02-23-2008, 04:25 PM
I know I said I'd create a whole separate report on new hardware being introduced to the gaming world, but The Game Developers' Conference isn't quite as heavy regarding actual games as other expos. So because of that, I've included the new hardware in day 3 along with the final new characters of Super Smash Bros. Brawl that were available to be played.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl:
Lucas: Depending on your definition, Lucas is basically a clone of Ness. His moves are almost identical and he only plays slightly different to his comrade from the Mother series. He does seem to be a bit quicker while losing a bit of power compared to Ness. His PK Freeze move has the added bonus of freezing opponents while causing damage, but any time I connected with it, even after it was charging for a one to two seconds, the frozen enemy broke free before even hitting the ground by simply rapidly pressing directions and buttons. Granted they did fly pretty high, so it may actually be more advantageous to freeze enemies at lower damage if you're trying to get them to fall off the edge so they won't soar as high as a frozen fighter. In the notes from Smash Bros. Dojo, it mentions that Lucas's side smash attack, a strong whack with a baseball bat, is quicker than Ness's. I wasn't able to play as Ness (though I did see him unlocked several times followed quickly by an assistant resetting the Wii), but Lucas's side smash attack takes some time to charge as it is. Ness would take forever to swing away if it's much longer than Lucas's attack. I did enjoy the PK Fire moving directly horizontal instead of falling, but the PK Thunder is just as annoying as ever. It's true the ball of lightning does move slower and it's easier to control, but that's not saying much. It will still take time and practice to be able to connect the bolt with the brawler's bottom to initiate the desired effect. The PK Starstorm is definitely biased for smaller fighting areas. The stars can be greatly spread out at times, but the hits are definitely powerful. Anyone short of the heaviest brawlers will almost certainly be thrown off stage if hit by two stars. Personally, Lucas seemed to be a way of getting used to the PK Fighters' combat style. After getting the style down with Lucas, seasoned players would move on to Ness unless they prefer the slightly faster fighting of Lucas.
Diddy Kong: Yes, I finally brought myself to play with the newest primate of Smash Bros. I didn't really want to as I have a strong dislike for the monkey, but I did it just for the readers. I could never quite place my dislike for Diddy, but it's not quite as strong after playing as him in Brawl. He seems pretty well balanced. His attacks are more on the quick side while still maintaining a fair amount of power. In general I judge characters by where I place come the end of the fight. If I play as Link, I'm generally guaranteed a win unless I happen to be pitted against a professional player, which has only happened once or twice at these expos. With Diddy Kong, I did manage to win in sudden death by latching onto Mario's face and launching him off-screen. It wasn't the easier type of win I received with Ike, but he's still a good character. His up special move can be a bit tricky to get used to though. It's not as easy to guide the launch as I'd like, but you can't get what you want with every aspect of every character. Diddy's final smash attack is extremely powerful. Just like the other characters' final moves which allow you to fly about the screen and deal damage (Pikachu and Sonic namely), this is pretty much a guaranteed KO to everyone on the screen. Each peanut bullet deals pretty heavy damage, and it's easy to get off three dozen or so shots. The only difficult part is that the shots are fired in the opposite direction while moving, so if you want to shoot to the right, you'll have to move a bit to the left. However, it's easier to just fly back and forth across the screen while rapidly pressing the fire button. Diddy may not be a favorite for the hardcore players, but for beginners he's definitely capable of holding his own ground.
Starting with Zero Suit Samus: Just a small mention. Starting with Zero Suit Samus is possible by holding down every button when starting. I tested this not because I wanted to see if it'd work, but because I forgot which button to hold and everyone around looked at me like I was insane when I asked about it. So I instead just held down the A, B, C and Z buttons (I was playing with the Nunchuk/Wii Remote combo) and started with the stripped down Samus. Actually, you still come out as regular Samus, but her armor falls off during the entry of other characters, leaving pieces of armor you can pick up and throw at opponents.
That's it for Super Smash Bros. Hopefully the bits of information I was able to provide will help alleviate some of the pains of waiting for the game's release next month. Apologies if there was something available I wasn't able to try out. I focused on characters most but still try to get around to items, final smash attacks and even levels, but time was not widely available. The following sections are pieces of hardware coming to the gaming world. Some are PC based, one is actually mobile based, one is possible for multiple systems and one is definitely a huge leap in how we play games.
The Nokia N-Gage: That's right, the N-Gage returns to the gaming world. I'm sure most people remember Nokia's original N-Gage, but in case you missed it (which wasn't too hard seeing how it did so poorly), here's a brief look at it. The N-Gage was meant to combine cell phones with handheld gaming. The graphics were pretty good considering the platform, but a high price tag and little 3rd party support led to its quick demise. Well now Nokia's is attempting to break into the mobile gaming yet again with a new rendition of the N-Gage. The N-Gage is now actually a gaming application which is downloaded to a compatible cell phone. This application then allows you to find and download N-Gage games. The games can either be downloaded straight to the phone or downloaded to your PC and transferred to the phone. All compatible phones are equipped with a camera which is integrated with some of the games. One of the demos was of Dirk Dagger which is a point-and-click adventure with slightly action oriented mini-games. To scroll the screen left and right, you can either press the directional buttons or move the camera which senses the movement and scrolls the screen accordingly. Another game, Yamake, allows you to create very small mini-games which you can send to friends. These games are as simple as taking a picture and making it into a sliding tile game, or you can use a video which makes the game much more difficult as the tiles continue to play the video while you move them around. As you may have guessed with the mention of sending friends Yamake games, these N-Gage games will keep track of friends you've made which will allow you to see when they're online for competitive play or send available content. The graphics of the new N-Gage are comparable to the DS and even up to par with the PSP for some games, though most games on display went for a more comic book or cartoon style look. Nokia's newest attempt to revolutionize the mobile gaming industry is looking to shape up quite well, especially when cell phones have already become a large market for gaming, but will it be enough to compete with the DS and PSP?
Phillips amBX: The amBX is a complete player immersion system. It includes 2.1 sound system with sub woofer, a wall washer light, left and right lights (attached to the side speakers), a wrist rumble pad and two small fans (all displayed and explained at the amBX website here. I know that's a lot to picture yourself, so here's the breakdown. The sound system provides excellent audio, the wall washer and side lights display various colors depending on what is going on on the monitor extending the environment beyond the screen, the rumble wrist pad vibrates with actions on the game for a force feedback effect, and the fans will blow accordingly to action in the game. Combined, the amBX really does immerse the player in the game like never before for PC gaming. In the demo, hypogryphs were flying through a city. When one would land nearby and start flapping it's wings, the fans would blow puffs of air, the lights would display flashes of red with explosions, and the vibrations could be felt very well between the wrist pad and the sub woofer. For those who really want an evolving experience with their PC games, and have $400 to spend on the system, the Phillips amBX is a great buy.
Novint Falcon: It's no easy to tell what the Falcon does based on the picture, but it takes the place of your PC mouse. The system reads in what direction and how far you move the handle and reacts accordingly. It takes a bit of getting used to, but after some practice the system can be quite precise for first person shooters. It didn't seem to react quite as well when driving through Half Life 2, but I haven't played the game before to know if it was the game or the Falcon. The best part of the peripheral is the feedback. One of the demos was a point-and-click adventure where you would open drawers and doors to find items. For this, I actually had to move the pointer down to the drawer, hold the button, and pull back to open it. This is fun and entertaining, but it got better with the locked door. I reached down and grabbed the handle, but pulling backwards did nothing, to the pointer or the Falcon. It would actually read that I couldn't affect the object and reacted accordingly. I pulled as hard as I could, but the Falcon's handle wouldn't budge. Even when I'd grab a chair to move it, I could feel that it was heavier than the flashlight. For shooters, the Falcon's handle would react with the recoil of the gun. Furthermore, the handle would dramatically jump around when I took a shotgun blast from another player. As with the amBX, if you have the $189 to afford on the Novint Falcon, it makes for an excellent gaming experience.
Vivox: This isn't a huge thing, but just a small note. I spoke with a representative from Vivox which handles the voice chatting features of Second Life and Eve Online. When asked if they were interested in expanding voice chat to other systems, he said they are currently working very strongly on adding voice chatting functionality to the PS3 online community, possibly working with the XBox 360 despite it already having voice chat, or possibly even adding it to the Wii. Unfortunately, he said that the Wii currently lacks the hardware or community for voice chatting. The hardware is a given as there is currently no microphone system for the Wii, but he didn't say exactly what he meant by lacking the community. Assuming this changes, there is already at least one company that is interested in bringing voice chatting to the Wii.
Break Through NeuroSky: Those of us who have been around awhile may remember some people claiming they could control a video game with simply their minds. This turned out to be a scam as they were actually using muscle movements in their heads to control the game. Well the mind control system has finally been realized. Break Through has created a headset which monitors how much a person is focusing or relaxing his/her thoughts. In their demo, you could move your character around using the keyboard and mouse like a typical third person action game. The NeuroSky came into effect when you would click on an object. After choosing one of four abilities - push, pull, torch and lift - you would perform this action with your thoughts. For pushing, pulling and torching, you would have to focus your thoughts. The more focused you are, the further you'd push the object, pull it, or set it on fire quicker. Currently, the headset is able to connect to a PC or mobile device such as cell phones. However, the company has very high hopes of allowing all handhelds and consoles to use the device. That's right, soon you may be able to use you mind to play games on your XBox, PS3, Wii, DS and PSP. The headset is only set to cost around $50 and will be available before the end of the year.
That's it for my coverage of the Game Developers' Conference. Unfortunately I was not able to attend sessions where the big news was released due to my limited access, but hopefully you enjoyed what I was able to obtain. The gaming topics of the expo were not quite what I had hoped for, but all the advances in technology was great to see. There is getting to be a huge focus on small development studios being able to release their information with free gaming engines available for download and websites which allow gamers to stream video games with only a short download. Even Nintendo was releasing flyers on how to obtain development kits and submit projects. Hopefully, this will soon allow everyone with a great gaming idea to find some way to broadcast it to the world.
Lucas: Depending on your definition, Lucas is basically a clone of Ness. His moves are almost identical and he only plays slightly different to his comrade from the Mother series. He does seem to be a bit quicker while losing a bit of power compared to Ness. His PK Freeze move has the added bonus of freezing opponents while causing damage, but any time I connected with it, even after it was charging for a one to two seconds, the frozen enemy broke free before even hitting the ground by simply rapidly pressing directions and buttons. Granted they did fly pretty high, so it may actually be more advantageous to freeze enemies at lower damage if you're trying to get them to fall off the edge so they won't soar as high as a frozen fighter. In the notes from Smash Bros. Dojo, it mentions that Lucas's side smash attack, a strong whack with a baseball bat, is quicker than Ness's. I wasn't able to play as Ness (though I did see him unlocked several times followed quickly by an assistant resetting the Wii), but Lucas's side smash attack takes some time to charge as it is. Ness would take forever to swing away if it's much longer than Lucas's attack. I did enjoy the PK Fire moving directly horizontal instead of falling, but the PK Thunder is just as annoying as ever. It's true the ball of lightning does move slower and it's easier to control, but that's not saying much. It will still take time and practice to be able to connect the bolt with the brawler's bottom to initiate the desired effect. The PK Starstorm is definitely biased for smaller fighting areas. The stars can be greatly spread out at times, but the hits are definitely powerful. Anyone short of the heaviest brawlers will almost certainly be thrown off stage if hit by two stars. Personally, Lucas seemed to be a way of getting used to the PK Fighters' combat style. After getting the style down with Lucas, seasoned players would move on to Ness unless they prefer the slightly faster fighting of Lucas.
Diddy Kong: Yes, I finally brought myself to play with the newest primate of Smash Bros. I didn't really want to as I have a strong dislike for the monkey, but I did it just for the readers. I could never quite place my dislike for Diddy, but it's not quite as strong after playing as him in Brawl. He seems pretty well balanced. His attacks are more on the quick side while still maintaining a fair amount of power. In general I judge characters by where I place come the end of the fight. If I play as Link, I'm generally guaranteed a win unless I happen to be pitted against a professional player, which has only happened once or twice at these expos. With Diddy Kong, I did manage to win in sudden death by latching onto Mario's face and launching him off-screen. It wasn't the easier type of win I received with Ike, but he's still a good character. His up special move can be a bit tricky to get used to though. It's not as easy to guide the launch as I'd like, but you can't get what you want with every aspect of every character. Diddy's final smash attack is extremely powerful. Just like the other characters' final moves which allow you to fly about the screen and deal damage (Pikachu and Sonic namely), this is pretty much a guaranteed KO to everyone on the screen. Each peanut bullet deals pretty heavy damage, and it's easy to get off three dozen or so shots. The only difficult part is that the shots are fired in the opposite direction while moving, so if you want to shoot to the right, you'll have to move a bit to the left. However, it's easier to just fly back and forth across the screen while rapidly pressing the fire button. Diddy may not be a favorite for the hardcore players, but for beginners he's definitely capable of holding his own ground.
Starting with Zero Suit Samus: Just a small mention. Starting with Zero Suit Samus is possible by holding down every button when starting. I tested this not because I wanted to see if it'd work, but because I forgot which button to hold and everyone around looked at me like I was insane when I asked about it. So I instead just held down the A, B, C and Z buttons (I was playing with the Nunchuk/Wii Remote combo) and started with the stripped down Samus. Actually, you still come out as regular Samus, but her armor falls off during the entry of other characters, leaving pieces of armor you can pick up and throw at opponents.
That's it for Super Smash Bros. Hopefully the bits of information I was able to provide will help alleviate some of the pains of waiting for the game's release next month. Apologies if there was something available I wasn't able to try out. I focused on characters most but still try to get around to items, final smash attacks and even levels, but time was not widely available. The following sections are pieces of hardware coming to the gaming world. Some are PC based, one is actually mobile based, one is possible for multiple systems and one is definitely a huge leap in how we play games.
Phillips amBX: The amBX is a complete player immersion system. It includes 2.1 sound system with sub woofer, a wall washer light, left and right lights (attached to the side speakers), a wrist rumble pad and two small fans (all displayed and explained at the amBX website here. I know that's a lot to picture yourself, so here's the breakdown. The sound system provides excellent audio, the wall washer and side lights display various colors depending on what is going on on the monitor extending the environment beyond the screen, the rumble wrist pad vibrates with actions on the game for a force feedback effect, and the fans will blow accordingly to action in the game. Combined, the amBX really does immerse the player in the game like never before for PC gaming. In the demo, hypogryphs were flying through a city. When one would land nearby and start flapping it's wings, the fans would blow puffs of air, the lights would display flashes of red with explosions, and the vibrations could be felt very well between the wrist pad and the sub woofer. For those who really want an evolving experience with their PC games, and have $400 to spend on the system, the Phillips amBX is a great buy.
Vivox: This isn't a huge thing, but just a small note. I spoke with a representative from Vivox which handles the voice chatting features of Second Life and Eve Online. When asked if they were interested in expanding voice chat to other systems, he said they are currently working very strongly on adding voice chatting functionality to the PS3 online community, possibly working with the XBox 360 despite it already having voice chat, or possibly even adding it to the Wii. Unfortunately, he said that the Wii currently lacks the hardware or community for voice chatting. The hardware is a given as there is currently no microphone system for the Wii, but he didn't say exactly what he meant by lacking the community. Assuming this changes, there is already at least one company that is interested in bringing voice chatting to the Wii.
Break Through NeuroSky: Those of us who have been around awhile may remember some people claiming they could control a video game with simply their minds. This turned out to be a scam as they were actually using muscle movements in their heads to control the game. Well the mind control system has finally been realized. Break Through has created a headset which monitors how much a person is focusing or relaxing his/her thoughts. In their demo, you could move your character around using the keyboard and mouse like a typical third person action game. The NeuroSky came into effect when you would click on an object. After choosing one of four abilities - push, pull, torch and lift - you would perform this action with your thoughts. For pushing, pulling and torching, you would have to focus your thoughts. The more focused you are, the further you'd push the object, pull it, or set it on fire quicker. Currently, the headset is able to connect to a PC or mobile device such as cell phones. However, the company has very high hopes of allowing all handhelds and consoles to use the device. That's right, soon you may be able to use you mind to play games on your XBox, PS3, Wii, DS and PSP. The headset is only set to cost around $50 and will be available before the end of the year.
That's it for my coverage of the Game Developers' Conference. Unfortunately I was not able to attend sessions where the big news was released due to my limited access, but hopefully you enjoyed what I was able to obtain. The gaming topics of the expo were not quite what I had hoped for, but all the advances in technology was great to see. There is getting to be a huge focus on small development studios being able to release their information with free gaming engines available for download and websites which allow gamers to stream video games with only a short download. Even Nintendo was releasing flyers on how to obtain development kits and submit projects. Hopefully, this will soon allow everyone with a great gaming idea to find some way to broadcast it to the world.
