July 25th, 2008 by David Hinkle
Filed under: Features
Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility is a big game. The first thing that I noticed was just how large the game world is. You aren’t restricted to just one farm, instead able to spread many a seed across many a land. Aside from that, the game very much feels like all of the other Harvest Moon titles, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whether you’re a fan of the series or not.
With it being the demo build and all, many things were unlocked from the outset. The main farm my character was situated at had a large plot of various flowers planted, which looked very nice. I had lots of animals, including a goat, sheep and, yes, an ostrich. I even rode it around some. It’s as awesome as it looks. There were even penguins!
Dwelling within the house was a family from the previous save. In Tree of Tranquility, once you play long enough and find a mate, eventually having some offspring, you can take all of the upgraded tools and use them with the new character, thus starting all over again. All of you Harvest Moon fanatics out there, I honestly don’t know how you could do it.
One thing that was a big issue when demoing the game was the frame rate. Because there were so many flowers and everything, the game ran pretty slow. But, I was told by Graham, the helpful Natsume rep showing off the game, this was due to the game being run on a dev kit (something about an extra buffer pass being needed). Regardless of what it was that did it, Graham knew of the issue and offered a very technical and thorough explanation of the issue. Basically, I was assured that it wouldn’t exist in the final build of the game.
Tree of Tranquility should provide Harvest Moon fans with loads of content. This should keep them content until next year, when another Harvest Moon game releases.
Posted in , sim, joystiqfeatures, harvest-moon, natsume, e3-2008, e308, tree-of-tranquility | No Comments »
July 23rd, 2008 by David Hinkle
Filed under: Features
Aside from knowing the game exists, I didn’t have anything else to go on when I came across Guinness World Records: The Videogame at my closed-door session in the back of the Warner Bros. meeting room at E3. When the game was revealed, I figured it would just be another cookie-cutter mini-game compilation that didn’t hold much value. Actually, I was wrong, as Guiness World Records is a pretty fun title.
The majority of the game has you traveling to various locales throughout the world and competing in the three available mini-games for that region. You travel by walking your avatar (sorry, no Mii support!) across a large globe that represents the world. Once you have arrived at your destination, you simply click on it to jump in and check out what’s there. Some of the locales I saw included Egypt and South Africa, which was nice because it doubled as a geography refresher.
While the demo didn’t have every region available, it did have quite the number of mini-games to play. Sadly, my appointment was really just for LEGO Batman, so I only got a few minutes with the game while I waited. In this amount of time, I was able to smash some watermelons with my head and shoot myself out of a cannon.
Each of the mini-games required some sort of motion-based controls, which have been implemented decently. For example, in the watermelon mini-game, I was forced to smash oncoming watermelons with my head, flicking the Wiimote down to represent this action in-game. The motion controls never skipped a beat and I performed quite well, proving to me that the controls work well and have been instituted quite effectively.
Guiness World Records: The Videogame will support Wi-Fi leaderboards, allowing you to compare your score with friends online. Sadly, that’s the only Wi-Fi feature in the game, as players can’t enjoy multiplayer online. But, there’s definitely support for local multiplayer, which is great because this strikes me as geared toward the social crowd and the younger audience.
In the end, I was pleasantly surprised by Guiness World Records: The Videogame. It was a genuinely fun time and not a piece of shovelware that I expected it would be. The mini-games were engaging and actually controlled well, which was very nice. Fans of fun mini-game compilations should definitely keep their eyes on this one.
Posted in , joystiqfeatures, minigame, minigames, warner-bros, e3-2008, e308, guiness-world-records, guinness-world-records-the-videogame, telltale-games | No Comments »
July 18th, 2008 by Chris Greenhough
Filed under: Interviews
Shigeru Miyamoto has weighed in on the grand debate that has raged over Nintendo’s E3 press conference, addressing fan complaints that not enough “core” titles were shown. According to Shiggy, the shortage of more traditional games could be attributed to one thing: E3.
Whereas once E3 was perceived as an event for those who treated gaming as serious business, Miyamoto argues that the industry’s red-letter day is now better suited to showing off “new concepts and new types of play that we intend to bring to the broader audience, particularly because of the media that gathers at E3 now.”
Nevertheless, Miyamoto did reassure diehard fans that classic franchises were being worked on, with the Zelda, Mario, and Pikmin teams all concentrating on new games. “… We’re still working on many of those titles,” Miyamoto told MSNBC, “But [E3 is] just not the type of event where we’ll be showcasing that anymore.”
It’s interesting to note the different perspectives on this issue taken by Miyamoto and Reggie Fils-Aime. Whereas Reggie refuted the suggestion that Nintendo could have offered more “core” games, Miyamoto seems to admit that yes, there was a lack of such titles at E3, but that E3 itself was the reason behind this.
[Via GamesIndustry.biz]
Posted in , INDUSTRY, Reggie-Fils-Aime, miyamoto, shigeru-miyamoto, core, e3-2008, e308 | No Comments »
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