No more further explanations, here’s first and foremost, my list of most anticipated games this year.(Disclaimer: This piece was written while I was doing other things, so it’s really disorganized, I suggest not reading it! reading it drunk or something.)

Top 10 Upcoming games of 2012

10. Soul Calibur V
Transcanding history and world, this fighting game series was what got me back into the fighting genre, first with Soul Edge back in the mid 90s, and then with Soul Calibur II when it was released on Gamecube. While most people points to I or II as their favourite and III as the worst, I found myself actually liking Soul Calibur III the most so far, for multiple reasons, and while there were a few exploits, we never used those when playing back in the days. The fourth instalment added stats to armors, and that simply ruined for me. This is gone for SCV, and I’m glad it is so.

Anyway, looking forward to try the new characters, and kick asses with Maxi all over again.

9. Binary Domain
A game by the Yakuza and Monkey Balls dude, that’s neither of these titles? Count me in! The setting, while cliché at this point, seems somewhat still full of surprises, the idea that a game from a director whose second only to Hideo Kojima in terms of expansive cutscenes decides to put the story development you’d normally see in cutscenes directly into the gameplay, as me riddled and curious. In terms of gameplay, I’m digging the fact that what you shoot on an enemy gets torned off, and affects its AI/movements/abilities. In example, if you shoot the head off, the robot will start shooting indiscriminately at everything around in, including its allies. If you shoot the leg off, they’ll crawl up to you and attempt to grab you or crawl away in fear, or something.

This one is another day one buy.

8. Lollipop Chainsaw
A game with zombies in it!? Who would buy that? I actually rarely would, but the kitsch style of Suda51 has me almost sold. I love kitsch stuff, but only when it’s well executed in its cheesiness. And I doubt it’ll be the latter with the guy behind Killer 7 and No More Heroes behind it. But this has the potential to be really great, or just meh. The gameplay looks good enough, but if it’s shallow, I’ll probably end up passing or at best giving it a rental. I’m not expecting Bayonetta depth here, but I’m hoping for depth.

7. Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney
Barely played one Professor Layton game, but I loved what I played of it. Brain teasers that are designed just well enough to tease your brain into twisting it one way or another, but still let’s you solve them and make you feel smart are the best. On the other side, I’m a big fan of the Ace Attorney games, even though I was a bit disappointed with the last game released in North America, Miles Investigations, as while the story was fun, it was way too easy and I saw everything coming, and didn’t feel that despair that I could share with Nick in the other games near the end of a case where there doesn’t seem to be any way to get out of a bind.

I’m not sure what are the odds of it making it over here, it has a lot of hype surrounding it, so it could end up making it, but the latest game in the AA series never made it here and probably never will. So it’s a tough call. But if it does come over here, another day one!

6. TERA
MMOrpgs are a disease! They hook you up, drain you up, and then instead of throwing you away, they dry you up t’il the last drop. Still I keep falling for them for a reason or another, and I usually get bored when I realize I’ve been doing the same thing over and over.

Anyway, this one has something different than those other MMOs of this scale. You can’t target a monster (and then just mash your numbers on your keyboard to do damage). You need to play like you would play an action console game. Even so, if I ever get into this game, I’ll be buying myself a 360 controller just for it. It really fixes my biggest gripe about these PC games. It gets boring when all you need to do to connect an attack is having a little circle around the monster. It annoys me when most enemy attacks connect even though I should be out of their reach, and just once in a while, an attack that you can dodge occurs and at that point you’re supposed to get out of the way. Seriously, make all attacks like this, and remove as many random numbers as you can. Most of these games, it’s usually a staring contest on your screen to grasp the once in a while thing that catches you off-guard because you fell asleep of boredom.

Well, I don’t know how much TERA fixes this. I’m hoping to get in the beta to find that out. I’m not expecting Bayonetta online here, but damn would that be sweet or what?

5. One Piece Musou
Not too fond of the Musou games (Dynasty Warriors, etc.). They were nice last generation, but I got tired of playing the same game again and again. But this time, it’s a Dynasty Warrior game in the One Piece universe, covering most of what’s been covered by the anime seemingly, and let’s you play with all the strawhats, and let’s you do a whole bunch of their moves, all with what seems to be the right feel for each character.

Anyway, I’m again not sure what are the odds here, but damn it, I’m gonna play this, in Japanese if needed.

4. Yakuza Dead Souls
For the rest of this list, I’m showing how much of a SEGA fanboy I am, it seems. As even number one has some links to SEGA in a way (more or less).

So the usual Yakuza type game is kind of taking a break this time and is replaced by another zombie game. So what does that mean? Mostly that guns play a much bigger part this time around, and most of Kamurochou is filled with zombies. There are still all the side contents and mini-games to mess around with, though. And while I didn’t like the Japanese demo’s controls last year, we’ve been promised a better control scheme for the release in the West.

Day one!

3. Anarchy Reigns
This was supposed to be out already, and then out this month, but in the end, it’s been pushed back to this summer. But I’m still not sure how the game will turn out, but if it’s Bayonetta Online, damn I might not need any other game for a while. But it being more of a Madworld online, with a few characters that seem to control more like they would be in a Kamiya game, I’m not sure how good it will turn out. I got bored of Madworld kind of fast. Still, I have high hopes!

2. Phantasy Star Online 2
This is still not announced for a release outside Japan. But I kind of doubt they’ll keep the best Phantasy Star Online so far (at least gameplay-wise) out of our hands over here for too long, considering they’ve been bringing most Phantasy Star games released in the last decade(s?) here. I just hope it keeps that lobby formula and sticks to being a non-massive, multiplayer Online RPG.

1. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
The VGAs had one thing good in 2011, and that was the announcement trailer of MGR now being developed by Platinun Games. The lightning fast fighting designed by the masters of this kind of gameplay just looks too sweet to pass by, and being the big Metal Gear fan (though Kojima does not need to do Metal Gear games anymore) that I am, this is probably going to be one of my favourite games ever. Though it might only take over spot number 3, because…

0. Hideki Kamiya’s upcoming project
My favourite game of all time is Bayonetta, and Kamiya’s upcoming project is a serious contender for that spot, even though I have no clue what it’s going to be, but unless it’s a Social Media game, I’m confident I’m gonna love the hell out of whatever he’s developing.

As an extra, with a bit less dribble, here’s a top 5 of things I’m curious to see how the game will turn out and a top 3 of games that are highly anticipated but couldn’t care less.

Top 5 curious about
5. DmC: Devil May Cry
This will most likely turn out awful. Still gonna rent it though to see if Ninja Theory managed to nail the DMC feel. Highly unlikely, as the gameplay video we’ve seen so far suggests otherwise.

4. Blade and Souls
This was announced forever ago, and might or might not be for PS3 (according to Wikipedia it is), but like TERA, this is more oriented in terms of an mmorpg, but looking at videos, I’m somewhat confused as to how it works, as to how much skills, how much RGN are involved into the whole combat system. Also, I’ll be surprised if this comes out this year, as there’s still no real dates for it.

3. Dragon’s Dogma
Capcom would release some of the best games, if they wouldn’t cancel them just when they’ve teased us enough with them. Anyway, this is supposed to be a Japan take on the western RPG, more or less. I’ve seen some good and some bad in terms of previews, but I’m mostly hoping the combat is deeper than what they’ve shown so far.

2. Doctor Who: Worlds in Time
A Doctor Who game, I hope it’s made by Telltale! (Oh wait, it’s not). Ok well, I hope it’s a point and click adventure game! (Nope, it’s a platformer). Well damn. I love platformers, but from what I’ve seen, this looks as good as the average platform game inspired by a movie in the 90s. So I’m somewhat doubting the upcoming quality of this Who game playable on PS3 (and others I don’t care about). But I’ll still look it up.

1. Dragon Quest X: Mezameshi Itsutsu no Shuzoku Online
Really, really curious how this will turn out. I’ve played some fun Dragon Quest mmorpg on some site I forgot the name, fan-made of course. So I can see the combat working. What I’m really hoping for though, is a deep story and setting, that keeps it as amazing as FFXI was. Also, I’m hoping it won’t release on Wii, or Wii U. Yeah.. That’s probably enough of a reason for me to pass it up. Doesn’t change that I’ll still look it up.

Top 3 big titles not excited for
3. Resident Evil 6
Oh it looks great from the little we’ve seen. But I never could manage playing 4 or 5 beyond a certain point. I know, I suck. But yeah, little excitement for probably one of the big legit release this year.

2. Diablo III
Click click click click click… click click click. Sorry, I really can’t dig it.

1. Call of Duty 2012 (or whatever it’ll be called)
Pow pow pow pow explosion. Millions of people will buy it. I’m not one of them.

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Let’s Bet!

Let’s Bet is a new feature where we’ll speculate on future events and see who gets as close to the truth as possible in the form of a contest. From time to time, it’ll only be for fun, but other times we’ll put something in play. This is all for fun’s sake and nothing more.

Specific rules are set  for each contest and everyone is welcome to try their shot at it from the comments. And if you beat us to it? I guarantee we’ll have a prize for you!

To participate: Post in the comments or send us a tweet @thesavepoints using the tag #NGPbet.

After years of speculations, Sony revealed yesterday in Japan its official successor to the PSP, the NGP (Next Generation Portable). Now it’s obviously an expensive piece of technology that’s going to cost a fortune to Sony to manufacture. Just the front screen seems to be worth $200+ alone  (5 inch OLED capacitive Touchscreen, 16 million colors, 960 × 544 pixels).

Will we have to leave saving our beloved one for another day to buy it? Will we have to sell our clothes? Will Sony get rich over the NGP?

Will it compete with the Nintendo 3DS or will it aim for the iPad/Iphone/Android market?

So let’s play a variation of price is right on this one.

How much do you think each of the Next Generation Portable SKUs will cost?

Since there’s speculations on two different units, one supporting 3G and the other one without 3G, let’s speculate on both prices.

Important: Missing one of the two prices will be taken as speculating the cheaper one will cost $0.

To determine who is the winner, we’ll add up the difference between the guessed price of both SKUs (w/3G, w/o 3G) and whoever has the smallest number wins.

We’re testing waters with this one, so the prize will be on me. (And if I win, no one gets anything!)

Prize for this contest: $30 certificate at the Amazon Online store of your choice (.com, .ca, .uk, etc.)

Note: Entry will end as soon as we’re aware that Sony will announce the price, or whenever they do announce it.

Tie-breaker:  We’ll find a way to settle tie-breakers shortly.

Edit: Tie-breakers will go to the earlier entry if it’s out of the staff. If it’s in staff, I’ll split it up. If it’s staff and public, I’ll give it to the earliest public entry and give something too to the winning staff member.

We’re expecting a price announced during the Sony E3 conference (man I wish I could be there again this year, it was pretty cool being there last year), so entries will be taken until June 4 11:59 PM. If that’s not the case, we’ll review the date.

See what  bets have been made  so far after the jump.

Our Bets:

David:

NGP without 3G: $379,99

NGP with 3G: $449,99

Jobocan:

NGP without 3G: $400

NGP with 3G: $450

Victor:

NGP without 3G: $300

NGP with 3G: $350

Mitsuki:

NGP without 3G: $350

NGP with 3G: $400

Wintrale:

NGP without 3G: $499

NGP with 3G: $549

Josh:

NGP without 3G: $449

NGP with 3G: $549

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Releases on the virtual console have been few and far between lately on the Wii, almost has few and far between as I’ve been posting lately. Is it because they’re running out of good games to put on it? I highly doubt so. Only Nintendo would really know what the hell is going on.

I wrote most of this review a while back, so I’ll keep the old format, but from my next post, I’ll use the same system Jo started using.

But enough rambling. This week they released a NES/Famicom gem that hadn’t seen a release in North America. It was called Hebereke in Japan and Ufouria in PAL regions. It was featured adventure-action gameplay similar to games like Metroid, but overall took from all that was good about games from the NES era while also showing hints of more recent standards in videogames, like infinite continues and the ability to pick right back up where you last left (assuming in this case you wrote down the password, which you’ll probably won’t need as you can beat the game in one sit).

So was the 20 years wait in North America worth it? You know the drill, find out after the jump.

Developer: Sunsoft
Publisher: Sunsoft
Date of Release: August 23rd 2010
Platforms: Wii’s Virtual Console (originally on Famicom/Nes)

Genre: Action-Adventure (Metroidvania)
Rated E for Everyone

Story

I really didn’t pay any attention to the story intro, so here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Bop-Louie and his friends live in a world named Ufouria , The characters stumble upon a crater, in which his friends fall in. Bop-Louie climbs in, but suddenly blanks out. He finds out that he must find all 3 of his other friends, all of which suffer from amnesia and take on Bop-Louie as a threat.

The Japanese version had a very different story apparently and some different sprites for the character, which was common back then (see Doki Doki Panic/Super Mario Bros 2 US). It also had some weird alterations. I guess birds dropping dung didn’t make sense to the Europeans, so they changed that to 16 tons weights, which makes a whole lot more sense (it doesn’t).

But anyway, as you play the game, you need to free your friends, who join you into beating mini-bosses, getting upgrades and finding keys to the final boss.

It took me around three hours to get through the whole game on my first (and only) play-through.

Presentation

The game’s graphics are pretty good for an 8-bit game. It’s comparable to some other late NES/Famicom games.  The game sometimes runs into slowdowns when there are too many sprites on screen. I wish they wouldn’t emulate that kind of things in the virtual console, but again, I guess it’s the nostalgia factor. An on/off option would be great. But anyway, this isn’t a Virtual Console review; I’m 4 years too late for that. The slowdowns can be really annoying though, since they mostly happen during boss fights and can change the flow of the fight easily, in both directions. They can make a specific boss ultra easy or make it hell just because of it.
Other than that, the game has some great 8-bit music, which is always a great point for old school games, and it was a pleasure to be introduced to old classic 8-bit tunes.

The menus are a bit weird to navigate at first, but they work well once you get around switching from one character to another pretty often. As for the graphics and music, they’re your usual NES ones. Simple graphics, catchy chiptunes.

Gameplay

I want to keep this on the short side so I’m skipping ahead to gameplay. After freeing all your friends, you have access to four different characters with different abilities each. One can swim on the water and run on ice, one can swim under water, one is your run of the mill average guy and the last one is a ghost that can jump farther than the others. They also each get an attack upgrade and a few other boosts along the game.

Most of the game is spent exploring in a Metroidvania fashion, opening access to new areas and boss fights as you go along. Most of it is fairly easy and you’ll hardly have a problem going through most of the game.

There were a few challenging sections, but nothing really hardcore if you played any Megaman games, or if you played something along the lines of Battle Kid, Ufouria will be a cakewalk for you. It’s still a fun game to go through though.

Most of the first few boss fights are quite simple and will almost hold your hands, but a few of the last ones are mild, fun, challenges, so don’t be deceived by the first few encounters.

Overall

I feel that Ufouria is still one of the must-have on the virtual console, especially if you’re in North America, as it was a good title we didn’t get a chance to pick up back in the 90s.  It won’t come with the pure nostalgia dose buying a game like Excitebike or Super Mario Bros. 3 would provide, but it’s still has a good chunk of old school charm.

The story isn’t all that great and the ending is pretty dumb, but it’s definitely not why we played games back then.

Pros and Cons

Pros
- Fun (yes)
- Metroidvania style gameplay

Cons
- On the short side (3 hours to get everything done)
- Story is stupid, especially the ending

The Save Factor

When it comes to the save factor for this game, I don’t remember how much it cost me on the virtual console (I believe it was $5), but $5 does sound like the best fit for this game.

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The steampunk setting is a setup we don’t see all that often in recent works (or at least not that I’ve noticed). So it doesn’t come as overplayed when games like Clockwork Man 2 – The Hidden World comes along.  I’ve never tried the prequel to this casual game, but it didn’t stop me from being able to enjoy this one.

So what exactly is this game? It’s a puzzle adventure game, not unlike the such as the Monkey Islands, with its own rules and features. It mixes the elements of the prior mentioned game, where you need to use and mix items to solve puzzles and another part where you’re looking for specific items in screens filled with beautifully-drawn objects.

So did I enjoy it enough to recommend this game to the casual gamers in you? Read on to find out!

Developer: GameHouse
Publisher: GameHouse
Date of Release: Premium Edition: July 21, 2010
Platforms: PC (with a Mac version coming in September)

Genre: Hidden Object, Puzzle Adventure (think Visual Novels)
Players: 1

Story

The story picks up two years after the events of the first game. Like I mentioned, you won’t need to play the first one to understand what’s going on, as The Hidden World provides enough background information to the characters and setting for you to understand what’s going on.

So you play as Miranda Calomy, daughter of parents that left her eight years ago as they went on a journey. After finding artifacts left by her parents, Miranda finds herself on the way to Ireland looking for the Hidden World, while also running away from people interested in the secrets of those artifacts and mostly how they are related to this hidden world.

The story takes a few interesting twists that keeps it interesting enough to make you keep caring about the story. It’s nothing surprising and overly unexpected, but I don’t think that was the intent either. The story is just there enough for you to care about, without being intrusive too much into the gameplay, which is what really matters.

Presentation

The Premium Edition comes with a bunch of neat stuff. Most importantly, the chapter 3 is only available in this edition. There’s 6 chapters (plus a prologue), so I wonder why and how they went and removed the third one out of the standard edition, especially since it explains how you get to the entrance The Hidden World.

Also with the PE, you get what GameHouse calls an “Interactive Bonus Feature” set, which is a separate exe program that includes music from the game you can use to listen to or as a ringtone, in mp3 format, a bunch of wallpapers and concept arts and an interactive walkthrough that proved really helpful for the less obvious puzzles when I was stuck.

The game itself has a pretty handy interface, with items on top of the screen, abilities to help you find objects and solve puzzles on the lower left and your notebook and objectives on the lower right. It works well, and the only gripes I have with the presentation are minor.

First and foremost, even though I have a pretty good PC, it seems like the game runs on a software mouse or something, as it doesn’t move as smoothly as I wished at times. I have a really good video card, so I assume the game runs mostly off the CPU and probably doesn’t use more than one core, explaining why I would have problems?

Other than that, sometimes the game won’t close unless I end the process in the task manager. This is a really weird bug that might confuse people that wouldn’t know how to close a game this way.

One last bug I encountered was early on in the game, I need to scroll on a screen to the left, but the game wouldn’t let me. This was fixed by exiting the area, going elsewhere then going back.

Graphics

On the graphics side, everything is in 2D, but most of it is drawn at a pretty high resolution and everything is in layers, which adds a really neat and pretty sense of depth, especially when you use one of the game’s key features, the scrolling.

When you scroll horizontally through the scenery, objects closer to you move at a pace differently than those further from you, and this is always somewhat fun to look at and it also adds depth to the gameplay itself, as you might miss hidden spots where that last item you’re looking for is hidden.

I was also really impressed by the attention to details in both the drawings themselves and all the little touches in the scenery. For example, at one point in chapter 3, you’re in a submarine looking and looking through the glass you can see some kind of big fish monster’s shadow swimming through. Overall this game is really pretty to look at as long as you’re not of the mind that what makes a game pretty is its number of polygons… Joking aside, I’m not kidding when I was awed at some of the drawings.

Sound

The ambient music in the game fits right in, and while it’s nothing stellar, it’s good enough to feel the atmosphere of the game and doesn’t intrude on the experience.

The voice acting goes from great, Miranda and Sprocket (the robot that does noises to speak) are examples of voice acting done well for this kind of game, while others just feel like they’re talking to a tin can and not to another person.

Gameplay

The gameplay here is split mostly between finding hidden objects and puzzles. So I’ll separate this section between both.

Hidden Objects

About 70% of the game is spent going through one area to another and sometimes coming back to find hidden objects on the screen.  It’s a pretty simple concept; you click on the screen on objects that matches the list given to you to find what you need. The objects written in white on the list are fillers while the yellow ones will be useful to you for the puzzle parts.

Now you can click most of the time all over the place to try and get everything. That’s how I started most areas, as I was very likely to find what a good chunk of my list like that. But eventually, you’ll need to scrutinize and pay more attention to details, as a lot of the objects are camouflaged in the environment.

Adding to the challenge is the fact that some areas will have a second sub-areas you can zoom to, while others will let you scroll horizontally (and on rare occasions vertically).  The trickiest one though (and the most frequent ones) have you scroll through the area horizontally, letting you see at the same time from different angles behind objects that are in the foreground.

Still, there’s always the tougher one to find. Like I mentioned, some items tends to camouflage themselves in the scenery. For that, you have a few tools to really turns the odds for you. Sprocket, your steam-robot has abilities (that runs on cooldowns) for you to use. One is a sonar that will highlight the items for a brief moment. One will directly spot you where to find one of the items (randomly). One other will show you what the item you’re looking for looks like (you select from your list) and finally there’s the hints button, but that’s mostly for the puzzles.

It’s obviously the most casual part of the game and is more a relaxing distraction and a mean if you will to move further through the story than a fun and exciting or mind-bending challenge.  But that’s alright, we all have times where that’s what we feel like doing.  It’s not any different than playing Where’s Waldo really.

Puzzles

The rest of the game is spent solving different type of puzzles, going from making items by mixing stuff together in the right order to logic, observation and deduction based puzzles.

These are obviously the more fun part and some of them will keep you stuck if you don’t take your time to think about it. Others require popular classic culture knowledge to solve. And some are just plain brutal, chapter 3 hosting the worst of them in terms of difficulty as you’re trying to play with water pressure between three tubes and the solution requires over a dozen manipulations from neutral settings to get right. I think I would have given up if it wouldn’t have been for the walkthrough included with the Premium Edition.

But anyway, the puzzles were quite original and interesting, simply because the variation was very diverse and almost every single ones required a different perspective on things.

Overall

It should take you between around 4 hours to get through the game. Give or take one or so, depending on how much you rely on the walkthrough or how clever you are at solving some of the puzzles.

It’s a fun game with an intriguing story and it’s still a casual game, though some parts felt as deep or even deeper than some other games we consider non-casual. So take it as you may, I’ve enjoyed the hours I’ve spent through the game and I really wanted to get through the story as I played to find out what was going to happen next.

It might also be worth mentioning that you won’t be making dialogue choices in this game and that everything follows the script to the letter. I wouldn’t count this as a negative point, as I see it more as a choice of direction against another.

Pros and Cons

Pros
- Really beautiful art.
- The “horizontal scrolling” affecting the layers at different speeds is worth being seen.
-  Fun Challenging puzzles.
-  Story, characters and setting are quite charming.
- Actually quite long for a casual game.

Cons
- The few bugs
- Once you’ve beaten the game, there’s zero replay-value.
- Some of the voice acting is cringe-worthy.
- Standard Edition is missing a chapter in the middle of the story

The Save Factor

The standard edition goes for $6,99 and the Premium Edition goes for $19,99. But I think that $4 would be a good price for the standard edition and $8 for the Premium Edition considering the extra chapter that actually completes the story and the bonus features makes it worth at least twice as much as the Standard Edition.  But this also takes into account that you can get a game like Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge for $10 and that will keep you busy for a lot longer.

You can find the game here:  The Clockwork Man 2 – The Hidden World

A review copy was given to us for reviewing purposes.

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The Nintendo DS has proven, through its multiple versions to be a solid product in terms of marketing and mass appeal. Nintendo was ready at this year’s E3 to let part of the public get their hands on the next iteration of their portable gaming system, the Nintendo 3DS.

I’ve had the chance to try it after waiting a relatively short time (about 25 minutes in line) and I’ve got good things and bad things to say about it.

Let’s start with the bad. I promise it’s going to be actually short.

We all know by now the 3DS’s new features. Larger top-screen, an analog stick and one 3D screen without the need of 3D dedicated glasses.

I’ve always been a camper on 3D, I don’t particularly enjoy it that much, but I’ve never been one to complain either about headaches, etc.  But here, the 3DS, after only a few minutes of playing in 3D, had my eyes and the image itself twitching and I was getting a bit of a headache after a while.  Now I can give it the benefit of the doubt. It’s a newer technology, and the 3DS itself is still in development. It could also be me not calibrating it well.

And that’s about it for the bad. Now for the good, there’s a lot more.

The 3DS is something every gamer out there should be excited for. Heck, even non-gamers will love it, I’m sure and here’s why.

The 3DS features tons of new things the DSi doesn’t have.

I’m going to start on the not game-related part.

It takes pictures… in 3D!

This might fall into gimmicks soon enough, or some brilliant people will make some neat art with it. But I was pretty surprised to see the result of seeing myself, in a picture, in 3D after one lady took a picture of me with a 3DS.  The depth of the picture of myself and what was in front of me and behind was clearly visible with the naked eye.

The other feature that will catch the attention of the non-gaming mass is the ability to watch movies in 3D on it. Just like with the GBA before it, Nintendo is going to try again to sell movies for the portable platform. But this time you’ll be able to watch Hollywood’s latest 3D movies without wearing those unfashionable glasses.

I’ve watched two different movie trailers in 3D on the 3DS and they looked fantastic, and well, not any different then I imagine they will do with the glasses.

Now, now, how about the games?

The first one I got to try was Pilotwing, which felt a bit dull compared to the original. And was kind of a bad introduction to they system for me, but the 3D did work well.

Next was a Star Fox 64 remake. The game controls didn’t feel as precise as they were on the N64 and the 3D didn’t work too much for me on this one. I must say I was a bit disappointed there too.

I’ve also seen some tech demos. They were of NES games rendered in 3D in terms of layers of foregrounds and backgrounds and it was a neat effect that would probably have me go ahead and try. It wasn’t playable on floor though.

The Kid Icarus trailer was awesome. I haven’t been one of the people clamouring for a new Kid Icarus game, simply because, while the original was a great (and very challenging) game, I didn’t see how it would fit to re-use the same gameplay in today’s standards.  And as a matter of fact, it doesn’t look like they did.  The game looks amazingly fun and looks like it’s going to be a huge experience to go through, with multiple types of gameplay types. There’s some stuff done through flying and other stuff on the ground.

One last game I want to mention, and probably the one that left its mark the most on me. I’m not sure if it had a name, but it looked more like a tech demo than a full game. It wasn’t particularly fun, but it was more of a big hint at the 3DS’s capabilities to re-invent how we play games.

It had me taking a picture of my face, and rounding it up in 3D to make some kind of balloon with my face drawn on it, wearing a helmet.

I was then moving the 3DS itself as the controller, to spot the balloons and to through balls at it to defend myself, until the boss showed up, which was a bigger version of the other balloons and took a lot of hits before going down.

It wasn’t particularly fun like I said, but it showed a lot of the 3DS’s potential.

I’m going to end this hands-on with the hardware itself.

The graphics are really great. They’re on the level of the Wii easily, and they look better as they’re on a smaller screen with a good resolution.

The top screen is quite big, but it’s weird now that they don’t have the lower screen as big as the top one.

The 3DS itself doesn’t weight too much so it shouldn’t tire your arms out too quick through those long play sessions, but it weights enough so that you won’t get cramps from feeling like you’re not holding anything.

The analog stick, one of the new features, feels ok, but it’s still no 360 or PS3 controllers thumb sticks, so don’t expect as much accuracy as those.

And that’s about it, I only had about 20 minutes to get around and try it out. So that’s as much as I can say from my experience.

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So what is this game about and how much does it fare for its price tag of $4,99, which seems at first glance a bit high for the concept of “minis”? Read on to find out!

Developer: Creat Studios
Date of Release: April 8, 2010
Platforms: Minis (PSP, PS3) [Review copy was played on PS3]

Genre: 2D-Platforming Puzzles
Players: 1

Story and Presentation

Hell, isn’t a fun place, Freek, a devilish creature, is stuck doing chores because he won’t bring himself to cause harm to others.  But he’s had enough so he sets out to make his way to Heaven. Shortly on his way, he finds a magical trident in a treasure room and will make good use of it to make his way to Paradise, where he hopes things are a bit better.  Of course, being magical, the trident has powers, which powers you ask? Well, the powers to poke other devilish creatures and make good use of them to solve puzzles.

The setup is slightly childish, but makes for a good setup for the whole game, and got me playing for much longer than I expected a game of this price to make me, and well, everything holds well together.  For example, you’re a devil, and so are your enemies, so you or they can’t die or feel pain. If they come to an outcome where they would normally die, they will simply appear back from their designated portal, just like you do, except they’re also checkpoints in Freek’s case, when you fall off.

As far as presentation is concerned, booting the game will be the place where you’ll wait the most. You’ll get a lot of loading time when trying to create a save file and actually going into the game.  That’s most likely more related to the minis architecture than anything.  But after that, the loading is barely noticeable and makes for smooth transitions while you’re actually playing.  Whenever you “die”, you re-spawn at your portal really quickly, which prevents from really frustrating you from your failure. The same goes for the other devils, if they meet a bitter fate, they’ll be back at their portal in a matter of a few seconds.

Other than that, the world map is easy to navigate, the in-game controls works pretty well on the basic things, but I’ll be covering a few issues in a bit about these.

The game does make good use of things like 2D and 3D. The graphics are obviously 3D, the gameplay though is in 2D most of the time, but still takes that third dimension into consideration for a few things.

Graphics and Sounds

This is a PSP game. I played it on my PS3, expecting it to look not so good. I must say the actual upscaling of the graphics exceeded my expectations.  Yes, it’s still noticeable that the game is originally in the PSP resolution due to some lack of details, but it comes out really clean on my 32’’ TV.

The actual models and textures are on the level of your average 3D PSP game and really far from being an eyesore and could be actually be called “cute” if anything Tim Burton created as ever been called that too.

While the canned sound effects are to be expected in a game of this size, a lot of the music is reminiscent of the music found in Little Big Planet, with ironically cheerful, yet sometimes a bit too repetitive beats.

A nice touch from the developers too, is how some (or all?) of the levels are deviations from songs names.  Songs like “sticking in the name” obviously refers to Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name of and “number of the freak” refers to Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast.

Gameplay

As for the meat of the game, I was simply baffled. Weak minds really does need not apply here, you’ll be broken.  Hell is a tough place, but I’d have assumed this cutesy one wouldn’t be so bad. Turns out I was wrong.  This game requires a lot of thinking and ingenuity to use the tools at your disposal. It also had me take 26 minutes to beat a level that can be sped run in less than two minutes. But I like it.  Too many games these days are holding our hands and afraid to make us feel stupid, so they reward us, whether we tried or not. This game does not.

So how does it all work? A lot like Kirby’s Adventure on NES and a few of its sequels, and again it does not.  Using your magical trident, you poke devils of a multitude of variety to use their abilities to solve puzzles and make your way across tricky platforming.  As an example, you’ll be using some mushroom looking devil as a spring and/or pogo stick, a two-horned devil which packs quite a punch, a devil with an ability to suck you in their mouth and spit you out.  There’s a lot more than those mentioned here, like one that makes you glide and one that really loves hugging anything and they all play a part in your escape.

Also, all devils will be pissed-off, increase their powers and attack the nearest devil when you let go of them, which plays a lot in solving your way to heaven.  One puzzle that comes in plenty of flavours is one that uses switches and doors.  The switch requires one of the devils that loves hugging to activate, and they’re usually in a really hard to reach spot, and then you’ll have a limited time to reach the related door.  And don’t underestimate those too; I rarely made it more than just in time beyond a door.

While puzzles play an important part, there’s also an equivalent part of well-designed platforming.  From leap of faith to tricky timing, there’s plenty to go around in terms of jumping from one platform to another and that part doesn’t disappoint.

There are also a few things that annoyed me, like how I’d bounce back really far in specific conditions like being thrown toward a hugger devil instead of being caught by it or how jumping would “not work” like a lot of old-school NES games that were unforgiving in your jump button press timing.  But really, these are minor complaints, given the nature of the game.

Overall

It’s been years since I’ve seen platforming mixed with puzzles so well-thought out. Little Big Planet and New Mario Wii have nothing on this.  Though these two have their fun side of things, Freekscape requires a lot of planning and foretelling.  This does have a down-side.  I couldn’t complete the game, and I’m afraid a lot of more casual and less casual players will give up way before where I got stuck and I personally lost too much time trying to figure some stuff out.  Maybe I was just not seeing something obvious too, but at that point I doubt it. I still managed to get plenty of hours of fun with this. There’s also a steep curve on execution at some points. Like you’ll see the solution to the puzzle, but won’t manage to do all the tasks it requires without messing up and needing to start over, too many times.

Pros and Cons

Pros

- Variety of abilities are fun to use.
- Awesome plaftorming
- Some really fun puzzles
- Interesting secret paths to explore.

Cons

- Progress-blocking difficulty is sometimes really frustrating.
- Controls are slightly less functional than I’d like to see them.

PSP minis impressions

This next part has nothing to do with the actual game and more about the minis themselves so feel free to skip it.

Minis have been available since last Fall on PSN, and been playable on the PS3 (as well as the PSP) for almost as long now, but I don’t think anyone here had given those a spin yet.

Well, I must say I’m fairly impressed by the system, which didn’t show much issues on the PS3, even though it’s ran on PSP coding. The only real issue I’ve come across was when I first started the game, the creating save files took a bit of time, but I imagine that’s because it needed to create/emulate a PRO Duo Stick or something.

The scaling on the tested game, as mentioned above, is working really well and doesn’t show any artefacts from the resizing. So if you see any minis you are interested into but worried it won’t look too well on the PS3, I would stop worrying and grab it.

This whole category seems also like a great way for smaller development teams to prove themselves.

The Save Factor

The starting price of $5 is a bit too low honestly. $7 would be a better price in my opinion, even if I couldn’t get to the end I’ve had enough hours of enjoyment, more than plenty standards PSN games sold twice the price. Heck, if you think you can get through all of it, I’m rather sure you’d get your money’s worth at $10.

NOTE: We were given a copy of the game for review. This does not affect our judgment of a game.

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Hideo Kojima is already deep in thoughts about his next project.

On Twitter he shares the following two statements.

“I’m pondering over the next project’s voice cast. I still do not have the details embedded, but everything is running simultaneously in my head. The title, game design, story, characters, setting, mechs, casting, direction of the graphics, sound, beginning & ending, and key story sequences. It all molds together naturally in my head.”

“I still have loads of work for PW, but my mind is in “The Next Title Mode.” This is bad. I have to get my mind set on PW. I think about it without noticing, obsessing over it, unconsciously smiling and getting excited. Once again, thinking about “The Next Title.””

What does this all mean? Well one thing for sure, mechs seems to be included. Could be more Metal Gear, which, Kojima really doesn’t need to do anymore of those.  Could be a possible new IP. But it could also be what everyone really wants… Zone of the Enders 3!

Let’s just hope that the answer is not another Metal Gear. Love them, but Kojima really doesn’t need to do anymore of them.

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The guys (and gals?) of Creat Studios [Digger HD, Cuboid, Mushroom Wars, Hamsterball and more] are bringing you a new PSP Minis game this week.

Freekscape: Escape from Hell is the name of the game, playable on either your PSP or your PS3.

The game has you trying to escape Hell and mixes platforming and puzzles similarly to what seems to me as a Kirby game.

Freek found a magic trident that can change powers depending on the monsters you grab with it, and helps you solve puzzles, rings a bell a bit, doesn’t it?

You can watch the trailer on the PlayStation Blog and grab the game when it comes out this Thursday at the irregular PSN Store update time for $4,99.

We should also have a review up early this weekend!

Additional screenshot after the break.

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Aksys Games revealed earlier today through a press release that about a year after the release of Calamity Trigger, the sequel subtitled Continuum Shift will be coming out in North America. That’s right; expect another summer of intense fighting as Aksys announced today the release of Arc System’s latest arcade hit in Japan. But don’t think for a second Continuum Shift is just a few characters tacked on and a new packaging.

Read on to find out what’s new in this pseudo-sequel.

A lot of work has seemingly been put on the title to justify the price-tag. New playable characters counts among Hazama, Tsubaki and μ-12 (pronounced Mu). No words on Λ-11 (Lambda) though, a character available in the arcade version.

Additionally to the new characters, the old ones have been rebalanced and are getting some new moves.

New modes such as beginner mode, which will let newer players to the genre play the game with simpler and easier controls, and tutorial mode are welcomed additions breaking the entry barrier for many.

Meanwhile for the more experienced and adventurous, challenge mode will let you take on specific missions and Legion mode will have you make an army to take over Kagutsuchi (the world Blazblue takes place in) in a mix between strategy and fighting games.

Finally, Continuum Shift will boast four new arenas and seven new songs composed by Daisuke Ishiwatari, well-known among Guilty Gears and Blazblue fans for his work on those series.

The game is being released in Japan on console on July 1st, so we can expect it in North America sometime through July or August.

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More screens after the break.

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