Ninja Battle

• 20Nov

  Apple Pins Its Hopes on Gaming

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  Back when I was in college — way back in early 1997, I’m afraid — I wrote a well-reasoned letter to the online arm of Ultra Game Players magazine in defense of Nintendo, whose star was starting to take on a distinct tinge of tarnish among the nascent online hardcore gaming fanbase. The N64’s strong launch had deteriorated into the likes of Yoshi’s Story, with little but Star Fox 64 and the far-distant Ocarina of Time to look forward to for the foreseeable future. But that’s okay, I argued; Nintendo has always employed the same model as Apple Computer, whose Macintosh suffered from the same problems as the N64 — an expensive proprietary format, relatively sparse releases, an insular corporate culture — but also offered the same ultimate benefit: powerful hardware and quality software.

  “Yeah, but Apple sucks,” was the website’s thoughtful response. Fortunately, I can take some pleasure in knowing that history has lent weight to my comparison, with Nintendo seemingly aping Apple at every turn since then. Apple makes colorful computers and a laptop in translucent blue or orange with white accents; Nintendo unveils N64s in the same color, along with its upcoming Game Boy Advance hardware in translucent blue or orange with white accents. Apple makes a compact, cube-shaped computer that founders in the marketplace; Nintendo follows with a compact, cube-shaped console that founders in the marketplace. Nintendo’s current systems, the DS and Wii, want so badly to be Mac hardware it’s not even funny. Where Apple leads, Nintendo seems to follow in lockstep.

  But for the first time, perhaps Apple would do well to learn from its imitator. They’ve suddenly decided that video gaming is the future — a distinct change of pace for a company whose boss deliberately pushed the Macintosh platform away from gaming for fear that the ability to have fun on Macs would lend credence to the view that the system was a toy next to its stodgy, command-line-driven competition. Aside from the occasional bit of MacWorld keynote lip-service — look, it’s John Carmack! And he’s playing Quake III on an iMac! — Apple’s relationship with gaming has largely been one of disinterest, with a few stalwarts like Blizzard, Freeverse, Ambrosia, Pangaea, and Spiderweb keeping the home fires burning for those few Mac gamers who haven’t given up and installed Boot Camp.

• 20Nov

  Grand Theft Auto 4 DLC Coming February 17

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  Six months after the release of Grand Theft Auto 4, details of the much-hyped episodic downloadable content have emerged. And no, it’s definitely not 28 Days Later-style zombie outbreaks or a return trip to San Andreas.

  Instead, USA Today is reporting that the narrative, titled “Lost and Damned” and due February 17, will shift to The Lost biker gang member Johnny Klebitz. Klebitz is described as being “very different” from former protagonist Niko Bellic, with Niko himself fading into the background and only making a few cameo apperances

  “I can’t go into too much detail on the story, because we try not to give away too much plot before the game is released,” said Rockstar Games vice president of creative development Dan Houser. “But I can say that the story will show you a different side of Liberty City.”

• 20Nov

  Sins of a Solar Empire 1.1 Patch Released

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  Sins of a Solar Empire fans will have to wait a little bit longer to get their hands on all the goodies being offered in the upcoming Entrenchment expansion pack. But don’t worry, Stardock still has your back for Christmas.

  Stardock has announced that the long-awaited Sins of a Solar Empire 1.1 patch is here, bringing with it a graphics upgrade, improved multiplayer stability, better performance and balance tweaks. 1.1 has been available as a beta for a while now, but this is the first time that the full version of the patch has been available for download.

  Keep in mind that your old mods won’t work with the new 1.1 patch, but it shouldn’t be long before updates starting being released. Until then, feel free to let us know how you’re liking the new patch in the comments.
  

• 20Nov

  Microsoft’s Michael Wolf on Digital Distribution With GFW Live

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  Microsoft’s Games for Windows Live service hasn’t exactly been the beacon of light that PC gamers may have been hoping for when it launched last year, but the PC mega-company is not giving up the ghost on its troubled initiative yet. In a recent interview with GameDaily, GFW Live senior marketing manager Michael Wolf discussed some of the changes coming to the service in the near future, including plans to introduce digital distribution.

  Talking about digital distribution, Wolf called the PC platform “the cradle of innovation,” adding, “The PC gaming industry is not in decline; it’s evolving and it’s definitely evolving to a more online market.” Wolf went on to explain how their slow move toward digital distribution doesn’t have to do with retailers fighting back:
  

  “I think retailers are starting to get it. Even when we look at what Microsoft has done with digital distribution and how we worked with retailers…it’s almost like the same people who said books are going away and magazines are going away because everybody gets stuff online. I think there’s still going to be that market where people want to go out and buy hard boxed copies and collector’s editions and things like that. Things like that are still going to drive people to retail, and even when it comes to digital distribution Microsoft sells points cards at retail, and the retailers love that. So I don’t think it’s necessarily cutting out retailers or that we’re getting a lot of pushback from them.”

  Moving on to the subject of cross-platform multiplayer, Wolf says Microsoft learned that this “is really hard to do” with Shadowrun. Despite all their work to balance the game so players using controllers could go up against players using mouse and keyboard, problems remained in the final version: “PC gamers had an advantage when it comes to long distance because of the accuracy of the mouse for headshots and sniping, whereas the console players had a little advantage in close combat because they could hit combos faster and pull things off quicker.”

• 20Nov

  Half-Life Now 98 Cents in Honor of 10th Anniversary

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  Valve is currently celebrating the tenth anniversary of their seminal first-person shooter Half-Life, and they’ve taken the opportunity to temporarily drop the game’s price on Steam to an astonishingly low 98 cents. Compared to the game’s usual price of $9.99, that’s roughly 90% off the standard cost of admission. Trust us, that’s a deal you just won’t find outside of, well, Tabula Rasa.

  If you’re looking for a nostalgic trip through Black Mesa — or if you’ve somehow managed to miss out on this classic shooter over the past decade — then this is your chance to take the plunge and find out exactly why the dark science of teleportation should never be explored. Interested parties need to act fast, however; the deal expires at noon PST on Friday, November 21.
  

• 20Nov

  Microsoft Admits to Banjo-Kazooie Preorder Code Problems, Delays XBLA Release to December 3

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  UPDATE: Almost as though directly responding to our reaction to this news, Microsoft sent us an update revealing that the official public release of Banjo-Kazooie on Xbox Live Arcade has been delayed to December 3. Microsoft notes that this move “extends the exclusive window for our preorder customers another week.” Here’s hoping those customers can get the code they need to enjoy that extra week.

  ORIGINAL STORY: With so many huge releases coming out in the last few months, one of the tricks publishers have employed to help pull gamers in to purchasing their game over the competition is special preorder bonuses. One of the coolest bonuses came with last week’s new release from Rare, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts. Customers who preordered the game from select retailers received a free download code for the full original Banjo-Kazooie on Xbox Live Arcade weeks before it’s available for purchase for anyone who didn’t preorder…or at least preorder customers should have received that code. I didn’t when I picked up my copy of the game, and it turns out I wasn’t alone.

  Two separate GameStops in the Bay Area informed me that they had only been sent two preorder codes for the whole store — significantly less than the number of preorders they had taken on the game. The problem is not limited to GameStop stores either, as others in the office had preordered the game from Amazon and also never received download codes for Banjo-Kazooie. Upon hearing that the problem was also happening to some friends on the opposite side of the country (and thus was not just a California issue), I contacted Microsoft to see if they knew what was going on and received the following official response:
  

  “We are aware that some consumers who preordered Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts have not received their redeem code for Banjo-Kazooie on Xbox Live Arcade. We are currently investigating the scope of this situation, but we believe it represents a small fraction of the total number of preorder customers. We encourage anyone who preordered Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and did not receive a redeem code to follow up directly with your retailer’s customer service team for resolution.”

  Wrestling the code out of your retailer of choice may not be as easy as Microsoft makes it sound here, though. When I asked for help, GameStop employees just pointed me toward other GameStop stores in the area that “could have extra codes” (and didn’t). Another customer contacted a manager who also checked other stores (which also didn’t have extras) and then put the customer on a waiting list in the store’s inventory in case more codes showed up, but the manager didn’t seem hopeful about the prospects of that happening.

• 20Nov

  Bungie Advises Against Installing Halo 3

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  In the weeks leading up to today’s release of the New Xbox Experience, reports circulated on the impact of installing games to the hard drive. While most games a modest decrease in load times, Halo 3, strangely, was performing worse than it did when running off the DVD. Installing to the hard drive requires that you insert the disc of the game you want to play into the DVD drive for the purpose of verifying you actually own the game. The game disc, however, isn’t spinning like usual, so even if loading times weren’t impacted, you wouldn’t have to hear that noisy disc drive while you played.

  As it turns out, those reports weren’t erroneous. Bungie is advising people to not install Halo 3 to their hard drive, as internal tests have shown that doing so can increase load times. Because of that, there’s the concern that increasing load times will negatively impact multiplayer games. Longer load times slow down the process of actually getting into games, which means people will begin quitting, which results in more waiting or in lame, unbalanced games.

  The technical explanation of what’s causing this is fairly complicated. The full explanation can be found here, but essentially the reason is that Halo 3 already makes use of the hard drive in order to speed up load times by temporarily caching data. Even though the game is now located on the hard drive, it doesn’t know that, so it does the same process but is unable to simultaneously read the data from the hard drive and write to the drive.

• 20Nov

  Halo 3 Pro Tom Taylor Appearing On Dr. Pepper Labels

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  Tom Taylor, a.k.a. TSquared, may be one of the most well-known and highly paid, professional gamers ever. In 2006, he signed a $250,000 contract with Major League Gaming, and he has appeared on multiple TV shows, including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and MTV’s True Life: I’m a Professional Gamer. Now, according to a New York Times article (via Kotaku), he’ll be appearing on millions of bottles of Dr. Pepper.

  Referring to Taylor’s highly successful Halo 3 team, Str8 Rippin, Dr. Pepper interactive team manager Richard Lyons says, “They really are rock stars in their own little world.” Matthew Bromberg, Major League Gaming’s chief executive, couldn’t agree more, adding, “What’s really going on here is for tens of millions of young men, the aspiration to be a pro gamers is the new dream of sports stardom.”

  The bottles will be on sale from January to April and will make up around 80% of all Dr. Pepper bottles on sale during that time. Additionally, the company will be running a promotion allowing consumers the opportunity to go online and enter codes from bottle-caps to win points and prizes.

• 20Nov

  Disney Sing It Review

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  I’m not the target audience for Disney Sing It, but even I have to admit that the game’s loaded with catchy tunes and fantastic videos that will appeal to anyone who’s into pop music. But despite nailing the setlist for the Disney demographic, I wouldn’t review these music videos any more than I would review the cut-scenes in a role-playing game. It’s the game part of this game that stinks, and the rest of it should have just been a DVD.

  Sing It boasts 35 songs from Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana, High School Musical, Aly & AJ, The Cheetah Girls, and the like and both single-player and multiplayer modes. However, it’s nearly impossible not to notice the game’s pitch-tracking issues (with the possible exception of the “You’re On Your Own” mode, where pitch cues don’t obscure the video). While it does generally recognize the correct pitch on longer notes, the note tracking for short notes is poor enough to frequently break your singing streak (and hence, your score multiplier).

• 20Nov

  Animal Crossing: City Folk Comparison Video

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  Animal Crossing ‘Comparison’ clip

  You don’t need to look at the screenshots of Animal Crossing: City Folk for long to notice the game looks awfully similar to Animal Crossing on GameCube and Wild World on DS. If you thought the screenshots were deceptive or that something was missing from them, GameVideos has just put together a comparison video to let you see the three games both in motion and in quick succession.

  Despite being a bit crisper than either the GameCube or DS games, City Folk’s graphics were clearly not Nintendo’s focus. There would be nothing wrong with that if the rest of the game had that time poured into it, but as our review says, Nintendo missed the mark if they were aiming to improve any of the existing aspects of the series.
  

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