The Brooklyn Inductive Power Station and more

While wandering around the business section at Gamescom, the team stumbled upon what appeared to be an interesting device for charging gaming controllers, and all of a sudden, we were invited into the booth for an impromptu interview with a representative from Vidis.

The charger is called the Inductive Power Station, and it only requires you to lie your controller (with rechargeable battery attached) on top of the device, which looks like a large iPhone, and it will immediately begin charging. A light on the bottom of the device will be red while the battery is not fully charged, and will turn to green when it is.

The nice thing about the power station is that it has three places where a battery can be placed, so you can charge three Wii remotes at the same time on one power station. What’s even better is that it can charge Wii, Xbox, PS3, iPhone, DS and Blackberry batteries all at the same time, so you can even toss your iPhone onto it next to your Wii remote and Xbox battery, and have all your devices charging at the same time.

The charger itself sells for about 30 euros, and each battery is 15, but a pack is going to be released soon which packages two Wii batteries and the charger for 50 euros; the price seems more than reasonable for what the device is capable of. Below is a short video demonstrating how the device works.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g175/nisute/Powerstation_english_mail.swf

Also shown was a pair of mini Wii remotes with nunchucks, which are perfect for children to hold comfortably, and even felt fine in an adult’s hands. It’s super light as well, so when playing with a mini Wii remote, you can pretend you’ve got no controller in hand and that you’re playing using Kinect (eat that, Microsoft). The remotes are compatible with the motion plus accessory, but there are plans to ship ones in the near future with motion plus built in.

Finally, we were shown an extender for your Playstation 3, which makes it about as big an an extra large pizza box, but houses two charging docks for two PS3 controllers to be hidden away in the device, and on the outside contains extra USB ports, SD card reader and more.

All these devices are definitely reassuring in an industry which has quickly become over saturated with plastic tennis rackets to put on your Wii remote and thousands of console-specific charging docks. Hopefully we can see more quality products like these in the future.

Codemasters show off F1 2010 at Gamescom

At Gamescom, Codemasters showed gameplay and their vision for the upcoming racing title “F1 2010”. The game is developed by their own Codemasters studio in Birmingham. It will feature both single and multiplayer and is based on the real life Formula One 2010 season. It is the sequel to the F1 2009 game and will be released for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

When we sat down in the room we were introduced to the producer and game designer who were about to show us the game. It ran on a Xbox 360, and someone in the back of the room was playing it while we were looking at the large screen.

The first scene popped up which was the menu, but not just some menu, it showed a nice little scene that portrayed a view behind the scenes of a F1 race with your teammates and support trucks. The menu and user interface were extremely well integrated into the environment and looked very sleek, the color scheme was very well chosen and it was a feast for the eyes. You were able to go into some of the trucks to get to extra scenes with menu’s like your press representative or technical staff.

That brings us to the first reason why F1 2010 is different than other racing games: the game isn’t just a racing game where you only race, but all the stuff that is going on around the races is also included. It’s a real simulation of everything that goes on in and around the racetrack.

There are a couple of modes to play depending on your preference: you can choose between Career, Time trial (party) or Multiplayer. Apart from that you can also create custom races or mini championships if you’re with more people. The career mode will feature the length of either three, five or seven seasons depending on the user’s choice. Players can choose to start with any of the 12 teams and 24 drivers he or she wants, which are all based on the real teams from the 2010 season. The choice you make at the beginning will affect the difficulty of the game though. For example if you would choose a very high ranked team like Ferrari, only winning would be good enough, but choosing for a team with less reputation even finishing could be a large accomplishment. This way it isn’t just always the same gameplay where you start small and need to race your way up. And if you would lose a race under the Ferrari flag the press would come to you and ask all kinds of questions, the answers you decide to give affect things like team morale, if you tell the press it was the team’s fault you lost they won’t like you for it and help you less or work less hard which could result in pit stops taking just a bit longer for example.

The game really tries to make you feel like you’ re part of a team, instead of just you racing on your own.

One of the main selling points for F1 2010 is the dynamic weather system and track evolution system. It can be any kind of weather, from sunny to heavy rain; that doesn’t mean it’s dependent on the race itself, during a race the weather can flip 180 degrees and you will have to change your driving style in that same race. Next to that, you have the track evolution system which will make the track react to all kinds of things and update your grip on the road every 30 centimeters. If it’s raining, it’s not like the whole track is equally wet; instead, there will be puddles and lower places and it will be dry under an over hanging tree. Next to that, the tracks also remember how much cars have been racing on it; when the track is brand new it will have less grip compared to the same track a little further in the season that had a thin coating from the rubber of the tires.

This will really force the player to focus on the road and every turn will be different depending on the conditions; if it’s raining you’ll have to try to stay on the dry spots but also keep the shortest route.

The art looks very nice and sleek; some of the cars were low detail enough that there were visible polygonal edges, but when you were actually in the race it wasn’t very noticeable. Weather effects and effects on the tires looked extremely cool and the fact that your screen gets blurry when someone drives in front of you was a nice touch. Everything looks very polished and runs very smoothly.

Their plan for the future is to make more online options and they will release downloadable content a couple of months after the game hits the shelves.

If you’re a fan of racing games, you should definitely check out this one when it gets released on the 22 September for the US and 24 September in Europe.

The rise of Unity

A couple of years ago, when I got the idea to create games, I was looking around for interesting engines I could use. I stumbled upon a very new engine under the name Unity 3D, it had a very small community but some of their demos on the website were very promising, showing millions of polygons and beautiful landscapes right in my browser.
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Hands on Castlevania Lords of Shadow

During the Japan Expo event at the early July in Paris, a demo of the PS3 version of Castlevania Lords of Shadow was playable at the Konami booth.

Developed by MercuryStream and produced by Hideo Kojima, “father” of Metal Gear hero Snake, this game is the first instalment of the series as an action game with some RPG elements. We were able to play the first stage of the game, more like a tutorial, to learn the basics of the game: the different attacks with the whip, the secondary weapons (such as daggers), how to dodge or to unlock combos and other attacks.

The game truly is an AAA title made like a movie with some incredible cinematic scenes as good as Hollywood movies, as usual with Kojima productions. Graphics are smooth and pretty good, but darker than usual. The game takes place (as usual) in the surroundings of Dracula’s Castle, in a village by a stormy night. This game surely looks like a mature one. There’s a new hero, Gabriel Belmont, who looks like a virile and muscular men breaking with the “tradition” of young and quite androgyne men. Gabriel just want is sweat heart to be brought back to life. As Gabriel arrives at the village, villagers are all afraid of something scary and the village is soon attacked by werewolves. Read more

Two Worlds 2 preview

My opinion on the first two worlds was that it was fun, but many other people that I talk to about the game didn’t like it or never heard of it. This could be for a couple reasons: first off, it came out near the same time as Oblivion did, and many people already play Oblivion so they just ignored Two Worlds altogether. Either that or they sold it back to the store because of the lack of polish that you could clearly see in the game. This is not the case in Two Worlds 2, they have made such an improvement in terms of graphics in comparison to the first one. Some of these improvements include: sunsets, rippling water, and when you run through grass it sways. I think that even now they are putting more minor details into the game. Read more

Motion-sensing, role-playing games and the rise of Nintendo

Thoughts on E3 2010

E3 2010 is now over and now that I’ve recuperated from all the news and announcements, it’s time to make up the balance. It’s a shame I couldn’t witness it first-hand, but luckily we live in the age of internet, so I got my daily updates of game trailers, interviews and what not. And from what I saw, the E3 didn’t disappoint as much as I initially feared: in fact, I’m quite satisfied. My expectations before hand weren’t especially high, but I crossed my fingers and hoped Nintendo would redeem itself and make up for the lost years. And for me, they did. Nintendo stole the show. I’ve seen so many good things from them this E3 I don’t know where to start. I got the feeling Microsoft really wanted their Kinect thing to be a big deal, but from what I saw, it’s pretty dull. You’d almost fear they follow in Nintendo’s footsteps and try to be popular with all target audiences except gamers (I don’t think they will, fortunately). Read more

New IP for Konami: Neverdead

Konami Digital Entertainment has announced that there is a new IP called Neverdead coming to the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

Neverdead is a third person action title under the genres of fantasy and survival hoorror. The player has access to a unique sword, whose abilities have yet to be seen, as well as a large arsenal of assorted weaponrywhich they will use to decimate the demonic forces. In the trailer, the main character, Neverdead, is seen weilding dual handguns, which provides for an action experience seemingly similar to bayonetta or Devil May Cry.

Neverdead takes place in an alternate future, where the world has been overrun by hordes of demons. The protagonist, Neverdead, has been given the power to transcend death, making him unable to die. You play as an undead hero who makes use of his regenerative abilities to fight off the evils and rid the city of the demonic plague.

The big thing about Neverdead is the unique healing system that it offers, which also has yet to be explained in detail. What can be seen in the trailer is similar to something like rewinding time, but it is most likely just putting your head back on once you grab it. Could be interesting, having to put yourself back together in the midst of battle, we will see.

With Neverdead, Konami and the team behind the title want to provide the player with a new IP that sports all kinds of interesting gameplay and frightening worlds to explore and decimate with deadly weaponry and exciting swordplay. Read more

Sunday Pre E3 Announcement Wrap up.

Kilzone 3

Scott Pilgrim VS the World Read more

Sony 3D dodging rocks and mud

A few days ago, NiSuTe Europe was invited to the Sony 3D casual Friday. We went there along with several other Dutch game press groups. We were welcomed by Jeroen Rovers, and then went in to the press room and got a welcoming drink. Everyone from the press was highly skeptical; we  all knew what the history of 3D technology is; we have all seen our fair share of 3D glasses. We all took our seats and Bart Vader took the stage.

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Tom’s Crème de la Crème of Gaming:

SURVIVAL HORROR

A top 5 of (in my opinion) the best games in the genre

I recently saw that a fellow NiSuTe member, Jean, started writing a multi-part column describing his personal top 20 games. As I love top 20/10/whatevers, that inspired me to do something similar, but to withhold myself from making a list that a) is way to similar to Jean’s; and b) narrowed down to a top 211, I decided to go with this concept.

In this series I’ll try to cover each of gaming’s genre’s and give you my personal favorites of each genre, narrowed down to a top 5. Obviously, this includes certain genres that I don’t generally like, but this will mean those lists can be all the more interesting or laughable. There is no harm done in trying.

To kick this thing off, I decided to start on familiar grounds. To start with a genre I do know, and have always liked: Survival Horror. Whether it be Alone in the Dark or Resident Evil, I’ve played many a survival horror game and often enjoyed them a great deal. Some of them were downright awful, others brilliant and even terrifying at times. Before I start I think we need to be clear on what will count as a survival horror game, and what doesn’t. A survival horror game needs to include the following elements: Read more

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