Early look at Heavy Rain

For those that don’t know, Heavy Rain is an interactive drama. Almost every action has a consequence, be it small or large. The game, for the most part, forsakes “typical” gameplay in favour of a series of cutscenes which can be interacted with, using context sensitive button presses (sometimes, more than one is available, and you have a choice). However, contrary to widespread belief, this is not the entire game. A large portion is spent in free move mode, where you can interact with certain objects in the environment using, of course, context sensitive button presses. One might think this would ruin the immersion, but it serves to do exactly the opposite. None of the button presses are illogical, if that makes any sense. It makes you feel like you are the character, going through each of their actions.


In “Sleazy Place”, you play as highly overweight and asthmatic private detective Scott Shelby, as he finds and questions Lauren Winter, a hotel prostitute whose son was abducted and killed by the Origami Killer. The first thing that strikes the player is the incredible quality of the graphics. Even having seen trailers, and screenshots, nothing compares to seeing the game running on a PS3. The graphics are crisp and crystal clear, the characters and environments are extremely detailed, and there’s not a framerate hitch to speak of. The hotel receptionist doesn’t know this “Lauren Winter”, until a picture of Abraham Lincoln on a piece of green paper jogs his memory. Scott Shelby goes up to Lauren’s room and, if you push the right buttons (literally), you can question her about the disappearance of her son. This is all fairly calm, and slow. There’s a powerful atmosphere, but the timing of Lauren’s voice makes the conversation sound somewhat unnatural. She sounds like she is reading from a script, and in some sort of hurry to get through it. Scott, however, speaks perfectly naturally, as if the voice actor really is a private detective questioning a reluctant witness.

There’s also a strange bug here which I encountered on one playthrough, where Lauren continually repeats an odd animation which involves quickly turning around and phasing through a bed, before teleporting back to her starting position and doing this again, all of this while talking in a mournful voice about her son’s death. Where her slightly off voice acting only hurt the atmosphere a little, that bug downright ruined it. But hopefully it’s just an issue in the early build, and will be wiped out by the time of the retail release. Heavy Rain is a game which depends a lot on its atmosphere, with a constant air of something amiss which is just out of reach, a mystery waiting to be solved.

After Scott leaves the room, he begins to walk down the corridor, and has an asthma attack. You have to search for the correct pocket and activate his inhaler. Now, this was perhaps the one thing in the demo which really disappointed me, and I hope it’s just a temporary thing: I left Scott leaning against the wall, panting and trembling, for a good fifteen minutes, and he just stayed there. He didn’t collapse. He didn’t die of suffocation, or even go into respiratory arrest. He happily leaned against that wall until I gave him a puff from his inhaler, at which point he slowly recovered. This doesn’t really fit in with the game’s idea of every single action having a consequence at some point, unless the fact that I left him panting for fifteen minutes impedes his ability to do something ten hours later.

This next part is where the atmosphere changes. A strange, rough-looking man barges into Lauren’s room, and being the responsible detective, Scott follows. A fight between Scott (the highly overweight asthmatic, remember) and the rough looking man (with a tattoo on his chest and huge biceps) ensues. This is surprisingly immersive. The game has you pressing different buttons at different intervals, sometimes tapping them, sometimes holding them down. Now, this may not sound highly exciting, but anybody who has played the demo will know what I mean - it’s as exhilarating as any action sequence in any typical game. Now, if you press pretty much every button perfectly, the man runs out and Scott looks none the worse for it. If you miss quite a few, Scott will have a few bruises. And if you place your controller on the floor and let the man beat Scott to a pulp… Scott has a few more bruises, is bleeding a little… and the man still runs out. Now, remembering how I described Scott, and how I described this mysterious man, all of these scenarios seem rather unlikely. But the purpose of a game is to entertain, and that particular sequence is very entertaining, and a nice contrast to the earlier part of the demo.

In the second level, “Crime Scene”, you control Norman Jayden, a seemingly nervous FBI agent who is investigating the scene of a murder by the Origami killer. In this level, Norman is outside and it's pouring. Now, when it is raining heavily, or perhaps just when playing as Jayden, because it was raining heavily in the first section of "Sleazy Place" (the tutorial), the game appears to change to a much blurrier, less crisp and clear view. Not to say the graphics are bad at this point, they are just... different from the previous level. After a rendezvous with the police officer who is on site, Lt. Blake, where Norman can ask certain questions about the murder (and get rather vague responses, as Blake doesn’t seem to know much), Jayden dons a pair of sunglasses which allow him to scan for clues. This level has far more emphasis on the free moving, clue finding aspect of Heavy Rain. For this reason it’s not as story focused or real-time as “Sleazy Place”, but it's just as interesting in its own way. These sunglasses of Norman’s have all sorts of handy features: from a shoeprint, he can reach an FBI record, which in turn contains information about the name, profession, criminal record and so on of the person. Unfortunately, this Origami Killer isn’t sloppy, and he’s left no such tracks. The most Norman can find out (after climbing a hill with a very interesting and, again, immersive, quick-time sequence) is that the killer dragged the body down from a main road into some sort of dump.

From what I’ve played (and this is my first experience of the genre), Heavy Rain is a delight. It’s completely different from any game I’ve played. It’s no less exhilarating or action-packed than your typical game, it just delivers the feeling and packs in the action in different ways. If you’re not scared to give a new type of gaming experience a try, keep an eye on Heavy Rain.

An early look at Army of Two: 40th Day

The demo begins from the perspective of a tourist’s video camera in Shanghai, which acts as a sort of intro reel, as well as an convenient way of conveying the city’s utter destruction, as explosions begin tearing apart buildings without mercy. As the video cuts out, we shift back a few hours to Salem and Rios en route to meet with their contact for an upcoming mission.

EA promised that steps would be taken to raise the tone of the narrative a bit, but early evidence suggests that this isn’t the case. It appears that by adding in a few lines of dialogue to make the characters seems a bit more cynical and world weary, we’re expected to be fooled into thinking that we’re being pulled into a nuanced and thought provoking story. Sure it’s just a demo, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say…we’re not. That being said, I can’t even remember the names of anyone other than the protagonists from the original, so I decided to let that slide and let the action do the talking.

After meeting with the contact Salem and Rios get started on the mission, which at first is a simple recon assignment that involves placing beacons at pre-defined points. Of course, that wouldn’t make for a very exciting game and it’s not long before the security detail make an appearance, and it’s through fighting these goons that a lot of the gaming mechanics are introduced.

First up is the return of the ‘aggro’ system, which involves attracting enemy attention by making as much noise as possible to give your partner a bit more freedom to maneuver. It’s a simple concept and one that I like, but it’s implemented and presented in a very transparent manner. Rather than having to judge subtle differences in enemy behaviour as their attention switched between Salem and Rios, the aggrometer at the top of the screen tells you exactly how much they’re focusing on you. Not only that, filling up the aggrometer in your favour results in your character glowing bright red, just in case you didn’t pick up on the fact that everyone is shooting at you. While the whole mechanic is a bit heavy handed and extreme, it still adds a bit of strategy to the average firefight, and can often be responsible for some hilarious moments of badassery. Within moments of the first firefight, as I blindly fired from behind cover to keep the enemy distracted, I could barely contain laughing as I watched Rios sneak around behind one of the enemies, grab him by the scruff of the neck and and royally headbutt him in the dish, only for everyone else to turn around and start blasting away at him.

Making our way up the building, we also came across a few situations that let us put our teamwork skills to the test. Hostage situations and room breaches allowed us to have a quick tactical briefing before entering the fray, and for the most part some of the new co-op moves work pretty well. Walking into a room with your hands up will take enemy attention away from the hostages and gives your partner a few seconds to get the drop on them. You can also take your foes hostage and use them as human shields, which doesn’t work so well in hostage situations (as we found out the hard way) but again diverts a lot of aggro your way as well as giving you a bit of protection from incoming fire.

A common complaint with Army of Two was that the co-op moves were very inflexible and often only executable at strictly predetermined points in the game. This is still true of some location specific moves like boosting your partner over high fences, but other actions appear to have been freed up a bit and co-op tactics are prevalent throughout the core of the game rather than just in bite sized chunks. Co-op sniping can now be performed whenever you want for example, with a little picture in picture representation of your ally’s viewpoint being displayed whenever he aims through a sniper scope. It can be pretty useful looking through your partners eyes every now and then, especially when trying to launch a well timed attack, and it also lets you appreciate some Fallout 3 inspired exploding heads when a successful shot is made.

Sorry for the slow movement. + Wii Motion Plus

Teh Reviewer aimed at being a first rate source for video game news, previews, and reviews, but we haven't quite lived up. Some things have come up and interfered with our busy schedule and our staff hasn't been able to produce like we planned. We are not going to give up though.

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Sincerely,

Lewis Nankivil
Jayson Harris
Jerry Shippley

With the announcement of the Nintendo Wii at E3 2006 the gamers community quickly plunged into a world of possibilities that were previously a mirage in the industry of video games. Using our own movements to give life to characters that marked our lives, was a scene that began to enter the subconscious of each and finally pull the console to a tide of unparalleled success throughout history.

Nintendo is a company that always gives a good introduction of new concepts in their games. Now, not only have revolutionized something, as all their franchises will gain new life through a unique and new control scheme, with all the potential to bring new life to older games. From the Link's sword in Zelda, to helping Mario to save the princess Peach, the possibilities were endless, and it was able to get business throughout the simmer of excitement and turn it into something tangible, that company would be Nintendo.

However, over the months, this whole scenario is not turned out. 1:1 The controls are still a lie, and all that the Wii Remote finally bring, was a replacement for a normal button with a gesture. Indeed this scenario does not appeal to anyone, and while the casual side of the community embraced with satisfaction the friendly nature of the system, the hardcore players criticized the direction that the Wii had adopted, with an avalanche of so-called party-games or titles to hit the gym line-up available and affected the overall quality of it. The fatigue effect during a gameplay session was among the many complaints, because few companies that have the potential advantage of the Wii Remote and make what had been requested. As a defense in this scenario, there were also those who criticize his own command of the console saying that the technology has some flaws, because the movement is detected only in some directions and intensity of the movement given by the arm of the player not be measured accurately. Perhaps the control technology is always to be well planned by Nintendo, or maybe not. We do not know what happened, and most likely we will never know if the company really expect Japanese hold the command as it is by the end of the lifespan of the console, but what is certain is that soon a solution to this problem was found, and the project of the Wii Motion Plus was placed on the table and then announced in E3 2008, or two years after the announcement of the console.

Speaking a little of the games so far released by Nintendo, can become illuminating the limitations of the Wii Remote. Referring only 1st party games because they tend to be those that exploit the best that the system has to offer, we had great games like Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Strikers, Metroid Prime 3 or even Zelda: Twilight Princess, the latter being one of the most expectations created when imagined with the characteristics of the new controller. A sword is the main focus of gameplay 1:1, because easily simulates the movements of the same with your Wii Remote. The game is fantastic, however, the roles of Link attacks are far from respecting what was expected. That is, each attack of a sword is triggered by our movement, whether sudden or mild, is for the left or right, so it is only the replacement of a traditional motion as is the press of a button for something that involves another type of movement on our part. That initially, although it is a limited technology, has surprised many people, perhaps because this is a novelty. What is certain is that with time passing and the "fashion", the errors were dormant, and the players quickly began thinking of going a different way to detect problems and how the game could be even better if there was a detection most realistic of our movements.

However, the Wii Remote is not based solely on a technology to capture the movement, also have infra-red, making the laser control of an important ally in certain genres of games. Taking now Mario Galaxy as an example, after the capture of movement in this game also have missed out something, the pointer has introduced a new mechanic in the series, becoming the support of multi-player game and focus on collecting the scattered pieces of stars by levels. The role of this mechanism is somewhat beside the brilliance of the game, but it was the note that the pointer was effective to perform its function.

The role of the Wii Motion Plus has to be by itself a proof that the error is in the movement, and nothing more, because the only thing that fixes the accessory. The pointer will remain the same, derived from the already perfect and shows a competent performance when tested in several games. But then what really promises the Wii Motion Plus?

At E3 2008 we could see some potential, and what was emphasized, is that actually there are reasons for excitement around the new command. 1:1 The feeling seems to be better represented and to the pulse of our movement is now detected, allowing just a different control of our actions. Star Wars and its duels with swords of light can gain new life, and already released games like Force Unleashed could have another type of quality and create a wave of enthusiasm. If you exchanged the sword for rackets, quickly comes a new application relevant to this accessory, and indeed already are weighing two titles in development, was one and Grand Slam Tennis and Virtua Tennis series already renowned as a new chapter for 2009. Those who have had opportunity to test this new gameplay in tennis simulators relate to its effectiveness as a fine and successful. Our movements are finally captured with the required accuracy and the bar is set very high levels to the console that is currently sold as quickly as ever, reaching the 50 million sold very recently. With all this innovation that is beginning to receive positive feedback, sales rise more promises and programs have new reason to produce quality games and finally the technology available to make what probably already wanted to do over the years of the Wii. Proof that the technology was desired are many projects already announced and who want to take advantage of new sensors for movement. It is a new success to the sight by Nintendo, and nobody wants to stay behind.

Wii Sports, a tennis simulator immensely popular, everyone can agree that the fun is in this mini-game, despite having a very basic gameplay, which only depends on timing of our movements. But now try to add the same game, the Wii Motion Plus, and instead of having a more relaxed experience, we have something much more demanding in that time we have our command will be key, how to hit the ball and tilt the Wii Remote will affect the trajectory of the ball, among many other things. Can all this would result in a level of gameplay fun enough to grab the player to the accessory? Only time will ultimately dictate all that, so for now we even expect the Wii Motion Plus is launched, and let the industry decide the future. Future which may well pass by presenting a new challenge to Nintendo that may have to revise its schedule of inspections in a future generation of consoles.

First Post

It's our first post here at Teh Reviewer's Video Game Review Crew, and we've got the MAG Beta. Remember that HUGE open First-person shooter that Sony unveiled at last year's E3? Well here's the first look and we're telling you what we think.

Imagine a world where a battle was taking a place on your TV in which you were a leader of a 8 man platoon that was part of a larger 32 man squad that was part of a larger 128 man army. Imagine now your are the leader of this 128 man army directing your squad leaders to various points, defending your areas, calling in air strikes and advancing your forces into enemy territory. Now imagine that on the other side there was another 128 man unit at the same time doing the exact same time.


Previously games like this were overhead views and you just directed bot forces and they did your bidding…MAG developers said that is old school style we want real live players doing a massive battle. To achieve this the developers could not use any run of the mill engine, they could not use the unreal engine most all game run on, they had to create their own! They also needed the mother off all server infrastructure to handle all of these people playing at one time. I for one hate all the lag in games and would believe with 256 people playing online in one battle the it would be laggy. The Zipper interactive team that developed MAG built the server structure specifically to handle all this. They also allow people to drop out of the game without the game freezing, so people can quit and new people can come in and there is no down time. Impressive to say the least but how is the gameplay?



The system is first person shooter based and will mostly remind you of a Call of Duty/ SOCOM experience when you first pick it up. As a initial player you start out as a foot soldier getting your commands from the leader of your eight man platoon. He/She gets orders to defend a area or attack area from another commander. You will engage in firefights in various areas of the large map space. The map space is set 20 years in the future with various gun improvements and a city that has been ravaged by war. You have a option when you first start to pick a waring faction that you want to play as either the Raven(Sleek and High Tech), Serv (Burly camo covered squad) or the Valor(a ragtag makeshift army force). Each of these forces has their own unique look so during the massive battle you can tell foe from friend. Each force also has their unique qualities, some will be better at air strikes some better on the ground, and some will be better at sneaking around and more covert ops.



The style of play is not for the run and gun style of gamer, in a battle this large you will be picked off rather quickly if you do not manage your squad or platoon intricately. The team must be organized and move together in a strategic manner to efficiently win the battle. The battle has goals the a team must achieve in order to win either controlling a certain area or getting in to enemy territory and stealing some armored tanks. If you are killed during battle you parachute back to drop point that has to be defended by you squad. The main Army commander declares this drop point and places snipers around it to ensure that the area is controlled and that your respawned soldiers come in unharmed.



So will MAG live up to the hype surrounding it or will it be a bust? From what we played it looks like it has the potential to be a blockbuster online title joining the PS3's already large array of a great gaming library. But only time will tell if the kinks have been worked out and MAG is as good as it promises.

New Blog Start

You may know our crew from around the web on various gaming sites, and now our team of three is moving over to our own site and beginning a blog based on Video Game reviews, and also news. Hope to see some active members following the blog.

-Teh Reviwer