Atlus is making (or localizing) a MMOG. http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=736 GAME PRODUCER

The Game Producer is responsible for overall game performance of a significant MMO title including revenue, game content, and community growth. This Producer manages and coordinates the day to day activities of the game team supporting this MMO title. The Producer is also responsible for gathering the necessary resources from our engineering, quality assurance, marketing, and business development teams which will contribute to their game title's growth and success.

The Game Producer should posses a background that includes project management of multi-phased projects, daily management of hourly employees, and driving revenue based on marketing campaigns. The ideal candidate for this position should have a strong understanding of their gaming community and the ability to balance scope, time, cost, risk and quality of their title while also developing a high performance team.

The ideal candidate will meet the following requirements:

Responsibilities
# Perform ongoing game product analysis by working closely with the Director of Online Games to ensure project requirements are clearly defined, understood, and delivered
# Prepare and maintain daily documentation to include game project plans, status reports, risk assessment plans, change requests, and resource requests
# Maintain current knowledge of the latest MMOG market trends and customer requirements in both the US and foreign markets
# Define requirements for administrative tools used to manage the game
# Provide strategic direction to the game experience based upon community knowledge and expertise
# Work with your Community Manager to understand community needs and develop ways to effectively address them

Minimum Qualifications
# Produced and managed at least 2 - 3 MMO or PC based titles
# Minimum 7 years experience in the game industry, with increasing levels of responsibilities

Additional Positive Considerations
# Experience working at an Internet or web based company

I'd highlight the important parts, but they capitalized them for me. Is it Shin Megami Tensei Imagine? Or something new. Is Atlus USA going to sextuple the size of their studio and make a new MMOG? What the hell is happening here? I'm hyped for for a goddamn ghost. Someone hold me.

Edit: Some additional thoughts. Atlus is located in Irvine. The cost of living in Irvine is roughly the equivalent of chartering a 200-foot yacht to Mars and building the surrounding space shuttle with help from a team of highly unqualified heart surgeons. They are probably expecting an MMOG Producer to get paid the industry average +10-20%. Might I point out that Irvine would require an MMOG producer get paid 2-300% more, if not more. Especially if they have a family. Especially if they want someone with, ahem, SEVEN years of experience. Basically, wow, this is an interesting tree to bark up. God bless you, Atlus. Best of luck with this. It's total madness.

Edit 2: You know, on second thought, competition for this job will be FIERCE. Like, tooth and fucking nail and knife and shotgun. Then more gun. They should titled it *PRODUCER WHO WILL ACCEPT THE LITTLEST AMOUNT OF MONEY, BECAUSE WE KNOW YOU'RE ALL GOING TO APPLY. WE'RE AWESOME." And they are. Man, I wish they'd make it a reality show. It would be better than the trash they put on Hell's Kitchen.
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]]> News Thu, 1 May 2008 21:38:24 -0600 Review: Persona 3 Fes http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=735
Editors note: This review was submitted by Cory J. Someone who lives in Arizona, near me (schild), and was willing to play through the new content so I could start over as I wanted the "full experience." I'm not really going to say anything about this review other than "we warned you." Without further ado, I present you with... well... this.

If you haven't played the original Persona 3 let me start off by telling you exactly how much I hate you. There are no known English words that come to mind that can accurate sum up how much I want bad things to happen near and to you. It reminds me of this one time a yellow VW bug pulled up alongside of me. Two problems here:

1. I hate bugs.
2. It was yellow.

I wanted bad things to happen to this car and its occupants. Like, say, immediate death. This all-together dangerous and violent feeling that was surging through my body was only heightened when they pulled slightly ahead to reveal a plush yellow bug in the window and a vanity license plate that read, "luvmybug." Trying to remember how to breathe, I raced past them at full speed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the passenger and driver. Both were relavitely old, and by justifying that nature would take my revenge soon enough, if cancer wasn't already, I was able to calm down. Now, in retrospect they never really did anything to offend me, but if you're reading this and haven't played Persona 3, you have. Keep that in mind because in a minute I'm going to tell you all to shoot yourselves in the face. And no not in a clever way to tie in a Persona reference, mainly I just want you dead. You deserve it for being thick.
]]> spoilers incoming.

Now, for the rest of you reasonably sensible people out there let's move on. For those of you that remember, Persona 3 plays out much like a typical dungeon crawler spliced together with a dating sim the likes of you'd find at Newgrounds save the two second clip of hentai at the end of each round. Atlus, take notes here, I'd kinda like to see that in Persona 4, so let's make that happen. In any case not much has changed here, the mechanics are still the same, only better, because they've given me a chance to court my pedoesque teacher and that goofy-ass albino, Elizabeth. Now, I haven't gotten a chance to go all the way through the main story again, since I only received the disc a few days ago, but it's basically the same. Just a handful of new personas, and yellow-eyes surfing down a slide.

The real draw of FES is the additional episodic Aigis area, which we're told will act as an epilogue to the original story. I always thought the original ending was closing enough, but who am I to deny another trip into Tartarus. The story takes place a month after the original Persona ended. We find the remaining members of S.E.E.S. sitting in their dorm, basically being slackers and wondering what their night life will be like without their favorite coffee shop and ability to be superheroes... well, sort of.

Shit hits the fan, so to speak, and the group gets its collective ass in gear to take on Tartrus yet again. This time, however, you're not lead by that stylish emo-hair kid with amazing headphones, who I've named "BACON AWESOME!" Yes, with the exclamation point. This story is centered around the robot Aigis, who I was never fond of and promptly replaced with a small boy Lance the first chance I got. But people seem to like her, must be a fan-boy thing about having a devoted machine to fight evil with and molest at night, I don't really know. Aside from that there's not much say. It plays out the same, you run around kill things and collect items, whilst indulging in your suicidal fetish and the story plays out.

I don't want to go into too many details because than this would turn into a review of nothing but spoilers, and no one wants that. FES is an add-on, thus making it difficult to accurately review. It was if Atlus was like, "Hey, you remember that incredible RPG we made? Well we've added more costumes, more social links, weapons, and personas. Then we made it longer and gave it a real ending. What do you think?" It's better, faster, stronger, and I'm harder, and its essentially two games for less than the price of one. So just go buy it, judge the awesomeness, and prevent a situation where you have to punish yourself. With bullets to the face. Cory rules, thank you.
[discuss]
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]]> News spoilers incoming.

Now, for the rest of you reasonably sensible people out there let's move on. For those of you that remember, Persona 3 plays out much like a typical dungeon crawler spliced together with a dating sim the likes of you'd find at Newgrounds save the two second clip of hentai at the end of each round. Atlus, take notes here, I'd kinda like to see that in Persona 4, so let's make that happen. In any case not much has changed here, the mechanics are still the same, only better, because they've given me a chance to court my pedoesque teacher and that goofy-ass albino, Elizabeth. Now, I haven't gotten a chance to go all the way through the main story again, since I only received the disc a few days ago, but it's basically the same. Just a handful of new personas, and yellow-eyes surfing down a slide.

The real draw of FES is the additional episodic Aigis area, which we're told will act as an epilogue to the original story. I always thought the original ending was closing enough, but who am I to deny another trip into Tartarus. The story takes place a month after the original Persona ended. We find the remaining members of S.E.E.S. sitting in their dorm, basically being slackers and wondering what their night life will be like without their favorite coffee shop and ability to be superheroes... well, sort of.

Shit hits the fan, so to speak, and the group gets its collective ass in gear to take on Tartrus yet again. This time, however, you're not lead by that stylish emo-hair kid with amazing headphones, who I've named "BACON AWESOME!" Yes, with the exclamation point. This story is centered around the robot Aigis, who I was never fond of and promptly replaced with a small boy Lance the first chance I got. But people seem to like her, must be a fan-boy thing about having a devoted machine to fight evil with and molest at night, I don't really know. Aside from that there's not much say. It plays out the same, you run around kill things and collect items, whilst indulging in your suicidal fetish and the story plays out.

I don't want to go into too many details because than this would turn into a review of nothing but spoilers, and no one wants that. FES is an add-on, thus making it difficult to accurately review. It was if Atlus was like, "Hey, you remember that incredible RPG we made? Well we've added more costumes, more social links, weapons, and personas. Then we made it longer and gave it a real ending. What do you think?" It's better, faster, stronger, and I'm harder, and its essentially two games for less than the price of one. So just go buy it, judge the awesomeness, and prevent a situation where you have to punish yourself. With bullets to the face. Cory rules, thank you.
[discuss]
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]]> Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:06:57 -0600 Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 – Grin AB - PC http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=733
I’ve always had an outside interest in the Ghost Recon series as well. Well, kinda. Years ago I played the demo of the original game, enjoyed it, bought the original game, along with Island Thunder and Desert Siege, then promptly never got around to playing them. Even now, they sit in the shelf, in the metaphorical “I must get around to playing that one day” pile. Then the series became a console title and finally returned to PC. The PC version of this title is quite different to the console version, as I understand it.

The game at it’s core is a mostly-fun, semi-stealth-based realistic-looking shooter, which provides you with an endless supply of generic heavily-armed bad guys, all of whom look like hardcore special forces, regardless of whether they’re supposed to be US marines, Mexicans, Mercs or whatever.

Your squad AI is typically dumb, but then so is the enemy, so it’s kinda even there.

[read more]

]]> But is it Fun? Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:04:19 -0600 Does it come down to trust? http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=732
Brad Wardell, founder of Stardock, had some interesting things to say about piracy in a post he made on his blog last week:

So even though Galactic Civilizations II sold 300,000 copies making 8 digits in revenue on a budget of less than $1 million, it’s still largely off the radar. I practically have to agree to mow editors lawns to get coverage. And you should see Jeff Green’s (Games for Windows) yard. I still can’t find my hedge trimmers.

Another game that has been off the radar until recently was Sins of a Solar Empire. With a small budget, it has already sold about 200,000 copies in the first month of release. It’s the highest rated PC game of 2008 and probably the best selling 2008 PC title. Neither of these titles have CD copy protection.


While I don’t see Sins as the best-selling PC title of 2008 (leave that to the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, Spore, or The Sims 3 if it’s out in time), that’s not the interesting part. Brad goes on to say that the key to a successful PC title is to find a demographic that buys games, and then to build them a game.

(obviously, the rest after the jump)]]> When you make a game for a target market, you have to look at how many people will actually buy your game combined with how much it will cost to make a game for that target market. What good is a large number of users if they’re not going to buy your game? And what good is a market where the minimal commitment to make a game for it is $10 million if the target audience isn’t likely to pay for the game?

If the target demographic for your game is full of pirates who won’t buy your game, then why support them? That’s one of the things I have a hard time understanding. It’s irrelevant how many people will play your game (if you’re in the business of selling games that is). It’s only relevant how many people are likely to buy your game.

He also says that the key to a high selling PC title is to develop a game that will play on the widest variety of hardware configurations out there, ie to support players beyond the traditional hard core frequent video card buying market. While I agree that catering to a lower spec machine is one way of increasing sales, it’s not a requirement. Relatively demanding games such as Crysis breaking into the top 10 are not an anomaly. There’s something more. Let me say at this point that I don’t have the answer, so here’s your way out if you wanted one, but I am going to ask questions and throw out a few bits that I feel correlate with the above.

Using Kieron Gillen’s methodology of tracking relative piracy numbers, let’s compare the current number of people downloading torrents of Sins of a Solar Empire and Universe at War. Sins is selling like hotcakes, the PC version of Universe at War, already out for several months, not so much.

Universe at War - 829 leechers
Sins of a Solar Empire - 24 leechers (interesting sidenote, there are over 100 seeds for the patches)

A few other related titles, just for kicks.

Civilization 4 - 160 leechers
World in Conflict - 2785 leechers
Supreme Commander - 1914 leechers

Wow.

You know, there may just be some merit when Brad says “if you don’t want your game to be pirated, don’t make games for pirates!” Do 4X players pirate games less than RTS players, who in turn pirate games less than FPS players?
Contrary to what many would believe to be obvious, does the lack of DRM have anything to do with the limited number of folks pirating Sins of a Solar Empire? Let’s compare two other titles…

Company of Heroes - 348 leechers
Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts - 1679 leechers

What makes these two titles particularly interesting? Company of Heroes originally shipped with no DRM whatsoever, and was a posterchild for many in the anti-DRM camp. Opposing Fronts, the standalone sequel, did a complete 180, requiring the user upon installation to uninstall the original CoH, register both online, and then proceed. Once installed, either the original DVD or an internet connection to the registration servers is required to play the game. While, granted, the original game is a year older than its sequel, could it be that the DRM in Company of Heros: Opposing Fronts is having the opposite effect of what Relic and company intended?

Does copy protection provide an easy way out for the player, a slight nudge towards piracy or a challenge to one who may not otherwise be inclined?

Likewise, does a lack of DRM make us honest, more willing to give money to and trust a company who in turn trusts us?

Or is DRM simply a small piece of a larger issue between developers and players? Could it be that trust is the key to Stardock’s success?
[discuss]
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]]> Commentary When you make a game for a target market, you have to look at how many people will actually buy your game combined with how much it will cost to make a game for that target market. What good is a large number of users if they’re not going to buy your game? And what good is a market where the minimal commitment to make a game for it is $10 million if the target audience isn’t likely to pay for the game?

If the target demographic for your game is full of pirates who won’t buy your game, then why support them? That’s one of the things I have a hard time understanding. It’s irrelevant how many people will play your game (if you’re in the business of selling games that is). It’s only relevant how many people are likely to buy your game.

He also says that the key to a high selling PC title is to develop a game that will play on the widest variety of hardware configurations out there, ie to support players beyond the traditional hard core frequent video card buying market. While I agree that catering to a lower spec machine is one way of increasing sales, it’s not a requirement. Relatively demanding games such as Crysis breaking into the top 10 are not an anomaly. There’s something more. Let me say at this point that I don’t have the answer, so here’s your way out if you wanted one, but I am going to ask questions and throw out a few bits that I feel correlate with the above.

Using Kieron Gillen’s methodology of tracking relative piracy numbers, let’s compare the current number of people downloading torrents of Sins of a Solar Empire and Universe at War. Sins is selling like hotcakes, the PC version of Universe at War, already out for several months, not so much.

Universe at War - 829 leechers
Sins of a Solar Empire - 24 leechers (interesting sidenote, there are over 100 seeds for the patches)

A few other related titles, just for kicks.

Civilization 4 - 160 leechers
World in Conflict - 2785 leechers
Supreme Commander - 1914 leechers

Wow.

You know, there may just be some merit when Brad says “if you don’t want your game to be pirated, don’t make games for pirates!” Do 4X players pirate games less than RTS players, who in turn pirate games less than FPS players?
Contrary to what many would believe to be obvious, does the lack of DRM have anything to do with the limited number of folks pirating Sins of a Solar Empire? Let’s compare two other titles…

Company of Heroes - 348 leechers
Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts - 1679 leechers

What makes these two titles particularly interesting? Company of Heroes originally shipped with no DRM whatsoever, and was a posterchild for many in the anti-DRM camp. Opposing Fronts, the standalone sequel, did a complete 180, requiring the user upon installation to uninstall the original CoH, register both online, and then proceed. Once installed, either the original DVD or an internet connection to the registration servers is required to play the game. While, granted, the original game is a year older than its sequel, could it be that the DRM in Company of Heros: Opposing Fronts is having the opposite effect of what Relic and company intended?

Does copy protection provide an easy way out for the player, a slight nudge towards piracy or a challenge to one who may not otherwise be inclined?

Likewise, does a lack of DRM make us honest, more willing to give money to and trust a company who in turn trusts us?

Or is DRM simply a small piece of a larger issue between developers and players? Could it be that trust is the key to Stardock’s success?
[discuss]
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]]> Thu, 3 Apr 2008 06:06:12 -0600 Burnout Paradise - Criterion - X360 http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=731
Having been a fan of the Burnout franchise since I first played Burnout 2, I was in two minds when I started reading about Burnout Paradise.

Open world? Integrated online? I played the Demo on XBL and while it was a bit of fun, was still not convinced. Read a few reviews, and was turned off. Then I saw it'd been new-release discounted at one of the major chains, so I took their catalog to EB and got them to price-match, figuring that their 7-day return policy could act as insurance.

So anyway, there's both good and bad here. And also Meh.]]>
The city is huge and detailed and so on. But you can read all that crap in any other web review. In the game, there are several event types and things to do. Oh, but first, a few notes -

The western half of the map is where the "hilly/country/cliffside/etc" type roads are. Unfortunately, if you end a race/event out there, then you'd better enjoy just tooling around, because you'll spend a couple of minutes driving back to the nearest event-starting-intersection. Oh, you'll by now have heard about how every intersection in the game has an event in it? It's, well, bullshit. Most of them do, but not quite all by any means.

Probably 80% of the intersections have something, and while this might seem just as good, it's annoying when you're driving back from yet another event that went up to that fucking observatory and wanting to do something. To elaborate for a moment on that Observatory - there are eight "finishing points" on the big city map, one more or less for each of the compass points. There are also repair shops, petrol stations (that refill your boost), junkyards (hubs where you can swap your cars), and paint shops (which change the color of your car and then allow you to repaint them in the junkyard).

So anyway, the events:

Racing - The giant city maps really are a detriment to the racing in my opinion, while on one hand it's kind of cool in theory to be able to choose your own path through the city to get to the finish line, you'll just as often be concentrating on the driving and dodging, and zoom right past a critical intersection, which puts you in the category of fucked. There's sometimes a little beeping street sign that appears up top of the screen showing a recommended turn, but those pop up for every turn in the "correct direction" regardless of whether that turn will be a good route, or a terrible one. So you're essentially forced to pause in the middle of a high-speed race at least once, and often a couple of times and try to work out your best route and where to make your turns. Of course this can be negated a lot by simply learning the huge map backwards, but you know, there's fat fucking chance of that happening.

Road Rage - The wide-open city is really an enhancement to RR. Since it's not about racing anywhere, but instead on takedowns, being able to change your route by 180, or chase down a repair shop when you need to (you can be taken down 3 times, then your car is toast and you fail whichever mission you're on). On the negative side, there are no more double-takedowns (even when you cause them) and no psyche-outs, and once you've achieved your target, there's no longer any point in continuing to take cars down. This is because unlike Burnout 2 and 3, the game doesn't keep track of your takedowns and give you another car for x number of those takedowns. (Ok, there's an achievement at 500 cars taken down, but big deal). Oh, probably as a result of the whole seamless online integration thing, aftertouch has been removed.

Stunt - I find this mode weak. Basically drive around going off jumps and doing rolls and other shit to score a target number of points. Some things give you a multiplier. In the words of young Annie: Yippee!

Marked Man - I think I remember playing this online in a previous version of Burnout - basically a bunch of black cars are after you. You need to make it to whichever one of the 8 points the game tells you to before they take you down. This is pretty fun, actually.

Burning Route - Basically a time trial race to one of those 8 spots. But you need a specific car for each of them. The reward is an upgraded version of whichever car you've been driving for it. Seems like a way that they have padded out the whole "each intersection has a unique event" thing. They're ok, but since every car in the game has a made-up name, trying to figure out if you even have the right car and where your eligible event is a pain in the arse.

Showtime - Crash Mode – Kinda - remember how much fun Crash Mode was in B2? Then they made it less of a multiplayer party game fun thing in B3 onwards, instead tying it to your save, and making it an integrated part of the whole qualifying event aspect of the game? Well, it's back in BP, and it's shit. Really Shit. Basically, at any point in time, you press your L and R buttons, and your car goes into a death roll. When you press the boost button, your car does a little explosive jump. You get more boost by hitting more cars, and you get bonus multipliers by hitting buses, which, like other vehicle types, are random spawns on the road. They really screwed the pooch with crash mode.

Since Burnout has gone to the Sandbox, there are also a whole bunch of typical "sandboxy" things put in there to keep the players busy and frustrated. Knocking down 400 gates which typically have shortcuts or access to different parts of the city, (like rail yards and warehouses) or ramps behind them. These hidden ramps, as well as many non-hidden ramps are used to smash through "Burnout" billboards. There's Superjumps, and also time trials called "Road Rules" - being getting the fastest time on a given street in the game - which you can also do online.

What really sucks is the lack of a "retry" option when you fail a mission. I think Criterion's idea is that instead of driving back to the starting point of the race you just failed (by coming second, for example) you can just do another event, and it makes the game more "worldly". In practice, it's bullshit, and a pain in the arse. Saints Row showed that a Sandbox game can still work quite nicely with a retry button, thankyouveryfucking much. It's really a no-brainer, especially since BP is a racing game. I'm of the hope that they will patch this in. On the other hand, since Criterion is owned by EA, I think it's more likely the kind of minor-but-valuable improvement to be seen in next year's iteration of the franchise.

In order to keep things a bit more interesting, and keep the game from having only "the best" car, they have also been split into three categories, all of which earn and use boost in slightly different ways. They fall into Stunt, Speed, and Aggression. Stunt cars seem to be all-rounders, and the closest to the cars from previous Burnout games. Aggression cars are the tanks of the game. Not so fast but heavy and perfect for Road Rage type events. Speed.. well, it's self-explanatory. The most fragile kind of car, but also capable of pulling Burnout chains which means if you use all your boost in one go, you get an instant refill. The only drawback is that you can only boost when your burnout meter is full, which in practice is actually easier than it sounds. Naturally, each type of car has an advantage in one of the event types.

The game has just given me a new car twice, I believe, and I picked some upgraded versions up from Burning Routes, but most of the new cars become available after completing an event, and the game telling you that the "XYZ" model is now available for you to take down, meaning that car is now cruising around the city, and when you take him down, you get his car at the junkyard. The reality of this is that it's not particularly hard. When the game decides you've been tooling around, looking at the scenery for long enough, it'll drive one of these suckers past you so you can then chase them down. It actually works nicely as a mechanic, though I always enjoyed the way the Burnout series used to give you new cars for sneezing, or pretty much everything. Really worked the ding-grats mentality.

Online. Criterion have taken a page from Test Drive Unlimited's book in terms of seamless multiplayer (you just tap right a couple of times, and you're into a game). Once in there are various multiplayer races and challenges to do, from 2-player ones right up to 8-player ones. Essentially you and the others share an instance of the city. With random Pugtards, well, it’s a mixed bag. Much like playing MMO-of-the-day, you can be grouped with a bunch of guys who are actually pretty cool, a bunch of smegheads, or a mixture. Just like when you get a great pickup group in a MMOG, a good group of players in BP really does help you enjoy the game a whole lot more.

When online, the game host can set up various challenges for you to cooperatively do, such as “jump a total of X distance” or “smash a burnout sign” or “do a barrel roll” this is typically easy enough to achieve, though pretty often there is some idiot who is more concerned with driving around randomly like an idiot (which makes you wonder why they’re online to begin with). Still, it’s a worthwhile addition to the game, so much so that I’m actually now tempted to pick up Test Drive Unlimited next time I see it deeply discounted.

If a bunch of friends or people from f13 ended up with this, It would definitely be a highlight of the game.

As our mate Yahtzee mentioned in his review, it is a game that’s works well as a jump-on, jump-off kind of game, though I have on a few occasions found myself stuck to the thing longer than I had planned, and indeed, after I had planned to get off, with a case of “just-one-more”, so I guess that’s a positive in the game’s favor.

Music. There's some good stuff here, there's some awful stuff here. Also a bunch of older tracks from older Burnout games. I turned the Avril Lavigne track off completely, but basically I just stream my music from my PC most of the time anyway. DJ Atomica is a moron as usual, but slightly less annoying this time around.

By now you've either seen that BP has a ton of things to do in it, or you've skipped ahead to the end. The fact is that it's not a perfect Burnout by any means, but it is actually much better than I was expecting it to be. The hugeness of it and amount to do probably mean I'll never finish it, but I've never finished a previous Burnout as well, since I treat arcade racers as something fun to jump on and off of, and will never sit down and play solely to finish over a long period. BP has incrementally more stuff in it, and will also have DLC to come, so I'll simply never finish it. I really wasn't expecting to like this game, but I've been surprised. Taken as what it is, however, it's actually a surprisingly fun game, and something I'd definitely recommend checking out with at least a rental or a 7-day trial.

(sent in by Azazel)
[discuss]
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]]> Reviews
The city is huge and detailed and so on. But you can read all that crap in any other web review. In the game, there are several event types and things to do. Oh, but first, a few notes -

The western half of the map is where the "hilly/country/cliffside/etc" type roads are. Unfortunately, if you end a race/event out there, then you'd better enjoy just tooling around, because you'll spend a couple of minutes driving back to the nearest event-starting-intersection. Oh, you'll by now have heard about how every intersection in the game has an event in it? It's, well, bullshit. Most of them do, but not quite all by any means.

Probably 80% of the intersections have something, and while this might seem just as good, it's annoying when you're driving back from yet another event that went up to that fucking observatory and wanting to do something. To elaborate for a moment on that Observatory - there are eight "finishing points" on the big city map, one more or less for each of the compass points. There are also repair shops, petrol stations (that refill your boost), junkyards (hubs where you can swap your cars), and paint shops (which change the color of your car and then allow you to repaint them in the junkyard).

So anyway, the events:

Racing - The giant city maps really are a detriment to the racing in my opinion, while on one hand it's kind of cool in theory to be able to choose your own path through the city to get to the finish line, you'll just as often be concentrating on the driving and dodging, and zoom right past a critical intersection, which puts you in the category of fucked. There's sometimes a little beeping street sign that appears up top of the screen showing a recommended turn, but those pop up for every turn in the "correct direction" regardless of whether that turn will be a good route, or a terrible one. So you're essentially forced to pause in the middle of a high-speed race at least once, and often a couple of times and try to work out your best route and where to make your turns. Of course this can be negated a lot by simply learning the huge map backwards, but you know, there's fat fucking chance of that happening.

Road Rage - The wide-open city is really an enhancement to RR. Since it's not about racing anywhere, but instead on takedowns, being able to change your route by 180, or chase down a repair shop when you need to (you can be taken down 3 times, then your car is toast and you fail whichever mission you're on). On the negative side, there are no more double-takedowns (even when you cause them) and no psyche-outs, and once you've achieved your target, there's no longer any point in continuing to take cars down. This is because unlike Burnout 2 and 3, the game doesn't keep track of your takedowns and give you another car for x number of those takedowns. (Ok, there's an achievement at 500 cars taken down, but big deal). Oh, probably as a result of the whole seamless online integration thing, aftertouch has been removed.

Stunt - I find this mode weak. Basically drive around going off jumps and doing rolls and other shit to score a target number of points. Some things give you a multiplier. In the words of young Annie: Yippee!

Marked Man - I think I remember playing this online in a previous version of Burnout - basically a bunch of black cars are after you. You need to make it to whichever one of the 8 points the game tells you to before they take you down. This is pretty fun, actually.

Burning Route - Basically a time trial race to one of those 8 spots. But you need a specific car for each of them. The reward is an upgraded version of whichever car you've been driving for it. Seems like a way that they have padded out the whole "each intersection has a unique event" thing. They're ok, but since every car in the game has a made-up name, trying to figure out if you even have the right car and where your eligible event is a pain in the arse.

Showtime - Crash Mode – Kinda - remember how much fun Crash Mode was in B2? Then they made it less of a multiplayer party game fun thing in B3 onwards, instead tying it to your save, and making it an integrated part of the whole qualifying event aspect of the game? Well, it's back in BP, and it's shit. Really Shit. Basically, at any point in time, you press your L and R buttons, and your car goes into a death roll. When you press the boost button, your car does a little explosive jump. You get more boost by hitting more cars, and you get bonus multipliers by hitting buses, which, like other vehicle types, are random spawns on the road. They really screwed the pooch with crash mode.

Since Burnout has gone to the Sandbox, there are also a whole bunch of typical "sandboxy" things put in there to keep the players busy and frustrated. Knocking down 400 gates which typically have shortcuts or access to different parts of the city, (like rail yards and warehouses) or ramps behind them. These hidden ramps, as well as many non-hidden ramps are used to smash through "Burnout" billboards. There's Superjumps, and also time trials called "Road Rules" - being getting the fastest time on a given street in the game - which you can also do online.

What really sucks is the lack of a "retry" option when you fail a mission. I think Criterion's idea is that instead of driving back to the starting point of the race you just failed (by coming second, for example) you can just do another event, and it makes the game more "worldly". In practice, it's bullshit, and a pain in the arse. Saints Row showed that a Sandbox game can still work quite nicely with a retry button, thankyouveryfucking much. It's really a no-brainer, especially since BP is a racing game. I'm of the hope that they will patch this in. On the other hand, since Criterion is owned by EA, I think it's more likely the kind of minor-but-valuable improvement to be seen in next year's iteration of the franchise.

In order to keep things a bit more interesting, and keep the game from having only "the best" car, they have also been split into three categories, all of which earn and use boost in slightly different ways. They fall into Stunt, Speed, and Aggression. Stunt cars seem to be all-rounders, and the closest to the cars from previous Burnout games. Aggression cars are the tanks of the game. Not so fast but heavy and perfect for Road Rage type events. Speed.. well, it's self-explanatory. The most fragile kind of car, but also capable of pulling Burnout chains which means if you use all your boost in one go, you get an instant refill. The only drawback is that you can only boost when your burnout meter is full, which in practice is actually easier than it sounds. Naturally, each type of car has an advantage in one of the event types.

The game has just given me a new car twice, I believe, and I picked some upgraded versions up from Burning Routes, but most of the new cars become available after completing an event, and the game telling you that the "XYZ" model is now available for you to take down, meaning that car is now cruising around the city, and when you take him down, you get his car at the junkyard. The reality of this is that it's not particularly hard. When the game decides you've been tooling around, looking at the scenery for long enough, it'll drive one of these suckers past you so you can then chase them down. It actually works nicely as a mechanic, though I always enjoyed the way the Burnout series used to give you new cars for sneezing, or pretty much everything. Really worked the ding-grats mentality.

Online. Criterion have taken a page from Test Drive Unlimited's book in terms of seamless multiplayer (you just tap right a couple of times, and you're into a game). Once in there are various multiplayer races and challenges to do, from 2-player ones right up to 8-player ones. Essentially you and the others share an instance of the city. With random Pugtards, well, it’s a mixed bag. Much like playing MMO-of-the-day, you can be grouped with a bunch of guys who are actually pretty cool, a bunch of smegheads, or a mixture. Just like when you get a great pickup group in a MMOG, a good group of players in BP really does help you enjoy the game a whole lot more.

When online, the game host can set up various challenges for you to cooperatively do, such as “jump a total of X distance” or “smash a burnout sign” or “do a barrel roll” this is typically easy enough to achieve, though pretty often there is some idiot who is more concerned with driving around randomly like an idiot (which makes you wonder why they’re online to begin with). Still, it’s a worthwhile addition to the game, so much so that I’m actually now tempted to pick up Test Drive Unlimited next time I see it deeply discounted.

If a bunch of friends or people from f13 ended up with this, It would definitely be a highlight of the game.

As our mate Yahtzee mentioned in his review, it is a game that’s works well as a jump-on, jump-off kind of game, though I have on a few occasions found myself stuck to the thing longer than I had planned, and indeed, after I had planned to get off, with a case of “just-one-more”, so I guess that’s a positive in the game’s favor.

Music. There's some good stuff here, there's some awful stuff here. Also a bunch of older tracks from older Burnout games. I turned the Avril Lavigne track off completely, but basically I just stream my music from my PC most of the time anyway. DJ Atomica is a moron as usual, but slightly less annoying this time around.

By now you've either seen that BP has a ton of things to do in it, or you've skipped ahead to the end. The fact is that it's not a perfect Burnout by any means, but it is actually much better than I was expecting it to be. The hugeness of it and amount to do probably mean I'll never finish it, but I've never finished a previous Burnout as well, since I treat arcade racers as something fun to jump on and off of, and will never sit down and play solely to finish over a long period. BP has incrementally more stuff in it, and will also have DLC to come, so I'll simply never finish it. I really wasn't expecting to like this game, but I've been surprised. Taken as what it is, however, it's actually a surprisingly fun game, and something I'd definitely recommend checking out with at least a rental or a 7-day trial.

(sent in by Azazel)
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]]> Thu, 3 Apr 2008 05:44:26 -0600 Prey - Human Head Studios - PC http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=730
It was $5 on Steam last weekend, so if you didn't buy it then, sucks to be you, but it's bound to come around again, right?  Still worth the regular $20 price if you've got a hankering for some single player FPS action RIGHT NOW.  And if you're on the fence, there's a demo you can play to whet your appetite.

--

Buy it.

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]]> But is it Fun? Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:16:30 -0600 Dark Sector - Digital Extremes/D3Publisher US - PS3/360 http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=729
Being the sucker for new games that I am, I rushed down one of my local gamestops and bought a copy (also a pre-order of the Warhammer Online CE. Sucker I tell you) and headed home. Having skimmed the various previews from different sites over the last 9 months or so, I had a vague idea of the story and setting, no no real idea about the game play other than FPS + KRULL = LOLAWESOME, and that one reviewer had said it was sort of a Gears of War clone. I had no idea how right he was.

The game starts out with you on the wall of some russian castle that is being controlled by nazi-esque bad guys and you are on some sort of mission.

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]]> But is it Fun? Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:44:13 -0600 Mabinogi - Nexion - PC http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=728
The look is cutesy.  Very cutesy.  Facial expressions are the familiar exaggerated anime style emoticons people like myself get made fun of for using.  One cannot look badass in this game, so don't try.

Using the free character card, your character is a human with a limited but decent set of options.  Through the wonders of RMT, many more options are available during a purchased Rebirth.  Other races will eventually be available.  Your character can start between the ages of 10 and 17.  Older characters are stronger to begin with, however they generally do not gain as many stat points with levels.

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]]> But is it Fun? Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:42:12 -0600 Dwarf Fortress - Bay 12 Games - PC http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=727
The concept is simple.  In Fortress Mode, you take seven dwarves on an expedition to colonize an area.  You generate a huge random map (or use a seed), then select the tiny region you want them to settle.  You can select their skills and equipment or take pre-generated dwarves.  Once they embark your goal is anything you want.

The basic skills your dwarves will need are tree cutting, mining, carpentry, masonry, and farming.  The other fifty skills will improve the lot of your fortress and range from hunting and fishing to several types of crafts.  You tell your dwarves where to dig or what to chop, and assign tasks in the many, many workshops available.  Traps can be made to catch enemies.

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]]> But is it Fun? Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:41:12 -0600 Warhammer: Age of Reckoning CE Contents Leaked http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=726
$79.99
Limited to 60,000 copies.
$10 Deposit at EBGamestop (Edit: This can be reserved starting tomorrow).

Exclusive GW Figure - Grumlock and Gazbag Miniature (Assembly and Painting Required)
Warhammer Online: Prelude to War (128-page Hardbound Original Graphic Novel)
The Art of Warhammer Online - (224-page Hardbound Art Book)
Bonus In-Game Item - The Librams of Insight - Special Use XP-Gain Modifier.
Bonus Quests - 12 of them.
Bonus Quest Rewards - 12 of them. I suppose this isn't shocking. Oh, and it adds a bullet point.
Bonus Character Titles - 12 of them.
Bonus Character Customization Options - 12 of them. All Heads.

So, there's that.
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]]> News Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:32:08 -0600