Late Night Consoling (Updated)
-
Red Steel sequel in the works
[wii]Ubisoft has long professed early dedication to Nintendo's Wii console, supporting the system with several games at launch. One of those launch titles, the first person shooter/slasher Red Steel, was one of the first officially unveiled Wii games earlier this year. Since its announcement, company executives have given strong indication that the game is intended as the first in a franchise, and now a job posting on Ubisoft's official site essentially confirms those plans. The posting seeks a game designer for "continuation of the Redsteel project," and, interestingly enough, seems to indicate that experience in RPG development is a plus.
The game in development is undoubtedly heading to Wii, though no target platforms were listed on the site. Given Ubisoft's penchant for heavily multiplatform development, there is always a possibility that the game may head to other systems as well.
Red Steel was released to mixed critical response. Our own impressions pegged the game as greatly suffering from a general lack of polish and numerous unsightly flaws, much of which likely could have been improved upon with a development cycle not compressed to make a system launch. Hopefully, further games in the series are given more necessary resources.
-
PS3 game download sizes to beat XBLA's by factor of ten
[ps3]Microsoft has a detailed list of requirements that must be met for games downloadable to Xbox 360 through Xbox Live Arcade, and one of those points is a maximum download size of 50MB, in order to accomodate users who own an Xbox 360 memory unit but not a hard drive. Sony's PlayStation 3 has long been known to have mandatory hard drive support, and this week, in an interview on FiringSquad, SCE Santa Monica director of external development John Hight commented on some of Sony's own requirements for its downloadable games. As far as size limit, Sony is one-upping Microsoft's by allowing games to reach 500MB. "Since weÂ’ve got plenty of HD space we can accommodate even bigger games and a lot of them," said Hight.
Sony also has some characteristics it looks for in downloadable PS3 games, according to Hight, including support for 1080p resolution and functionality making use of the motion-sensing Sixaxis controller. Hight also noted that while Sony's first party development does not plan on offering reissued arcade releases a la Xbox Live Arcade, third parties are likely to do so.
-
Capcom promises contextual font size in Lost Planet
[xbox360]Following the release of Capcom's Dead Rising (X360), many gamers equipped with non-HD televisions complained about the game's small text size, claiming it was unreadable when not displayed in 720p resolution. Capcom acknowledged the problem, but indicated that a fix was unlikely. Now, it seems that the company will be keeping the issue in mind for future releases.
Last week, Capcom released a multiplayer demo of its upcoming sci-fi action game Lost Planet over Xbox Live, and soon afterwards, the company's message boards saw similar text-related complaints, mainly in regards to the score list in the game's Elimination mode. Today, Capcom sent over word that this has been addressed in the full version of the game, which ships in January. The final game will detect whether the system is outputting to high definition or standard definition, and will automatically adjust the font size accordingly. Capcom sent along some comparison shots showing Elimination mode with the original font and the adjusted font. We've also resized the second picture to give a more accurate representation of the game's resolution when running on a standard definition (480i) or enhanced definition (480p) widescreen display.
Capcom also noted that single-player objectives in the game have been clarified, and are now delivered through both voice and text, as well as being accessible at any time from the in-game PDA. Lost Planet is set to release for Xbox 360 on January 12, 2007.
-
Sega releases two for Virtual Console
[wii]Following yesterday's release of the TurboGrafx-16 shooter Super Star Soldier on Wii's Virtual Console, Sega today announced that it has brought two classic Sega Genesis games to the service. The much loved 1989 two-player fantasy action title Golden Axe and the offbeat 1993 dolphin-centric adventure Ecco the Dolphin were made available today for 800 Wii Points ($8) each. Both games can be played using either the Wii Remote in its horizontal position, the Wii's classic controller, or the GameCube controller.
-
Double Dragon coming to Xbox Live Arcade?
[xbox360]According to a news report published on Official Xbox 360 Magazine UK's official website, the classic side-scrolling brawler Double Dragon will be coming to Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade. The report does not contain any information regarding its source or the alleged download's release date, but it does give a fairly specific total size of 12.56MB for the game. Like various other updated Xbox Live Arcade games, it will allow online cooperative play and will include an enhanced graphics option (likely an anti-aliasing post-processing filter).
As the site notes, Double Dragon will at the very least not be coming this week, as Wednesday's release has been confirmed to be an update for Texas Hold 'em.
Console Game Of The Evening [Submit Yours!]
Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves for the Dreamcast. "I just refuse to believe this isn't submitted yet. A late port that takes the top fighter crown away from a library already brimming. You did own a Dreamcast Arcade Stick, didn't you? We're fortunate Capcom and SNK liked the system while it lasted." (submitted by skankcore)
-
j33uk
replyAdjustable font sizes are good stuff, Dead Rising's text was sometimes hard to read even on an HDTV
-
I find it silly that they care about people complaining about small font sizes when they have ignored PC > Console converts for years over LARGE font sizes.
By far, the number one complaint about console games from PC (and actually in general.. but mostly PC) users have been the overly large font and HUD sizes.
It still bugs me to this day, and is one of the reasons I have never felt fully "immersed" in a console game; despite the fact that there have been some incredible atmospheric console games over the years.
Hopefully this initiative will spawn developers thinking in the opposite direction as well, with less shit on the screen (as an option); though with that expanding of what I like to call "idiot text" (push A to jump, for 16 hundredth time) over the last few years I doubt it will ever be realized.-
I find giant HUDs to be ok if implemented properly. Context sensitive HUDs.
Ok, I've been shot, now would be a good time to see how much health I have. Ok, now I know how much health I have, now the HUD can go fade out.
kthxbye HUD.
Unfortunately most games are notorious with displaying insignificant information all the damn time coupled with massive graphical pizzazz on the HUD itself which ends up taking a good 1/3 of the screen real estate.-
While I would prefer the option to have it on, have it fade, or turn it off, having the fading out scenario as a base is a reasonable compromise to the problem.
In PC games where the hud is not essential (FPS mostly) I almost always turn the HUD off completely for the immersion factor. Now I realize that I am certainly not the "norm" but to me, it is an important part of the fun wondering how many bullets I have or what my health status is. It's also an excellent way to compensate for lacking AI and to overcome "quick-save-itis" (can't save now, I might only have 2 health left).
Unfortunately, developers may have no actual option to get rid of the help text and other HUD information, even as an option. For the 360 at least, MS sets up clear rules on what developers must present to the player (tips on loading screens is a good example). In game contextual "help text" (idiot text) may be a requirement as well.
If there is a resident 360 dev around perhaps you may enlighten us on the issue?
-
-
-
-
What do you mean? People were saying that playing the game on an SDTV was difficult, not that the "SDTV version" (of which there is no such thing as far as I'm aware) was difficult to read on an HDTV. Since there's just one version of the game that downscales, playing the game in SD didn't have the necessary resolution to make text of that size readable. What they're doing with Lost Planet doesn't provide two versions of the game, it just adjusts the font size of the real-time text being generated depending on what kind of video signal is being sent.
-
-
