Time Travel is Awesome

I’m not sure what to think about BioWare and Segas new attempt to refresh the long suffering Sonic franchise. The two companies are responsible for some quality games. BioWares Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic is not only the best Star Wars game made to date (I’m expecting Force Unleashed to knock KOTOR off its throne) but one of the best American Role Playing Games in recent years. But can they do the same with Sonic?

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood begins while our hero is on vacation after defeating Eggman (Dr. Robotnik for those stubborn readers who grew up with Sonic) when he hears from Tails that Knunkles has been kidnapped and the Chaos Emeralds are disappearing. The game is divided into two parts. The first half happening in Sonics world and the second happening in a different dimension where Sonic must take on a mysterious alien race.

The gameplay is standard RPG fair with enemies appearing on the world map and turn based encounters are activated by walking into them. Special moves are activated my giving special touch combinations with the stylus. Some of these special moves will require certain characters in your party, one such move is called “Blue Bomber” and requires Sonic and Tails in the active party.

The premise and the game itself seem to be fairly solid at this point, of course we won’t really know what to expect until someone plays it. But at this point in the development stage, only a few weeks from going gold, we’re looking at a fun adventure RPG featuring the Sonic characters. Probably nothing that will revolutionize the genre or redeem Sonics past few years of mediocrity, but a solid game none-the-less.

The points I’m worried about is use of Sonic in a turn based game. Sonic games have always been about speed. Not about killing enemies, not about collecting rings, and not about how many wacky side characters Sega can introduce. The games were about speed. How fast you can think while zooming though the levels was the element in the original games. Adding a turn based RPG into this franchise will probably not work for the fans who enjoyed the gameplay of the classics.

The other factor that has me worried about this game are the use of all the Sonic side characters in the game. These side characters have never really been embraced by the fans of Sonic games and were never counted as a strong point in the series. The last Sonic game I played, Sonic Rush for the DS, had some many characters that I didn’t know of it just left me bewildered and confused. Sticking with the dream team of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles might have been a much better choice in order to craft a solid story. But we have yet to find out if for once these characters add something to a Sonic game instead of taking away. They haven’t worked in Sonics favor so far, I don’t know how Sega plans on changing that.

I’m excited and worried at the same time. The combination of BioWare and Sega is either going to be a stunning success of fall into the muck of gaming history with the rest of the Sonic games that came out in the past fifteen years. I hope it succeeds, and I hope it will be good enough to take it’s place among the classic Sonic games. Mario RPG managed to do it, why not Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood?

Some interesting links and video about this upcoming game:

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood Wikipedia entry

E3 2008 Director Interview via Gametrailers

Gameplay Video via Gametrailers

Combat Trailer via Kotaku

The Large Hadron Collider, CERNs new particle accelerator, has some people worried that it might just destroy time and space as we know it by creating tiny black holes we can’t control. CERN has responced by making this rap video to describe exactly what the LHC was designed to do. Needless to say, nothing about the end of the world is mentioned.

CERN Rap from Will Barras on Vimeo.

There are very few things in this world that would get me interested in Knitting, but one of them is video games! Cassie started a blog dedicated to her goal of knitting all of the first level of Mario into a single scarf.

Check out her blog to follow the progress up to the scarfs completion: The Mario Scarf Blog

Editors Note - This was the final skit of the evening and by far the best. It was such a fun night. If you ever have the opportunity to sit in a room packed full of nerds watching other nerds pretend to be amine characters… I highly recommended it. Please excuse the girlish screams that Miss Pocket Mouse and the fans around her let out, this is the best amature video of the Exhibition Skit to hit youtube and even with the screaming the sound quality remains excellent. Besides, if I had taken the video the girlish screams I let out would have drowned out all of the skit, not just a tiny part of it. Which would have had nothing to do with the fact that I couldn’t have been farther away from the stage and could barely hear anyway.

Without further whining the final AnimeNEXT 2008 Masquerade Skit, The Exhibition Skit: I’ll Make a Host out of you staring the award winning Mario Bueno

This is the major ending to this masquerade, featuring the Ouran Host Club! They are making a special appearance with Tamaki singing his heart out, making the fangirls scream! Poor Haruhi–she’s being picked on! She’s a girl after all. Ohh, if only Tamaki would of known…or will he?

Previous Posts:

AnimeNEXT 2008 Masquerade Skits #2 and #3
AnimeNEXT 2008 Masquerade Skits #7 and #8
AnimeNEXT 2008 Masquerade Skits #9 and #14
AnimeNEXT 2008 Masquerade Skits #15 and #17
AnimeNEXT 2008 Masquerade Skits #19 and #20
AnimeNEXT 2008 Masquerade Skits #22 and #25
AnimeNEXT 2008 Masquerade Skits #27 and #28

Two weeks out of E3 I feel like I need to say something. Years ago E3 was the big event for gamers. I remember fondly back to E3 2005 where the PlayStation 3 became official, Spore was announced, the glamour was at it’s high, and Epics new graphics engine was demonstrated. Now that E3 has been hacked to bits and turned from the industry’s largest trade show into a giant press conference where absolutely nothing is exciting anymore. It is possible that this year is a bit of a transition year. The seventh generation consoles starting to seriously establish themselves as opposed to being new. But that is only one thing that lowers the impact that a large Video Game trade show. This is the year that software should be coming out to impress the fanboys and convince those of us who have held back from picking between Microsoft and Sony to finally decide. What we got was a mess.

This year almost no new game was announced at E3, no game changing announcements were made, and nothing was really accomplished that couldn’t have been done if each of the big three simply hosted their own small press conferences instead of having to drag all of their staff and equipment to this so called “trade show”.

Nintendo announced Animal Crossing, Sony Announced DC Universe Online, Microsoft announced nothing… who cares? The show was mainly made up of companies showing off new footage or featuring playable demos of games that were announced months (or in the case of Spore years) ago. There is no reason to treat E3 2008 as a special event, it’s just a mess of small updates to a couple dozen upcoming games.

One of the most insane examples is from the latest installment of the Total War series, Empire: Total War. It has been one of my favorite franchises for years now. Total War games have had the same basic game since Rome: Total War. The new edition sets the game in the age where Europe was building Empires across the world. Navel battles have been expanded to be as in depth and complex as land battles. At E3 they showed off… a navel battle. A feature we already knew was going to be in the game. Things got a little more detailed on the way the navel battles were going to look but nothing substantial was gained that Total War couldn’t have done in a press release, or in a new trailer. This is the kind of silly announcements that plagued E3, to the point where I just stopped caring after day two.

E3 used to be important. But if it continues to be anything like this year than it will stop being important. It’ll just become a hassle. The industry is going to have to take a step back and look really hard at this years E3 and made a decision if next year will even be worth anyone’s time. Maybe 2008 was just a stale year for announcements. Maybe because of the constant blog coverage these announcements just fell flat for me but would have been exciting for someone who doesn’t constantly watch gaming blogs. I’m underwhelmed, I’m frustrated. E3 used to be something special, not an excuse to show off games we already know were coming.

I’m not the only one who feels this way, nor are any of my comments original when you look at the great sigh of disappointment that happened after the dust settled on E3. If I was there I’m sure it would have been exciting. The stars of The Totally Rad Show seemed like they had a blast. But as a lonely second rate Blogger I don’t have any hope of gaining a ticket to the show. There is no reason why anyone who wasn’t there to play with these long awaited titles to be excited about E3. It’s an excuse to allow the press access to games that won’t be seen any time soon. An insider trade show where consumers no longer wanted.

Unfortunately the malefactors of useless wii-mote add-ons aren’t getting the hint that nobody wants to add more bulk to their controller. The entire point of the Wii’s controller is that it can be used on anything, completely adapting to any game. These cheap pieces of plastic only cheapen that experience.

The Wii Laser Sword has two modes, continuous light or motion detection. Making Subsonic the first company that has not only has succeeded in creating a useless Wii add-on, but has found a way for the Wii to suck down more batteries in any given afternoon.

Wii Laser Sword

An on going countdown timer on Cryptic Studios website ran down this morning and in it’s place was the official announcement of Star Trek Online, the long awaited MMO. Star Trek Online has been passed between several developers and many fans have given up hope that the concept would ever see the light of day.

Although there have been several leaks of the announcement thanks to the Las Vegas Star Trek convention and Cryptic’s own job posting, speculation is over and we can now await without fear for our turn on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

CRYPTIC STUDIOS LICENSES RIGHTS TO PRODUCE STAR TREK ONLINE

Trek Fans Worldwide Are Invited to MMO Gamplay Reveal at Annual Star Trek Convention August 10, 2008 or Via Live Webcast at http://www.startrekonline.com/

Los Gatos, Calif. – Cryptic Studios™, a leading developer and publisher of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), announced today that it has secured the global rights to develop and publish Star Trek® Online, a massively multiplayer online game based on the legendary Star Trek franchise, from CBS Consumer Products.

Cryptic will unveil the first Star Trek Online gameplay footage as well as details about this highly anticipated MMO at the annual Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas on Sunday, August 10, 2008. Trek fans from around the globe can also view the event live via webcast at http://www.startrekonline.com/.

Interested participants can register today for the Star Trek Online webcast and to sign up for the STO community by visiting http://www.startrekonline.com/.

The exciting part is that I will be at the Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas in August 10th, 2008. Look forward to a blog post live from the big reveal.

The Hoverboard, made famous by Back to the Future star Michael J. Fox’s character Marty McFly, Is up for auction on Ebay Live Auctions with a starting bid of $30,000. That might seem a little steep considering that these things are supposed to be kids toys by the year 2015 (nice work dropping the ball MATEL!) but if I had the money I wouldn’t hesitate to own this little piece of Science Fiction movie history.

957. Michael J. Fox “Marty Mcfly” hero Mattel hoverboard from Back to the Future Part II & Part III. (Universal Pictures, 1989, 1990) This is one of the hero Mattel Hoverboards used by Michael J. Fox in his most famous role as “Marty McFly” in the Robert Zemeckis classic 80s trilogy, Back to the Future. Two styles of Hoverboard were made for and employed in the film – lightweight boards of styrofoam construction and thick and durable wood-based props – this example is the latter, and is recognized as the best example of all wood Hoverboards to have survived the rigors of filming. The illusion of Michael J. Fox as “Marty McFly” hovering through the air was achieved with practical effects, with actors in rigged harnesses being “flown” via cranes, with special effects taking care of the rest.

Of the two styles of props used in the film – styrofoam and wood – the styrofoam examples in collections today have not held up as well, given the more fragile nature of the material and the abuse they endured in production. Few wood examples have survived, and the collector who obtained this specimen from the prop master chose this for his personal collection as the premiere example of those preserved following the film. It is in used but outstanding condition, and is very rare in that it is entirely complete and intact. Given the wood build and use of metal components, it looks and feels like a “real” prop. This piece has the complete fully functional and rear ballbearing-mounted footpad that rotates 360 degrees, as well as the bottom “magnet plates”. Of the two styles of stickers used for the effects, this prop has the “photoboard”-style sticker affixed. In addition, there is other textured styling and hand painting. This Hoverboard also features the hole in the top, representing where the handlebars were that “Marty” pulled off after borrowing the “toy” from the little girl in the film. $30000 - $50000

Fallout 3, the long anticipated post-apocalyptic role-playing game (I love putting those words together) by Bethesda is only months away and in order to generate even more hype (if there were possible) they have contracted Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade to write a series of comics. What is the series of comics about? They are about a man locked in a fault… with a crate full of puppets.

Fallout 3 Comics