Blast: Boston's Online Magazine » E3 2009

The last of the E3 swag

Blast Magazine Newsroom — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:34:22 +0000

Ok people listen up. E3 was a blast this year. We all know that. While the crowd was huge, and a lot larger than last year, we know that you were all sitting at home reading the stuff that the Blast Games team was firing up like so many chaingun rounds.

We’re cleaning up the Blast Newroom over the next few weeks, and right away we found a few things (like porn).

We have official E3 t-shirts for Wet, Rogue Warrior, and Red Steel 2. Do you want them?

Well we’re gonna make you work for’em.

You need to review something. A video game released in the past two months that we somehow haven’t reviewed yet. A rare peripheral. A brand new PC game would be great. Write us a 400-700 word review with a 1-10 rating. We’ll PUBLISH the best reviews in Blast and the best three reviews will win these rare pieces of cloth. First place gets choice, second, and so on. Reviews must be your own work and not be published anywhere else.

How do you do this? Register as a Blast user — it’s FREE and takes 30 seconds and post a comment on this story with your email address. We’ll be in touch.

E3 2009 Redux: Q&A with Rob Nicholls, developer of The Conduit

John M. Guilfoil — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 05:54:44 +0000

LOS ANGELES — We’re very hopeful about The Conduit, a Wii exclusive shooter that will boast 12-player online multiplayer.

Blast got to talk to Rob Nicholls, game designer for High Voltage Software, which is developing The Conduit.

The the buzz growing around this game, and we’re happy to show this interview in its full form:

BLAST: Tell us a little about The Conduit and a little bit about the challenges of developing a formative shooter for the Wii and the Wii only.

ROB NICHOLLS: Well, The conduit is a fps action styled on the Wii. It has single player components: nine missions, 8-10 hours of gameplay, standard difficulty settings settings. It also has a multiplayer component where you can have up to 12 people competing online where you have your standard deathmach type modes to team-based gameplay with a variety of modes. We have team modes, 13 different rule sets interspersed around those modes, nine different weapons sets and seven different maps that you can mix and match to those.

Plus the maps very in size from 2-6 people all the way up through really big ones that are meant for 12 people, but if you want to put 12 into the smaller maps youâ€™re more than willing to do so.

The storyline for the single player is you play as Michael Ford a Secret Service agent in Washington D.C., and all these strange events have been occurring. Thereâ€™s been this freak weather system thatâ€™s rained and flooded certain parts, and then people got this illness called “The Bug” where they were either not going to work or not showing up to school. A lot of people got reported missing but then showed up later. And then you have these strange terrorist attacks, like the Washington Monumen gets bombed. A senator and presidential hopeful gets assassinated by a member of her own staff. It kind of culminates with you being assigned to the presidentâ€™s Secret Service detail, and you save him from the other members who suddenly turned on him and tried to kill the president.

This has put you in contact with a mysterious individual known as John Adams who runs this sort of M.I.B.-esque organization called The Trust. Your saving the president has proven you to be â€œTrustworthyâ€ and loyal and heâ€™s kind of tapped you for this assignment.

What you find out is that itâ€™s the prelude to an alien invasion of Washington D.C.

BLAST: Was it a challenge to make an action shooter just for the Wii under those standards without all the blood and gore and hacked off limbs? Was that easier or harder for you?

RN: It wasnâ€™t really more difficult. It’s just if youâ€™re skirting that line between teen and mature a lot of that depends on who the ESRB has brought in for your session. But I think weâ€™ve got one (game) that still has some hardcore elements. We got a teen rating, but itâ€™s still enjoyable. You can still shoot heads off guys and so forth.

For us I think it was really more important to get that teen rating. As you say this is kind of a new realm — rather, ground thatâ€™s been gone over before and nobodyâ€™s succeeded. So what we want to do is do everything possible to make this game succeed so it will encourage developers to do more of these in the future.

BLAST: We’re seeing a lot of games in either the post apocalyptic or the â€œimpending doomâ€ genre. Either the world has ended like has in Fallout 3 or the 10 games like it that are coming out or something very, very bad is about to happen. Do you believe that thereâ€™s a mimicking of society component in video games?

RN: I think thereâ€™s some mimicking. Thatâ€™s why youâ€™re seeing all these disaster movies. Itâ€™s kind of the mindset that society is in. Youâ€™re in bad times, youâ€™re going to get stories about bad times or enduring those bad times.

In bad times where like you have a recession, people are worried about losing their homes, losing their jobs, things of that nature, their anxiety is hyped. So thatâ€™s the sort of movies that kind of resonate with them and thatâ€™s why theyâ€™re so popular.

BLAST: Is that Gold for someone like you?

RN: Gold? Well, what story do you want to do? What is going to resonate with people and what are they going to identify with at the time that the game comes out?

We are definitely trying to tell a story with The Conduit, and the 10 second blurb I just gave you is just barely scratching the surface of what is going on behind the scenes.

E3 2009: Richard Ham discusses the deeper meaning of Brink

John M. Guilfoil — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:13:22 +0000

LOS ANGELES — Bethesda Softworks’ Brink is an immersive action shooter that blends single-player, co-op, and multiplayer into a video game experience that finally blurs the line between the single player offline experience and the often rabid online shooter world.

The game is under development by Splash Damage, the studio behind the Enemy Territory games.

Brink has RPG elements that require you to build up your player from the clothing and gear he wears to the missions he decides to go on, to which side of a civil war he chooses to fight for.

You’re on a man made city called Ark — a complex of hundreds of islands seen as the last visage of hope for humanity. It was originally one of those “Bio-Dome” green habitats until Earth’s oceans started to rise, making the Ark a refuge instead of a paradise. After 25 uneasy years, the residents of the Ark reached their breaking point. War breaks out.

The game has beautifully stylized visual elements and scenery. It also has an interesting control scheme with a “smart button” that lets you target a ledge or point on the map that your character will vault, leap, climb or fall to automatically. The game understands where you’re trying to go and interacts with the environment around you.

The game is set for a Spring 2010 release, and it wasn’t playable at E3 this year. Though, the demo we were shown looks wonderful.

Blast did get to sit down with the game’s Creative Director, Splash Damage’s Richard Ham. Ham is a powerful name in video games. He invented Syphon Filter and just finished a stint with Microsoft working on Fable II. Ham told us there’s a message behind Brink and other types of post-apocalyptic games, as video game developers, like movie directors and television producers, engage in social commentary with their mediums.

BLAST: What do you hope to add to this project? What’s your vision for Brink?

Richard Ham: When I actually went in to interview with Splash Damage I was actually a little bit nervous thinking “gosh I don’t really have a lot of multiplayer shooter experience.” I mean Syphon 2 had a little bit of a deathmatch game, and that was kind of nice. Fable has a little bit but not very much, and Paul (Wedgwood), the owner, said “that’s perfect. That’s exactly what we want because I’ve got a whole team full of guys who have been doing nothing for the last decade but make kick ass multiplayer shooters and that’s what they’ll continue to do.”

But now that they’re moving over to console, they really do want to kind of bridge a gap, and what I tend to think we’re actually going to accomplish here bringing all this together is with Brink I tend to think it’s almost a gateway drug in that players like me who traditionally don’t play a lot of online shooters — I mean, I love Call of Duty. I play them all, but I get to the end of the story, and then I shelve it, and I never go online because “that’s a dangerous placeâ€ it’s a nasty place and it’s a real shame, because for all these years I’ve been missing out on these great experiences. So a big, big push for Brink is creating a great multiplayer experience, but then making it open and accessible so players who would have thought twice about going online actually have a reason to and will find that “wow we’ve really been missing out.”

BLAST What design elements did you immediately want to bring to Brink?

RH: Probably the number one thing for me, the biggest thing that I wanted to push, was the notion of having dynamic objectives. It’s actually something I did a long time ago going back to Syphon Filter 1. You’re going through a mission and all of a sudden “oh a new objective will happen,” based on the preset storyline of the game and of the level you’re in.

We’re going the complete opposite way in that every mission you’re going to go on has a clear set of objectives you are to go through and pretty much plays by the book. …

But your personal story is radically different depending on what class you’re playing, what body type you have, what type of player you are, what level you’re at. Because in the game there’s this kind of invisible commander running the whole show, running your team, who knows what’s going on, knows who’s doing what and can basically give out orders, optional orders, to everybody.

We will bribe you as a player to do these things. “We need somebody to turn into an engineer to repair the crane. First guy that does it, 300 experience points.” That’s the equivalent of killing 30 guys. Why would you not do it? We’ll do it just to get you to change, just to try. Even if you don’t make it, we’ll reward you.

That’s a really big push. All these dynamic objectives are coming up. It’s one of the reasons I think it’s an accessible game. A first person shooter online is a pretty hardcore place. You go in there; everybody’s been playing for days and months, and they know every square inch of that level and you’re like “I don’t know what to do.â€

The worst experience I ever had playing an online shooter was the first time I played a capture the flag match, and I got the flag, and I was like “What do I do? Where do I go? Everyone wants to kill me. My team wants to kill me. This is terrible!â€ You want to kill yourself just to drop the damn thing. You’re completely helpless. In Brink, at any given time there’s always a lot of missions you can take. You can be on the front line where all the hardcore guys are, whooping it up. If that’s not going to work for you, look at that objective wheel that comes up. There’s always going to be lots of options, whether it takes you behind enemy lines to do some sneaking around, whether it’s all about rescuing civilians, capturing enemy command posts.

BLAST: There are a lot of shooters and a lot of online multiplayer shooters. There have also been a lot of lofty multiplayer games — M.A.G. for instance. What specifically about Brink do you feel will turn on players?

RH: Well there’s a standard answer, but the big one is that mission inside a mission. But there’s other things too. Splash Damage, you go back to the Enemy Territory Games, it was the first online shooter that actually had experience points and leveling up, even before Battlefield. So, they’ve been doing this for a long time, and it’s now kind of become en vogue. With Call of Duty’s perks, people go “oh wow this is really exciting.â€ Killzone has a really deep system. Resistance had one as well. But these guys have been doing it for a long time.

We’re all big fans of MMOs back at the office. I think players when they finally see all the RPG options that are available so they can really customize themselves and create the perfect guy for them that’s going to be really refreshing.

The entire storyline of Brink is the outbreak of the civil war on this remote man made island, kind of the last refuge of humanity — or so they think — it’s a civil war and there are two sides. The important thing is you choose up front whether you fight on the side of “the manâ€ of security, keep the peace or do you go on the other side and play as Resistance. The important thing is on your side, you’re clearly in the right. When you get to that mission on the other side of the fence, it’s a completely different story and there’s a completely different set of things going on. That’s a really key element in the game is this kind of two sides of the same coin and you don’t know the whole thing until you’ve seen it all.

BLAST: The post-apocalyptic genre has exploded recently. Do you see parallels to modern society with these games?

RH: We’re actually trying to use this platform to actually say something. I’ll be honest; I turned 40 this year. I’ve been doing this for 15 years, and I’m getting to the point where I actually want to say something. I don’t just want this to be about cheap thrills, and I know it has to be. It has to be fun, but when you look at the setting and what’s going on with the two sides, I’ll be honest we’re definitely trying to put parallels into whats going on in our world today, particularly Palestine and Israel.

You look at that situation, and it seems completely intractable. If you look at it from one side or the other, well everything’s entirely justified or justifiable. It’s been in a stalemate forever. We can use a setting like this, because obviously nobody wants to play a shooter set in modern day Palestine. Nobody would want that.

It’s like Star Trek back in the 60s. “Well we can’ really do anything about race relations on network television, so let’s paint a guy with half his face white and half his face black and have him have an internal struggle.” It was a way for them to actually do stuff, and that’s kind of what we’re trying to do as well.

The setting really just kind of comes out of that naturally.

E3 2009: Hands-off with Rogue Warrior

John M. Guilfoil — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:35:57 +0000

BLAST’S BEST OF E3 2009
Best Multiplatform Game

LOS ANGELES — Bethesda Softworks has a lot of money to develop new games right now. Everything they touch is gold. Oblivion was huge. Fallout 3 is legendary. Video gaming is up in a down economy.

So Bethesda Softworks can bring in Mr. SEAL Team Six, Richard Marcinko and the voice of Mickey Rourke to put you in the boots of a real American badass.

But there’s more to this than just action and explosions. The SEALS have a special meaning to guys in their 20s. It’s the only reason Steven Segal had a career. We all watched Michael Biehn, Charlie Sheen, Bill Paxton and Rick Rossovich in “Navy Seals.” It’s an awful movie, but it’s the stuff of legends. We love that shit.

Enter Bethesda’s Rogue Warrior, which we saw up close at E3. Playing as Marcinko, you go behind the iron curtain to disrupt a suspected North Korean ballistic missile program, uncovering a conspiracy that could turn the Cold War in the commies’ favor. Death and destruction follow.

On your black ops, you’ll mix stealth and assault to infiltrate communist strongholds, swearing like a true sailor along the way.

In the hands off demo, done by Bethesda producer Charles Harribey, the best part of combat were any of the 25 different “brutal kills” moves you can perform by sneaking up on an unsuspecting bad guy, like throwing him off a ledge or stabbing him in the face. Yeah. Brutal.

This is a single player game with multiplayer combat modes. It’s very story driven, and it’s not a Solid Snake type stealth game. There’s a ton of overt combat as well.

The graphics and sounds are beautiful, and this will be a winner when it comes out in the fall for Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3.

E3 2009: New Heavy Rain screenshots

John M. Guilfoil — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:56:25 +0000

BLAST’S BEST OF E3 2009
Best PlayStation 3 Game

LOS ANGELES — Two of the four main characters in Heavy Rain were playable at E3 this year. The first is Norman Jayden, an FBI profiler who has been asked by local police forces to investigate the case of The Origami Killer. The second is a sexy photographer named Madison Paige.

Here’s a look at both:

E3 2009: Hands-off with Flip’s Twisted World

John M. Guilfoil — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:39:38 +0000

LOS ANGELES — Majesco is primed to make a run for the money with two potentially huge platformer games coming out in A Boy and His Blob and Flip’s Twisted World.

Flip takes a platform concept we saw a bit of in the latest Paper Mario iteration and just blows it out of proportion. This is a very, very difficult looking game. Even the demoer had a difficult time staying alive in the game and not plummeting to the character’s death.

In Flip’s Twisted World “It started as an ordinary boring day for Master Fulcrumâ€™s apprentice, Flip, when he messed with the wrong magic artifact and got sucked into the crazy universe inside. Now he must fight and puzzle his way through five topsy-turvy worlds to return home and put everything back before The Master returns.”

This is a game that literally forces you to think outside the box, since the entire game world is one big cube that you have to flip around to your advantage. The goal is to get through fully 3D levels by manipulating the world. By flicking the remote, a wall in your way becomes a path to freedom and a bottomless pit becomes a useful corridor.

There are also two play styles. You can use the Wiimote and nunchuck or plug in the Gamecube controller for more traditional play. Each gives a unique challenge.

There is something very “Mario” about this game. Maybe it’s all the coins, castles and lava?

The only downfall to Flip’s Twisted World is that it’s not scheduled for release until January. It would be the perfect, wholesome holiday season gift.

E3 2009: Hands-off with A Boy and His Blob

John M. Guilfoil — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:14:04 +0000

LOS ANGELES — A Boy and His Blog was one of the most frustrating in a long line of frustrating NES games. That’s not to say it was a bad game. It was a great platformer designed by Pitfall!’s David Crane, but it was a game that was nearly unwinnable. If you missed one thing over the course of the game, you couldn’t beat it at the end.

“Blob” turned 20 this year, and nobody has touched the franchise since the original until now. Majesco and WayForward are developing a brand new Wii title due out this fall.

Majesco is known for taking something small and turning it into a big deal, (ever hear of Cooking Mama?) and they are poised for a real winner with ABAHB.

Story goes that when Blobolonia is threatened by an evil emperor, the blob comes to earth looking for help. Instead, he finds a young boy. Help the blob dethrone the evil Emperor thatâ€™s terrorizing Blobolonia and establish a friendship with the blob that will last a lifetime.

The Wii version, which we got to demo at the Majesco meeting room, looks and plays very true to the original. You feed the blob special jellybeans which turn it into a ladder, a hole, a canon, an anvil, etc, to creatively help you get though the platforms and enemies.

The result is 40 levels of classic video game play.

This is a totally new game, with a totally new development staff, but we talked to Sean Velasco from WayForward during the demo, and he really seems to have kept true to the original. Even the artwork feels retro.

The Best of E3 2009

John M. Guilfoil — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:47:01 +0000

LOS ANGELES – Oh hell yes.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo is back. It’s better. It’s … over. Damn.

While it still wasn’t the spectacle of the 90s, the conference was easily three times bigger than it was last year, and there was some actual news this time.

Here’s what we took away from the conference this time around:

BEST GAME
Uncharted 2

The first Uncharted is still one of the best games on the Playstation 3, and that’s not a knock on the console’s library either. This sequel looks to improve on the gameplay of the fantastic original, while also including a brand new multiplayer mode–one we will have impressions of for you in the near future.

BEST WII GAME
Super Mario Bros. Wii
Nintendo
Q4 2009

Mario is back. This new four-player side scroller is the first game to remind us of the good old days since the good old days, except now, with that multiplayer involved, it gives you a reason to want to punch your friends in the face.

BEST XBOX 360 GAME
Mass Effect 2

Bioware is promising a darker, more developed game than the first, which is saying something considering how well-done the original was. We’ll need to see it for ourselves, but what we saw was impressive.

BEST PLAYSTATION 3 GAME
Heavy Rain
Sony/Quantic Dream

This is a sleeper, but IGN also recognized the potential for Heavy Rain by nominating it for Best of E3/Best PlayStation 3 game. Blast got to play a demo, and we were thoroughly impressed by the control, decision-making abilities, dialog, and visuals. This is an excellent-looking game.

BEST MULTIPLATFORM GAME
Rogue Warrior
Bethesda Softworks
PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Fall 2009

Rogue Warrior looked great in a demo, and nothing is cooler than getting to play out the experiences of a real life badass navy seal voiced by Mickey Rourke. This game is full of pure action, explosions, and a great mix of stealth and offensive firepower.

BEST SPORTS GAME
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 Wii with MotionPlus
EA Sports
Nintendo Wii
June 8

Wii MotionPlus adds an amazing new dimension of reality to games, but nowhere was it more noticeable than in the latest Tiger Woods game. You have to position your wrists straight and do a full swing with follow-through. The MotionPlus makes you get off your couch and actually do stuff, and where better than at a virtual Bethpage?

BEST MUSIC GAME
The Beatles Rock Band
Harmonix/MTV Games
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii
Fall

With The Beatles Rock Band, Harmonix officially takes back the music game genre, eclipsing Guitar Hero and coming out from its shadow. Beatles Rock Band will feature the most recognizable songs in history from the most recognizable band in history.

BEST PC GAME OR MMO
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Lucas Arts

This ambitious massively multiplayer game promises all voice acting and no text dialog — thousands and thousands of lines of voice acting. And it’s Star Wars.

BEST PERIPHERAL
Mad Catz Rock Band Wireless Wooden Fender Stratocaster
$299
September 2009

Mad Catz had Fender build them a real guitar, and instead of strings, they wired buttons into it and unleashed it for Xbox 360. It uses no dongle — it’s compatible with Xbox 360 wireless technology. It’s a real guitar, with wood and a shiny finish. If you like to play fake guitar, this is as close to real as it gets.

GUTSIEST PROJECTS

Heavy Rain
Sony/Quantic Dream
PlayStation 3

We’ve been looking forward to this one for a long time. From the same team that put together Indigo Prophecy comes Heavy Rain, a psychological thriller adventure that’s more about story and drawing you in than it is about shooting endless bad guys.

Wet
Bethesda Softworks
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3

Eliza Dushku is awesome.

M.A.G. Massive Action Game, 256 player online multiplayer
Zipper Interactive/Sony
PlayStation 3
TBA

Second year in a row for M.A.G. on the gutsiest projects list, and it still stands. This game is either going to be huge or a huge disappointment.

James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game
Ubisoft
December

This is one of the first video games from a movie that stands on its own merits.

Biggest letdown: Atari. Where were you this year? One word kids: Ghostbusters. Or is that two words? Either way, with the failure of some recent releases, it’s the best chance for Atari to impress this generation. Despite a hell of a showing over the past year, the company hasn’t been able to blow up. Ghostbusters should sell millions, given it’s on every console, so let’s hope that’s a step in the right direction.

Marc Normandin and Bradley Ouellette of the Blast staff contributed to this report.

E3 2009: Hands-on with Real Heroes Firefighter

John M. Guilfoil — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:02:45 +0000

LOS ANGELES — Sega once had a quirky arcade cabinet called Brave Firefighters, but since then there really hasn’t been much attention paid to the genre of firefighting, which has been surprising, given how easily a major developer could have utilized the Nintendo Wii controls to profit by a quick and dirty firefighting sim.

They didn’t bite, so it took a small new developer called Epicenter Studios to bring the fire hose to the Wii.

Game design partners Nathaniel McClure and Bryan Jury are both former Call of Duty producers who wanted to tackle this genre for years.

“We wanted to have the action, and we wanted to do the excitement but get rid of the violence. Letâ€™s save people instead of killing them,” said McClure in an interview with Blast.

The guys set out to create a fun and challenging video game while trying to be true to real life. They brought on a 27-year veteran California fire captain and several career firemen to consult on the game while bringing the developers’ own action game experiences to bear on this untackled genre.

“It’s been tricky balancing the realism and hardcore aspect with the fun,” McClure said. “We have a lot of action that will pull in the more hardcore gamer, but the difficulty efforts can be really insane. I challenge anyone to do expert mode and blast through it.”

My father is a firefighter, so I was dying to grab a Wiimote and attack the flames.

The game has nine levels, ranging from a simple house fire to an entire amusement park ablaze (there’s even a TV news studio fire) and the fire is completely organic. It will react and respond differently each time you play. You can point the nozzle directly at a hot spot or turn on mist mode to attack a larger area, depending on how your fire is spreading.

The game is hard. It is a good mix of timing your Wiimote actions with bluntly pouring water by the gallon from your 3″ attack line. But it’s not just about the hose. You’ll be caught in tight spaces with nothing but a handheld extinguisher, and you’ll be using various tools for car accident extrication and prying open doors.

“There are plenty of mini game collections out there. We really wanted to make an adventure game,” said Jury. “It’s single player, with a story mode. You’re a working firefighter (in) a fake LA kind of city.”

The adventure game motif shows well with voice actors from “Backdraft” and television’s Rescue Me.

While playing the game, you’ll have objectives like rescuing trapped people or killing power to an electrical fire. In between, you’re free to roam and focus on putting out the flames around you.

It’s a great game so far. Real Heroes Firefighter is the first potential hit in the fire genre, and it’s fun to boot.

The title should have been multiplayer, which could have been accomplished by adding an arcade mode where you and a friend compete to see who can put out the most flames.

Jury and McClure said they’re hoping the firefighting genre takes off, allowing them to develop more games like Real Heroes.

“This is our baby that we’ve been working on for years now. (Multiplayer) is definitely our goal — put it online, everyone rushes to the firehouse, you know?” McClure said, “It’s got a lot of potential. Hopefully the consumers will agree and weâ€™ll go from there.”

A portion of the proceeds from this game will go to benefit the Firefighter Cancer Support Network.

E3 2009: Nyko’s offerings

John M. Guilfoil — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:05:11 +0000

LOS ANGELES — Nyko was the only peripheral maker at E3 last year, but they were one of like a dozen this year.

Still, they had babes, and they had gear. Here’s what Nyko brought to the expo this year:

DSi Zoom Case

The Zoom Case provides protection to your DSi and includes an detachable camera lens with 8x optical zoom. We’re not sure how useful the external lens is or how practical it is, but there you have it.

Nyko Wand

The Nyko Wand is a Wiimote clone that works as advertised, mimicking the original remote’s actions like a perfect generic ibuprofen tablet. It also includes vibration and on-board speaker functionality.

The main differences come in the buttons, where the A, 1 and 2 buttons are enlarged for retro gaming, and the B/trigger button has a rubber grip. The Wand also comes with a padded silicone sleeve. Nyko’s Trans-Port technology also lets you map buttons to different places, which is perfect for the…

Perfect Shot

The Perfect Shot is already one of the best gun accessories for the Wii, but what really makes this gun shine is that you can combine it with the Nyko Wand and its Trans-Port technology. Now, you can make sure the right buttons are being used for firing and reloading, etc.

Type Pad Pro for Wii

The Type Pad Pro us as ugly as it gets, but it provides a full QWERTY keyboard that docks with your remote or the new Nyko Wand. The buttons feel like an old telephone, but are big enough to let you quickly run through it, chatting away. It’s just really big.

It also uses Nyko Trans-Port button mapping to map the A and B buttons to the keyboard. The Type Pad has a 25-foot range and requires no additional batteries.

E3 2009: The return of the booth babes

John M. Guilfoil — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:36:47 +0000

LOS ANGELES — Last year, except for all the pretty publicists, the only booth babes at E3 belonged to Nyko, which had their customary red-wigged bombshells.

This year, with the Electronic Entertainment Expo being 3-5 times bigger, there was, we experienced, a return of the phenomenon known as the booth babe.

These are not gamers, but the girls are expected to know just enough about the product to direct expo-goers to the nearest adult.

There was one glaring exception: The G4TV miniskirt girls. They were idiots. They made idiots look smart.

They popped over to The Beatles Rock Band booth and took over one of the mini stages so G4TV could shoot a promo of hot babes playing The Beatles Rock Band. The MTV Games guys made sure to set the game to “no fail mode,” which is fine; it’s a promo video.

But what made me keel over laughing, and what I just can’t get G4TV get away with, was when — and did I mention this was at THE BEATLES ROCK BAND booth? — one of the girls (the drummer in the pics) screamed to the entire room, “YEAH Let’s do Guns N’ Roses!”

The room went silent, followed by laughter.

Viva la booth babe.

E3 2009: We’re genuinely excited about Heavy Rain

John M. Guilfoil — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 05:08:40 +0000

LOS ANGELES — Heavy Rain is the very definition of a sleeper. While most of the focus was on The Beatles Rock Band, and Assassin’s Creed 2, and some of the well-hyped sequels discussed at E3 this year, one of the best playable games at the expo was Heavy Rain.

Heavy Rain is the latest work of cinematic adventure by French developer Quantic Dream, the studio behind Indigo Prophecy, the best adventure game of the 21st century so far.

I first heard that Quantic Dream was collaborating with Sony for a PlayStation 3 exclusive about a few years ago, and I pushed my contacts at Sony Computer Entertainment America for answers, only to come up empty. So I forgot about the game for a while, and going into E3 I really didn’t have it on my mind.

Then I saw this cinematic, dramatic, dark, dreary, realistic adventure game being demoed at Sony’s booth, up some stairs, above the audience, appointment only.

So I played through a demo of Heavy Rain, which is currently in the alpha stage of development.

The game is definitely dark and mature. It combines exploration with cinematic, and instead of drawing your machine gun and blasting everyone in sight, you have to make conscious decisions and make certain movements with the controller or push certain buttons with split second reflexes to determine gameplay.

I died three times before getting past the first few minutes. After getting the hang of it, it was easy to see how decisions and even simple conversation points could dramatically change the story.

Controls are unique. It’s not a shooter or a fighting game, so buttons usually used for firing a weapon or punching or kicking are open. Thus, you actually use a trigger button to move your character forward. It actually feels strangely natural.

The entire game is voice acted and very well animated with lots of detail and ambiance.

When it was over, I told Sony’s Alex Armour that the game reminded me of a PC title called Indigo Prophecy. He smiled and said “yeah, it’s the same studio. The CEO is right over there. Do you want to talk to him?”

Yes.

Read the next page for an interview with Guillaume de Fondaumiere, the Co-CEO and executive producer of Quantic Dream

E3 2009: Hands-off with Dante’s Inferno

John M. Guilfoil — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:12:17 +0000

LOS ANGELES — Sitting through demos, not being able to put your hands on a game, can be a bit rough. But sometimes you get a movie-like experience that makes you drool.

And then sometimes you get (fake) protesters.

We got to experience both with Dante’s Inferno, Electronic Arts’ latest attempt to show off its recent creativity.

“Inferno” takes you to hell, in an interpretation of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s epic, â€œThe Divine Comedy.â€

It’s a third-person action game that cycles you through a tour of the afterlife as you descend, sin by sin, through the the nine circles of hell.

You assume the role of Dante, who descends into Hell after returning home to find his beloved Beatrice murdered, with Lucifer seducing her soul into the underworld. Dante sets out to save her but has to face down his own demons first.

You get to use two very different weapons: a scythe that Dante steals from Death, himself, and the Holy Cross, given to him by Beatrice. The cross lets Dante use spiritual powers and spells as you progress through the game.

Watching the gameplay, Dante’s Inferno looks a lot like God of War with crazy combos and giant enemies you have to get past. One thing I liked was that Dante gets to tame and take control over some of his larger enemies, like a giant demon that can lay waste to most smaller enemies.

EA’s Visceral Games studio is behind this title as it prepares to put out Dead Space: Extraction, which I loved.

EA was criticized for staging fake protesters at the event. They were even saying “we’re not against video games, just Dante’s Inferno.”

By the way: This version corrects our incorrect reporting that the protesters were real.

Blast Magazine staff writer Bradley Ouellette contributed to this report, also from Los Angeles.

E3 2009: Hands-on Tony Hawk: Ride

Bradley Ouellette — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:21:43 +0000

With the success of music controllers such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero, it’s no surprise that sports would start to get in on the peripheral action. Activision has decided to work with Tony Hawk to create a skateboard controller for the latest game from the skateboarding deity. The controller looks like a slightly thicker skateboard with no wheels. It uses accelerometers to determine the position of the board compared to the ground, and infrared sensors on each side, the front and back. The accelerometers detect when you turn the board or when you lift the front or back. The IR sensors detect when you move your foot next to the board, such as when you kick. These sensors can detect all the motions in the game, so there is no need for a regular controller.

The controller feels a little strange at first; the board is kind of rounded on the bottom allowing it to tilt left and right, which you don’t get just from standing on a real skateboard. You can jump the skateboard by quickly moving the skateboard’s front upward. While the skateboard is in the air, you can tilt the board left or right to flip it in flight. The “Ride” as this new controller is called, can do everything a traditional controller was able to do, mostly because the controls are context sensitive. TheÂ accelerometers will even detect if the Ride has been spun around. This allows you to even do 180s and 360s.

In the demo they showed off, the player has to kick beside the board to get started, then lean forward and backwards to direct the board down the path. The game will then ask you to do a “manual,” which is raising the front of the board slightly; all I had to do was lean on the back of the board a little. Then it goes up a ramp, and you need to get the board to jump. This was accomplished by pressing on the back a bit to make it go up at just the right spot. After that you ride by a railing that you can jump up onto; like the earlier jump, just pushing on the back will launch you into the air and balance you on the rail. This part really is cool for the new controller, since you need to actually balance by leaning, rather than using an analog stick or button presses.

This looks like it’ll be another good example of getting up and truly interacting with a game. I like how you don’t have to ever pick up the regular controller at all once you start, much like in the aforementioned music titles. To go through the menu you can just move the Skate board around to navigate it. If the game is as good as it looked from the five minute demo, and offers enough of a challenge, and enough variance, this should help revitalize the Tony Hawk game brand.

E3 2009: Blast EIC falls in love… err, interviews Eliza Dushku

John M. Guilfoil — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:24:42 +0000

LOS ANGELES â€“ Blast got to chat with the one and only Eliza Dushku, star of the new Bethesda Softworks action title Wet. Dushku plays Rubi Malone, a hard-drinking, acrobatic hit woman.

Let’s get this out of the way right now: Eliza Dushku is so cool. She gives a firm handshake. She talks to everyone around her, even the burly security guard. And she gets really into watching people play her game.

Anyways, on with the beans we got her to spill.

BLAST: Is this your first video game?

ELIZA DUSHKU: No. I was in Buffy and and then the Yakuza game.

BLAST: What do you think of Wet so far?

ED: I’m into it, and I have a friend that came down to test out the game. He’s 14. His name is Kyle. He says it’s really good and I trust him.

BLAST: Is there a big difference between doing a video game voiceover and a movie voiceover and then just plain acting?

ED: Um. It depends. It’s just a whole different â€” it’s you, but it’s not. It’s kind of like for this video game I didn’t do all the body muscle stuff. I knew she already sort of had a rhythm, and I felt in a way more like I was getting into her established character and trying to find the right fit, you know what I mean, to give her.

I actually decided that I should smoke a few cigarettes each time we did it. My friend was like â€œyour voice is so low,â€ and I was like â€œyeah that’s the cigarettes.â€ I quit smoking, but I was like â€œeh, it’s for work.â€

BLAST: Have you had a chance to play through Wet and see yourself in action?

ED: Just a little bit. It’s awesome and I love, you know, that Tarantino, â€œKill Bill” look to it â€” the whole 70s, grainy, the music. I think it’s really sexy. It’s sexy and it’s exciting and she’s a real working class Lara Croft, Jack Daniels-confident, tough, hard as nails, she’s international. She’s in Hong Hong and the UK, and she’s going wherever she needs to go to take care of business.

BLAST: Actors oftentimes say they put a lot of themselves into their roles. Are you able to do that in a video game role?

ED: Yeah. Every time, you know, she’s crazy I got to get crazy and hit record. It was a great anger release.

BLAST: Do you see yourself doing more video game roles now that you’ve got this one done?

ED: I was sort of holding off after the first two and then this one came to me. I like the idea of seeing this one sort of go farther and go deeper. I definitely feel a real identification with [the character].

BLAST: Did you play video games growing up?

ED: Not as much as I wanted to, because I was a little sister. I liked Metroid, and I liked Mortal Kombat, and I liked the Mario Bros.

BLAST: I want to talk about Dollhouse a bit. What was the most challenging thing about season one?

ED: Well if you asked me like three weeks ago I’d say the Friday night time slot. Because, you know, it’s Friday night, the people weren’t necessarily showing up and seeing it on their TVs on a Friday night, but then when they woke up we were the most DVR’d show in history or something.

I started realizing how many people were watching. Now it’s just kind of gravy that we get to go back and do anther season. We don’t have to worry sort of about what the numbers coming in on Friday are. We’re reaching our audience, you know?

BLAST: Does your producer role change your relationship with Joss Whedon at all?

ED: Yes. We’re so serious. We’re so business oriented there’s no fun and games anymore. (laughs) Not even. I think I’m going to go back and bring them all pizza. He just texted me last night and said â€œwe’re officially en fuego.â€

BLAST: What’s been your favorite imprint so far?

ED: I had a lot of fun playing the assassin. I fought FBI agent Ballard in, what was it, (episode) six, â€œMan on the Steet.â€ That’s also the episode where the show really picked up and found its voice. That was like a high episode.

It’s also cool in the end, â€œOmega,â€ where I played like 38 personalities at once.

BLAST: Do you ever feel that the show is too risque?

ED: No. I have three older brothers, and they saw the whole dominatrix opener one day and were like â€œreally sis? Really?â€ but, you know, it’s part of the â€œwe give the people what they wantâ€ on the show, and they want that.

BLAST: What are you looking forward to in season two?

ED: I feel like we really found a groove toward the end of the season and we just have so many stories that we want to tell and so many places we want to go and now we just get that chance and now we just get to make the show we want to make.

BLAST: Is there someplace new you want to go with the show in season two?

ED: There’s a little bit less of the dumbed-down doll and a little more of this young woman now being able to figure out what she’s going to do.

BLAST: So you’re filming in Boston soon. Boston’s trying to become this like Hollywood East. Do you like filming at home with us becoming more of a hub of the entertainment industry?

ED: I love it. Boston’s my favorite place on earth.

Eliza said she’s filming a psychological drama in Boston with Ben Barnes based on what she called â€œa really beautiful script.â€

She is also dating somebody. No, she didn’t say who, but the Boston Herald announced today it is ex-Celtic Rick Fox, and we’re pretty sure we caught a glimpse of him playing Wet before the interview.

She currently owns a Nintendo Wii and is addicted to BrickBreaker on her Blackberry.

Blast Magazine staff writer Kellen Rice contributed to this report.

E3 2009: Hands-on with Red Steel 2 for the Wii

John M. Guilfoil — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:07:46 +0000

LOS ANGELES — Red Steel was a game that was kind of easy to trash. It didn’t have great control, and it suffered a massive identity crisis by not knowing if it was a first person shooter or a sword fighting game.

But lots of hardcore gamers and some reviewers saw the title’s potential at the time, and Red Steel 2 looks like an excellent choice for Wii gamers when it comes out… “soon.”

Playing through an E3 demo of the game, which is designed specifically for and will come bundled with a Wii MotionPlus, it’s easy to see why people held out some hope.

The first thing I noticed about Red Steel is that you really have to give it a mighty swing. You have to really hack and wave your arm around to do what you want to do. The MotionPlus control is amazingly accurate. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised with how much more responsive the MotionPlus is than just the remote.

I got to tackle some obstacles, like slicing through a mighty thicket of bamboo or using my katana to whack open a metal door. Then I got to tackle some punk bad guys.

I guess “punk” is the most accurate way to describe them.

This is a weirdly stylized game. It seems to be set in the wild west, and your player has a pistol and a katana. So do the bad guys, and some of them are armored. You’ll have to slice through that too.

It was fun using the sword, and the pistol is a nice backdrop in this game instead of the main focus. The MotionPlus lets you effectively block attacks and then make quick counter moves.

The best part about this game is that you’re not just going through the Wii motions. This isn’t Wario where you can sit on your ass and fake it. You really have to get up and move to be effective in this game.

The comic book styling of the game and the lack of gore â€” no blood or severed limbs â€” also makes it suitable for most ages.

Even with just this brief glance into the game, I feel like Ubisoft has a winner. Red Steel 2 gives some much-needed tender lovin’ action to the Wii. Check out the E3 trailer below for a glimpse of what Red Steel 2 looks and plays like.

E3 2009: Assassin’s Creed Bloodlines screens and explanation

Eddie Makuch — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:04:45 +0000

Sony revealed yesterday at their E3 media briefing that a handheld version of Assassin’s Creed, in the form of AC: Bloodlines, will make its way to shelves November 2010, but also mentioned interactivity with the PlayStation 3.

But what about this interactivity?Â From the mouth of AC: Bloodlines producer Frederic Lefrancois:

“As players unlock health and Hidden blade upgrades in Assassin’s Creed 2 PS3, the same upgrades will be unlocked in Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines (PSP). It also works the other way around: on the PS3 you will be able to access any Templar Coins and special weapons you’ve collected on the PSP.”

Furthermore, AC: Bloodlines takes place directly after the events of the original Assassin’s Creed and is integral to understanding, if you care about story, who Ezio is and why he’s there.

“It’s the only game that explains the link between Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed 2. If you want to understand how Ezio is born and where the Codex comes from you need this game.”

Below are screens from the game that look quite fine if you ask me.

Stalking

City View

E3 2009: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs screens

Eddie Makuch — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:00:35 +0000

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was maybe my favorite story as a little guy and I could not be happier to know that in addition to a full CG film, a video game will be raining down on fans for every platform under the sun.

I think we all know how the story goes â€” it’s raining, but instead of rain, all types of food are falling from the sky.

In the game you’ll play as Flint Lockwood, a wacky inventor,Â and it will be your duty to utilize the myriad of tools at your fingertips to save the world from a food-tastrophe.

Whet your appetite for the game with these delectable screenshots below.

Falling Hamburger

Flint's Lab

Rolling Meatballs

Running Flint

Tornado, of sorts

E3 2009: Hands-on with Dead Space Extraction

John M. Guilfoil — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:36:09 +0000

LOS ANGELES — Dead Space 2 is the Wii-exclusive prequel to Electronic Arts’ gripping, ballsy horror action game. The original Dead Space was announced here at the Electronic Entertainment Expo last year, and to see a second game already well through development â€” set for a Sept. 29 release â€” is impressive and shows EA’s dedication to the genre and to this new intellectual property.

Blast had the chance to play Dead Space Extraction at E3, checking out the two player co-op mode with Chase Colasonna from Fortyseven Communications.

I also had the chance to chat with Steve Papoutsis, senior producer at EA’s Visceral Games, the studio behind Dead Space, Dante’s Inferno, and other hot titles.

The game is on a rail. There are tons of cut scenes and lots of story tidbits that reveal themselves as you progress. Papoutsis told me that they weren’t going for an arcade game feel, but seconds through the first level I was thinking “Time Crisis,” and I stand by the comparison.

The visuals are impressive, especially for a Wii game, and the co-op mode is fun, with tons of weapons and powerups that the players can share. The arcade feel actually works very well for the game, so it was surprising to hear that EA is shying away from that label. They are really going for a thick plot that sucks you in, and though I didn’t get that far in Extraction, I’ll buy the argument.

One thing I like is that there are puzzles throughout the game that the players have to complete together in order to advance. This adds to the game significantly with a bit of cerebral exercise, though it’s mostly about moving the Wiimote in the right direction.

But the main thing is that the game is fun and lets you jump quickly into the action, like raining molten fire down on some serious baddies.

Q&A with Visceral Games’ Steve Papoutsis:

Blast: So this is the Dead Space prequel. What does the Nintendo Wii add to this game?

Steve Papoutsis: So right off the bat, the Nintendo Wii brings a whole new kind of design thinking to the game. You have the unique Wii Remote and the nunchuck controls â€” you have to really think about how you’re going to use those. So for Extraction, it’s just a perfect analogue for pointing at the screen and shooting. The controls first and foremost are the big difference.

Blast: Dead Space is still a fairly new product. Where do you want to take this IP from here?

SP: Well right now I’m personally, solely focused on extraction, but I’d love to see more games in the Dead Space universe in the future.

Blast: Were you going for an arcade feel with this game â€” a kind of classic shooter game?

SP: No. Our goal with Extraction was to try to deliver on the same atmosphere, mood and visuals that Dead Space had. The way that extraction plays, you’ll notice that it’s not just a shoot-’em-up every five seconds. There’s areas where there’s pacing and story and there’s puzzles and different things that bring innovation to this type of game.

Blast: What do you think is the best part about the game so far? What should fans be looking for?

SP: My favorite feature is co-op. It’s really great to be able to play with a friend. When we started making the game, one of our goals was to make sure that it was easy to play with a friend. Jump right in. That was one of our goals. It’s really fun playing with a friend, making up different strategies and piecing the story together.

E3 2009: Day Two Roundup

Marc Normandin — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:04:07 +0000

Both Sony and Nintendo had their conferences yesterday, which means Eddie and I were news-relaying zombies here to do your bidding all day long. That means that out of the massive number of stories we published, there’s a good chance that you missed a few. Worry not, as we have the day two roundup for you right here:

E3 2009: Steve Wiebe gets Kill Screen in DK world record attempt

Eddie Makuch — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:11:10 +0000

Steve Weibe, a Washington state native and professional Donkey Kong gamer attempted to dethrone Billy Mitchell from Donkey Kong glory yesterday in a live broadcast attempt at the staggering world record of 1,050,200 on G4TV at E3 in Los Angeles.

How did he do? Sadly, after 4 dramatic tries at the record, Wiebe ultimately fell short in every instance.Â Was it the pressure packed scenario? Not likely. Wiebe has competed on live television before.Â Was it a failure of mental aptitude? Again, not likely, as Wiebe is an advanced Algebra teacher and is known to break down the game to a mathematical base.

So what did the man who was first to break the 1,000,000 barrier in the legendary arcade game suffer from in his attempts?Â Pure, cold, bad luck.

A first attempt yielded a mighty score of 923,400.Â His second try garnered a tally of 653,700. A third attempt was disrupted by a brief power failure forcing the man to try again, and this time, believe it or not, the infamous “kill screen” halted Wiebe’s efforts at an impressive mark of 989,400.

This event marked the first time ever a Kill Screen was broadcast on live TV, and man oh man, what an unfortunate time for its occurrence.

A kill screen, for those unaware is, according to my main man Wikipedia, any stage or level, most commonly in Arcade games “that stops the player’s progress due to a programming error or design oversight. Rather than “ending” in a traditional sense, the game will crash, freeze, or behave so erratically that further play is impossible.”

Was legendary rival Billy Mitchell behind the power failure and happy to see the kill screen?Â The world may never know. Â As far as we know the man resides in Antarctica perpetually practicing Donkey Kong only to arise when his record is broken.Â Nah, he lives in sunny Florida, and is a respectable man, but we know Wiebe should be king.

E3 2009: Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos interviewed by Blast

John M. Guilfoil — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:33:42 +0000

LOS ANGELES — Blast was very fortunate to have the opportunity to sit down with Alex Rigopulos, the CEO of Harmonix Music Systems, and discuss the upcoming Beatles Rock Band game and the future of the music game genre.

Blast: So, The Beatles. It must feel good.

Alex Rigopulos: It feels incredible. This is a band that’s been close to my heart personally since I was a small child. So this is really a dream project for me and a lot of people on the Harmonix team in a very big way. For a lot of us it’s still very surreal that this was able to happen at all. So for us to unveil the game to the world today is a big deal.”

Blast: I’m not going to go into inter-corporate politics but does it feel good to have this coup for your company over your biggest competitor Activision?

AR: This band’s music is incredible and for us as, I’ve said a number of times in the past, we make music games, but we consider it to be music first and games second. We really consider what we do in this category to be making new kinds of music experiences and to let people experience music in a new way, and this music is so rich and so beautiful and so joyful that to have an opportunity to take that to an interactive dimension to the first time is an honor and a privilege and something that the development team has been delighted about since the very beginning.

Blast: Personal favorite Beatles song?

AR: Well first of all there’s no one favorite just because it’s changing constantly, and it has changed constantly over the course of this project as well. One of the real pleasant surprises of making the game and what will be a real pleasant surprise for people playing the game is just that everyone has heard these songs hundreds of times in their lives, and you think you know this music but when you start learning to play the drum parts of the baselines, you discover all these little details and hidden gems in the music that you never noticed before.

I have this experience with Taxman which is one of the very first prototype songs that we developed early on that we built into the game in interactive form. The first time I played it I was playing the bass line and I started playing the bass line that I know and was familiar and was kind of bouncing and having a great time playing and there’s this one moment in the song in the bridge learning into the guitar solo that all of a sudden the bass line goes crazy and starts running all over the place, and that lasts for just four bars and then falls back to the old bass line that you know. And in all the hundreds of times that I heard that song I had never noticed that insane moment in the bass where Paul just started going crazy.

And its fun to play and its an amazing little moment that I had never heard before. I think that’s a big part of what we’re giving to the world is people are going to find all these hidden gems in the music.

For me, going back to the original question, discovering those hidden gems has been changing my favorite Beatles song through the duration of the project.

Blast: You must have met Paul and Ringo over the course of this…?

AR: Yeah many times. All four of the principles (including Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono) were very creatively engaged in the project from the very beginning. So yeah they were integrally involved in every step of the project from conception to fine tuning the details at the end.

Blast: What was it like working with them?

AR: “It was completely surreal. These are titanic figures, right? And they also made some of the greatest art that I’ve experienced in my life, so to actually be in a creative collaboration with them its just stunning. Its intoxicating. But what was most surprising to me as how engaged they actually were. They weren’t just making kind of superficial comments. They really got the vision. They helped us craft the vision, and they were really focused on details as well. They held our feet to the fire and were pushing us.

It was very much with their help that we got there. It was surreal and incredibly invigorating to actually be in a creative collaboration with these titans.

Blast: It could have been very easy to make this a simple game. You could have made an extended track pack, you could have done this quickly and easily if you wanted to. How important was it for you and for Harmonix to add the level of detail you’ve done with this game?

AR: The Beatles, themselves wouldn’t have been interested in just an expansion pack. That was clear from the beginning in the early discussions, but that was great as far as we were concerned because that’s not what we wanted to do either. This music is so special that it calls out for special handing.I dont think for us we would have wanted to do it any differently. This is a once in a lifetime opp to work with material like this.

Blast: Your company has come a long way in the past few years. The Rock Band franchise has really taken off. Where do you see the franchise and the company going in the next 5-10 years?

AR: That’s a big question. First of all we’re going to continue to advance just on the content. We’ve already put 700 songs and growing on the Rock Band platform, and while that seems like a lot, and it’s a ton in the historical standards of video games, it’s still the tiniest sliver of this incredible music that’s out there and it’s a big part of our ambition over the coming years to fan out as broadly as possible to just get more content on the platform.

That said, there’s also the feature aspect and we want to continue to get new kinds of play and let people interact with the music and engage with the music as well. We still have a lot of ideas of how that might be accomplished on the Rock Band platform, but we also have a lot of new ideas brewing about fun new types of music play that would exist in entirely new games as well

Blast: Anything you can share with us?

AR: Not today. There will be a time for that.

Blast: Are there any bands you have not worked with yet that you’d like to?

Well there are the obvious. We’re talking to everybody all the time right? That’s just the nature of what we do, so we’re considering all kinds of options.

Led Zeppelin is a band that is another that everyone loves and everyone asks for ,and you know, U2 is another big band that a lot of people love and a lot of people ask for. All the obvious candidates.

Blast: Are any of those on the short timeline?

AR: Nothing imminent or announcement worthy.

E3 2009: Resident Evil on the way to PSP

Eddie Makuch — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:27:07 +0000

In a Sony media briefing earlier today chock full of titles including the likes of God of War 3, Uncharted 2, and a new Metal Gear Solid title for the PSP, Sony had one final trick up their sleeve in the form of shocking horror.

The franchise in question?Â How about the epic and horror-laden Resident Evil? Sound good?Â Great, because Sony is set to usher in a new wave of zombie-killing fun with an original Resident Evil title set to release sometime next year.

Sony unveiled literally nothing about the game except the fact it exists and is likely not a re-make, spinoff, or side-story, though we really don’t know at the moment.

E3 2009: Sony unveils PS3 motion control technology

Eddie Makuch — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:09 +0000

Sony held their lengthy E3 media briefing this morning in sunny Los Angeles and the company clearly had games on the brain.Â They announced, showed off, and even demonstrated a myriad of hot titles coming to PS3 and PSP in the future but at a point in the middle interestingly departed from their game onslaught to debut a brand new precision-based motion-control technology bearing no name.

Due out early next year, this new 1:1 motion tracking technology makes use of two wands with colored balls of light at their ends tracked by a camera located near the PS3 itself.

Two engineers on the project took the stage, revealed that the new tech has been in the works for a “few years now” and will add to the PS3 interactive capabilities, and promised that what they were showing was merely a prototype.

That said, the two showed the first capabilities of the control mechanism, and while the technology is obviously not revolutionary (see Wii), it was alluring nonetheless.

We saw motion-tracking at a very precise level as the demonstrator showed how, by using the two wands, any number of gaming possibilities can be achieved including the use of the dynamic wands as literal extensions of one’s hands to build, draw, and create any number of things in the virtual test space.

More interestingly, when an object was picked up in the virtual space it could be transfigured into any number of objects ranging from a peaceful paint brush to a hell raising automatic weapon.

We don’t know where this technology will lead in the immediate future, only that it will become available sometime next year.

E3 2009: God of War 3 shown and dated

Eddie Makuch — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:42:09 +0000

What would a Sony media briefing be without the God of all franchises?Â Kratos, if we’re naming names here.

Sony Computer Entertainment of America did just that today as they showed thousands of media types stunning game-play from the final chapter in the fantasy trilogy: God of War 3.

If the masculinity and awesome power of Kratos wasn’t enough, Sony slammed the faithful with a release date of March 2010.

Grab your reddest red pen and circle that month again and again, as you won’t want to forget this one.

E3 2009: Sin & Punishment 2 screens and trailer

Marc Normandin — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:26:47 +0000

If you don’t know why you should be excited for Sin & Punishment 2, then you probably never played the original Sin & Punishment for the Nintendo 64. And if you haven’t played that (despite being released in Japan only, it made its way to North America via the Virtual Console for $12) then we can’t be lovers anymore. I’ll come pick up my toothbrush and favorite t-shirt tomorrow. Sorry it had to end this way.

Fine, we can try to be friends, but don’t let things get all weird. Oh, so now you’re interested in Sin & Punishment 2. Alright, alright. Why don’t you check out this trailer, and at least think about plopping the Nintendo Points down on the original. We’ll take this slowly, since you have until quarter one of 2010 to change.

E3 2009: Golden Sun DS screens

Marc Normandin — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:35:07 +0000

Still no info on this game, besides the obvious things like it’s in 3D and is slated to come out in 2010. While info is minimal, we’ve got a lot for you visual learners to sneak a peek at. A whole gallery of art and images from the newly announced game, in fact.

I hope we have some Golden Sun fans in the audience, as the previous two games were stellar Game Boy Advance efforts–it was well past the time to see a proper sequel in many fan’s minds, but here it is, on its way.

E3 2009: 256 player MAG gameplay shown

Eddie Makuch — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:24:24 +0000

Zipper Interactive, creators of the wildly ambitious MAG, a massive battlefield-type game exclusive to the PS3, at the Sony E3 media briefing today showed that indeed a full-on 128 versus 128 match could be pulled off effectively, without lag, and with tons of heinous explosions.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what to expect when Sony revealed MAG, short for massive action game, last year at this very show, but now, after seeing it in action, I really feel that Zipper and Sony know just what they’re doing.

What we saw was eight Zipper developers on-stage demonstrating MAG for the first time, over the expanses of the Internet, with QA testers and family members scattered throughout the globe.

You work in an eight-man squad in MAG to seek out and destroy enemy encampments. The fire can get heavy and the blood not only chills in your veins but also flows freely from your body if you aren’t careful.

This is a game we’re sure to keep our eyes on and stay close to as E3 2009 progresses. Keep it locked here at Blast for forthcoming details from our men on location.

MAG is due out fall of 2009.

E3 2009: Metroid: Other M screens

Marc Normandin — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:20:56 +0000

Sadly, all we have for you are three screens from Nintendo’s megaton announcement, but that’s all anyone has. We will definitely post more for you if we get a hold of them, but take a look at these and the trailer again (you know you want to watch it a (forty) second time). I already want to fight the enemy in the second image, though throwing enemies around doesn’t seem half bad either.

E3 2009: Gran Turismo PSP unveiled.

Eddie Makuch — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:09:46 +0000

Through the words of an American translator and the sights of aÂ glorious debut trailer, Gran Turismo for the PlayStation Portable, and now the PSP Go, was revealed earlier today at the Sony E3 media briefing.

Gran Turismo for PSP is, quoting developer Polyphony Digital, a “full-size GT experience and not simply a shrunken down game.” Good, because shrunken things remind me of what a witch doctor can do to your head!

And with 800 unique cars and 35 race tracks you might think we’re talking about a PS3 version, but no, we aren’t. The title, laughed at and deemed impossible back in 2004 with the launch of the original PSP, is now a manifested reality.

In GT for PSP you’ll be able to race with up to four players via the ad hoc multiplayer system and, most interestingly, you’ll be able to trade, share, and swap cars in your garage with those of friends elesewhere. Cool.

Gran Turismo for PSP will release October 1 alongside the PSP Go as, understandably, one of the systems’ core launch titles.

E3 2009: New Super Mario Bros. Wii details and screens

Marc Normandin — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:07:03 +0000

We promised more details, and now we have them for you, along with some artwork and screenshots. The new Super Mario Bros. Wii is a four-player side-scrolling platformer with a balance of co-op and competitive elements to it. You can choose to save your friend from danger by picking him up, or toss him into a pit of spikes or an incoming fireball. Why? Because it’s hilarious, that’s why.

Mario and Luigi are both playable characters, as are two Toad characters. Nintendo promises that many of our other favorites from the Mushroom Kingdom will make appearances in the game, which makes me wonder if any of them are secret playable characters, or if Nintendo is just keeping a lid on who is playable besides the Bros. and Toads for now.

The game will have some motion control, and it can be used for both co-op and competitive purposes. For example, you have seesaws in the game that can be used to get to hard to reach areas on the screen; if you’re the first character on it, you can either help your friend out, or be a jerk and mess with the incline to stall your friend. This is also important, because the game tallies your score at the end of each level to see which one of you is the highest scorer.

The game has sold me on the concept of competitive multiplayer, as well as Penguin Mario. He turns into a freakin’ penguin! That’s the most adorable thing I’ve seen since… well, Bee Mario.

E3 2009: Kojima graces stage, announces new Metal Gear PSP game

Eddie Makuch — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:46:51 +0000

This morning at Sony’s E3 media briefing legendary game designer Hideo Kojima of Kojima Productions unveiled his latest endeavor, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker to the hordes of media types on hand in Los Angeles.

Speaking through a translator, even though he didn’t need one yesterday at his Microsoft appearance, Kojima happily announced what he called a “true sequel and not a side story or spin-off” in the Metal Gear series.

Set ten years after Metal Gear Soldi 3 in the 1970’s Peace Walker has all the sneaking, killing, and bad-assery we’ve come to know, love, and expect from the man.

Also mentioned was the fact that Mr. Kojima is, and remains deeply involved in the title, with work duties including lending his abilitiesÂ even in writing the script for the game due out in 2010.

We don’t know much about the title as of yet, but this is E3, and we do have our editor in chief and senior gaming reporter on the scene perusing through the convention dissecting what they are seeing and revealing it to you, faithful reader, just as soon as possible.

E3 2009: All PSP titles to be available in digital and physical form

Eddie Makuch — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:33:52 +0000

Sony announced today that when the PSP Go launches in October of this year, all new titles will be made available both in digital and physical form.

The recently announced PSP Go will NOT have a UMD drive and new games will be accessible only through the systems’ built in 16GB of storage but for those with PSP 2000’s and 3000’s, you’ll have an option of either digitally downloading your favorite games or picking up the box at retail, granted you’ll need a seriously large memory card to perform the former.

I wholeheartedly welcome the total digital age. Hell, it’s already happened with CD’s.Â Video games, in physical form, while still the dominant form of distribution, are showing signs of weakness.

E3 2009: Super Mario Galaxy 2 screens

Marc Normandin — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:24:21 +0000

We said earlier that Yoshi was going to be involved in the upcoming sequel to Super Mario Galaxy, but if these screenshots are any indication, he’s going to be very involved. Check out Mario riding Yoshi around like he normally would, but also in a balloon state, as well as soaring through the air. We’ll have more info for your as it releases, but for now, enjoy the screens.

E3 2009: PSP development kit price reduced by 80%

Eddie Makuch — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:11:38 +0000

If 2009 is to be the year of the PlayStation Portable, the reduction in the cost of the PSP dev. kit by a staggering 80% is sure to help.Â By way of an official announcement from a Sony executive earlier today at the Sony media briefing, the PSP is now a lot more approachable.

Companies wanting to build games for the PSP can now do so at a much, much, much more affordable level.

We knew this was coming, as Sony hinted at the price drop earlier this year, but as E3 goes, say it hear and EVERYONE will hear it.

Good job Sony, you’ve stopped punching developers in the face in terms of asking prices.Â Why’d you have to wait so long?

E3 2009: Mario & Luigi RPG screens and art

Marc Normandin — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:54:17 +0000

Earlier we showed you gameplay footage straight from E3, but now it’s time to feast your eyes on some artwork and screens, both of which we have plenty of.

E3 2009: PSP Go to cost $249

Eddie Makuch — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:52:10 +0000

Sony held their E3 media briefing earlier today and, like an elephant in the room, all of us media types were anxiously awaiting the now certain PSP Go confirmation speech.

Although it was a mere formality, it still had to be said.Â When the time finally rolled around to announce the darn thing, a Sony executive referred to the new piece of hardware as “the worst kept secret of E3,” and really, how can we disagree?

However, what we didn’t know was when and at what price point we would be seeing the new piece of now smaller gaming hardware.Â The price? $249.Â The release date? October 1 2009.Â As a point of reference, the original PSP, when it released cost the same price.

What’s more is that a new “Media Go” multimedia computer application will be available for the PSP and will replace the somewhat clunky and confusing Media Manager.Â You’ll know be able to access the PlayStation Store directly from your PC with a much more intuitive interface.

Also, in a continued effort to tout the hardware as a full media player, a new “Sense Me” piece of software, built into the new PSP Go will allow for a selected mood of choice to be entered into the system with your music being chosen for you, depending on your mood. King of like the Genius player on iTunes?Â We’ll see.

E3 2009: Bethesda details Brink

Eddie Makuch — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:32:56 +0000

Fallout and Oblivion creator Bethesda Softworks took some time out of their E3 day today to reveal some details surrounding their upcoming collaboration project with Splash Damage, Brink.

Due out Spring 2010 for Xbox 360, PC, and PS3, Brink is an immersive first person shooter that somehow blends single-player, co-op, and multiplayer into one helluva game in which your character can be fine tuned throughout.

The story of Brink surrounds the fact that aÂ man-made floating city, made up of thousands of islands, dubbed the Ark is simply put, on the brink of war and preparing for the worst. After 25 years of social unrest, the people of the ark have had enough, and it is up to you and the character you decide to play, to determine the future of the city and its human race.

Compelling? Yes, especially given the fact that Bethesda is behind it.Â The Fallout and Oblivion series’ were pretty well crafted if you ask me.

Take a look at the first screen shots from the game to be revealed and head on over to BrinkTheGame to learn more.

E3 2009: Wii Sports Resort info and screens

Marc Normandin — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:15:59 +0000

Nintendo showed off some of the Wii MotionPlus capabilities in more detail at their press conference today, using Wii Sports Resort as their demo. The game begins with your Mii skydiving from an airplane, presumably onto the sports resort itself. In this phase, your Mii is the Wii Remote; tilt the remote, and you tilt the Mii. The motion was 1:1, with the Mii flipping around in midair as the remote moved.

Next came archery, which worked very well. You hold the Wii Remote vertically, as if it were the bow, and you pull back with the Nunchuk as if it were the bowstring and arrow. You press the A button to “grip” the bow, and the Z button on the Nunchuk to to draw back. You also have to compensate for wind, distance and moving targets, which makes this more than a simple point and shoot.

Bill Trinen and Reggie Fils-Aime next shot some hoops against each other; they both bent their knees, went to the tip of their toes and flicked their wrists, just like shooting an actual basketball. There’s a lot of potential in this peripheral, if they can accurately mimic a multi-part movement like shooting a basketball.

In addition to looking like a beefier game and less of a tech demo than the original Wii Sports was, this game is also more impressive graphically. Take a look at the environments in the screenshots provided, and make sure to be on the lookout for Wii Sports Resort when it hits shelves June 26.

E3 2009: PS3 exclusive Agent coming from Rockstar

Eddie Makuch — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:02:15 +0000

Revealed at the Sony media briefing at E3 just minutes ago, a brand new title dubbed “Agent” is in development by Rockstar North tet o release exclusively on the PlayStation 3 sometime in the future.

The title is said to contain the same “must have” value that other Rockstar projects, namely the Grand Theft Auto franchise are said to exhibit.

“We have always enjoyed making action games, and with Agent we are making what we believe will be the ultimate action game,”Â said Sam Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games. “Agent is a game we have wanted to make for a long time. The team in Edinburgh is doing an amazing job combining intense action, atmosphere and story in a great period setting to create something that feels quite unique. We cannot wait for people to experience this game.”

Agent takes place during the cold-war in 1970’s America and with a brew of counter-intelligence, espionage, and political assasinations, you’re likely to be on edge throughout.