Oats Orange

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The reviews are in for The Force Unleashed, and though the title promises unparalleled Force-based action, it seems that most of the praise being heaped on the game is for its story and how well it nails Lucas’ universe.

That doesn’t mean that the Force is wrong with this one, though (we’ve been waiting for months to use that). The consensus is that throwing wookies about like Congenital Generalized Hypertrichosis-stricken Ken dolls is a never-ending font of fun.

• Eurogamer (70/100): “It gets an extra point, then, from this Star Wars obsessive for the story and the mostly magnificent recreation of the universe. As a fan you will want to experience what The Force Unleashed has to offer. It’s just a shame that while there are occasional moments of brilliance when everything falls into place, they’re not quite enough to back up the game’s delusions of grandeur.”
• Game Informer (88/100): “The Force Unleashed isn’t the ultimate Star Wars game - KOTOR is still king in my book. But, as advertised, it amplifies this mystical power in new ways to delivers exciting gameplay and unforgettable Star Wars moments. It’ll leave you wanting more, but take my word for it, it’s worth playing just to see Vader Force-throw wookiees.”
• Giant Bomb (60/100): “Overall, the story is the main thing that I’ll remember about The Force Unleashed–I found it to be more satisfying than the last three movies combined. … That said, it’s unfortunate that the game isn’t a bit more even, because the constant flips from too easy to too hard really drag things down and prevent The Force Unleashed from being great. But even with its lengthy list of caveats, The Force Unleashed is still one of the best Star Wars games to be released in quite some time.”
• 1UP (C):”A more appropriate name would’ve been Star Wars: The Force Mildly Contained — rarely does the Force truly feel like the ultimate weapon, something that separates you (Darth Vader’s not-so-secret apprentice) from the rabble of stormtroopers, Rodians, and Felucians.”

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Although it appears to be missing its summer release window, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is apparently in the “home stretch” according to Rey Jimenez, the game’s associate producer.

In an interview with the Street Fighter Blog, Jimenez explains that the title is “closing out all the bugs” from the open beta and “other open issues.” He believes that “barring any unforeseen catastrophic event,” the game should be out this year. Given how jam-packed this holiday season is already, maybe a delay wouldn’t be so “catastrophic” at this point.

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Despite the franchise’s previous installment barely managing to shift a meager 10 million copies, Activision Publishing CEO Mike Griffith has made the surprising prediction that developer Infinity Ward would give it one more go with a sixth Call of Duty game, due in 2009. “In 2009, we expect Infinity Ward to deliver another [entry of] ground-breaking quality, Call of Duty 6,” said Griffith, speaking at Activision Blizzard’s Analyst Day (via Shacknews).

Call of Duty 6, which may end up dropping the “6″ in favor of a militaristic subtitle (eg. Moderner Warfare), will follow Treyarch’s Call of Duty: World at War, due to be released this November. Shacknews does note an element of confusion in Griffith’s statement, however, with the CEO stating, “For calendar year 2010, Infinity Ward is already at work on the next installment in the [Call of Duty] franchise.” Is that like … Call of Duty: Space Warfare?

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If you’ll recall, three of Retro Studios’ key developers – Mark Pacini, Todd Keller, and Jack Matthews – left the Nintendo-owned studio, famous for the Metroid Prime series, last April. Now the trio has announced the formation of an entirely new entity: Armature Studio. Armature isn’t your run-of-the-mill developer though – a “core creative team” will be tasked with creating new intellectual properties and then partner with an external development team to implement the design. It’s an outsourcing model (think Wideload) that allows smaller creative teams the ability to develop AAA titles.

But while the model is great, it’s not very valuable without a publishing partner to help get those games out there. Cue: “a long term, exclusive publishing deal with EA” – presumably the secretive EA Blueprint, since that imprint’s Louis Castle is serving as executive producer for the Armature titles. For the guys at Armature, they’re just excited to “rethink how games are developed for this generation of consoles.” Yup, “consoles” – no longer limited to Nintendo hardware, Pacini says, “What really gets me going is that now, no platform is off limits.” Xbox 360? PS3? Gizmondo?

So, are we posting about a demo for Mercenaries 2 (that just arrived on Xbox Live) solely so we can have an excuse to share “Oh No You Didn’t,” which somehow, mysteriously, has eluded our grasp for weeks? Possibly. We hope you can forgive us.

If you came here for actual demo information rather than hilarious song stylings, you should know that it only pays out 20 minutes of fun before it shuts the whole operation down and kicks you to the dashboard. If you’re looking for a really meaty taste, you may want to turn to renting.

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Last week we asked you, dear reader, to tell us what precisely you liked did not like about Will Wright’s “SimEverything” Spore (now also known as a beacon of DRM debate). The results are in, and overwhelmingly Space

and Creature phases were voted as favorites, while conversely, the Tribal phase was voted least favorite.

We also took the average score, from 1 to 5, as voted on each individual phase and the editors, and the editors were by and large ranked highest (4.37 out of 5), with Creature phase and Cell phase following behind it (3.72 and 3.51, respectively). The Civilization phase had 3.08, while the Tribal phase earned low marks at 2.26 out of 5.

As for the editors themselves, the Creature / Outfitter mode ranked much higher than the others, with 68.6% of respondents reporting it as their favorite. Conversely, the building editor was voted “least favorite” by almost identical margins (67.75%). Read on for the full semi-statistical breakdown.

Full Data

Average Score:

• Cell phase: 3.51
• Creature phase: 3.72
• Tribal phase: 2.26
• Civilization phase: 3.08
• Space phase: 3.88
• Editors: 4.37

Favorite Editor¹:

• Creature/Outfitter: 68.6%
• Vehicle: 13.9%
• Building: 4.73%
• Spaceship: 12.66%

Least Favorite Editor¹

1. Creature/Outfitter: 6.3%
2. Vehicle: 17.12%
3. Building: 67.75%
4. Spaceship: 8.65%

Favorite Phase¹:

1. Cell (15.45%)
2. Creature (30.9%)
3. Tribal (6.01%)
4. Civilization (11.16%)
5. Space (36.27%)

Least Favorite Phase¹:

1. Cell (17.18%)
2. Creature (11.89%)
3. Tribal (37.23%)
   
4. Civilization (18.94%)
5. Space (14.54%)

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Besides working on “Super Secret Project That We’re Dying to Find Out About X,” Ken Levine also has an involvement of some sort with the follow-up to his hit BioShock, as well as the upcoming film based on the license. Heart-breakingly, he recently told OXM his work with BioShock 2 isn’t really “material,” that he’s only “informally engaged in certain scenes.”

His involvement with the film is even harder to pin down. Levine said, “My job there is to be a friend to [director] Gore [Verbinski] and [writer] John [Logan], be a resource for them and kick ideas around with them. At the end of the day John’s the writer and Gore’s the director. I’m not the traffic cop.”

…Umm, if KennyL is hiring himself out as a friend, shouldn’t we have been his first choice? Or at least been allowed to make an offer? We think he would have found our salary of numerous hugs and adoring stares very competitiv

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Is Metal Gear Solid 4 producer Ryan Payton directing Peter Jackson’s Halo project? “Yes,” comes the reply from Shacknews, corroborating (thanks, “reliable source!”) a Kotaku rumor that places Payton in the “creative director” role on the forthcoming and exceedingly nebulous Halo project from Microsoft and the Lord of the Rings director, Peter Jackson.

If true, it would mark the second major franchise to be touched by Payton, who left Kojima Productions earlier this year. We’ve reached out to him for comment — and for the privilege of touching someone who’s a tag on our website.

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Step 1: Establish a reliance on excessive exclamation marks

Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade service will feature two new titles this Wednesday!! Those with a clam-oring for aquatic morsels should note the appearance of Feeding Frenzy 2: Shipwreck Showdown, an 800 whopper which features 60 new levels, couch co-op and the ability to jump out of the water and possibly over sharks!!!!

It’s joined by the similarly priced Domino Master, a fairly self-explanatory domino game boasting Mexican Train, All 3s, All 5s, Straight Dominos and Bergen modes!!! We hope it doesn’t fall down online!!!!!! LOL!!!

If neither of those float your cup of tea, there’s a “1910″ Ticket to Ride expansion (including 35 new destination tickets!!!) for 400!!!!!!!

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The first panel we attended at Austin GDC was entitled “The Psychology of the MMO Gamer,” which seemed to hold a mythical amount of promise. Sure enough, once the panel began it was clear that these people had gathered a couple of days before and said, “So hey… what can we talk about?” It was a bit disorganized, but some good stuff came out of it, particularly finding out how a six-year old can grief you with pudding. Read on to find out how you too can learn this devious and delicious skill.

The panel consisted of Sean Dahlberg of EA Bioware (Mass Effect), Troy Hewitt of Flying Lab Software (Pirates of the Burning Sea) and Meghan Rodberg from Turbine (The Lord of the Rings Online), and two doctors of psychology from the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Samuel Gosling and Dr. James Pennebaker. With a group that decent on a panel, you’d expect some sort of an agenda, but they just busted out with discussing why characters fake their own deaths or the deaths of loved ones in a game. “For attention,” was the short and sweet psychological answer.

But, should game masters and game support people be paying attention to this? Should someone get banned if they do this? Should they ignore in-game requests for memorial services? They can go pretty wrong, as it did in the case of this Warcraft funeral where rival players swooped in during a “moment of silence” and killed pretty much everyone. Forums also get choked with these types of posts, and people will sometimes set up a memorial site, and these end up getting bombed with porn and worse. What’s a game support tech to do?

Likewise, what should they be doing about griefing? For those of you not in the know, or lucky enough not to have experienced it, griefing is when one player tries to ruin the gaming experience for everyone else. Meghan told us how her six-year old daughter gave her a pudding and, after she ate it, was told, “I licked it.” A griefer at age six! Awesome.

One audience member had a very good point: “What does it matter if they do all this, because they’re playing an RPG? Isn’t the point that they’re supposed to act like someone else? Not themselves?” True to a point, we’d say. As long as you’re not actively trying to ruin the game for someone else, what’s the problem with it? More so, what can game developers do about it? Besides the banhammer, which just leads people to create new accounts, there’s not much.

Their general consensus was that the best thing to do about it is to promise that the situation will be reviewed, and then basically do nothing. You know, like filing a complaint about a character on Xbox Live. Those seem to get zapped into the ether where they vanish in a haze of nothingness. What other options can game designers incorporate? The panel discussed the “jail” system that was a part of Ultima Online, which doesn’t sound like a bad idea, or the “ignore” feature where players get flagged and put on “ignore” if they continue to grief. Only they don’t know they’re being ignored, so they finally just leave.

Doctor Gosling noted, “But this is all superficial. You’re fixing something after the fact when you need to be addressing the underlying cause of the problem.” Sean chimed in as well, saying, “The more anonymous someone can be in any situation, then the greater the chance is that they’ll act out.” That definitely seems to be true. For now, the best option seems to be what Doctor Pennebaker said, “Just do what I do in my classes that have 500 students in them. Just pretend like you care about each and every one of them. There’s no possible way I can actually care about them, but I can give them the illusion that I do.”