Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. PC Demo Now Available

Want to sample the latest game offering of Tom Clancy for the PC? Well, you are in luck. A few days ago, H.A.W.X. (High Altitude Warfare eXperimental squadron) is an action flight simulation that takes place in between previous Tom Clancy games released (which is Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 and Endwar) Yes, These three games are somewhat linked to each other in the Clancy universe.

The demo packs in at a whopping 1.24 gigabytes. It features a tutorial and some levels of the game. H.A.W.X. for the PS3 and XBOX360 is now available while the PC version will hit stores on March 10.

H.A.W.X.

System requirements for the retail version of the game are as follows:

Minimum Configuration :

• CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.0 GHz/ AMD Athlon XP 2000+ or higher
• Operating System: Windows XP (with Service Pack 3) or Windows Vista (with Service Pack 1)
• RAM: 1 GB Windows XP / 2 GB Windows Vista
• DVD-ROM: DVD-ROM speed 4x, dual-layer drive
• Drive Space: 1.5 GB
• Graphics Card: 128 MB DirectX compliant, Shader 2.0 enabled video card
• Sound Card: DirectX 9.0 compliant sound card
• DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0 or 10.0 libraries (included on disc)

Recommended & Preferred Configuration:

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 6320 / AMD Athlon X2 4000+ or higher
• Operating System: Windows XP (with Service Pack 3) or Windows Vista (with Service Pack 1)
• RAM: 2 GB
• DVD-ROM: DVD-ROM speed 4x, dual-layer drive
• Drive Space: 1.5 GB
• Graphics Card: 256 MB DirectX 10.0 compliant video card or DirectX 9.0 compliant card with Shader Model 3.0 or higher (see supported list)
• Sound Card: DirectX 9.0 compliant sound card
• DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0 or 10.0 libraries (included on disc)
• Peripherals: Xbox 360 Controller for Windows

You can download the demo here.

PS3 – A Developer’s Pain in the Neck

I know that PS3 bashing has been done to death and most you got the message but I just can’t resist after reading this article by CNET.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10173656-17.html

The title: Sony: PS3 is hard to develop for–on purpose

You see, it’s common knowledge to developers that PS3 games are harder to develop than, say Xbox 360 games or PC games. An executive producer from Midway said the following on a recent podcast that: “Anyone making a game, if you’re going to make it for both, just lead on the PS3 because if it works on the PS3, it’ll work on 360,” he said. “We had to play catch-up on the PS3 because of the memory constraints and how it renders; how it processes is just different. And it’s harder on the PS3,”

Valve’s Gabe Newell had in the past stated that “PlayStation 3 is a “waste of everyone’s time.”  and that  “investing in the Cell…gives you no long-term benefits. There’s nothing there that you’re going to apply to anything else. You’re not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they’ve created. I don’t think it’s a good solution.”

So now, in defense of Sony Computer Entertainment, CNET asked their CEO, Kaz Hirai, for comments. And here is the reasoning behind the complexity of the development:

“We don’t provide the ‘easy to program for’ console that (developers) want, because ‘easy to program for’ means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is, what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?”

“So it’s a kind of–I wouldn’t say a double-edged sword–but it’s hard to program for, and a lot of people see the negatives of it, but if you flip that around, it means the hardware has a lot more to offer.”

So according to Mr. Hirai, the complexity of development was on purpose. He goes on to say that we shouldn’t look at it as a negative thing. It just means that the hardware has a lot to offer. Uh…right…

Also, the specific reason why it is on purpose was to prevent everyone from being able to use the full potential of the hardware. This I can understand what he means. What they want is that early PS3 games won’t be able to use the full potential of the console so that there would be improvements in the quality of games every year. So that, to us customers, we would always be in awe whenever a new title arrives. See, if developers are able to use the full potential of the PS3, then the next game that would come up would have no significant improvements as the barrel has been scraped to the limit.

A good analogy for this is of dating a girl. Let say on your first date you are able to get to fourth base, then you would most probably think she’s an easy to bed girl and you wouldn’t take her seriously, compared to a girl who would only allow you to get to her one base at a time or worse, only if the two of you are married. The excitement would always be there. So basing on Mr. Hirai’s explanation, it would take us about nine and a half years to get a home run.

Honestly though, are you willing to wait for almost a decade to get to the prize? I’m not.

I would understand a year of celibacy, but a decade? Hell no. See, I’m not convinced that once the full potential of the console is reached it would get boring from there on. Graphics is not everything when it comes to games. If that is all what Sony thinks a game is, then we can say that PS3 is a bad lay. You’re stuck in one position for the rest of your sexual life.

Now look on the Xbox 360 side, since it’s easy to develop, the full potential (fourth base) is easily achieved. And with that, the developers now needs to explore more than the hardware potential of the console. They’ll turn to better game design as the eye-candy factor has reached it limits. Back to the girl analogy, so you’ve reached fourth base with her and the girl is afraid that you’ll leave her. So what the girl does is on the next chance, she’ll show you something more of the same thing. It’s the same graphics (fourth base) but with a different position (game design).

I have a different view on why PS3 games is hard to develop. I don’t think that they did it on purpose. What I think is that the success of PS2 and PSX made them arrogant and just simply didn’t care if developers would have a hard time making games. They would have to adapt as they are the giant in the playground. They believe that gamers would still buy their console because it’s a Playstation and Playstations, as they have proven in the past 2 generations of console, wins.

Well, let me just say that I have been waiting for this moment ever since the release of Playstation 1 and toppling Nintendo’s reign of supremacy. Ah…fellow Nintendo fans, revenge is oh so sweet…

Rock Band Unplugged and Unplayable

It has recently been announced that a handful of major console titles are being ported to the PSP, namely Assassins Creed (Seriously, what took them so long?), Motor Storm (Ah, yes. Makes sense.) Little Big Planet (Hmm, alright. I think that’s doable.) and Rock Band (FREAKIN’ SWEE….wait, wuh?).

While I’m pretty excited about the first three games, let’s focus on the last game mentioned shall we? I, for one, am a serious Rock Band fanatic. While not a very practical game, considering that I got mine for roughly $300, I consider it one of my smartest and most worthwhile purchases in my long history of gaming. Anybody with an appreciation for music – rock in particular I should add – and video games must have this game. It’s not the most innovative of games for sure – instrument games have long been let loose in arcades – however it’s simply just so much fun to play. It’s difficult to explain why it’s so fun when all you do is really press buttons when a few lights blink (Seriously, the skills involved are nothing more complex than what a lab rat can do.) however maybe it is this simplicity combined with the familiarity and natural emotional-evocativeness of song (Is evocativeness even a word?) that makes the game so great. Let’s not forget to mention the instruments. Coming from somebody who cannot play a note on a guitar, there is huge satisfaction to be gained from fooling yourself into thinking that you can play an instrument. That said, I wonder what they’re planning to do with Rock Band Unplugged (RBU) for the PSP. Is Harmonix going to pull a Guitar Hero On Tour and slap something on the PSP to make it resemble a guitar? Or perhaps you can simply connect your existing Rock Band set wirelessly to your PSP? Well gee, so much for portable gaming right?

A little research has revealed that Harmonix isn’t planning to do any of the crazy ideas mentioned above. Instead they have decided to go the conservative route and simple require players to press directional and face buttons in time with the song track. Cool. Ok, I’m lying. NOT COOL! As much as I love Harmonix and how it’s game has improved my way of gaming life, I seriously do not understand this move. Guitar Hero On Tour make a lot of sense. Though the button-strap-thing wasn’t the most ergonomic of peripherals, it really helped bring the novelty of having a “real instrument” to the portable gaming devices. Rock Band Unplugged brings nothing of the sort. Have you ever seen anybody play Rock Band with a controller and enjoy it? Why would you right? It doesn’t make any sense when the guitar, mic and drums already exist.

Rock Band Unplugged strikes me as an effort to milk the market. It makes a lot of sense from a business standpoint, when you consider how popular Rock Band is, but none at all from a game design perspective. I don’t see me buying a nerfed version of a game I already have. But then again, that’s just me.

Little Big Planet Late Review

Games nowadays really need innovation of some sort to survive the harsh environment of the game development industry. And it’s where little big planet climbs up a notch higher than the other games. Innovation. A fellow playstation 3 fanboy mentioned that only 25 developers were utilized to create this game; pretty small for a development team. Even small studios like Insomniac studios utilized about 40 in their team to create Resistance.

Little Big Planet

What makes little big planet unique is that they turned a simple platform into something like what most people do best when they are just idling around; doodling. And placed it into a world perfect for it. As little as a paper could be, it could spawn ideas bigger than the planets we know. And you can even share it to the world. Little big planet has established a solid community of aspiring level designers for them to freely share their own creation (And probably scout future game designers too, that’d be a good starting point for those aspiring ones out there). That’s the selling point of little big planet.

You play around with Sackboy/Sackgirl as your sort of Avatar within the game. Controls are simple. It’s just like your old super mario platformer with an added .5 dimension. You have the freedom to stick around stickers in the stage which in turn would sometimes unlock several items for you to use in the level editor. Characters spawn from weird to weirder. Some are as much weird as Katamari but not quite. Katamari is still the king of cuteness combined with weirdness. The physics system is great; I don’t know if this one is an inhouse physics engine or 3rd party ones like NoVoDex or Havok but it feels airy and bouncy. Level design, as far as I am right now is pretty much above average; I was expecting a little bit higher but the ones I saw are already doable. I haven’t touched the editor but as far as I’ve seen from user created levels on youtube, it looks very customizable. I think some objects are relatively scriptable which is a plus to modders and aspiring game designers.

Drawback I guess is the repetetive nature of the gameplay. I don’t know if they would patch this one up as future downloadable contents but as far as I’m in the game (and I think I’m done with the tutorial), the number of things to do is very limiting. They should’ve put more things that sackboy/sackgirl can do. I just wish that they put in a powerful scripting tool which can spawn some cool new objects like those in incredible machines or better yet, can make sackboy/sackgirl do more things than what they can right now.

I’m actually interested at how they programmed this game. They must’ve incorporated an extensive use of design patterns with this one because the level of extensibility required by the project would be quite heavy.

I’d give it a 4.5/5 score as a general score. Relatively fun. No brainer. It doesn’t need sex or violence to sell. Great for kids to grannies. More of casual though.

Jam Legend is Guitar Hero for Keyboards

Guitar hero is no doubt one of the most successful guitar simulation franchise games available in the market today. Recently, I have stumbled on this game entitled Jam legend and the first time playing it, well, it kind of resembles Guitar hero but instead of using a plastic guitar, you use your keyboard. Now I know what you’re thinking. Frets on fire have already created the same formula, what’s new in Jam legend? This one is a flash based game that surprisingly, runs smoothly (you’ll have the occasional lag) but hey, you’ll never notice it because once you start playing it, you’ll get hooked to it.

Jam Legend

You use the numbers 1-5 as your frets while pressing the enter key would simulate the strum effect of the virtual guitar. The songlist is quite small as compared to Frets on Fire but playing Cannon Rock is one of the main reasons why you should try to sign up and play this game. You can also add up your friends and invite them to Jam duels, which is a plus for the game.

So go ahead and try the game signing up here.

Quake Live Open Beta is now… well, Open

You may have heard of Quake, one of the first person shooters to feature insane map layouts, fast-paced gameplay and who would forget about the powerful railgun, one of the all time favorite sniper weapons that took players hours to master using it. Well, you are in luck. The new game entitled “Quake Live” is a browser based game that has a feel of quake 3 (yup, you’ve heard me right, a browser based game) This was first known as “Quake zero” but then changed its name to “Quake Live”

Quake Live

I have been hearing positive reviews about this game and that even though it is browser-based, it surprisingly runs smoothly.

Go grab an invite by following this link. Be warned though that the open beta testing signup would only last up until the 12 midnight of the 25^th of February.