Sonic Unleashed Wii scans

Link

You've seen the other scans that were released a few days ago and those were showing a very dark blue Sonic with no shadows and no lighting on his character at all. These new scans show that Sonic is a little more blue and at least somewhat shaded just a tad with some circle shadows to boot. The second screen from the top almost made me take a double take because at first I thought that was the 360 version since the action and the effects look very similar. Sonic Unleashed on the Wii so far seems to be coming along just as I had predicted: The game will look close enough to the 360/PS3 versions with some Wii motion control to sweeten the deal. We still need to find out what control choices Sega will make with the Wii remote and see how play tests turn out before we can get really excited for this game.

Arc Rise Fantasia tons of screens & info

Mikage has updated his blog, talking about Arc Rise Fantasia. He's happy that it's finally announced and he goes on to say some interesting things.

- The visuals you see in the magazine are only 70% complete and not final
- Currently all cutscenes have no facial motion and are rather lifeless
- The team is working very hard to improve the visuals and the lifeliness of the event scenes
- Next month they'll be announcing the voice cast for the game

- Image Epoch has 4 production lines now: Luminous Arc development team, World Destruction development team, Arc Rise Fantasia development and Unannounced game development team

- There are sprite teams and 3D teams within Image Epoch, and the sprite teams will continue to work on DS hardware, while the 3D teams will work on Wii and PSP hardware.

- dragon hunting is a focus of the agme
- features Trinity Battle system
- Excel Acts, Tandem Connect and Party Connect action commands

This is the first time he's mentioned PSP as a platform for Image Epoch games, so that's pretty interesting. It also confirms that Arc Rise is developed by a seperate team from Luminous Arc. It seems that the Famitsu article was referring to Mikage, the MMV producing and Mitsuda as "Luminous Arc staff" who are working on the game.

Link and Link and Link

Excited for this new Wii RPG? The game looks like it's going to be very epic and big, the only question I have is how the gameplay will turn out. Hopefully we can get a release date soon!

Arc Rise Fantasia scans

(click on scans for larger view)


Wow, this Japan RPG came out of nowhere! It looks amazing and I can't wait until we get some more screens or a video of this game in action. Not much is know about the game as far as release date and such but you can be sure that we'll be hearing more about it soon.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour '09 Gameplay videos

I enjoyed Wii Golf back with Wii Sports, but since then I haven't been interested in Golfing on the Wii. Maybe because no one has done it right yet. This new game of Tiger Woods looks like it might be worth checking out; the look is nice, the gameplay looks fun and the controls (from what previews have said) are 1:1 ratio with your swing. I think those are a winning combination.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars Wii trailer

The style of the game looks just about identical to the the movie. I'm hopeful that the controls will make the Wii remote feel more like a lightsaber and not just a bunch of waggle with no direction. I'm sure there will be more info at E3 coming soon.

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of a New World developer TV spot

This game is going to be selling good in Japan and no doubt the same when it's released in States. The battles look every bit as fun as the first game but with more control over the movement of your characters. Who was that girl laughing with the developer? "hehehehehe" You gotta love Japan....

Madden '09 Wii trailer

This looks to be the best playing and best looking Madden on Wii yet. The "Call your shot" mode looks excellent and will give you so much more freedom to call plays. I can't wait to see more soon.

The Conduit: Developer Q&A

Dan Kaufman - Software Development Director for High Voltage Software.

Rob Nicholls - Lead Game Designer on the Conduit.

Q1: We see alot of images of all different kinds of alien species, what are they called? Ex: Halo has the Covenant, The Conduit has?

Rob: Our alien race is called “The Drudge”.

Q2: Could you give us a brief glimpse into the story of the Conduit?

Rob: The Conduit is a first person adventure game that takes place on Earth in a fictional near future. The main character, “Mr. Ford”, works for an undisclosed government agency that has assigned him to investigate a possible extra-terrestrial encounter. The whole situation ends up going terribly wrong when the player discovers that there's a lot more going on behind the scenes than anybody could have realized. Players are going to be very surprised when they discover the real truth that surrounds us all.

Q3: In lots of the images and in the trailer their are aliens standing in front of what appears to be portals. Care to explain?

Rob: That’s because they ARE portals. The alien Drudge has the ability to set these up in various locations in order to easily pour in reinforcements. It also means these portals should be prime targets for players, in order to keep from having to face an endless horde of enemies. =)

Q4: How would you describe The Conduit's gameplay?

Rob: The Conduit is a fast-paced action shooter, intended to cater to a wide variety of play styles. It doesn’t matter if you are the “run and gun”, the “cover to cover” or the “sniper” type of player, there will be something for you in The Conduit.

Q5: What kinds of Online and offline modes can we expect to see?

Rob: The Conduit has an engaging single player mode for offline play and will have at least three competitive multiplayer modes for online play.

Q6: You mentioned in an IGN article that the framerate was currently at 30 but you were aiming for 60. Have you hit your goal yet?

Dan: The game will run absolutely solid at 30fps. For HVS, choice is either to have less visual splendor and run at 60fps or achieve the look we want for the game and run at 30fps. 30fps is a frame rate that is plenty responsive for FPS gaming and we are valuing the increased visual detail we can offer over the slightly smoother gameplay we might otherwise get by scaling this back.

Q7: Are we going to see voice/text chat or any way to communicate other then ducktaping out phones to our heads?

Dan: We are exploring the possibility for voice chat. It is too early to make any promises along these lines, but we agree it could make the game even better!

Q8: Any plans for local/splitscreen or lan multiplayer?

Dan: Splitscreen multiplayer – not this version. LAN multiplayer – very likely.

Q9: What has been the hardest part so far in the process of making The Conduit?

Rob: There are hard parts on any project, but since this is HVS’s first big internal title in some time, I would say that my biggest challenge on this title has been to maintain the focus and the vision. Not because people have wanted to make a different title, but because everyone is so excited about this opportunity that they all want to contribute above and beyond their normal roles. However, I think we succeeded in staying focused on making the best fast-paced action shooter on the Wii. =)

Q10: Lots of other third party developers have loaded their games full mini-games with... interesting controls. Any chance we will see any in The Conduit? (Yes, this question may be considered a joke)

Rob: Seriously, we _do_ have one “mini-game” in our title, but it plays so well that you don’t even notice that it’s a mini-game. I think that says something about how far we’ve come with our game design. =)

Link

So there you have some nice information from the developers themselves. I'm liking the Lan possibilities since there is no game like that on the Wii yet. I'm just hoping they nail the art style and make some better looking Aliens.

Alone in the Dark Wii trailer

This looks like a PS2 port with Wii controls all the way, but a decent attempt no doubt. The controls look interesting, but how many more of these type of games do Wii owners need to put up with before developers just use the Wii as the main console for development and forget about the PS2?

The Conduit: updated screens

The Conduit shows a lot of potential, and I'm happy that High Voltage is not releasing the game until early 2009 to perfect the game with more development time. While the screens I've shown here look great (great main character detail on the hands and guns), the rest of the screens that have been released on other sites leave more to be desired. The main problem is the art design and poor textures of the Alien enemies shown so far. The good news is that High Voltage has plenty of time to fix those issues since they have a great engine to run the game and in the end I'm sure it will look extremely good on Wii.

Call of Duty:World At War running the Call of Duty 4 Engine on Wii

Keep in mind that all next-gen versions of Call of Duty 5 will be running off the awarding winning Call of Duty 4 engine. The fact that the Wii version of the game will be running it as well is an amazing feat in itself, but read on for more details on Call of Duty 5 for Wii:

From Gonintendo:

This information is said to come from the latest issue of gamesTM magazine. If anyone out there is a subscriber, or has purchased the latest issue, please shoot me an email to confirm these details.

- enemies will be ’scarier’ and have new tactics

- co-op gameplay

- vehicles and squad-based multiplayer

- Wii version is being handled by Treyarch, but a separate team within Treyarch

- CoD 4 engine has been adapted to Wii

- Wii Zapper support

- Opening scene: Japanese commander stubbing a cigarette out in the eye of a prisoner before slitting his throat - the blood splatters and dribbles down the side of the tent you are being held in. He turns towards you to deal out the same treatment but help arrives just in time. Cue a daring level-long escape.

Reader the Real_weeman confirmed this information, and gave us some quotes!

“Man, we can definitely talk about the Wii Version, I mean, where do we start? Well, first and foremost, The Wii version is being developed here at Treyarch. It’s a separate team from the next-gen team but its on-site. If you’re going to compare the next-gen version and the wii version side-by-side then you’re going to find that it’s a much closer comparison than, I think, any other Wii game currently on the market..”

“Yeah, the challenge with this one was ‘how do we make a cutting edge next-gen game work on the wii’?’. The answer is a lot of frickin’ smart engineers who’ve shipped Wii titles in the past. Getting the call of duty 4 engine on Wii was our first challenge - which we’ve managed to do and it looks great - but there are also a content and design challenges to consider.”

“Beyond that, We’re reall accepting the fact that the person buying on the Wii is doing so for a different kind of experience. I mean, we’re going to be supporting the Zapper and, I don’t know how familiar you are with the Zapper personally, but you lose about five or six buttons on that controller, so it’s very challenging to make a call of duty game that functions well. We’ll be doing some unique stuff with co-op gameplay, too, but we’re not ready to talk on that yet. I honestly think you’ll see what we’re taking the Wii very seriously.”

Link to Gonintendo

Link to Strategyinformer

I can't wait to hear some more information on this soon. It's too bad that the game is back to good ol' World War II....but the technology running the game on the Wii is very exciting indeed. Glad to see a big time developer is really taking the Wii seriously (yes I know you are trying Capcom, but show us more!) and putting strong resources behind it to go along with their 360/PS3 efforts. There is also no way this is a PS2 port....

Tenchu IV Trailer

From what I'm hearing, Tenchu IV's exclusive announcement for the Wii was actually pretty big news. I have never played a Tenchu game on any platform, so can anyone tell me what to expect from the Wii game (besides the obvious control) and how good it can actually be? Leave a comment and let me know.

New Fatal Frame IV screens

Link to more screens including CG screens for comparison

These are all real-time screens and it's looking extremely atmospheric and awesome. Having to use the Wii remote as a flashlight is probably something many of you have been wanting to do ever since the Wii was announced back in 2005. Looking kinda spooky and scary too and that's always a good thing.

Spyborgs debut trailer

Capcom has said to have "faith" in this game, so I'm willing to give it a chance. After the strong backlash from hardcore fans wanting something like Lost Planet or Devil May Cry on the Wii they had to be expecting that. Before I jump to any conclusions about this game I will need to actually see some more info on how it plays, controls, and just more of the game itself.

Shiren the Wanderer 3 screens

link

This that new RPG coming out in Japan for the Wii. It's looking really good and hopefully it will come to the United States at some point. It looks extremely Japanese though and I'm not sure how much that will effect a release in the States.