Red Dead Revolver Sequel, Splatterhouse yanked & People try harder against other people – Welcome to the column that now has a value menu, twice the terrible jokes and only half the content known as Dare to Play the Game.
On Monday, I received back my beloved Xbox 360. WOOHOO! *jump for joy* I unpacked it as quickly as I could and then proceeded to play Fable II Pub Games for about 15 minutes before I turned it off. Then I went off to my computer to play my turns on BRE. A freaking text war simulator. I need help. Seriously, I do plan to get back into my 360 but with several weeks of not having it at all, I got used to it not being there.
However, I have noticed that I have quite a few unplayed 360 games in my collection. That’s the major thing that has come out of the last few weeks. The list is actually pretty substantial and might require another of those fancy poll questions on the forum. However, based on the forum the last time I had a poll question (I do thank Cron and Dub for chiming in though), I think I might just make up my own mind this time. But, if you are curious, check my Final Thoughts at the bottom for specifics.
She looks really horny! Get it? Horn….errr *sigh*. We always love when some hot girl decides to don a gargoyle-esque costume complete with horns, wings and lots and lots of cleavage. I know we here at Dare to Play the Game are used to the normal celebs and G4 girls. But there is nothing normal about this chick, yowza!
Red Dead Revolver
I’ve loved Red Dead Revolver like no other console game. It’s the only one I have 100 percented and finished on all difficulty levels. And I’m going back to play it after this post.
So when Rockstar finally confirmed this week that a sequel – rumored off and on for two years – was coming this fall I literally leaped out of my chair swinging a fist. On consoles, military and science fiction FPSes and third-person shooters have saturated the action market, but in westerns, there’s still something left to the imagination. And cowboys and indians, as old as the day your grandfather first pointed his finger like a six-gun, is a theme familiar enough that people don’t need much convincing to explore it.
According to Sam Houser’s comments, we can bank on this being a true sandboxer. They saw Gun and knew they could do that type of world better. Even now it’s hard to play Revolver and not feel like the vestiges of a sandbox are there, discarded because either the dev cycle was too short, or they didn’t want to extend it and the cost of the game.
While Redemption needs this more than anything else, it doesn’t need to have an environment as deep as GTA – something about as detailed as Bully, spread over a much larger geographic area – should cover it. And if they nail that, with art direction and a musical score faithful to the original, this game will be more than enough to satisfy fans of Revolver.
Some things will necessarily evolve with the console experience, like the bounty hunter challenges, which will likely become achievements and trophies. But here are some other things about Revolver that I hope are changed in Redemption, and some of the things from the original that earned their stay.
Update: This may be a semantic difference, but I’m going to stress this is what I hope is changed or remains in the game – because this is undoubtedly so far along, it’s rather arrogant of me to pre-criticize something that isn’t finished, or make demands of something that’s past the point of alteration.
Red Dead Revolver, now while I haven’t played that particular game; it touches on a favorite game genre of mine. Western Games. I have played all the way through Gun (fantastic game, still one of the best games on the 360) and Gunsmoke is still one of my favorite Nintendo games of all time. The genre is a rich one, full of great ideas and for the most part untapped in terms of video games. It’s one of the simplest hero ideas…a gunslinger in the Wild West. He shoots guns, plays cards, rescues damsels, and kicks butt. What more do you need?
But would it work as a Sandbox GTA game? The obvious answer is yes. Possible missions are easy, kill bandits, help (or kill) the Indians, rustle up some steer, and a super easy currency for completing these missions: gold. Oh yeah, got to have the poker mini-game, complete with cheating. Don’t forget the pony express option either where you have to deliver packages in a set time. Oyie, yeah I have played Gun quite a bit. I wish there would be a sequel to that fine game, but I will try to find a used copy of Red Dead Revolver for further study.
Splatterhouse
On the same day the Splatterhouse trailer debuted, Namco is rumored to have pulled the unfinished project from Bottlerocket, dooming the California-based developer.
Sources through the San Diego-area dev community – but not with Bottlerocket itself – say Namco showed up Friday and took back the dev kits and all assets for Splatterhouse. Word has it Namco intends to finish it in house with the Afro Samurai team.
That’s a huge slap to Bottlerocket, says one person familiar with the situation. Afro Samurai animators were sent on site to help out with the workload and Bottlerocket staff were said to have found their presence unhelpful. Now, if true, they’d get a nearly completed project and final credit.
And the kicker: this team would also be based in Carlsbad, and may even lease Bottlerocket’s building. Namco recruiters, naturally, were talking to BR employees about the possibility of coming aboard.
Of course it conjures up all sorts of speculation about why Namco would make a decision that would essentially destroy a developer under contract, in order to take back an nearly-completed game and attempt to finish it in house with a set of employees who didn’t work well together earlier. Sources say the game was going gold in early March.
This was Bottlerocket’s only project; its last work was on Flash with the now-kerplop Brash. One source told us all employees got their last paycheck yesterday; another says the office has about three months left before it closes for good.
A message left at Bottlerocket’s office was not immediately returned. One Bottlerocket employee has declined comment; we’re pursuing others, plus any word from Namco officially. More developments will be posted as they are known.
Very rough for the developer Bottlerocket, but unfortunately this doesn’t come as a surprise. These are rough times we are living in and Namco is probably nervous about what could potentially be a big release. So, a big title is coming out that they aren’t too sure about, a little paranoia sets in and they give it back to their in-house team. Their in-house team did seem to do a decent job with Afro Samurai and were probably in danger of losing their jobs since they had no work to do. Namco has work again on a big title, way to keep the employees for another 6 months. But at the expense of a small developer. I would not be surprised if the contract between Namco and Bottlerocket is written in-correctly, we could see lawsuits coming out of this. However, expect more companies to pull this practice in the near future. That is until the economy settles a little more (which I hope is sooner than later).
Gaming Habits
A recent study on brain patterns shows that people who think they are playing against real people try harder, then when they believe they are playing against computers.
Granted the study used gambling games to monitor brain activity, but I think it could also offer some interesting insight into what motivates video gamers as well. At the very least, it reminds us why we often care more about beating or losing to a group of online players than dying in a single player campaign.
This was more pronounced, not surprisingly, in men than it was in women.
Women may not have been as engaged playing an alleged soulless computer. Furthermore, male and female subjects always believed they were playing a male contender in the ‘human partner’ tests. It has been documented previously that men and women play games differently in the presence of a male partner”. However, in this respect more research is required to give any definitive answer to this question.
It would be interesting to see what a similar study would show in online video games, like Call of Duty or Killzone 2.
Personally to me, this is both a true and false statement. If I’m going full blast against the computer and trying my hardest to complete the game, that sucker is going to get my best effort, no matter what. Or say I’m playing a family member that I am clearly better than but don’t want to show up; then I tend to let up and play more for fun rather than push their face into the dirt.
But on average, I do agree with the statement. The computer for the most part is straight forward, they present the same challenge. They aren’t unpredictable typically which is where humans excel. This is why we as humans play harder against our own kind. There are exceptions to this rule like Rainbow Six Vegas (terrorist hunts specifically) where the computer seems to always change up their plan of attack and keep you on your toes.
Even though the study doesn’t really touch on the whole men vs women concept, I will. Men will always play harder against other men. It’s human nature to show who is king of the jungle. The only exception would be against kids or against the elderly. I mean, if you pop in Mortal Kombat vs DC for the 360 against your grandpa, I think you might show some restraint when you have the chance to do a fatality. Females, most of us tend to let up but try to make it competitive as much as possible. That is unless you face my Sarah, since she is t3h awesome, she kicks my butt in many games this way to Sunday. It’s really hard to fathom that the love of my life is better at a lot of games than I am.
Sports games are kinda rare to the Xbox Live Arcade landscape and licensed ones are even more uncommon. We’ll try to ignore MLB Stickball, the first baseball game that literally wanted me to stick a toothstick through my eye. This hockey game features 40 real NHLPA hockey players as they face each other in classic 3 on 3 format. There are many powerups and special abilities (as well as fairly basic goaltending) to make sure that each game is a high scoring affair. I’m hoping for something close to either Rock the Rink or Mutant League Hockey. I hope what I don’t get is something closer to the original Ice Hockey for the NES.
LIT is a fairly interesting sounding game. At least it isn’t the normal, let’s go turn a simple game into a fun game with the Wiimote. I’m just waiting for Darts. Thousands of HD television makers will thank me. This is described as a “horror puzzler” and has Jake a high school student trying to save his girlfriend Rachael. The high school has been overrun by shadowy creatures. The trick is if you learn how to use the light to your advantage you make it through each room. Light can come from lamps, flares, televisions and broken windows as well as your handy flashlight. However, too many electrical appliances turned on and you will blow a fuse which effectively ends a level and Jake is pulled into the darkness. Jake’s girlfriend communicates with him through the school’s internal phone system. At least it isn’t the intercom. That would suck. “Like could you get here, I’m stuck in a room, and like it sucks” “My hair is so messy and I don’t have any gum” “Are they going to like serve dinner in here or are they just going to let me waste away, oh my god?!” At some point, Jake would probably just leave the school and never come back.
The official sequel to Commando, this takes Joseph Gibson, who is a member of the counter-terrorist team known as the Wolf Force. The point of the game is to rescue the former President from rebels in the country of Zutula which looks awfully like parts of South Africa. The weapons are still real world including guns, grenades and flame throwers. However, on some levels; plasma launchers are also included. Are those available on the market yet? BTW, for those of you are trying to figure out the connection from Commando to Mercs and can’t quite get it, here it is. Super Joe is the main dude in Commando. In the soon to be released Bionic Commando sequel, Super Joe is revealed to be Joseph Gibson. Joseph Gibson = Mercs. Got it? Good, let’s move on.
PS2
Sing It: High School Musical 3
PSP
LocoRoco 2
PS3
Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection
Fear 2: Project Origin
X Blades
Xbox 360
OneChanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad
Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection
Fear 2: Project Origin
Mass Effect (2-disc PH)
X Blades
Wii
OneChanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers
NASCAR Kart Racing
House of the Dead: Overkill
Deadly Creatures
DS
Jake Power: Fireman
Jake Power: Policeman
Retro Game Challenge
My Do it All
Phineas and Ferb
Wow, that did work. Due to our chanting last week, we have a really good week. Seriously. Sure, it’s not up to the level of a Christmas time release week, but it’s probably the best week of the year so far. The #1 title to take a look at in my opinion is the retro releasing of Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection for the PS3 and 360 consoles. A ton of great Sega Genesis and even some Sega Master ones are available at a super low price of $29.99 complete with 1,000 achievement points. Real achievement points, not what the Namco set tried to pass off as achievement points (which were just recycled XBLA games). The Mass Effect 2-disc Platinum Hits package also is worthy of mention because it includes the great game of last year and a 2nd disc that has behind the scenes stuff and all of the current DLC for the game. OneChanbara is also worth mentioning for the simple fact, its Dead or Alive meets Dead Rising meats Devil May Cry. That’s what the videos and screenshots look like anyway. The game is also going to be on the Wii (as well as 360). I think this marks the first time this kind of sex driven game is going to be on a Wii. I certainly welcome it, but if this game does any business, expect a few parents to be upset. They really don’t have a right to be upset since it is an M rated game, but the family friendly appeal of the Wii is certain to raise a few eyebrows towards the Bikini Samurai squad.
Back to my initial subject of way too many unplayed games for my 360, I haven’t exactly made it any better during my Xbox’s stay at the fancy 360 repair ranch in Mesquite, Tx. I’ve purchased three games in that time frame. Last week, I received Blue Dragon and Dark Sector from NewEgg.com which had discounted them into oblivion. I also had the good fortune of finding the strategy guide for Blue Dragon at a local Half Price Books. $3. Yeah, I love Half Price. Then just yesterday, I found somebody selling a sealed copy of Guitar Hero World Tour for a measly $35. So we got that. Then, we got all sorts of games either partly played or not played at all. Fallout 3 (partial play), Condemned 1(partial play) & 2, Conan, Lost Odyssey, and more. Plus, I got Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Gears of War (collector’s edition) just sitting there sealed. It’s also not like I’m spending that much money. Fallout 3 is the only one of the above list I’ve paid full price for. The others were either gifts or purchased for $20 or less. I’m a cheap bastard, remember? Anyway, I’m looking into it. First things first, finish up Lego Star Wars CS. So today’s message, finish up something that you have the chance to, and then move onto something forgotten from a long time ago. Enjoy kiddoes!
As Always,
Kedrix of Aldrianian
(*The Forgotten One*)
02/11/2009 @ 3:25 pm
Haha! I so want a succubus costume like that chick on here, but I think Ill try to recreate my Gnome Death Knights costume first 😀
02/13/2009 @ 4:07 pm
Just want to bring a little attention to an overlooked release this week, Retro Game Challenge for the DS. For those in the know, it’s a Westernized version (more of an homage really) of the popular “Game Centre CX” series from Japan. If you’re a fan of retro 8-bit and 16-bit gaming and you own a DS, I can’t recommend this game enough.
And Ked, your next gaming priority should be Fallout 3. That is all. 🙂
03/15/2009 @ 5:05 am
Commenting usually isnt my thing, but ive spent an hour on the site, so thanks for the info