Wi-Philes

I recently picked up this little gadget with the hopes that it'd be a useful tool on my aspiring travelling plans. The idea is pretty simple, you go to a place you'll want to get back to later on, switch the Ecco GPS on and then save the location into memory. Then, when you're the other side of town and need to get back to your car / hotel / whatever, you switch the Ecco back on and hit return. It'll then generate a directional arrow to your destination along with the distance (in metres).

The device is small and designed to be carried on a keyring along with your keys, the button layout is pretty simple. You have a lock button, used to calibrate and lock locations to memory, a return button, used to retrieve directions to your saved locations, and three numerical buttons used to reference up to three saved locations. The power button is located on the side along with a small USB-B connector used for charging.

Overall, it works pretty well. Once the device has synced up with the nearest satellite, directions can be accessed for each of the three locations pretty much instantly. I must say that I've had a few issues getting the thing to sync up at times, leaving the device unusable until it can find a satellite. I got a chance to experiment with it during a brief vacation in Paris, as well as the towns and villages around where I live (South East England), and there seemed to be no noticeable difference in the reception or performance of the device. The bundled instructions inform you that it doesn't work indoors, and that it's an inherent problem with GPS and not the device (don't car sat-navs work fine indoors though?). I had some trouble using it when sat in a car and train as well. It seems to work best in wide open spaces, but it still generally takes up to a minute to sync, which is a little disappointing. Though perhaps I'm expecting too much from something that has been designed to be small enough to attach to a key ring.

Though it did point the direction and distance to home from the top of the Eiffel Tower. I thought that was pretty rad.

When I was younger I always pictured Sonic's transformation into a bigger yellower spikier hedgehog as being something akin to the Incredible Hulk. He wasn't just changing his outfit, he'd gone freakin' insane with power and wanted to kick as much ass as possible. It may have been the limited graphics and story-telling of the original Sonic games, but even Sonic the Comic seemed to agree with my assessment: Super Sonic was badass.

Case in point:

Ignore Tails' Klingon forehead (as well as how crappy the image is) for a moment and observe at how totally awesome Super Sonic is here. He doesn't give a damn who his friends are. He had one thing on his mind when he transformed and now his sole purpose in life is to annihilate that one thing. And everything else along with it.

Now with the 3D generation and wave upon wave of almost-bad to pretty terrible 3D Sonic titles we've been dumped with a tame Super Sonic who'd rather pet bunny rabbits than explode them. He's pretty much just Sonic with some glow in the dark spandex! I say the Sonic series would be saved if Super Sonic were restored to his former glory.

And Amy Rose met her doom.

The past few weeks I've been dabbling with an old web game that originally peaked my interest a few years ago. It's called Outer Space, and it's a free turn-based / real-time (kinda both) MMO RTS that has you competing with other players for galactic dominance.

The game is basically a glorified star chart displaying the systems and planets under your control. You can build structures on the planets that allow you to increase your empire's productive power in each area, from construction to research to morale and strategic resources such as titanium and uranium. The suitability for each planet's job depends on its environmental hospitality, size (bigger worlds allow more buildings), mineral deposits and proximity to its star. Large mineral-rich worlds are usually ideal as production planets, and allow you to begin building fleets of ships used to colonise and capture new systems. For anything that isn't any good for production I usually use as a research station or scanner to detect nearby threats. Once you've researched to a certain level, you get the chance to branch your faction off into a specific technological direction, each with its own benefits and depenencies. You can remain human (or super-human), become a race of cybernetic organisms (the Borg?) or go into bio-engineering and develop biological technology. Each one has its own exclusive technologies and strategic differences.

Time in the game is handled by turns. Every hour in real time is one turn, so if you order your fleet to travel to system X, and it says it'll take 20 turns for it to get there, that means you'll have to wait 20 hours before that fleet will have arrived. It can make the game painfully slow at the beginning, since you start off limited to a single system and one colony ship, but as you progress and get more systems under your belt, things rapidly start to pick up, especially when you start encountering other players and factions, with whom alliances can be struck, information shared, or war declared on.

Anyway, if you're interested, check it out. I'm currently playing as one of the larger factions on the Daela galaxy, though I don't recommend joining that one right now as you'll most likely be crushed by the well established empires. You're probably best waiting for one of the games in progress to end and restart and join then.

Welcome to the very first blog by Rogue! Actually, that's kind of a lie. I did set the whole thing up so there are plenty of invisible test blogs floating around the server that you'll never get a chance to see. Which is a shame, because they have boobies.*

* They do not have boobies.

Anyway, the epic event that was E3 2009 has come and gone. Apart from the absolutely kickass time I had with my fellow N-Philers in Los Angeles (you may be hearing more about that soon), we also got to experience a huge portion of the upcoming videogames coming out on all platforms over the next year or two. Since we're no longer a Nintendo-centric website, we got to dabble with the Microsoft and Sony consoles a little more. No complaints from me.

So let's get down to it!

Wii Sports Resort (Archery) (Wii)

This game is probably the one I had to queue the longest for. At least I got a Wii Sports frisbee out of it, I guess. Just what I always wanted. Anyway, the demo provided a few short sterile target shooting games using archery. The real point of the demo was to try out the motion plus, and it generally worked pretty well. You hold the Wii remote and nunchuk as you would a real bow and arrow. To fire, you hold the two close together, press and hold the Z button, and then draw the nunchuk back towards you. You can then adjust your aim by pitching your arms in any direction. Let go of Z to fire the arrow. The demo had a variety of targets to go for, some far away, some moving, some partially obscured. You also had to be aware of the wind direction and speed that might affect the arrow's direction.

Whilst waiting in line to play the archery, I got a good view of the frisbee and sword fighting games playing on different screens. Frisbee looked pretty basic, and seemed to involve just throwing the frisbee across a beach as a dog attempts to catch it. I'm not entirely sure if the objective is to hit a certain spot on the ground, outwit the dog and make him miss, or what. As for the sword fighting, it looked quite frantic and random from what I could tell from the people playing. I'll have to play it before judging if it requires any skill to play.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up (Wii)

I got to play this with Desiré, Jared and Jordan in a four player free-for-all. I picked Leonardo by accident (Donatello was always my favourite), but I'm sure the differences weren't significant. I wasn't too sure what to make of this game. It took me about 30 seconds to realize which character on the screen I was controlling, since the turtles all look pretty similar aside from their headbands, and once I did, the combat felt a little stiff and awkward. It plays a lot like Smash Bros, which is exactly what the developers' intentions were (as hinted at by the game's title), but there's no damage percentage meter, just standard health meters for each character. Items can be found around the stage, but I'm not too sure what they do. The game doesn't seem to quite have the smooth or fluid feel that Smash Bros. offers. Hopefully they'll tighten it up before its release on Wii this September.

Oh, and I totally won the match by the way!

New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii)

I got to play this one after meeting Charles Martinet and didn't even have to get in line. This one actually surprised me by how fun it was. The game plays a lot like the DS' New Super Mario Bros. It's probably using the same engine that game used, though I couldn't get a confirmation on that. Regardless, as the title might suggest, it plays very similar. The demo started with four of us picking our characters, I was Luigi, and being thrown into a classic Super Mario Bros. style level complete with classic Mario baddies and powerups. I don't really have much to say about this one, since it really was just Super Mario Bros. with four players. We were each competing with one-another for the most points, and often trying to screw one-another over by stealing powerups or jumping on eachother's heads to try and force them into a pit. The propeller suit that the guy in the Nintendo conference had a boner over made an appearance, and was kinda fun to use. It was certainly no cape though.

Oh, and I totally had the most points at the end of the demo. N-Philes 4 Lyfe.

The game due out towards the end of this year.

Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3)

I got to play the PS3 version of the game, mostly because the 360 one seemed to have a line longer than your Nan and the PS3 area seemed relatively empty. Initial impressions of the game are good. The fighting is extremely simple and easy to grasp, but still remains fun and and challenges you to play as stylishly as possible (though it remains to be seen if there is any challenge as far as actual difficulty goes). It plays as a fairly standard beat-em-up, with the added bonus that you're playing as Batman and do genuinely feel like you are.

After beating down a few waves of enemies, you're sent off to take down Mr. Zsasz, who has taken a guard hostage in his cell and is threatening to kill him. Here the demo introduced you to a few more of Batman's abilities, namely going into detective mode, which enabled a special visor allowing Batman to scope out the area for points of interest. Enabling the mode allows you to notice gargoyle statues above Zsasz's cell which you can Bat-Grapple up to. Once up top, you can drop down with your cape spread and surprise Zsasz in true Batman style.

Visually the game is great. Batman's cape flutters around as he moves, and the environments and character models are highly detailed. The game is set in its own unique universe, but is heavily based on the comic book world rather than having any roots in the movie or cartoon universes, so the game looks pretty gothic and doesn't hold many similarities to the Gotham/Arkham seen in the recent Nolan movies.

The demo featured cameos from Commissioner Gordon, Oracle (via radio), Mr. Zsasz, Harlequinn and of course the Joker. No sign of Robin or any other members of the Bat Family, and I'm kinda doubtful that they'll appear. Regardless, the game is definitely one to look out for come Fall 2009.

Oh, and as a side note, it looks like the PS3 version will exclusively feature the Joker as a playable character in the game's challenge mode. Kind of a gip for 360 owners, but I'm sure they'll eventually release an update that includes him on XBL at some point. We'll see.

Aliens vs Predator (Xbox 360)

We never got a chance to actually play this one, we just watched as the developer took us through the demo they'd provided. The demo only featured the Predator as a playable character, but that was more than enough to show how the game has advanced from its predecessors.

First off, the game is violent. With any game bearing the Aliens vs Predator name you're going to be expecting some gore, but watching some of the Predator's trophy kills (brutal executions that remove a piece of an enemy's body for trophy points) had groups of grown men screaming "Ohhhh!" in unison. It's also stunning to look at. Perhaps I still haven't gotten over how good the visuals are for current generation games, but I'm still amazed by everything that's coming out. Seeing the alien jaws open up and reveal the internal workings of their second mouth is pretty cool to see, as well as the contorted look of horror on the faces of space marines when a predator grabs them by the throat. It's epic.

Since the demo showed off the predator, we got to see some of the Predator's abilities and how they worked in the new game engine. Old features such as multiple visors (heat for human, alien for er, aliens and normal), the shoulder cannon (check out the targeting reticule on that thing - just like the movies!), stealth camouflage and such made a return. The stealth has apparently been worked to not drain on the predator's main power source, as the developers found it to be too much of an irritation for the player (see Crysis). Instead, stealth is unlimited except when attacking. One new feature is the scout mode, allowing the predator to scope out the locations of enemies, points of interest and places to jump to. It allows you to leap from tree to tree above the enemies, and reach otherwise inaccessible areas such as rooftops with ease.

Like its predecessors, AvP is set in the Aliens universe. That is, in the distant future where humans are colonising the far-reaches of space and pulse-rifle armed space marines are sent in to neutralise potential alien threats. None of the movie garbage where it's all set on present-day Earth (why the movie writers went with that idea I will never know).

The game is due out for PC, Xbox 360, PS3 some time in 2010.

Spyborgs (Wii)

I kinda found myself playing this by accident. I was in line to check out the new Wii Resident Evil title, saw an open booth and jumped out to play, when I realized it was a different game entirely. I was unfamiliar with Spyborgs before picking up the controller, so bear with me. It's basically an old school arcade style beat-em-up/shooter that plays like a bit a cross between Powerstone and Streets of Rage. Although that's probably not the best description of it you'll ever hear. The game allowed you to pick pick between a robot, a chick with a sword, and a guy with an arm cannon. I picked the robot, and the quirky woman manning the booth joined in for coop as the chick with the sword.

The gameplay is fairly simplistic. You run around the 3D environments beating up enemies and picking up items. Some items allow you to up your charge meter and pull off a co-operative attack with your team mate, which involves carefully timed button presses that are queued up on the screen. Think Heavenly Sword (but don't).

The game's visuals are pretty simplistic, even by Wii standards, but it doesn't look too bad. The boss battle at the end was pretty cool to watch; it was a gigantic robot that attacked the miniature-by-comparison player characters by slamming its fists and and firing huge energy blasts.

Spyborgs is due out for Wii some time this year (TBA 2009).

Ant Nation (DS)

I found this game to be more than a little confusing at first, but it seems to be fairly involving to just pick up and play at a booth and instantly know what's going on. Fortunately one of the guys manning the booth must have noticed the look of utter confusion on my face and came over to give me a hand.

The game is about building your own ant colony. The top screen shows the layout of your colony from an underground perspective, and the bottom screen shows a top-down view of the surface. You can switch between the viewpoints using a button at the top right of the touch-screen to interact with each one. The underground view allows you to build chambers that allow you to create more ants, of which there are several types. The top-down viewpoint allows you to move your ants around the surface and fight enemies, retrieve items and expand your nest. I eventually came across a blue box which contained a mission. Not really knowing what I was getting myself into, I accepted the mission and was suddenly attacked by a big ass praying mantis. It kicked my butt.

Ant Nation for DS and Wii are due out this July.

Red Steel 2 (Wii)

I was hugely impressed by this one. We were introduced to the trailer during the Nintendo conference before E3, and it looked good there (although it's a complete reboot of the franchise, why is it even called Red Steel? There was one game previously and it was a critical failure), but it was certainly reassuring to see and feel in person that the control issues from the first Red Steel had been ironed out. The demo begins by introducing the player to the basics, such as moving, aiming, firing and interacting with the environment. You're guided through the beginning area and have to fire shots at switches to open doors and vents. I felt pretty badass by being able to hit each one instantly without missing, but I'm sure that's just a testament to how much the controls have improved.

After fighting a few of the game's enemies, you're given your sword, and this is where the game seems to step into its own. Using the motion plus, you have a full range of control over how and where you sword strikes, and you can pose any defensive posture by holding the remote in the corresponding position. When striking foes, you can opt for a light blow (appears as a blue slash on the screen) or a heavy one (red). Going for heavy attacks really begins to feel like a bit of a workout after a while, as you really have to wave the remote pretty fast to pull it off. The game allows you to pretty much Z-target enemies and engage in battle directly with each one individually. Using the analog stick on the nunchuk in conjunction with the buttons on both controllers allow you to pull off certain moves such as side steps, jumps and dashes. You can pull out your pistol at any time and start blasting away too.

Definitely one to look out for. It's due out for Wii towards the end of this year.

Where the Wild Things Are (Xbox 360)

It's never wise to expect much when it comes to movie-licensed videogames, but I can fairly safely say that this one, while nothing special, isn't too bad. It's a run-of-the-mill 3D platform adventure game, giving the player control over Max, the little kid from the book/movie (I'm not familiar with the story, sorry!). He's generally followed by those big hairy monster things that help him out during battle or in getting to other locations. Not too much to say about this one, as it's all pretty standard stuff. One thing I will say is that the visuals are pretty nice. We were informed that the game's story is set after the events of the book/movie, so it's all completely fresh and can be played without spoiling the upcoming movie.

Both the game and movie are due out this October.

Sonic & SEGA All Star Racing (Xbox 360)

Let's just say this one is a huge leap from the SEGA Saturn's Sonic R back in 1997. The game is pretty much a direct Mario Kart clone, right down to characters driving karts and picking up items from spinning question mark boxes. The racing is fairly past paced, and the graphics are absolutely stunning to look at. There isn't really all that much else to say, other than the controls didn't feel quite as tight as Mario Kart. Drifting in particular felt far too loose and resulted in a crash pretty much every time it was used. Maybe I just sucked at it.

The items available included speed boosts, missiles and special moves. At the beginning of the race I somehow found myself transforming into Super Sonic and flew past most of the racers at breakneck speed. Worked pretty much the same way as the Star Man powerup from Mario Kart, just much faster.

Definitely one to watch out for. Could turn out good! It's due out Q1 2010.

Metal Gear Solid Touch (iPod Touch)

Adam and I headed over to this having seen the MGS logo and thinking there was a free booth with the new MGS game. Unfortunately it was just the IPOD Touch variant of the game. It was a pretty simple shooter that had Snake crouching behind a car and popping up to shoot whenever you tapped the screen. Aiming felt a little awkward as you had to drag the targeting reticule across to fire in a new location, rather than Snake just firing where you tapped. But hey, it's an iPod game.

More to come! Be sure to check out the impressions from the other N-Philes staffers.