GG Weekly Videogame News 
PS3 bug affecting developers
Industry debug units have been thrown into a "rebooting cycle, due to an endlessly-looping error message."
1up.com news
gamingeek
God of War director wants a franchise break
thinks a break would be good for the franchise.
1up.com news
gamingeek
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your Monster Tri demo now Capcom sent them a week early gonintendo.com news Ravenprose
Top Ten HDTVs for Standard definition pictures
Bookmark this page for your next purchase
hdtvorg.co.uk news
gamingeek
Mikami's Vanquish scans and info 1
Possibly the worst quality scans, ever
imagebam.com media
gamingeek
Level 3 - Episode 165
Band Hero, Dead Space Extraction, Stargate Resistance and more!
blip.tv media
darthhomer
LARA CROFT AND THE GUARDIAN OF LIGHT
New game is a digital download only
eidosgames.com news
gamingeek
NVIDIA 196.75 kills video cards
Driver update causing overheating deaths of cards
incgamers.com news
Ellyoda
More Tournaments of Legends pics
How far toned down is this High Voltage brawler?
wiiz.fr media
gamingeek
Telegraph reviews Silent Hill Shattered Memories
"it’s one of the most innovative and enjoyable survival horrors for many a year. "
telegraph.co.uk impressions
gamingeek
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*crickets*
I'd go with that on reflection. Its very solid and well executed.
I completed Another Code Wii last night, ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. This game you have to have the patience of a saint. It was worth it in the end, but unless you can bear clicking through text at a snails pace and a lot of redundent consversations at points, you can happily bypass it IMO.
I'm glad I got through it, but its not CINGs best.
Considering the Bioshock love here, I was suprised more people hadn't picked it up.
Sounds good, but kind of scary. Maybe not my kind of game. Tell me how it holds up in single player. Many years ago I got PSO and played it strictly offline. It was painful.
Neither can anyone else
And "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'RE NOT POSTING IMPRESSIONS IN THE THREAD!"
How did you get your hands on the game? Are you playing the japanese version?
The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds
while the pessimist fears this is true.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So, lets talk single player as I doubt I will play online much. What form does it take?
Say you start out in the town section, what do you do there, how do you get quests? Are they introduced by cutscenes? Is there actual story behind them? Are the rewards just for doing them etc?
And the gameplay, its all combat, no puzzling, no platforming. No... lock on?
The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds
while the pessimist fears this is true.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are basically different large quest areas with different themes so a quest may be in the desert, the jungle, the swamp, mountains, volcano, etc. Different paths and spaces may be open for different quests in the same overall area. They're pretty large themselves, but you learn them like the back of your hand pretty fast.
The main big quests are to hunt specific monsters which supposedly cause troubles to the village (no cut scene, you just pick a quest to do from the currently available quest the village chief has and it has a basic description of where how and why, often with some humour - but you get a small in-game cut scene to introduce every new boss you meet, and sometimes an extra "ecology" CG cut scene showing its natural behaviour).
But to do that you most often need/want to do other types of quests first to prepare for the hunt. Gathering quests to explore and learn the areas and find items you need to combine them and craft potions, traps, different ammo types for ranged weapons and other useful things, slaying quests that have you killing smaller prey that perhaps has items you need. The large monsters themselves provide items most often needed to craft new weapons and armor as that's the only way to better your character, you don't level up.
You can also buy many of the basic items if you can't bother going herb gathering for potion making for example, but generally you use a lot of what you find yourself. You also have a farm that you can tend to and gather some item types from without having to do a gathering quest, it progressively gets better as you upgrade it using points you earn from the questing for more or better item types, but you can only harvest it all once after every quest you do.
The item progression is insanely deep, MMO style, as you'll need different and dangerous to get materials for the smith to craft better armor and weapons, and the fighting is very technical and tough as you need to learn the monsters' attacks and movement patterns really well, as well as your own skillset (which differs per weapon type) to properly avoid taking damage. It's really cool and unique gameplay I haven't experienced in other franchises in anything but superficial similarities.
At first it's simple enough then quests start getting tougher and more complex like taking out more than a single large monster in an area, or needing to get items that break if you drop them so trying hard to evade enemies in the area, or having monsters beyond your league wandering during a slaying or gathering quest, etc.
For the actual hunts, you find yourself preparing really well beforehand, taking the right items with you, buffing your character with the right food, using the proper crafted equipment and gem attachments which enable different statistics, resistances, and skills, etc, as most of that can't be changed mid-quest. There are tons of different items you can make use of on top of your standard weapon to help with taking down or capturing a monster (capturing is basically just making it unconcious instead of directly killing it, but don't think pokemon or anything, the monster is - supposedly - still slain afterwards in the village, you just get more or different item rewards if you capture instead of kill something). Traps, bombs like flash bombs or smoke or noise bombs, each with their own uses against monsters particularly weak against them, or only applicable to certain environments (like can't put a pit trap in sand or something if I remember right). And you make all that yourself from items you find or purchase as said already.
There's also the guild after you're done with the village chief's sets of missions. The guild has new series of missions to keep increasing your hunter rank, fighting tougher versions of monsters to get better materials and armor and weapons, quests, etc. There's also the training where you can fight against certain monsters with pre-defined items and equipment and get other rewards from that. I think that's the mode you can play split screen in Tri, not the full game but only arena quests like this.
It's certainly more varied and involving than the simple "hunt monsters" theme implies at first glance.
All these apply to Monster Hunter Freedom Unite on PSP but I'm sure MH3 is set up similarly. Also, I'm not too far in it (80 hours in means I'm still a noob bitch) so for example I'm not exactly sure of what more the guild offers beyond the village quests but I'm sure it's something big as I'm maybe halfway through the village chief quests (seems after I'm done more will open up though, from her feline sidekick) and I'm nowhere near hundreds of hours clocked like other players so, yeah, I guess the bulk of the game is after those :-P
Edit: and I just realised I didn't even go into how the controls are, with "realistic" weapon handling and maneuvering of your character to avoid the attacks and how you'll need to sheath and unsheath weapons to use other items or to run faster, and how monsters at times will flee to different parts of the map so you'll wanna track them fast before they regain strength by eating or sleeping, and how each weapon type has different quirks to learn, and is better or worse against certain monsters, like the sword + shield being weak but fast and easy to aim while a great sword is slow, cumbersome, can easily hit hard armored parts of the monster you want to avoid because they deflect your attacks, yet is really powerful etc. Yeah, big game
There's no Zelda style lock on but the game would be very different if they made it work with lock on. The camera is honestly not an issue, you can auto center it so that it turns to the direction your character is facing or you can manually control its rotation to track a monster while you do other actions. It's simple enough. The camera woes are mostly for the PSP version which lacks the right stick to control it so you need to stop moving but honestly, even in that it's not so bad, the auto center is mostly sufficient as you find yourself simply making your character look to where you want to look and pressing the auto center then continuing on your way.
The online mode is more or less the same (but some monsters and items you can get may only be available there, while others may only be in single player), there are different lobbies with lots of people in, you choose one, then you find four other people wandering there that want to do the same quest, you form a party, and then go on your way as described in the beginning. Now with Tri able to use voice chat to properly coordinate attacks and tactics (you need to be careful to not hit your friends, you don't do much damage to them but you can still knock them down or make them miss an attack or end up in a monster's path unable to dodge etc). I dunno exact details beyond that.
MHTri is the first true sequel since the PS2 games, it lacks certain weapon types (dual swords, hunting horns, bows, gunlances) but that's mostly for balancing purposes as they were over or underpowered sub-sets of other weapon types, and it does have new combos and specials for the weapon types that remained (sword + shield, lance + shield, hammer, great sword, long sword), as well as an all new weapon (switch axe), and other enhancements like swimming (and so underwater missions and hunts) seen in videos, torches to explore dark areas, etc. There are other tweaks in what effects your attacks have, for example previously only hammers and such could stun a monster with repeating hits on the head but now more weapons can do that, you can do shield bashes that may also stun, etc, lots of additions to the fighting and the usefulness of the weapons and items.
This wall of text just scratches the surface :-)
The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds
while the pessimist fears this is true.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks
Errr... If you're looking for puzzles and platforms, I think you are going to be disappointed. Doesn't seem to be that sort of game in the least.
This was the most interesting part, "It certainly looks different from other basketball games. Digitised cutouts of the players' faces pasted over the top of 3D models give it a style that's quite surreal and very much in keeping with the 1993 version."
From the Vanquish preview:
"At this point the gameplay demo video kicks off. The screen displays the giant space colony shown in the trailer. It's ten kilometers in radius and 27 kilometres long, says Mikami ("We wanted to make a very large scale war"). Humans and robots wrapped in millions of tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night.
And if you think any such similarity to Babylon 5 is coincidental, consider the blonde woman who pops up in the cut-scene. She's mucking about with some holograms, Minority Report-style, while talking to our hero via a headset. The nametag on her shirt reads Ivanova.
But she's not the star of this show. That would be Sam Gideon, former research scientist and now military operative. As Mikami points out, Gideon has a much more athletic frame than your typical Gears of War-style hero -"
Gideon is the name of the technomage in Babylon 5 spin off: Crusade.
Mikami is a Babylon 5 fan
Just how interesting it ends up being will depend on what the game feels like to play, as Mikami himself pointed out. What we've seen so far is impressive from a technical point of view, but in terms of artistic style and gameplay concepts, Vanquish looks a little familiar. It doesn't have the instant visual impact of a game like MadWorld or the bizarro factor of a Bayonetta. But it's early days, and this is still a Platinum Games title, and this is still Shinji Mikami. Perhaps he should have the last word:
"We are working very hard on this, so please look forward to this title." Will do.
I know, I'm just curious.
Okay, updates done.
So Euro guys, anyone else picking up Shattered Memories tommorrow?
The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds
while the pessimist fears this is true.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dude the whole game was built around not only the wii remote features but also the hardware. If you check the comparison video, whole backgrounds and scenary are missing.
http://www.destructoid.com/silent-hill-shattered-memories-wii-vs-ps2-fight--161714.phtml
"A lot of people I know skipped the Wii version of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and went for the slightly cheaper PS2 port, assuming that the two games would look identical. Turns out that they don't. In fact, the PS2 version looks like it's missing a lot, to the point where I'm not even sure it's complete. As you can see in the above video, the first enemy in the game, the one that's supposed to send Harry tumbling down a road of madness and horror, doesn't even bother to show up in the PS2 game. Instead, Harry just stares at a big block of ice, then pretends to get scared.
Thanks for trying Harry, but it's not working. Pagophobia is so much less fun that skinless-freak-that-wants-to-hump-me-to-death-phobia."
Wow, thanks for the info, it was good reading that. I guess its a good thing Capcom has made Tri more approachable for newbies in this edition, as some of that sounds scary. At least I now know there is depth and tons to do.
___
Listen to Wu-Tang and watch Kung-Fu
Sell some of your unplayed backlog and get SM.
That reminds me, I need to flog Another Code and Spirit tracks pronto.
zavvi has the PS2 and PSP versions for £18 but the Wii version still £25
___
Listen to Wu-Tang and watch Kung-Fu
Still? It only comes out tommorrow. Check the info above:
http://thevgpress.com/ggweekly/ggweekly.html&perPage=20#comment59781
Why the hell would anyone get another version if they own a Wii?
Wow, just checked out the comparison pics
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=19371796&postcount=1634
The PS2 version pics are first, then Wii version. Forget about the bad captures of both, look at the actual levels and backgrounds. See what's missing.
More pics at the link.
Vanquish is looking and sounding like it's going to be pretty awesome plus I totally loved Babylon 5 so that's huge for me. I'm definitely looking forward to this game.