The later PlayStation 3 release found me catching up with Grubbins on Ice during the Holiday break, and the DLC actually takes place during the winter as well. Everett and Lucy have been hypothesizing about the monsters they fought on Halloween night, and begin searching for tangible evidence, all of which leads to Lucy getting kidnapped after stumbling upon a receiver in the snow that opens up a portal – of course Everett, Wren and Reynold are left with no choice but to suit up and save her.

Entering the strange world of Repugia, the children discover monsters wanting to start a revolution against the tyrannous Araxia. Teaming up with these monsters, the game retains the shtick of the original adventure by having players knock on doors, but now looking to solicit support for the revolution, or fight the anti-revolutionists within – relive your anti-establishment college days, “Viva, Repugia!”

New costumes include the pirate, yeti and eyeball, each with new battle powers. If you’re a completionist, the pirate costume is essential for exploring and uncovering all the secrets and pathways. Older costumes (such as the fry costume!) are not forgotten and are used for light puzzle-solving around town and underground.

I wish the DLC changed how exploration powers can only be used via the main character. It would be great, and save a lot of costume switching, if other characters’ costume powers could be used. However, a nice addition is the “historical center” and its satellite posts for game saves. I never needed to intentionally save my game, but the witty banter justified some return visits.

Double Fine also ramped up the difficulty of the final boss fight, where Araxia fights alongside Big Bones, smashing your party with high-powered attacks. It took a few costume and power-up switches to fashion my characters with a strategy combination capable of defeating the duo. And at that point I was left feeling more than a little sad that the adventure was all over after three hours – though the end perhaps gives us hope for more episodes.

Overall, I enjoyed this addition to one of my favorite games of 2010, largely because the charm reminded me why I loved playing the title earlier this year. What other game lets you play as a pirate, a yeti and a unicorn all at the same time?

*Sidenote: Did anyone catch the blatant Stacking plug in the caves? The music and tiny characters are adorable!

Recently released by Gaijin games on WiiWare, lilt line is a game being marketed as “a retro rhythm racing beat ‘em up action game with a dubstep flavour,” which bothered when I first started the game.

I took one look at the UI and level design and flashbacks of raver kids tripping on E wearing stunna shades at HARD Summer’s electro festival came to mind, not dubstep. Around here, dubstep is a mellow, mostly downtempo scene, devoid of bright neon colors, and saying “rapid” is almost an oxymoron, so I feel it is an imperfect visual representation of dubstep. The scene is becoming a bit more commercialized as groups like Magnetic Man lead it into the mainstream, perhaps melding perceptions of dubstep into an all-encompassing view of electronic music, but I digress.

Apart from my disapproval of the stylistic design choices, lilt line is a fun game that breezes by too quickly. The game adds an accelerometer element (it was originally released for iPhones) to a musical game that’s not far from Rock Band, where the movements are tilting the remote and hitting the 2 button on the marked beats. There are 15 levels in which you control your line by tilting the horizontal WiiMote forward and backwards. Your lifeline is the score shown on the bottom left of the screen, depleting every time you hit the wall or miss a beat.

Most levels are fun and easy, but some stages are frustratingly challenging. The lilt line is fast, but not resilient – it sometimes gets lost in its own liltingly carefree self. Bad level run throughs go something like this: tilt up, hit 2, keep it tilted up, tilt down, dodge the menacing walls, hit 2, beat break, hit 2, tilt up, hit wall, keep hitting wall, tilt up too high, hit wall again, miss beat, hit wall, “game over,” throw controller. Once you hit the wall, the line moves too quickly to bounce back into the groove.

This game made me contemplate the correlation between presentation and gameplay and how there is a certain visual/gameplay ratio for games.

There are games that look spectacular enough to forget substandard gameplay issues, and games that are nowhere near the cutting-edge in visual terms but provide play that invites the imagination to overlook presentation. lilt line’s simple but engaging mechanics allow me to overlook my own design issues with the game, even though the visuals portray more of a “music visualizer” vibe and the neon colors and geometric shapes come across as flat and abstract on a first impression.

lilt line

Developer
Different Cloth

Publisher
Gaijin Games

System
Nintendo Wii (WiiWare)

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
December 13, 2010

Price
500 Wii Pts

*A copy of this title was purchased by Gamesugar for review

Sanrio is currently celebrating their 50th anniversary with “Small Gift” festivals in Los Angeles and Miami and a touring pop-up store hitting select cities in the US, featuring rare collectors items only available on the tour.

Gamesugar visited Small Gift in Santa Monica, CA, held at Santa Monica Airport’s Barker Hangar. The venue is perfect for a massive festival that includes an art show, gift shop, game booths, miniature golf course, arcade station, face painting booths, and a Ferris wheel. We could barely hold it together ten feet from the entrance because everything oozed of cuteness. Most of my time was spent at the arcade station, playing retro games and yelling at the pinball machine.

Check out plenty of photos from the event at our Facebook Page.

http://www.sanrio.com/smallgift

The last of their three game deal with Sony, the title’s focus on multiplayer is something previously unexplored by them in fl0w and fl0wer. As social interaction transforms alongside technology and corporations are realizing that individuals strive to publicize their self-expression in order to connect to others in the virtual world, Journey aims to express simple feelings with other humans to achieve “authentic” memorable moments.

Journey can immediately spark some comparisons to games like Shadow of the Colossus and Demon’s Souls, and while the similarities were acknowledged, the development of Journey owes plenty to an in-house prototype called Dragon.

Dragon served as the clay to mold the ideas behind Journey, allowing the observation of players, who were unaware that any other characters encountered within the game were human controlled. When encountering others, players were quick to push them into a pit, and an emphasis was placed on observing players’ behaviors within the game, as well as looking at how people communicate within online multiplayer-based games (Call of Duty, etc.). The emphasis for Journey became the belief that humans have a broader emotional palette, and can communicate in a more meaningful way while interacting with other one another online.

In this game where “social” is the core mechanic, the thesis statement has been changed multiple times during development. Initially, it was “Together we can move the mountain,” and evolved into, “We all walk the path; each journey is different.” As the game goes further into development, they’re converging to a solidified thesis that will go unknown beyond TGC.

I see this game as a metaphor for life, or an idealized perception of civilization. Jenova spoke about how players can choose to play solo or with others, either choice allowing players to complete the game, but making available the possibility of a finding a deeper satisfaction from working and interacting with others (just like real life).

The game is set to release in 2011, and we’ll definitely be keeping the title on our radar.

Attract Mode and Giant Robot are hosting a Game Night event with Bryan Lee O’Malley, who will be present for a signing and game session with fans at GR2 on August 21. At 5:00pm, he’ll be signing copies of Scott Pilgrim Volume 6 and after that wraps up, he’ll be playing Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game multiplayer mode with fans.

Gamesugar had a great time at the first Game Night with Gaijin Games, so count on us attending this one and sharing the photos shortly after.

GR2
2062 Sawtelle Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
http://gr2.net/

RSVP:

That sweet poster clipped for the title image can be seen in fuller glory here.

The opening reception brought out a crowd of art, music, and videogame lovers. Game-themed music and food joined the celebration where Julian Yoland created Tetris pieces out of waffles in the dishes he served, and plenty of wine, beer, and energy drinks were present to wash it down.

Howardamb performed an experimental electronic set using several iPad apps (Bebot, Sampletoy, etc.) and the KORG DS-10 (Nintendo DS) in their set. Wet Mango featured chiptune beats and sampled sounds from retro games. Bobb Bruno made a special appearance and Back to the Future the Ride closed up the show.

The name of the show encompasses an old-school DIY vibe, where the artists found inspiration from the 8-bit generation of gaming. With the centralized theme of retro gaming, it was easy for the artists to merge their love of interactive installations, video art, and the pixel aesthetic to create the show. Many of the works embraced the local creative community by including Los Angeles bands for their pieces. My favorite pieces were by William Lu, who transformed his friends’ bands into pixelated illustrations.

Walt and his team of artists give an inside look into the show:

There will be a closing party presented by Walt and Sean Carnage on August 7th ($5) featuring I.E., Baseck and more TBA. DJs include Jacob Safari and Kyle Mabson.

TETRICIDE
Pehrspace
325 Glendale Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90026
July 10 – August 7, 2010
Open Monday 2-6pm, or by appointment (213) 483-PEHR
http://www.waltproductions.com/tetricide.html

Somehow we managed to get on the list this year, and it was hard not to feel like tagging along with an elite club, especially because of the strict rule that no recording devices were allowed.

Miyamoto brought out members of Nintendo’s own elite club – The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword’s producer Eiji Aonuma, and Nintendo 3DS hardware producer Hideki Konno.

The talk that followed focused primarily on Zelda: Skyward Sword, the 3DS, and 3DS games – namely Nintendogs + Cats, Steel Diver, and Starfox, with most of the time restrained to those topics.

From the start of the project, both Nintendo President Satoru Iwata and Miyamoto stressed the importance of having only one person as the producer for the overall 3DS project – a role given to Hideki Konno, whose portable resume includes producing Nintendogs and Mario Kart DS, and whose full resume includes most of Nintendo’s biggest titles from the eighties onward. Konno mentioned being nervous about the initial shift from working on software to hardware, but said he eventually embraced the new role and valued the gained experience.

Miyamoto started off asking how many people had played the 3DS during the first day of E3, too which most of the room raised their hands. After a day full of surprises, Nintendo managed one more when we were suddenly presented with the revelation of Ocarina of Time on the 3DS, not simply ported, but remade for the handheld.

Miyamoto said that the motivation for this was in offering a game that allowed player’s to feel as if they were truly moving through Hyrule. He also mentioned that it had been twelve years since the original release, and that anyone who had played the game for the first time in the 6th grade would now be 24.

Amidst the laughter of him asking if anyone had played it for the first time in the 6th grade, I was one of the few who raised their hand.

Steel Diver for the 3DS was another title on the show floor, and the development for the game seems to be going well. Miyamoto joked and said this was because development has been going on for six years of course.

For those who don’t remember, the original Nintendo DS was shown at E3 six years ago, and Steel Diver was included as part of the tech demo because the slow submarine was accommodating to the touch screen. Nintendo decided that it was a perfect title to finally push forward and bring to the Nintendo 3DS.

Among the 3DS titles discussed, Star Fox grabbed plenty of attention as well. With Star Fox being the type of shooting game it is, it’s difficult to tell the spatial relationship between the ship and objects in space, but with the 3DS, there’s reason to believe that gamers will be able to maneuver the ship better with the aid of 3D visuals.

For instance, in fully rendered Mario games, players often find that floating question marks can be difficult to hit since it’s confusing to figure out exactly where it’s floating above your head.

With 3D visuals, the goal is to make those tasks—and games in general—easier to play.

A positive point for developers is they can focus on creating their games on a single spec for the 3DS and not have to worry about various hardware variables such as different brands of 3D glasses and televisions.

Admittedly I would love to play this on the 3DS, Star Fox 64 was one of my favorite games growing up and the familiarity of the controls, coupled with new 3D visuals leave me expecting a great nostalgia trip and an overdue return for the series.

When Nintendogs +Cats came up, Miyamoto had a very quotable explanation for the idea of interacting with cats. He said, “Cats are interesting, they’re kind of like girls… If they come and talk to you it’s great, but when you go and try to talk to them it doesn’t always go so well! Also, although they’re pets they do their own thing, you can’t teach them any tricks.”

It was interesting to hear about experimenting with the idea of having cats in a pet game, of putting cat models in place of the dogs in the Nintendogs program – how strange it was to tell the cat to sit, and stranger still when their tails would start wagging at the player. From there, they decided that putting cats on the screen along with dogs would be a better way to include them. Miyamoto seemed quite fascinated with how dogs and cats react to each other.

The inner camera of the 3DS will be used in the game for facial recognition to create realistic interaction between player and pet. For example, if you look at the screen and tilt your head side to side, the pet will imitate your movement; if you move your face closer to the screen, the dog will come up and lick you – additionally the pet will even recognize your face. If you hand your 3DS to a friend, the pet may have a different reaction than it would with you.

The 3DS allows for three levels of interaction with your pets – touching with the touch screen, talking with the microphone, and now visually with the camera.

Miyamoto addressed his difficulty playing Skyward Sword during the press conference with a bit of laughter, reiterating that what happened on stage was wireless interference – he had trouble shooting the spiders, and wanted the crowd to make sure their wireless devices were off.

With the Wii MotionPlus technology available, Skyward Sword was created with a heavy focus on motion enhanced gameplay during its development. The ease of swinging the sword and the ability to change items instantaneously with the Wii MotionPlus is the type of mechanism that he has wanted in the Zelda series for a long time.

One apparent improvement over earlier Zelda games is the map, which is easier to follow. Not getting lost plays into Nintendo’s goal of maintaining the core of the series while also attempting to create a more engaging experience for the player. Judging from the gameplay demo happening during the roundtable, the controls did seem very natural with the Wii MotionPlus, and it doesn’t hurt that I’m digging the slightly Impressionistic art style.

Last year at around this same time, the gameplay structure for Skyward Sword was said to be almost complete, but graphically they were able to show only a single piece of art. This year Nintendo says that they don’t want to rush for a 2010 release, taking time to polish the title and add more dungeons and bosses, pushing the title into 2011.

I respect any developer that takes the time to finalize their projects before prematurely announcing a release date, and it’s hard not to be swayed by the confidence earned by the Zelda team over the years.

The story for Skyward Sword involves Link being born and raised on a floating island called Skyloft. One day, an incident reveals another land beneath the clouds, one naturally ruled by evil forces. Due to this incident, Link is forced to visit the evil land and it becomes necessary to travel between there and Skyloft. Link is led to the evil land by the Skyward Sword. The symbolism of “sky” is said to be important in this game, as with the scene of Link falling off a cliff in the trailer.

And that was the bulk of what Nintendo had to share at their E3 2010 roundtable… except for a brief mention of that Pikmin title for the Wii – yes they are still working on that new Pikmin!

Konami is releasing Hard Corps: Uprising on Xbox LIVE Arcade and PlayStation Network this fall, and judging by the E3 demo, it’s coming along really well. The art shift makes it easy to call it a refreshing take on a celebrated franchise, whose concept and gameplay controls are still adopted from early Contra games – of course new features such as online co-op mode and leaderboards tag along for the nostalgia trip.

I couldn’t help but notice “working title” on the E3 sign with Hard Corps. Does that mean that they’re considering putting “Contra” back in the title? I’m going to guess probably not.

With the game being developed by ARC System Works, a huge draw for the title is the art direction, which is hard to ignore – the hand-drawn sprites in 2.5D look incredible. So far, there are only Bahamut and Krystal to choose for playable characters, with plans for three additional ones via DLC. And although these characters take up about 1/4 of the screen, the view doesn’t look at all cramped.

In Hard Corps: Uprising, characters are agile enough to hold up to two special weapons, lay low and shoot, dash on ground, even double jump and dash in the air. While playing the demo, I blindly neglected the R button, which locks the character in place to aim and shoot your weapon. Not knowing this made the motorbike sequence frustrating as I continually drove into the enemies coming at me from behind while trying to shoot at them. Duh, Aileen, DUH!

I died plenty during my time with the game, but that’s part of the fun with Contra games, isn’t it?

Square-Enix’s Space Invaders Infinity Gene is a completely different type of nostalgia ride. It actually reminds me of all the 3D modeling software I used in architecture class.

Instead of having to measure and strategically draw buildings in vector grids, architecture class would have been more fun if there was a little space ship floating around in my projects.

Unlike the static nature of buildings, the focus of Space Invaders Infinity Gene is evolution, which brings an organic element into geometrical space. I thought they were leaning toward a bit of pretentiousness at first, but the concept of evolution demonstrated within the game quickly explains the Charles Darwin quotes shown during the loading screens.

The stages begin in classic Space Invader fashion, with your ship stationed at the bottom of the screen. As more power-ups are collected, more vector planes are unlocked, allowing your ship to eventually move all around the screen, transforming from a 2D to 3D shooter.

Word of the game’s music mode, which generates custom stages based on my own music means I’m going to have to dig through plenty of songs to see how the frameworks change. I’m already imagining a potential Space Invaders playlist on my PS3.

It’s great that Square-Enix decided to bring an XBLA and PSN version to North America, it’s just a matter of seeing where the price point settles once it’s announced along with a release date.

At the show I was lucky enough to be in a closed-door setting where Inaba demoed his new 3rd-person shooter for Gamesugar.

In the game, Sam Gideon is a research scientist who develops a battle suit that gives him faster reflexes and superhuman strength to help fight for the planet’s depleting energy resources. I asked Inaba what his influences were for the art direction and he said that he and his development team grew up watching a lot of Japanese anime, whose influences reflect in the game in a hyper-realistic way.

He wanted to show a sci-fi vision of the future by juxtaposing robots and robot-types in a realistic-type setting, rather than in an anime world. So, imagine it like this: rip a picture of a Gundam robot from a magazine and glue it to one of your family pictures. That’s Vanquish. Then, take that same robot and glue it to one of your anime books. That’s not Vanquish. Get it?

The speed and tempo of the game creates a heightening tension when mixed with action and shooting. Watching the demo made it hard not to cringe from moments of intensity and shout out at the television like a backseat gamer. The game even presents a vertical battlefield, where danger comes from above, adding an upper dimension to 3rd-person shooters.

Inaba explained three systems unique to Vanquish as a shooter:

The boost system takes the dash idea from action games – your character slides around the ground to dodge gunfire and to quickly advance through the stage.

The suit Sam wears has a blade system, which is a battlefield adaptable weapons pod that replicates weapons after they are scanned. The animation of the weapon replication is very cool. While flipping through your weapons, they disappear like holograms, quickly materializing into the next weapon in your arsenal.

And then there’s the Augmented Reaction (AR) system, which slows down time, giving you more opportunity to react and analyze the frenetic battlefield. Damage can still be taken while engaging the AR system, but enemies’ attacks and weapons slow down, giving the player time to strategize the plan of attack and regenerate health. There is no health gauge in the game. Like other shooters, you’re in an ambiguous health state as long, so as you’re not taking too much damage, you’re fine. If you take too much damage at once, the screen turns red and the AR system activates, slowing down time as a last chance to replenish.

With an October release, the title’s most direct 3rd-person shooter competition is Mindjack (Square Enix/feelplus – October 2010) and Quantum Theory (Tecmo Koei Games/Tecmo – Fall 2010) at the moment.

Aside from the pace of action, Vanquish’s added edge seems to be how the game retains a very anime essence to it on that battlefield, rather than trying to be overly realistic like most Western shooters.

The game already looks and feels much better than the competition, but I’d look forward to getting more hands-on time with Vanquish before release to get a real sense on how the controls feel, and to try out the cover mechanic and melee combat.

As proof that you never know who you might be standing next to at E3, I asked the man next to me if he wanted to join me with the game only to discover that he was out of Nintendo’s top game composers, credited with having worked on quite a few memorable titles.

As for Kirby, the amalgamation of creative ideas, of merging a virtual fabric world with a cute, pliable, fluffy character really breathes new life into the franchise. The art style makes you question your own creative ideas, simultaneously producing a refreshing outlook on how a simple, delightfully unconventional idea can work.

The controls give homage to old-school gaming while seamlessly incorporating simple WiiMote motion controls. Controlling Kirby and Prince Fluff reminds me of my button mashing days of Super Smash Bros. In the demo, the attack button can be used to swing, “unwind” your enemies, swim, grab/throw your partner (in multiplayer) and enemies, and manipulate the environment when encountering obstacles. Tall buildings can be pulled down or unzipped to lower platforms, and yarn can be pulled toward you to bring platforms closer. Kirby’s other moves included an anvil drop and transforming into a parachute when you’re jumping off tall platforms.

Traversing through the levels while keeping a smile on your face isn’t a difficult thing. Each level brought charming surprises as I interacted with the environment. The evil yarn dragon was the boss to defeat in order to complete the demo, and instead of squabbling over who would do what, my partner and I unified instinctively, coming together to pull off his buttons and un-knit the dragon’s yarn.

I only wish the demo had been longer!

The transformative Kirby unites form and function in perfect harmony, and the game has definitely already charmed its way onto the top of my list.