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I want to introduce you to one of my co-workers, Robby Zinchak. Don’t let his young looks fool you. He’s an up-and-coming associate producer extraordinaire who’s ready to answer all your questions regarding this truly unique, downloadable game. Just don’t ask him to show you his ID. (Just kidding Robby.)

Hi! This is my first time posting here, so I figure I should introduce myself first My name is Robby, and I’m the Associate Producer on FLOCK! here at Capcom. As mentioned previously on this blog, the new episode of Qore (available today!) includes both a video feature on FLOCK! and a fully playable demo!

The premise of FLOCK! is simple: you’re a UFO (the ‘Flocker’) which seeks to abduct animals. Through the levels, you’ll abduct these cute animals by herding them into your Motherflocker (yes, really, we named the ship that :P). But it’s not a simple point A to point B operation – all sorts of peril and surprises lie between the animals and their destination. For instance, in one level you’ll play, there are crops between the sheep and the ship, so you’ll have to make crop circles with your UFO’s depressor beam to make a path for them to cross (finally we know the true purpose behind all those crop circles!). Through the game, you’ll have to contend with numerous challenges. Among these challenges, your flock will face pits, scarecrows, water, bridges, and even trampolines that’ll send them flying!

The full game also includes co-op gameplay, so you can bring a friend in to help you herd the animals. In co-op levels, you’ll have to work together to get your objectives met. For instance, one player may need to lift a gate while another player herds the animals through the gate. It’s a lot of fun, so look forward to it! One of our more unique features is the ability to create your own maps with our built in map-editor. We use the same tool to make the official levels, so you’ll have a lot of flexibility and power in the kind of maps you’re able to make. Plus, you can even upload your maps online where you’ll be able to share them with other players.

Each of the levels (over 50!) is replayable – there are bonuses to beating the map quickly and also beating the map perfectly by collecting all animals. As you beat levels, you’ll unlock new abilities to use and items to place in the editor. Sometimes you’ll need to unlock something later in the game that’ll help you beat a level earlier in the game perfectly. Between all the levels and modes included, we think you’ll be getting a lot of gameplay value out of this downloadable game!

So, hopefully that’s a good introduction to FLOCK!. Don’t forget to download the FLOCK! Winter Qore Demo — you’ll be among the first to ever play the game! It includes a full six levels, with three of the four animals unlocked to play with. We’ve even included the level editor to make your own levels! I’ll keep an eye out for comments here and reply where I’m able to. Keep your eyes out for more FLOCK! news in the coming weeks – we’ll have lots more information coming soon!

So Rusty wanted me to write a little blog post about Everyday Shooter for PSP. I don’t really know what to talk about so I guess I’ll start chronological and see where that goes.

I actually tried porting Everyday Shooter to PSP way back around December 20th, 2007, and stopped around December 27th, 2007. Here’s an old video I found from back then:

WHAT!!??!? WHY DIDN’T YOU RELEASE IT!?!?? WHY DID YOU SIT ON IT FOR 239846921487 MONTHS YOU SON OF SO MANY UNMENTIONABLE THINGS!!!!!!!

I thought the same thing until I remembered that it crashed every eight seconds, had a ridiculously low frame rate, was missing graphics and effects, and generally blew.

Yeah, Everyday Shooter PSP really worried me at the time. I was convinced to get the game running properly it needed to be hacked to shreds - reducing the number of enemies, changing all the
backgrounds, changing the enemy graphics - ugh, this is going to SUCK.

So I dropped the idea until Rusty contacted my agent, Warren, and I, saying Sony was interested in putting Everyday Shooter on PSP. Immediately, the floodgates opened to the stress of so many potential problems sweeping my soul to the faraway depths of darkness where it was then beaten repeatedly at three frames per second before crashing…

But Rusty said (paraphrased): “Jon, this is how it’s going to go down. We’re going to hire this developer [Backbone], and I know this guy, he is one of the best programmers I know. And the deal is going to be this: if they even hint at a suggestion of messing with your vision, we are going to fire them and find a new developer. This is going to be a straight port, we are not going to mess with your vision.”

Skeptically, I replied “and the boobies?” To which he answered “no boobies.”

Honestly, I was still skeptical.

I was also told that the original QA team for ES-PS3 was brought in to test the PSP version too, so I’m quite confident that it was left in good hands.

I’m amazed at the job Backbone did:

They actually ported it without altering any of the graphics, effects, or gameplay! How!?? No seriously, how did you do that!? Like, even the backgrounds? I was expecting to have to do this whole back and forth about what graphics needed to be changed and redesigned, what enemies needed to be reduced, gimping the game just for the sake of performance… NO! Not at all! They just somehow made it work. What is this sweet juice of hexadecimal that you drink from and where do I get it?

Then again, I’m not technically a great programmer, so maybe there’s some simple secret I’m not aware of. I generally just multiply things by negative one if they don’t work because in math, to get the opposite of something you just multiply it by negative one. Since the opposite of “doesn’t work” is “it works,” multiplying numbers by negative one should yield a correct result. Unfortunately, when
applying this strategy to Everyday Shooter PSP it still didn’t work.

Thus, and clearly thus, there was no solution.

Of course Backbone proved me wrong.

I think this is a pretty accurate port of the game. I mean, I played it till my hands cramped, jotting down every subtle problem, some bordering on imaginary, but yet still fixed. For example, the first
few builds I played, everything looked great and seemed to be in working order but something was weird. I kept getting beaned by the game! I mean, I couldn’t even get to level 4! Suspecting my own
skill level, I busted out the PS3 version just to make sure and to my surprise, I was still able reach the final stage with just three starting lives. It’s got to be the port.

Okay, so how do you convince someone that this is actually a bug and not because of some lack of skill on my part? I mean, otherwise, the game felt exactly like the PS3 version, so there was no factual information to draw from except for “well, Jon thinks it’s too hard now.” For weeks, I kept thinking they were going to ignore it, and it’ll get released, and the internet will swallow me whole, and then it will hurt a lot.

But amazingly, the bug was found. Apparently (and from what I recall — I might be wrong), it had something to do with timing issues since Everyday Shooter PSP runs at a much lower simulation rate given that the PSP isn’t as powerful as the PS3.

To this day, I’m still not sure if anyone believed me on this, and I’m not even sure if I believed myself (I’m quite positive it was way harder, though), and I totally see that the whole thing just sounded nuts and imaginary, but either way, Backbone was gracious enough to give me the benefit of the doubt and make this change. I know some people who paid a silver dollar only to have their ports birched by shoddy developers, so I’m very grateful for the amount of effort and attention Backbone gave to the project.

Anyway, we tried to make this as accurate as possible. Warren called me a few weeks before the final build asking whether I played the PSP port yet and what I thought of it. I replied, “I don’t know what to say. I mean, it’s basically Everyday Shooter PS3, except it’s running on a PSP.”
_______________________

• PEGI 3 - The game content is considered suitable for all age groups. 
• PEGI 7 - The game may contain some violence of a non-realistic nature in relation to fantasy characters, which might be frightening to very children but is considered suitable for those aged 7 and over.
  
• PEGI 12 - The game may include instances of violence of a non-realistic nature, but only towards fantasy characters. There is no violence towards human-looking characters or recognizable animals. Suitable for players aged 12 and over.
  
• PEGI 16 - Adult behavior and violence can start to look life-like. Suitable for players 16 and over.
  
• PEGI 18 - The adult classification is applied to games that are suitable only for an adult audience. Subject matter and graphical details can mirror levels of detail in the storytelling found in adult television programs and movies. Suitable for those 18 years old and over.

With a little over three weeks until Christmas, parents are under increased pressure from children looking to play their favourite games. But not all games are suitable for younger children so the games industry, which always has child safety at the forefront of its mind, knows that it is of paramount importance that parents carefully check the PEGI ratings and descriptors to ensure the game s suitability for the intended player.

• Conservative Christian Investment Firm flags gay content in games
• Porn game company to bypass ESRB, Sony, Ninty, MS; to create own adult game industry
• Parental advisory: 5 Best Kid Friendly Games '08
• Parental Advisory Group: MK vs. DC is family-friendly
  

• PEGI 3 - The game content is considered suitable for all age groups. 
• PEGI 7 - The game may contain some violence of a non-realistic nature in relation to fantasy characters, which might be frightening to very children but is considered suitable for those aged 7 and over.
  
• PEGI 12 - The game may include instances of violence of a non-realistic nature, but only towards fantasy characters. There is no violence towards human-looking characters or recognizable animals. Suitable for players aged 12 and over.
  
• PEGI 16 - Adult behavior and violence can start to look life-like. Suitable for players 16 and over.
  
• PEGI 18 - The adult classification is applied to games that are suitable only for an adult audience. Subject matter and graphical details can mirror levels of detail in the storytelling found in adult television programs and movies. Suitable for those 18 years old and over.

With a little over three weeks until Christmas, parents are under increased pressure from children looking to play their favourite games. But not all games are suitable for younger children so the games industry, which always has child safety at the forefront of its mind, knows that it is of paramount importance that parents carefully check the PEGI ratings and descriptors to ensure the game s suitability for the intended player.

• Conservative Christian Investment Firm flags gay content in games
• Porn game company to bypass ESRB, Sony, Ninty, MS; to create own adult game industry
• Parental advisory: 5 Best Kid Friendly Games '08
• Parental Advisory Group: MK vs. DC is family-friendly
  

• PEGI 3 - The game content is considered suitable for all age groups. 
• PEGI 7 - The game may contain some violence of a non-realistic nature in relation to fantasy characters, which might be frightening to very children but is considered suitable for those aged 7 and over.
  
• PEGI 12 - The game may include instances of violence of a non-realistic nature, but only towards fantasy characters. There is no violence towards human-looking characters or recognizable animals. Suitable for players aged 12 and over.
  
• PEGI 16 - Adult behavior and violence can start to look life-like. Suitable for players 16 and over.
  
• PEGI 18 - The adult classification is applied to games that are suitable only for an adult audience. Subject matter and graphical details can mirror levels of detail in the storytelling found in adult television programs and movies. Suitable for those 18 years old and over.

With a little over three weeks until Christmas, parents are under increased pressure from children looking to play their favourite games. But not all games are suitable for younger children so the games industry, which always has child safety at the forefront of its mind, knows that it is of paramount importance that parents carefully check the PEGI ratings and descriptors to ensure the game s suitability for the intended player.

• Conservative Christian Investment Firm flags gay content in games
• Porn game company to bypass ESRB, Sony, Ninty, MS; to create own adult game industry
• Parental advisory: 5 Best Kid Friendly Games '08
• Parental Advisory Group: MK vs. DC is family-friendly
  

“It’s been a great high for the last couple of weeks,” Daniel Suarez, Activision’s executive producer for “Call of Duty: World At War” told me in an interview last week. Happy is any man whose game has launched so well that it topped — his words — the “bajillion pound gorilla” that is “World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King” in sales in the U.K in its launch week.

Suarez and I talked about a number of things during out interview, some of which I’ve covered here on Multiplayer this week — plans for upcoming DLC for the game and where the game’s surprising Nazi Zombie mode came from.

The first topic of my interview, however, was how the development team at Treyarch dealt with making a game in the shadow of “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.” That was the bajillion-pound gorilla as far as I was concerned.

It’s not every year that a development team puts out a game that so many critics don’t expect to be better than last year’s installment. How do you deal with that pressure?

“If you look at what was done for ‘Call of Duty 3,’ everybody goes, ‘Treyarch’s not very good’…Well they only had a year to do it.”

Suarez said his team was “100% aware” of the main knock on “World At War” going in, the reason some gaming critics were expecting a stinker. The “Call of Duty” franchise had been threatening to veer into “Star Trek” movie or “Splinter Cell” gaming territory, flip-flopping in quality with each installment.

Last year’s “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” as well as “Call of Duty 2” two years before that were seen as good “Call of Duty” games. The one in between, “CoD 3,” was a critical disappointment. The even number ones were made by Infinity Ward. But installment #3 and this new one, “World at War,” were developed by Treyarch. “If you look at what was done for ‘Call of Duty 3,’ everybody goes, ‘Treyarch’s not very good. “Call of Duty 3″ wasn’t as good as the other ones.’” You have to look at the detail of it. Why was “Call of Duty 3″ rated only a mid-80 game? Well they only had a year to do it in a year that they were also doing PS3 for the first time on a launch year and also the Wii on a launch year.” The new game, “World At War,” he said, benefited from a two-year development cycle and an embrace of some new priorities like improving the voice-acting and pushing an M rating.

“Everybody wants to say it’s a competition,” Suarez said when I pressed him about “World At War”’s airplane level, which seemed to me to be an attempt to one-up “Modern Warfare”’s airplane level. I wasn’t buying his explanation that there wasn’t competition. Didn’t these teams have heat? I persisted that there had to be some sort of competitive urge there to prove that “World at War” could top its predecessor. “It’s not like that,” Suarez said. As Suarez tells it, Treyarch started with historical inspiration and then amped up the drama for reasons other than competing with Infinity Ward. “From our perspective it’s never about how we can one-up the previous game. It’s: ‘What do we think is going to make a great game? What do we think is fun? What do we think is going to make people’s jaws drop when they play it?’”

Suarez said there were three levels in Treyarch that is most proud of. Judge Treyarch by them: 1) The flight level Black Cats, for its sheer Michael Bay bombastic spectacle. 2) The street scene in Eviction, a level in Berlin that culminates in a fight in the metro. 3) The Hard Landing level that ends with a massive Pacific island firefight.

At the time of our interview I believed that one of the best measures of “World At War”’s appeal — and one of the best ways to see if Activision had been overzealous in releasing a sequel in the franchise this year — was Xbox Live activity. A year after its release, “Modern Warfare” consistently ranks at or near the top of the chart for most online activity on Microsoft’s console. I suggested to Suarez that some people, maybe many people, just wouldn’t migrate away from the “Modern Warfare” experience they love so much.

“Other iterations to ‘Counter-Strike’ occurred after that first one came out, but a lot of people still liked the core of what [the original] ‘Counter-Strike’ was. I think it’s the same with ‘Call of Duty’ multiplayer.”

“I think there’s going to be a longstanding group of people that play “Modern Warfare.” I think “Modern Warfare,” to me, at least when I play it today, it’s very much how ‘Counter-Strike‘ was. Other iterations to ‘Counter-Strike’ occurred after that first one came out, but a lot of people still liked the core of what [the original] ‘Counter-Strike’ was. I think it’s the same with ‘Call of Duty’ multiplayer. A lot of people come over to play ‘World At War” that kind of like the setting. They like that it’s a little different. It’s got new maps. They like the vehicles and different perks. They may go back. They may come back to “World At War.” From our perspective, all we want to deliver is a great game. It’s not a competition, like ‘Who’s got more volume online today vs. [Modern Warfare]?’”

Typically a game developer can assume that their online-enabled sequel will eventually have more players competing in it than the previous iteration. See “Halo 3“’s online activity currently surpassing “Halo 2“’s. The prospect of the same thing happening with the “Call of Duty” franchise isn’t guaranteed. I asked Suarez if he thought that online usage of “World at War” would eventually exceed that of “Modern Warfare.” Shouldn’t that just be a matter of time? “We’ll see how the sales go,” he said. “There’s 10 million copies sold of ‘Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare’. The hope is that if we can get close to that number… again it’s not “Do we hope it exceeds the number of users online?’ Look, I’d love to be number one on Xbox Live and hold that crown for a while.”

Well, today Suarez may be an even happier man. The latest popularity ranking for Xbox Live usage shows that last week, “Call of Duty: World At War” was played more online than “Modern Warfare.”

Victory? It’s not a competition.

Cinemax (no relation to the Skinemax channel) and RA Images have announces the development of Legends of Daemonica: Farepoynt’s Purgatory, a 3D psychological thriller told in a non-linear storyline set in the 14th century.  In the game, players controls Nicholas Farepoynt, an obscure character with a troubled past who, along with twelve others, arrives on a mysterious island. It’s at this place where they will be purified and stripped of their special abilities. The player will have to help Farepoynt escape this island.
Features:

• Fourteen characters with multi-layered personalities. You can become their enemy, friend, or leader, and learn about their special abilities and use them to aid Farepoynt on his journey.
• Unique game mechanics such as influencing the present by altering the past or entering other people’s dreams.
• Interesting game puzzles.
• Non-linear storyline. Your decisions shape the gameplay experience right from the start of the game. People die or are saved based on your actions. There are no easy or obvious choices to be made.
• Full 3D environments and high polygon characters.
• Numerous special effects and shaders such as dynamic weather and lighting, depth of field, and heat haze.
• Dynamic camera allowing the creation of unique cutscenes using techniques such as split screen or picture in picture technology.
• Atmospheric soundtrack

The game is expected to be released in March 2009 and you can preorder it now from the official website. The price of the finished game is $29.95 but if you pre-order before March 2009, you’ll get the game for $14.95 and get to play it two weeks before anyone else.

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Interesting news regarding Brütal Legend. Which is a splendid thing to be able to say. After Atari picked up Ghostbusters, it’s hard not to despair that Schafer’s new project is still without a publisher, following the Activision/Blizzard high speed collision. So how come Jack Black’s going to be showing a “premiere” of the game at next week’s Spike TV’s 2008 Video Game Awards? And for goodness sakes, will it be on PC?

(...)
Read the rest of Brutal Legend “Premiere” Next Week? (221 words)

Posted by botherer. | 3 comments | Donate or subscribe to RPS | Post tags: brutal legend, Double-Fine, jack black, Tim-Schafer
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