Rare, the developer behind the upcoming motion-controlled Kinect Sports, recently asked gamers to submit questions through its Facebook page regarding the upcoming Kinect launch title. The developers thought long and hard, and put together the following video montage in which they answer said questions. Hit play to find out everything you ever wanted to know about Kinect Sports.
When gamers first saw "Milo" at E3 2009, the vulnerable little computer boy quickly became the butt of endless internet jokes and speculation. But a few years later, when Peter Molyneux explained some of the possibilities of Milo, I, for one, began to take the whole thing more seriously. Sadly, today's rumor of the day, via Eurogamer, says that Milo, as a separate game, has been canned.
Welcome, one and all to another glorious edition of your favorite weekly video game web show Feedback. Tokyo Game Show 2010 is now officially behind us, and, most importantly, everyone made the flight home (except of course for Randy, the intern I just made up. Poor guy.) Anywho, on this week’s show, Kevin "Back from the Land of the Rising Sun" Kelly, sun stabber Abbie Heppe, the always sunny Nikole Zivalich, and son of a sabertoothed rock demon and fiery orc maiden J.P. Shub to discuss the week’s biggest news, TGS, and, officially, Halo: Reach.
While we are, admittedly, pathetically inept dancers, there's still no good reason that we can't learn a thing or two from a virtual Michael Jackson. Thankfully, we were able to go feet-on with the new game based around the King of Pop's legendary routines.
"Michael Jackson's signature dance moves are heading for current-generation consoles and handhelds in Michael Jackson the Experience, which puts you in Michael Jackson's shoes as you perform his greatest hits. The title is coming to the Wii, Xbox 360, and PS3, as well as the PSP and DS, and we got to check out the Wii and handheld versions in Tokyo. The man's personal life aside, he really was one of the most talented singers and dancers in history, which is why this dance title might have a leg up on the competition."
Read our full Michael Jackson the Experience preview before you hit the dance floor.
If there's one thing that gamers have historically loved to do it's...move? Okay, well, maybe not, but there's no doubt that Kinect is going to ask us to do just that with Your Shape: Fitness Evolved. We had the chance to check it out at this year's TGS and returned to weigh in on how the game is shaping up.
"Aside from the training sessions, Fitness Evolved includes the usual complement of mini-games, which appear to meet the Wii Fit level of adequacy. Fitness Evolved calls them 'Gym Games,' and I saw one that had me punching on-screen boxes in a set pattern, and another where the player has to stack falling boxes on a virtual table to dump them into a pit and score points. Apparently, if you want to wage war on boxes, this is the game for you."
Shed a few pounds by checking out the Your Shape: Fitness Evolved preview.
It’s been a while—too long, by his own admission—since Suda 51, the charming and eccentric head of No More Heroes developer Grasshopper Manufacture, has had a new game to enthusiastically discuss. This unfortunate cycle was broken during this year’s Gamescom 2010 when Suda-san and company announced the downloadable shooter Sine Mora, which Grasshopper is collaborating on with Digital Reality.
When I spoke with Suda-san shortly after the Gamescom reveal, he was unable to share any details about a then unannounced title he was working on with EA. However, this mystery was solved yesterday when the blood soaked, action/horror title Shadows of the Damned was officially unveiled during the Tokyo Game Show. Our own Abbie Heppe sat down with Suda-san himself to find out more about the new project, and to find out why everyone should own a pair of golden sneakers.
On Wednesday night at the Tokyo Game Show, Capcom creative guru Keiji Inafune insisted that his company needed to do a better job of listening to “the West.” On Thursday morning, Microsoft Game Studios vice president Phil Spencer took the position that Microsoft had to do a better job of broadcasting Japanese developers’ message to the world. You might think that these two guys were pulling at opposite ends of the rope.
The fact is, though, Inafune and Spencer are coming from a shared perspective: They realize that the aesthetic conversation between major game makers in Japan and in the United States has been stalled for a while now. This week, they laid out their plans to do something about it.
Although Kinect was the overwhelming focus of Microsoft’s keynote shindig at this year’s Tokyo Game Show, the company did announce two upcoming XBLA titles that you can play with an old-fashioned buttons-’n’-analog sticks gamepad. (Remember those?) Both of them promise to give a global audience to games whose appeal has been felt mostly among Japanese players until now.
The first XBLA exclusive announced was Fire Pro-Wrestling, an Xbox 360 refresh of the classic series by the same name. The FPW games, popular in Japan since the 1990s, have seen occasional release in the States over the past decade, but they have never quite taken hold. A teaser trailer promised that players would be able to experiment with a variety of over-the-top wrestling styles, and the characters will be represented by users’ Xbox 360 Avatars.
Among the slew of Kinect announcements at Microsoft’s TGS keynote today was Haunt, a new horror game to be released on Xbox Live Arcade. The title is being produced by NanaOn-Sha, the studio that broke ground on the rhythm-game genre with PaRappa the Rapper in 1996 and is also responsible for Vib-Ripple and Major Minor’s Majestic March.
Nobody would be surprised if, like most of NanaOn-Sha’s past work, this game centers around music. If that’s the case, though, there was little evidence of it at Microsoft’s press conference, which offered no details aside from a teaser trailer. That short bit of footage takes us down a hallway in a haunted house from a first-person perspective. Thunder, lightning, screams, spooky paintings—all the hoary staples of Halloween stories are on display. The characters and scenery are rendered in a cartoonish style. Think Pixar with a touch of Tim Burton.
Haunt is slated for release in 2011, exclusively for Kinect.
Microsoft announced Sega’s Rise of the Nightmare at TGS Thursday, showing the thriller to the public for the first time. Microsoft Japan executive Takashi Sensui mostly let the trailer speak for itself. The trailer wasn’t doing much talking, either. But it was doing a lot of screaming. The teaser shows a rapid series of arcane symbols and ghostly apparitions, with occasional scenes (maybe from the game?) of torture. One man prepares to meet his doom in a sort of open-air iron maiden. Another flails in an electric chair.
Rise of the Nightmare was the second horror game announced for Kinect today—after NanaOn-Sha’s XBLA title Haunt—but it looks like Nightmare will be a far grittier game. It’s “tense and thrilling,” according to Sensui, and it’s slated for release in 2011, exclusively for Kinect.
Game director Yukio Futatsugi, creator of Panzer Dragoon, who left Microsoft in 2007 to found his own studio, Groundling, appeared at Microsoft’s keynote today to unveil Project Draco. It’s a new title from Groundling for the Xbox 360’s Kinect motion-control system. There were few details on offer, but the game appears to center around flying—specifically, hopping on the back of a huge, winged dragon and taking it for a ride. A brief teaser trailer showed two men grabbing the reins of two dragons as they flew through a mountain pass.
“After I heard about Kinect, what excited me most was that we could use our body,” Futatsugi said. “What I wanted to do most is to fly. Not with a joystick, but with Kinect—you can ride a gigantic creature. You can have balance and reins, and you can point at the enemy and attack.”
Project Draco is slated for release in 2011 on Xbox Live Arcade, exclusively for Kinect.
At its TGS keynote Thursday, Microsoft announced Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, a Kinect-enhanced sequel to a cult title for the original Xbox, Steel Battalion. The previous game was most famous for its huge, ornate controller that simulated the cockpit of the game’s “Vertical Tanks.” The “new interpretation” for Kinect will be developed by From Software of Demon’s Souls fame and published by Capcom.
Microsoft today officially announced its 250GB Xbox 360 Kinect bundle, which includes a console, Kinect camera, and a copy of Kinect Adventures, will release on November 4 for $399.99.
Ubisoft revealed its Pax 2010 lineup this morning, and it includes the first Ubisoft Kinect games that are playable by the public. Ubisoft will have three booths at the show (exhibit spaces: 632, 622 and 712) and will be showing some never-before-played Kinect titles Child of Eden and H.A.W.X 2 multiplayer, as well as giving the public a "sneak peak of Outland." Non-Kinect Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood will be on display as well.
Harmonix is trying something quite ambitious with its Kinect launch title Dance Central: teaching gamers how to dance! Luckily, the game keeps looking better and better, and the soundtrack isn’t too shabby either (if you’re into that sort of thing). Speaking of tracks, Harmonix just put out a new trailer featuring some Natal-powered dancing set to the Salt-n-Pepa hit “Push It.” And while we’re talking about pushing things, why not push play?
ADVERTISEMENT
1,387,748 Views | 03:12
440,324 Views | 00:49
50,122 Views | 01:24
1,050,151 Views | 05:20
158,963 Views | 03:14
Stay connected to The Feed 24/7. Follow us on Twitter and never miss another story.
Start Following
