Wii Gaming News

Valve co-founder Gabe Newell isn’t exactly known for keeping his opinions about the gaming industry a secret. In keeping with that fine tradition, the Half-Life creator used his acceptance speech at this year’s Game Developer’s Choice Awards to shed some light on what he believes the future holds for gaming: real-world biometrics in games.

“We think biometrics will be really important,” the Valve boss told his GDC audience (via Develop). “We’ve seen a lot of work since the Wii shipped to explore how motion — and with this next generation of controllers — how vision systems are going to affect our games.”

Newell continued, “Given that we have all these proxies inside of our games, that measure player state, we think that actually being able to measure small things like pupil dilation, heart rate — those are the techniques that are going to give our games enormous impact in the future.”

Crystal Dynamics has a good reason for why its next, artifact-scavenging game is called Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, and not something with “Tomb Raider” in the title: this is unlike any other Tomb Raider game to date. According to Crystal Dynamics’ brand director Karl Stewart, “For us, this in between our pillar releases… the reason for calling it Lara Croft and not calling it Tomb Raider is to avoid confusion. We see Tomb Raider as being our big, epic adventure. And this is a great opportunity for Lara Croft fans to try new things.” Different is an understatement; this downloadable-only game uses twin-stick shooter mechanics and bears a stronger resemblance to Too Human than Uncharted 2.

But it’s not all new. The setting and setup aren’t too different: Lara explores the Temple of Light, finds an ancient, powerful artifact (the Mirror of Smoke), and gets attacked by mercenaries. But it turns out the mirror was holding in an evil being called Xolotl, who’d been trapped by the titular Guardian of Light, Totec. Xolotl nabs the mirror, and to make a long story short, Lara teams up with Totec to get it back and re-imprison the evil lord. The temple, with its myriad traps and puzzles will probably feel familiar, but your ability to team up with another player changes things drastically.

Note to self: if I ever find myself in a situation where I try a hand at home invasion, I should make sure to not be breaking into the house of a superspy like Sam Fisher. Within the first hour of Splinter Cell Conviction, there’s a flashback to Sam tucking his five-year-old daughter Sara into bed. This sequence in itself is a pretty nifty take on teaching the light/dark mechanic; Sam explains to Sara (and the player) about maintaining awareness within the dark while exploiting your opponent’s lack of awareness, and also demonstrates how the screen goes black-and-white to indicate that you’re in darkness and unseen.

Then, some idiots happen to knock a vase over while trying to boost some of Sam’s stuff. It’s in dealing with these dimwits that Conviction teaches you more about using instant melee takedowns to earn “Mark-and-Execute” points. That is, you just tap the B button to instantly take the first fool down, and then use the right bumper to designate your next two victims (upgraded weapons will allow for additional targets). These animations range from simple neck snaps to crazy “whoa, he just jammed his pistol into that dude’s eye before firing” moments. Pressing Y then instantly kills your foes (usually with a neat gun flourish) and shows that these burglars picked the wrong house.

While Infinity Wars appears to have some premium downloadable maps coming on March 30 for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, DICE, too, is at work on new maps for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 that are set for release on the same day. DICE has made it no secret that they’re out to best MW2, and they’ve taken shots at Infinity Ward in the past — after it was revealed that MW2 wouldn’t have dedicated servers, DICE released an FAQ that stated, “So rest assured PC players, Battlefield will stay true to its roots offering dedicated servers to all its players and continue the tradition of the ultimate FPS gaming experience!”

With the announcement about the new maps at the end of the month, DICE has once again knocked the competition. In addition to pointing out that releasing the new maps for free helps to prevent segmenting the community, DICE said, “It also plays a vital part in making sure you, the players get proper value for the money you’ve invested in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. This is why these map packs are available at no extra cost, contradicting the industry standard and what our direct competitors are doing.” If that’s not blatant enough for you, they went on to add, “We’re dedicated to taking care of this product for a long time — helping you avoid ‘mapathy’ without getting nickel-and-dimed.”

The new maps aren’t entirely new, however; instead, the existing Arica Harbor map is being repurposed as a Conquest mode map, and Laguna Presa is being turned into a Rush mode map (both pictured above). You’ll need to be a VIP member in order to get the maps for free. In other words, you’ll simply need to have purchased a new copy of the game and entered the accompanying code to grant yourself VIP access.

Last month, an ESRB rating hinted that a new Sam & Max episode was coming to the PlayStation 3. Sure enough, Telltale Games has confirmed a PS3 release of The Penal Zone, the first episode of Sam & Max’s third season, for April 15, the same day the game will hit on PC and Mac.

Pre-orders for the PC and Mac versions are now available on Telltale’s site for $34.95, and as a limited time bonus, you’ll be able to get a free episode from the Telltale library — including Sam & Max, Strong Bad, Wallace & Gromit, Bone, or Texas Hold’em. You’ll also get membership to the “Freelance Police Elite Forces,” which grants you such perks as access to a special forum where you’ll be able to chat with the developers, including Steve Purcell; first look previews at the upcoming episodes; special offers on the Telltale store through September; and exclusive downloads. That’s not a bad haul of pre-order goodies, especially if you’re a Sam & Max fan that is certain to buy all five of the monthly episodes.

An FAQ on the game’s official site summarizes the story of season three, entitled The Devil’s Playhouse:

Sam and Max face a mysterious otherworldly power for controlling matter and space that calls to the strongest and strangest who might wield it – intergalactic warlords and eldritch gods, under-dwellers and scholars of the arcane. It’s Sam’s and Max’s biggest case yet.

Characters from the previous seasons, including Flint and the COPS, among others, are promised to make a return this season. The FAQ also claims “Max’s newfound psychic abilities give you a whole new way to interact with the world around you, and see the world through the eyes of a psychotic, empowered rabbit,” making it sound like the traditional gameplay we’ve seen in the first two seasons might be shaken up a bit in season three.

In videogames, just as in sports, competition’s really the key to success. When you’ve got a rival challenging your every move, you’re simply a lot more motivated to get the job done right. The year-to year competition with Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer helped propel EA’s FIFA series to worldwide success as the top footballing sim, while many observers feel that Madden hasn’t shown the same innovation since the NFL 2K franchise bit the dust. Last year, MLB: The Show faced competition in theory, but against a buggy, broken MLB 2K9 — one of the worst
baseball releases in history — it wasn’t much of a contest. And that might have lulled Sony into a false sense of security — while MLB 10: The Show is still the baseball sim to beat, the competition’s certainly much closer this year.

For example, while I didn’t personally experience any game-breaking bugs in The Show’s franchise mode, some users have reported issues such as randomly completed trades and crashes in specific stadiums. I simmed the first half of my franchise season in order to speed things along and noticed some curious results myself: At the All-Star break, real-life San Francisco Giants ace (and the Cy Young winner two years running) Tim Lincecum stood at 2-10 with an ERA over 5, while underachieving Barry Zito had laughably transformed into the ace of the staff at 10-3, with an ERA well below 3. Maybe The Show just hates Lincecum for gracing the cover of MLB 2K9?

Legend has it that the term “yakuza” derives from the classic Japanese card game hanafuda. Of the many combinations of cards you can draw as a hand, the worst is eight-nine-three — pronounced, in an old dialect of Japanese, “ya-ku-za.” In order to win the game with such a hand, you would need a combination of trickery, luck, and courage — qualities that the gangsters who took the name as their own held in high esteem. Despite being the worst of society, they would use those strengths to attain power, wealth, and respect.

Centuries later, the U.S. version of Sega’s Yakuza 3 has been dealt an equally bad hand. Released without several of the features of its Japanese counterpart, Yakuza 3’s Western release has generated enough nerd rage to intimidate the Incredible Hulk, and has suffered from a bungled, half-assed marketing effort that has failed to engage anyone beyond the series’ cult following. Nevertheless — and pay attention now, because this is important — Yakuza 3 has what it takes to overcome the hype and go down as one of the PS3’s all-time great titles, but only if you will give it a chance.

Torchlight was the toast of the dungeon-crawling crowd when it released on PC last year, but what if your rig just doesn’t cut the mustard? No worries — word on the street suggests Runic Games’ debut could be headed to a console near you.

Game Informer first picked up on a quote from Runic CEO Max Schaefer, who recently showed up on The Rumble Pack podcast. “We’re going to put some serious effort into it — pretty quick — getting Torchlight onto consoles,” Schaefer confessed on The Rumble Pack.

Nothing’s official just yet, but Schaefer did mention that they’re talking with multiple publishing partners to help make Torchlight on consoles a reality. Whether he means a full retail package or a Xbox Live Arcade/PlayStation Network release remains to be seen, but we’ll keep you updated as more announcements are made.

Legendary game designer Sid Meier gave a keynote talk Friday at the Game Developers Conference, explaining to his fellow game designers how to trick players into having a good time.

“If you play Civilization, you are an egomaniac,” Meier joked at the beginning of his talk. Through lots of playtesting, Meier has discovered that his players have come to expect to be rewarded constantly, and assume that when something bad happens in the game, it’s because the game’s A.I. “cheated.”