Denis Dyack was on hand yesterday at the Microsoft Showcase event to show off Too Human. Of all the games on the show floor, I spent most of my time with Too Human which is saying something. Too Human is set for its August 19th release date and the build I played yesterday seemed pretty close to a final build. Too Human is going to feature 2 play seamless cooperative play. While this is a controversial change from the original promise of 4 players online Dyack explained that the game in their testing just seemed to fit the 2 player coop model better. With four the action became too frantic and disjointed. The game is supposed to be more about quality of game play rather than quantity. Dyack and another Silicon Knights representative showed off the cooperative aspect of Too Human and some of the stylistic kills you can pull off together. There is real depth behind Too Human that is going to take players a long time to master. In the demo, one player was more a melee heavy class and another more a ranged class. To perfectly work together, Dyack flicked the right thumbstick twice when attacking to initiate a toss of an enemy into the air while his coop partner shot him with his stronger ranged attack. He also claimed playing as a Beserker class may be the fastest an action RPG class in a battle has gone ever. During the play session, both coop and single player were available.
The sequel to what many consider to be the best game nobody has played (Hey even Rare knows it) was on the floor at yesterday’s Microsoft Showcase. Rare’s Justin Cook and Adam Park were on hand to demo the game for us. The presentation opened with a discussion of the first Viva Pinata and how it seemed like a game meant for children but was so deep that it required a hardcore gamer’s desire to truly play and enjoy the game. This core issue with Viva Pinata is what Viva Pinata 2 is seeking to address. The game play this time around is much friendlier to the new player highlighted by a helpful tutorial on the game. There is seamless dynamic coop over Xbox live also included in Viva Pinata as well as on the same screen for local players. Another casual friendly addition to the game is the aptly named Just for Fun mode. In Just for Fun mode you have infinite money and no enemies in the world. You can truly sim pinata it up to your heart’s content without any fear of the game world effecting you.
Banjo Kazooie’s return to consoles is something fans of Rare have been looking forward to for a very long. The wait will finally be over this November according to representatives from Rare at the Microsoft Showcase. When screen shots surfaced a few weeks back there was a buzz that it may have been a kart racing game. It turns out, vehicles are a major part of the game play in Banjo for both single player and mutliplayer. But there’s so much more. Rare has gone to great lengths to provide gamers with the freedom to build anything. No joke, anything. You can build a car, a helicopter, a plane, a space shuttle, and even a submarine if you wanted to. It all comes to shape in a realistic and revolutionary vehicular design garage in Banjo. Your imagination is the limit of what you can make.
The garage starts you off with a very basic blue print of parts you can choose from. There is a science to building your vehicle of choice and I think in this game almost more than any other the smartest player is going to be the most successful. When building a vehicle you have to account for weight, aerodynamics, and fuel use due in part to the game’s use of the Havok physics engine. When you enter the garage you will start with a basic engine, body, and weapon choices. From there you can start to build your creation into anything you want. The preview build present yesterday had 15 pre made designs for us to choose however we were free to edit them if we wanted to. You of course will not start Banjo with the best parts but as you play through the campaign you will gain access to better and better parts. The vehicle design is extremely important. Design a vehicle that isn’t well balanced and you will run out of fuel in mid game or your vehicle may be easily defeated and pushed around. But fear not, you can test your newly minted machine in the car park which is sort of like Banjo’s idea of a half pipe except for vehicles before taking it out and challenging the world. Friends can also join you in the car park and you can show each other your vehicles. Another cool feature of the game in the single player portion at least was starting with a very basic vehicle and as you gain parts throughout the 5 lands in Banjo being able to upgrade on the fly. As you can see in the above video you can go from a vehicle on wheels, to a helicopter, then with the proper engine located in the back a jet. A thinking man’s game of how to best approach a challenge or situation. Read more…
It’s not often you walk into a room with every heavyweight behind one console in one place. Yesterday in San Fransisco this was very much a rare instance for the 2008 Showcase. The first thing I noticed once walking inside was none other than Team Ninja front man Tomonobu Itagaki playing Viva Pinata 2 during what was probably a much needed break from the early morning sessions. Once things got underway at about 2 the first game I got a chance to sit down with was Ninja Gaiden 2.
Ninja Gaiden to me on the first Xbox was one of the most impossible games I’ve ever played. Go ahead and ridicule, I’m just not hardcore enough. However, even Itagaki himself admitted in an interview which I will be posting soon that the difficulty in Ninja Gaiden was thrown in via pure unblockable moves by opponents that would take down half your health. In summation, it was the stereotypical overbearing unnecessary difficulty. Much to my pleasure, Ninja Gaiden II has an option to play a toned down mode known as the Acolyte. In acolyte difficulty the enemies are not as numerous but are still numerous enough where it’s definitely a fight. The damage they do is also not as much per hit. While this is obviously viewed as a wuss way to play by “hardcore gamers” it made Ninja Gaiden II enjoyable for those us wanting to avoid the numerous controlling throwing moments of Ninja Gaiden. On the harder difficulty setting the enemies are more numerous and do more damage and only those who were good at Ninja Gaiden should attempt this path at least at first. Read more…
