Late Night Consoling
As I mentioned last night, in addition to getting to check out Manhunt (impressions posted here) I was able to check out the Game Boy Advance version of Max Payne. I only spent a brief time with the game, but I was able to play a bit of it, and I must say that I am indeed impressed. The controls were a bit looser than I had expected (I seemed to keep running in wider circles than I intended to) but it's still a faithful recreation of the Max Payne gameplay. All the standard moves are here, from the slow-mo jumps to pill popping and full-on bullet-time. The game recreates the first game in an isometric format, which works, although it definitely takes some getting used to. They've done an admirable job porting the graphic novel sequences from the original game, and while they're obviously in a lower-resolution than the original, they have made the transition remarkably well. The spoken dialog is about as scratchy as I've come to expect from GBA games, although it looked like the only spoken dialogue is during those graphic novel sequences. While in-game, the dialogue appears in the form of word balloons. Which isn't such a bad compromise at all. I walked away from the game impressed, although I wasn't blown away. I'd say this is going to be a good distraction if you're looking for a good action game to take on a trip, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a must-have for owners of the GameCube GBA Player to play at home alongside more fleshed out games.
| Hardware Sales Peaked? It's been suggested a few times already by various industry pundits (including yours truly), but now a market analysis firm has gone on record saying that they believe hardware sales for this generation of home consoles has peaked in this country. They predict hardware sales to hit 22.3 million units this year (up from 21.1 last year), but then they predict sales will drop to 20.3 next year. All the same, they do expect software sales to continue to grow, it's just hardware that has reached the saturation point. |
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| New Platinum Hits Titles Announced Just in time for the holidays, Microsoft announced seven new entries in their Platinum Hits line of budget-priced Xbox titles. Among the new additions are some pretty big games, including MechAssault, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. |
| Koei Working on PSP Titles Japanese developer Koei announced today at their midterm strategy meeting that they are working on a handful of PSP titles, at least two of which are planned for release worldwide. Koei has quite a few franchises to draw upon, including Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Nobunaga's Ambition, Dynasty Tactics, Kessen and Dynasty Warriors, which in particular has been a worldwide success for the company and would seem to be a logical choice for handheld expansion. |
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| StarCraft: Ghost Interview Computer and Video Games has conducted an interview with John Lagrave, the producer on StarCraft: Ghost, the Blizzard-produced action game from Nihilistic Software. John talks about the team's current focus (A.I. and level design) among other things. |
| Tiger Woods on N-Gage Electronic Arts announced another addition to their N-Gage lineup today. The latest game to be released for Nokia's phone/game system will be Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf 2004, which will support Nokia's N-Gage Arena for downloadable content and a global leaderboard. |
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| R: Racing Evolution Interview |
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| Counter-Strike Interview GameSpy has posted an interview with Jess Cliffe, the co-creator of Counter-Strike, talking with him about the Xbox port of the game. As you would expect, the questions deal with his thoughts on the porting process, and what was changed to make the transition a smooth one. |
| Final Fantasy Tactics Numbers 1UP has posted global sales figures to date for Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. The game has sold over 1.5 million copies so far this year, with the most copies being sold in North America since its September release, which at 760,000 stands well above the 460,000 copies sold since the game's February release in Japan. |
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| Spy Hunter 2 Q&A A new Q&A with Zach Wood of Midway Games is up at HomeLAN tonight, talking with the producer about their upcoming title Spy Hunter 2. |
| New Releases This Week | |
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| New for GameCube this week are Go! Go! Hypergrind, Mario Kart: Double Dash!! and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. |
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| It's a pretty big PS2 week, with all of these new titles: EverQuest Online Adventures: Frontiers, Final Fantasy X-2, Fugitive Hunter: War on Terror, I-Ninja, Kya: Dark Lineage, Looney Toons: Back in Action, Lowrider, Manhunt, Midway Arcade Treasures, Space Channel 5: Special Edition, The King of Fighters 2000/2001, Tokyo Xtreme Racer 3, Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior and XIII. |
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| For Xbox are Counter-Strike, Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Magic: The Gathering - Battlegrounds, NBA Inside Drive 2004 and Project Gotham Racing 2. |
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| For GBA are Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Medal of Honor: Infiltrator, Star Wars: Flight of the Falcon and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. |
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| And on the mutli-platform front this week are Battlestar Galactica (PS2, Xbox), Metal Arms: Glitch in the System (GC, PS2, Xbox), NCAA March Madness 2004 (PS2, Xbox), Need for Speed Underground (GC, PS2, Xbox), Secret Weapons Over Normandy (PS2, Xbox), Spawn: Armageddon (GC, PS2, Xbox) and Whiplash (PS2, Xbox). |
| Misc. Media/Previews | |
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| Cube.IGN has posted their hands-on impressions of Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition, which I gather is the official name for the Zelda multi-game bonus disc, and the first videos from Shikigami no Shiro 2, an Ikaruga-style shooter. |
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| The Magic Box has new shots from the PS2 remake of Dragon Quest V. |
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| GameSpot has new shots from Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (PS2, Xbox), while Team Xbox has a new movie from the same game. Also at GameSpot are new shots from Legends of Wrestling: Showdown (GC, PS2, Xbox), while GameInformer has hands-on impressions of Wrath Unleashed (PS2, Xbox). |
Console Game of the Evening: Blaster Master 2 for the Sega Genesis. "An absolutely dreadful sequel to one of the best NES games ever made. Too easy, and just plain boring." (submitted by chizwiz@speakeasy.net).
