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gamingeek (31s)
Famitsu scores
Star Ocean 4 The Last Hope (Xbox 360, Square Enix): 9 / 9 / 8 / 8 - (34/40)
DoDonPachi Daioujou Black Label Extra (Xbox 360, 5pb): 8 / 7 / 6 / 6 - (27/40)
Shining Force Feather (NDS, Sega): 8 / 8 / 8 / 8 - (32/40)
Sonic World Adventure (PS3/Xbox 360, Sega): 9 / 9 / 9 / 7 - (34/40)
SimAnimals (Wii, EA): 6 / 7 / 6 / 6 - (25/40)
Shinjuku no Ookami (PS2, Spike): 4 / 7 / 4 / 3 - (18/40)
Sacred Blaze (PS2, FlightPlan): 8 / 8 / 7 / 8 - (31/40)
Shooting Love, 200X (Xbox 360, Triangle Service): 8 / 7 / 7 / 7 - (29/40)
SimAnimals (NDS, EA): 7 / 7 / 7 / 7 - (28/40)
Lock's Quest (NDS, THQ): 8 / 7 / 8 / 8 - (31/40)
Saru Saru DS (NDS, D3): 7 / 8 / 7 / 8 - (30/40)
Simple DS Series Vol. 46: The Hikyou Tankentai: Choutoko Special (NDS, D3): 6 / 5 / 5 / 5 - (21/40)
Chou Gekijoban Keroro Gunsou: Gekishin Dragon Warriors de Arimasu! (NDS, Bandai Namco): 8 / 7 / 8 / 8 - (31/40)
Idolmaster SP (PSP, Bandai Namco): 7 / 8 / 8 / 8 - (31/40)
Don't sweat it man. One of my goals is to create a web host for my various hobby sites... Once I left the industry I was shocked by how craptacular remote hosting was.
Where is the Leo joke?
Anyhow Archangel, sorry if my reply seemed abrupt. I was desperate for a poop and had to leave the house too. What I'll just explain is that I've been on the Capcom boards for a long time and listened to their so called reasoning and excuses, denials and outright lies at points. Part of the problem stems from their refusal so far to localise or confirm localisation of two of their titles. The shoddy looking reveal of Spyborgs, PR mistakes, their PR spin portrayel of Chop Till you drop as a "ground up project" and the lack of follow through to mature games, after the success of two of their titles, which have performed as well as titles on other systems that they poured tens of millions resources into, to make and market. $20 million to market Lost Planet? $20 million to make it? How much do you think they spent on Zack and Wiki advertising? How much do you think they spent making that game? Okami took 8 people to port and cost a few hundred thousand (IGN Interviews) same can be said for RE4 port and Chop Till you drop, which despite their claims of being a "ground up project using the RE4 Wii engine" (lets not forget that the RE4 Wii engine is actually a gamecube engine that is years old by now) also is a poor looking port where the producer admitted to simply downgrading assets (Gamasutra interview)
Then they have this BS PR manager trying to make excuses for it "give it a fair shake" when in secret they are making the "proper" sequel for every platform apart from Wii. And lets not talk about vision, when they farm out development of DR2 to a Canadian developer whose only experience is baseball games. No one would be angry about DR2 being announced for all other systems IF they had made Chop Till you Drop an original, ground up Dead Rising game and not instead made a disgusting looking game that is the very epitomy of the word cash in. Meanwhile their VP of Capcom America talks of "tests" that Wii owners have to pass whilst other platforms get a free ride. Meanwhile, once those tests have been passed, 1.5 million RE4 Wii sold, 1.5 million RE UC sold, their reward for passing those tests is............ Chop till you drop? Then there is their finanacial report that says that all their future games will be multiplatform and then of course this definition of multiplatform excludes one system of course. On the other hand we see other companies that can and do make versions of multiplatform games for the Wii, either released at the same time or ground up versions later.
Other companies like SEGA are making ground up hardcore games like Madworld, the Conduit or HOTD Overkill and it looks pretty lame at this point for Capcom to be having this huge imbalance in their resource allocation. Especially when Wii hardware sales are tracking 30% above PS2 sales. Hell there are months where the system sells more than 360/PS3/PSP/PS2 combined. You can make an argument and it has been said before by Peter Moore or EA's John Ricettello, that Wii is "half the market"
The sad thing is that Capcom have decent looking games, Tatsukono gets good reviews everyday, Monster Hunter 3 looks superb and Spyborgs will most probably turn out well too. But their patronising PR bullshit and lack of follow through on mature games is pathetic. RE UC was originally suppossed to be a RE4 style game, instead they re-purposed it as a light gun game. People wouldn't be complaining about RE5 if it weren't for this fact.
On top of that you have a vast imbalance in titles, if you were to hold your hands out and on one hand put their Wii line-up and on the other the titles coming to every system but the Wii. One hand would be light, the other groaning with strain. Did you know that Devil May Cry 4, despite being a multiplatform title only sold 1.4 million last year? Again think about single platform sales of RE UC at a similar number, made at a far lower cost.
To top all of that off you have Wii economics, for the $40 million they spend on Lost Planet they could have made 4 Red Steel games and Red Steel is at the high end of the market in production cost terms. Given the cost difference it puts their output into even starker terms, for every Dark Void they could make 3 Wii games, lets be generous and say 2. For every RE5 they could make 3 Wii games.
Instead of this, you don't even see 1:1 parity on the most successful console of all time, which in monetary terms would equate to something like a 75% spend on next gen platforms and 25% spend on Wii. You don't even see that which puts things into even starker terms. EA, in title count has now promised that half their output will now be on Wii in title count, sounds good doesn't it? And yet the monetary spend would be nowhere near that. The beauty of Wii economics.
This is really bad 3rd party resource allocation for a system whose 3rd party million seller list jumped from 12 to 30 from March 08 to December 08.
Perhaps the saddest thing is that Capcom is one of the better 3rd parties on the system and people just expect more.
Anyhow, last night got Sam and Max season 1 on Wii, today I picked up the Darkness and Stranglehold on 360.
HOTD Overkill GAMEINFORMER reviews
http://gameinformer.com/NR/exeres/A3E2C989-15C2-4A23-A7A2-9F4A5AB7A74D.htm
"The star of The House of the Dead: Overkill is the unabashed writing, which finds gold in spoofing the genre with a brazen effectiveness. The parade of F-bombs and one-liners fit in perfect harmony with the grindhouse presentation. Tarantino fans shouldn’t miss this clever, curse-heavy shooter."
8.5
Second Opinion
"House of the Dead: Overkill is sanguineous and profane, twisted and appalling; a blood-spewing, F-bomb-abusing goregasm of pulp horror. It’s shocking and over-the-top, but the intent isn’t to offend you to the point that you write your senator. The content in question is used for comedic purposes. Profanity replaces nearly every adjective, yet most of the jokes are intelligently written and original. Comedic material also flows through the gameplay, turning a typical rail shooter into a laugh-out-loud blast. The dismemberment-heavy action doesn’t offer much of a challenge, especially once the assault rifle is unlocked, but the gameplay mechanics are rock solid. While it delivers the sensation of shooting fish in a barrel, the experience never wavers from being entertaining. Director’s Cut mode, co-op, and dozens of unlockables give players reason to come back for more. Video game comedy is rarely done well, but House of the Dead: Overkill handles it with bloody aplomb."
8.5
GAMES RADAR REVIEW
http://www.gamesradar.com/wii/the-house-of-the-dead-overkill/review/the-house-of-the-dead-overkill/a-2009021015845545032/g-2008081914304370030
Despite being easy....
"This isn’t to say Overkill isn’t a tremendous laugh; it’s just not what light gun fans may have wanted. As a shooting experience it won’t trouble you, but it’ll entertain you. Heads pop perfectly, arms spin off as blood geysers pump icky red all over the walls, chain kills rack up and a gravelly voice bellows the multiplier names with homicidal relish. And if you hit a bullet time pick-up, you can watch it all frame by frame. The adrenaline of arcade survival has been exchanged for the satisfaction of uber-violence. Ghost Squad and House of the Dead 2+3 already have the adrenaline angle covered on Wii, so we can enjoy Overkill for what it is. At last, the Wii comes of age."
8/10
Well GG you're also dismissing all the residuals off of things like downloadable content which Capcom can't do or can't do in a satisfactory way on the Wii. Also like I said before unless you know what the profit margins are from their games it's all just guessing using just the cost and games sold ratio. Obviously Capcom sees it in their best interest to develop the games they do on the systems they see fit which is entirely their perogative to do. I say just get the games you want, get games like Monster Hunter 3 on the Wii and games like Resident Evil 5 on the 360. You do have both so I really don't see what the big deal is.
Downloadabe content isn't free either. It costs money and takes manpower and time to make.
Guessing profit on Wii games isn't hard, you hear from companies all the time about their Wii games are raking in cash. THQ income from Wii titles rose by something like 77% recentely. Ubisoft makes more than 50% of its income from casual games on Wii and DS. It's not rocket science to deduct a games development budget + marketing costs compared to something which costs a quarter as much to make and in half the time.
You're right though in that Capcom are sketchy with details concerning their budgets. I even asked the VP to rate how much they spent per game on a scale of 1 to 10 and he evaded that question too. These companies just wont disclose their figures, which makes it even more frustrating to get a straight answer out of them. But we definetely do know that the Lost Planet $40 million budget is correct, we do know how much Red Steel took to make and we do know from different sources in general how much it costs to make a Wii title vs a next gen game.
I think we've had a similar discussion before. Like Dvader said of me, I complain like hell when I disagree with things.
Think about gamers like Angry beaver who don't have multiple consoles. And I didn't buy the Wii for it to be a white elephant. I didn't buy it as a first party machine. I know what the system is capable of, I can see its potential and I want some games that take advantage of it. And developers suddenly pretending that their visions and vanity projects aren't possible or that it's impossible to create good games on Xbox level hardware are BS-ing of the highest order.
Even worse is that some of these huge projects aren't even self sustaining and you have a situation where companies like Ubisoft have openly admitted that they are creaming off the profit from Wii and DS games to make actual good games on other systems.
Lastly, Monster Hunter 3 and Tatsukono vs Capcom aren't even slated for a western release. Which leaves Capcom's 2009 Wii output as Chop Till you Drop and Spyborgs and both games so far look like shiteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
(I hope that they've improved Spyborgs a lot)
It's like God of War apparentely.
Nooo! I wanted something more like Dead Space for this game.
Tough titty. You got RE5 which is like Dead Space, which is like RE4.
I'm done with the updates if Iga wants to get on. Just going to post some pics here and then in the forum.
Oh, I guess I should tell you guys about Sam and Max season one. Will do in a while.
Just posted about 20+ screens in the Sonic thread. Damn the engine is good.
Anyhow, Sam and Max season 1 Wii impressions.
Going from 2-D to 3-D the game loses a lot of charm. The Wii menu animated title screen is awesome and you want the game to look like that, 2-D almost viewtiful Joe style. Instead the game uses chunky pleasing on the eye cartoon models. The colour isn't strong enough but the main problem is terrible slowdown. In ANY other game this would be crippling, but in a game where you walk around at 1 mph by clicking and pointing it's not that much of an issue at all.
They could have optimised it a bit better for Wii use. The item icons are quite small but the accuracy of the remote comes through. The dialogue choices can thankfully be manipulated via d-pad so you dont have to constantly aim at the screen.
Humour wise it's pretty good so far, not stunning and the 3-D does detract from the charm. Unfortunately Sam's voice actor is really boring and bland, while Max is good. The convience store guy has some awesome lines. I'm only halfway through chapter 1 so far. It's pretty decent if you can pick it up cheaply.
In other news I finally beat that Dead Space boss in the cylinder chamber.
Enough of these Sonic stuff
KILLZONE 2 GAMEINFORMER REVIEW
Skim through:
There is a disregard for any sense of pacing in the gameplay. It’s hard for that exploding building to have much “wow” effect when another building just exploded 10 seconds ago.
Combat feels tight and the AI is suitably cunning, but too many of the commonly available firearms feel like a machine gun variant. The enemy Helghast are fast, vicious, and clever, and have the unfortunate characteristic of all looking almost identical to each other. Only a few occasional enemies are fundamentally different.
Killzone 2 is a fantastic addition to the PS3 catalogue. It makes good on the promise of its original unveiling nearly four years ago through unceasing action and breathtaking visual fidelity. It doesn’t change our level of expectation for all first-person shooters, but it does give us all a good reason to keep playing them.
8.75
SECOND OPINION
"Killzone 2 was designed with a singular vision: throw players headfirst into hellfire, and keep them pinned down until the credits roll.The intensity is suffocating, making you feel that every shot matters, every move must be carefully orchestrated, and that it’s going to take every bit of your mettle to survive. The single-player campaign story is forgettable, and the squad banter beats you over the head with the stupid-stick far too often, but the weapon play and epic firefights are more than enough to keep you charging into battle. Killzone 2 doesn’t hit the target with all of its shots, but when it does, it blows the target away."
9.00
It's me altering stories that have already been posted Iga. I can't delete them, so I have to blank it. Look down a tad and you will see the GI joe story posted.
Okay I always control f before I post, so that we do not have duplicates. But you spelled it wrong, so I could not find it!