The Full Circle: 360 News Report 07.18.08

Posted by Joe Roche on 07.18.2008

It's the post E3 edition of The Full Circle and we've got all the news that you need coming off the convention floor. We're going to talk about instrument compatibility between Rock Band and Guitar Hero: World Tour, plus Halo Wars, Singularity, Jack Bauer in Call of Duty, Square's other RPG from the convention, and all the talk about Bungie having the rug pulled out from under them. It's all here plus an E3 centered Hot Button in The Full Circle.



Well that was – interesting. E3 has come and gone and we're just trying to pick up the pieces around these parts. I wasn't overly impressed with anything I saw out of anyone this week other then Resident Evil 5, and Little Big Planet. I was super excited to see Gears of War 2 but still I've been watching so many videos of Gears 2 that nothing is going to make me anticipate game the more. I was disappointed to not see Killzone 2 because Killzone was one of my favorite last generation PlayStation games, and much like Fallout 3 I was less then enthused with Resistance 2. I'm also completely baffled by what went down between Bungie and Microsoft and whether or not there ever was a mystery Halo game or if the powers that be are just yanking our chains. However, I do know that it's Friday which can mean only one thing – time to go around the Full Circle.

Guitar Hero Compatible with Rock Band



If you're a fan of music games then there is a good chance that you've got a closet somewhere in your house full of instrument peripherals, but that might be about to change. According to Activision Rock Band instruments will be compatible with Guitar Hero: World Tour. Naturally that's not the whole story as all that has been confirmed is that this will be true for the Xbox 360 version and only for Rock Band 1 instruments because Activision hasn't had a chance to test on Rock Band 2. If it turns out that the instruments are compatible with Rock Band 2 that would be a huge plus for these music games because honestly how many tiny plastic drum sets do you really need laying around in your basement?

Call of Duty: Jack Bauer at War



Granted this isn't necessarily an Xbox 360 story but Treyarch confirmed that Kiefer Sutherland will be providing some voice work for Call of Duty: World at War. Along with that news Mark Lamia the head of Treyarch also put over the next installment of Call of Duty as the grittiest game in the series, although I'll believe that when I see it. Frankly I'm excited for this game because between the jungles, the Pacific front of WWII and the flamethrowers it all looks pretty bad ass. But after the huge success of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare I'm a bit let down that we're going back to World War II. Hell at this point wouldn't people be more interested in a FPS set during the Korean War, or how controlling some British soldiers in the Falkland Islands?

Activision Announces Singularity



The ability to shift time seems like it should be a can't miss proposition in a video game, and if you ask fans of TimeSplitters or Timeshift they'd tell you that it's not only can't miss, but it's also great fun. If you're in the camp that loves the idea of controlling time then you're going to love the new Activision title being developed by Raven Software "Singularity." During the Activision press event they announced this new game with a very short trailer and not much else other then the fact that it will in fact be based around your ability to control time. My favorite part of this announcement of course is that it most certainly was NOT a part of E3 so please let's not think that this was some sort of E3 announcement because if anyone from the ESRB is out there reading this, Activision was not at E3.

Bungie Pulled



This was probably the most controversial story of E3 and even managed to overshadow a lot of what went on at the actual convention as far as internet ramblings went. If you're new to the story it breaks down something like this: Bungie had a clock counting down to some major announcement. All over the Bungie website there were clues, and different images that led people to believe that it might have something to do with that superintendent logo that always pops up in Bungie materials, or it might be another Halo game, since that's all anyone thinks of now when Bungie is going to make an announcement. Most people were confused as to why the countdown wasn't going to the Microsoft press event, and then that came and went without a mention of Halo, Halo Wars, or Bungie – so we waited.

The next day the countdown was gone, the mystery about what would happen when the clock struck zero became a mystery about why there was no longer a clock to run out. Harold Ryan, President of Bungie posted a message on the Bungie website that said basically that their publisher (Microsoft) pulled the plug on their announcement and that no further information would be forthcoming. That might have been true had the publisher not spilled the beans that in fact the countdown was gearing towards a new Halo game from Bungie, but the announcement was postponed for whatever reason. Some are saying it was because Microsoft thought Sony and Nintendo didn't show much so there was no need to announce another new title, others thought Microsoft wanted the focus solely on the coup of getting FFXIII, and even others feel as though this was done to appease Epic and keep the focus on Gears of War 2. All of those are possible, but all we know is that the announcement could have been a big deal, and it wound up being a trickle of information coming from third party sources.

Nobody should be surprised that this happened – hell in his Preview to E3 "Beyond the Report" Mark Salmela said and I quote: "But be aware that each company ALWAYS keeps a secret game in reserve in case the other has some "epic" announcement. Like Microsoft kept both Halo Wars and I'm sure another Halo-esc *Halo 4, Peter Jackson's Halo, IDK* in secret. Sony may hold back more than I want them to in case Microsoft is planning a "one-two" punch type thing and FF13 was only the first punch."

It was clear as day that the reason Microsoft wasn't putting Bungie on the stage during their press conference on Monday was because they were saving the announcement in case Sony came out and blew their doors off. There was a very good chance that Sony was going to trot out some playable God of War III material (anything more then a tiny CGI clip), or Team Ico's next project could be revealed and absolutely take everyone's breath away. Instead Sony went the conservative route, spent way to much time on the PS2 and didn't really show us anything that we didn't already know about and clearly nothing bigger then the FFXIII reveal. Hell, I didn't even see a clip of Killzone 2 until about four hours after the Sony event ended. So Microsoft kept a bullet in the chamber and then didn't need it – that shouldn't surprise anyone although it sucks for Bungie that their big reveal wound up being nothing more then a "we will see you later on down the road" moment. Welcome back to independent production Bungie.

The Last Remnant Details



Square Enix overshadowed themselves with the news that Final Fantasy XIII was coming to the Xbox 360 because they diverted attention away from one of their upcoming RPG's The Last Remnant which is due out in November. Not much has been seen or heard about this game other then it's a timed exclusive with the PS3 and PC versions coming at some point next year. However IGN had a chance to pry some details out of Square and there are a few interesting things to note.

The battle system in The Last Remnant makes use of what Square is calling unions. There will be multiple members in your party that can be grouped into these unions. Up to five characters can be put in each union and up to five unions can be commanded at once. The team is in the final stages of crafting and tweaking the system, but it says that the goal of the game is to build unions based on character's strengths and to then use them strategically. Though it is a command based RPG, each union is given a strategy command and then the AI acts upon it.

Also for those concerned about the possibly storyline this game follows the main character is named Rush Sykes and your adventure begins when your sister is kidnapped. Not much outside of that is known but after viewing the trailer this game looks beautiful (as you would expect from Square) and while it is boasting a worldwide appeal we shall see if they can break off a bit from the JRPG style that has made them famous to create a more western type RPG when this comes out in November.

Be the Covenant



Some details are beginning to trickle out about the too be released (Spring 2009) Halo Wars. Some of the boys over at Joystiq got their hands on the game and found out some rather interesting bits of information, not the least of which is that in the multiplayer component of the game you will be able to play as The Covenant. As a non Halo player I have absolutely no idea what this means but I've been told that it's similar to being able to play as the Locust horde in Gears of War so I am sure that this is pretty cool. There is no option to play as the Covenant in the single player campaign mode, but from all reports Halo Wars is a game that will thrive through online multiplayer so there will be no shortage of people enjoying their time as the bad guys.

Pandemic Knows What You Want



Pandemic is set to release "Mercenaries 2: World in Flames" next month and while everything I've seen of the game makes me at least interested to give it a whirl the people responsible for creating the game are already kicking themselves. Apparently Pandemic wanted to include video capture for the game – much like games like Halo 3, and Ninja Gaiden II offer – but they are much to far along in the development process to include that feature at this juncture. I guess they are talking about making sure that it'll be available in Mercenaries 3: Search for Curley's Gold, or Mercenaries: World in Flames 2 "Electric Bugaloo." Personally I've never been a huge fan of watching other gamers videos on YouTube so not having the capability doesn't bother me one bit, however I guess the service must be popular or else nobody would include it so this might be a downer for those of you who love to show off your ability to blow stuff up.

Screening Room
I joked about adding videos with Mark the other day, but after watching roughly sixteen hours of these trailers online I thought it was only fair to include some of the highlights coming out of E3 in this spot.

Wolfenstein: undead supernatural Nazi's are back


Quantum of Solace: actual gameplay footage of the upcoming Bond game = sweet


Silent Hill: Homecoming is creepy as hell


THE HOT BUTTON

E3 has come and gone and I can't be the only person who felt a bit let down by the entire event this year. As a matter of fact I know I'm not alone because at least one person, Ubisoft executive director Alain Corre agrees with me. It's a little difficult to take anything that Corre says with anything more then a grain of salt since he was the same person who had a problem with the older style of E3 as well – so there is a chance that he's just a grumpy man who won't be pleased with anything. However, he is on to one thing – frankly E3 is much too late in the year to be as important as it used to be.

Speaking in an interview the day after his company gave their presentation at E3 Corre claimed that the size of E3 should be much grander, and the date should be changed to reflect the importance of the event. This is a paraphrase of what he actually said, but it gets to the nuts and bolts of the problem which is that the gaming industry builds their entire year around the holiday season push and by the middle of July there just aren't that many surprises that they can reveal that will have any immediate impact.

Think about the past few days and what was revealed at E3 concerning games. Microsoft focused on Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, and Fable II – none of which were surprises, none of which brought much new to the table. Sure you could say that the Final Fantasy XIII reveal was a big deal but you're telling me it wouldn't have been even more impressive next March with something that could be played on screen? Nintendo took a lot of heat for their lack of games being revealed even though they assure us that Mario and Zelda teams are in the studio working at we speak, and Sony…well Resistance 2, and Little Big Planet was fantastic but those we knew about – a two second teaser for God of War III doesn't count as a major reveal.

The surprises and the major revelations this year seemingly centered on non game related information. The new Xbox Live interface, the expansion of the PlayStation store and some more views of Home. These things are fun, for people who already own the system and like avatars and the ability to customize your own love seat, but is anyone going to buy a PS3 so they can try out home? Or run to pick up an Xbox 360 so they can stream Netflix on their console?

People want these conventions to mean something, we want to be blown away and surprised with what we're shown. When we start to look back on this E3 will we remember it for what was shown, or what wasn't shown? Will we think about the teaser of God of War III, or the Final Fantasy XIII reveal, or some game play footage of VATS from Fallout 3 – or will we still be thinking about not seeing Killzone 2, Team Ico's next project, Halo Wars, Halo: Chronicles, Halo Sudoku, some actual game play from MAG, maybe something more from God of War III, or Kid Icarus if you're a Nintendo fan?

It's obvious that E3 in July is used as a ramp up to the Christmas season but the games that will be out by the holiday we already knew about and have been anticipating since this time last year. The new stuff that we were shown all contained the "don't believe it until you see it" label – SPRING 2009 – and because of that we were mostly left with a flat feeling coming out of the convention. This is an easy problem to fix, just have E3 in April.

Think about that for a second – the holiday season usually carries pretty good numbers through December and into January (gift card purchases and back orders). Things start to substantially slow down in February during which time development teams that had been stressed about making this holiday deadline have now all transitioned into polishing up their next big release. An E3 in April is going to allow games that will be out in that vaunted SPRING 2009 window to be shown with much more detail, the different companies can brag about their sales figures through the holidays, and you as a gamer will be able to see the direction that your console will be taken in the year to come.

I understand that these companies don't want this event to be like ComiCon with throngs of fans running around everywhere and preventing them from getting their message out to the media (who after all are the focus of E3). That's fine, I have no qualms with keeping the event invite only and allowing gamers to watch from their couch on TV, it gives the games the chance to shine, and keeps the wacko fan ratio to a minimum. However, when the fans were there the event felt like it meant something – this year the event felt like a place holder to something bigger and more important. If I had to hear one more person say "you'll see much more at Tokyo" I might have thrown my remote through the TV. Why should the Tokyo Games Show benefit because E3 wants to be a less important launching point for Christmas?

So that's my idea – it's not the best idea, it's probably not even a good idea but feel free to throw out your own feelings on how E3 came off this past week. I'll be interested to hear how some of you felt about the convention as a whole and especially how the companies came off with their press conferences. If you've got an idea to make E3 feel more important do not hesitate to leave some comments.

Punching Out:

Beyond The Report by Mark Salmela. This was Mark's pre Sony press event column, he should have a new one up this morning so check that out as well.

Nintendophiles by Theo Frasier. Rumor around the water cooler is that Theo already pre ordered his copy of Barbie as the Island Princess. This week Theo runs down the mixed bag that he got from Nintendo's E3 press conference.

The PC Centric Extravaganza by Chris Evans. Interesting take on FPS between the console and the PC and one I completely agree with. In the end most shooters come off as similar to one another because frankly there are only so many things you can do.

by Derek Robbins. Derek's list of games he wanted to see at E3. Yes I know I linked to this last week, but since we're back to posting on the same day just know that he's got something new today.

by Vincent Chiucchi. It is safe to say that Vincent is not excited with the news of the upcoming Mega Man 9 release.

The Working Title by Jordan Williams. The Working Title runs rates each E3 conference and while I agree with most of what Jordan said I think Nintendo is going to sell so many units of Wii Summer Resort that it won't matter that they might not have any other games coming out this year.