LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes Wii Review

LEGO games are cute, funny and easy to jump into, but they've also been around since 2005. Whenever someone wandered by my desk and spied me playing LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, he or she would undoubtedly say "Yup, it's another LEGO game" before wandering off. Trouble is, LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes isn't just another LEGO game. It does away with hard-to-judge platforming, its puzzles make sense, and it adds a couple of big things that are sure to become staples for the LEGO franchise moving forward.

The changes come with growing pains, but there's no denying that LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes is a great video game.

The Wii Effect

Yes, that's the PlayStation 3 / Xbox 360 video review up there. Most of that applies to the Wii version of LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes as the game packs the same content as the HD twins. It just isn't HD because it's on the Wii. While a bummer -- there's a lot of pop-in and flat visuals -- it's impressive that the Wii has the same story, characters and content. So, if you have no other choice, the LEGO Batman 2 on the Wii will fit the superhero bill.

Like the previous game, LEGO Batman 2 spins an original yarn, but this time it's engaging and really interesting. Lex Luthor is running for president, teaming with the Joker and using kryptonite to stuff the ballot box. With foulness afoot, Batman, Robin, Superman and eventually the entire Justice League step in to stop the plot.

This plays out via traditional LEGO game controls. You jump, punch and switch between characters with button presses. The Wiimote allows you to precisely aim batarangs and grappling hooks, but the lack of a second stick means you can only center the camera behind you and not control it. A friend on the couch can drop in and out for co-op in a jiff. The game's as simple to understand as ever, but adds new suits for Batman and Robin along with powers for specific characters. Black Canary has her sonic blast, Cyborg is magnetized, and Wonder Woman can lasso hard to reach handles.

“ That's what LEGO games are all about -- exploring and collecting -- and LEGO Batman does that better than any iteration that's come before.

It's a focused story that's entertaining from start to finish, and part of that is thanks to voice acting. For the first time in LEGO history, LEGO Batman 2 packs a full voice cast to tell its tale. While the silent LEGO games have always been funny, LEGO Batman 2 is able to move beyond shrugs and grins. Robin fanboying out over Superman, Vicki Vale's newscasts, and Lex trying to convince Joker that killing Batman is a good idea -- these are brilliant moments we would've lost without the excellent actors. Among these actors is Superman: The Animated Series' Clancy Brown reprising his role as Lex Luthor. Fresh voices are used for most of the other characters, but the new takes are welcome.

Of course, the story is just a tiny sliver of any LEGO game. You'll run through the 15-chapter story of LEGO Batman 2 in about nine hours (probably a lot less if you don't methodically smash everything like I did and get distracted by side stuff), but then you'll replay levels for more studs (in-game currency) and to find collectables such as mini-kit parts.

That's what LEGO games are all about -- exploring and collecting -- and LEGO Batman does that better than any iteration that's come before. See, LEGO Batman 2 has another first for the series: an open world. While LEGO games always have a HUB world, they're usually a bit limited. LEGO Batman 2 gives you all of Gotham City to explore. Arkham Asylum, Ace Chemicals, GCPD -- it's an entire town and it's packed with stuff to collect, save and explore.

Hit the gas, Dark Knight. (PS3 Version)

Red bricks are tucked around corners and unlock cheats, new characters appear on rooftops, and bosses are around to fight and add to your playable roster. There are vehicles to purchase and then drive, people to save and so many studs to collect. Still, it's the Gold Bricks that stand out.

There are 250 Golden Bricks. While you'll get them for completing objectives in story missions, the majority are hidden around Gotham and only accessible via certain characters. Plenty of times I'd be flying around as Superman (the John Williams theme plays any time Kal-El is airborne), spot a Gold Brick, and have to work my way from the goal to the beginning of the challenge so that Robin in his acrobat suit or Batman in his electricity suit could go through the Mousetrap-like obstacle course to unlock the brick the appropriate way. The Gold Bricks are these little challenges inside the greater world that keep you on your toes and have you trying out the more than 50-character roster that includes the Flash, Hush, Martian Manhunter and more.

Of course, bringing in all of this new stuff creates a few new – albeit minor -- problems. Zooming around this open world as Flash or Superman, I'd land at objectives and have to wait for the computer terminal I needed to pop in. While the map will show you where bosses and unlockables are, you can't zoom in to really orient where you should be looking so there's a lot of moving a few feet, pausing and reevaluating. The game saves when you nab a Gold Brick, but for some crazy reason, you can't move while it autosaves.

Again, developer Traveller's Tales has nailed the gameplay issues that have plagued the franchise for years, but now, the designers have to take some notes on how modern open worlds work. (Although Red Bricks do eventually label unlockables on the screen.)



Source : ign[dot]com

Shigeru Miyamoto Talks the Competition at E3

One of the big themes at this year’s E3 expo was connectivity. Microsoft has gone with an ‘all-in’ approach it's calling SmartGlass – aka great material for Trey Parker and Matt Stone – while Sony is pushing Vita connectivity across titles like PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale and LittleBigPlanet 2. With the Wii U's dual screens thrown into the mix, it’s an unusually heated race for Nintendo, a company used to running on an entirely different track paved with balance boards and wrist straps.

One would assume Shigeru Miyamoto would veto discussions around Nintendo’s competition. It had been a tough couple of days by the time we interviewed the legendary creator of Super Mario Bros. et al; Nintendo’s press conference failed to ignite thanks to a peculiarly dry presentation and a dearth of surprises, and online commentary had not been kind. This E3 was not the time for controversy.

But, under the fluorescent lights, against a pounding dubstep soundtrack, Mr. Miyamoto sits up and gives us a big smile.

“In the past when we’ve introduced stuff like motion control or touch screen control with the Nintendo DS, it typically would take a few years for other companies bring them into their own offerings,” he says. “The fact that one year out when we first introduced the concept of Wii U, we’re already seeing other companies trying to move in that same direction, suggests there’s a tremendous amount of possibility in what we’ve shown so far.”

It’s a heartening – if idealistic – take. But Mr. Miyamoto also believes that Nintendo is in a much stronger position to offer dual experiences than its competitors.

“We have a long history of creating these kinds of experiences," he says. "Even going back as far as our early experiments long ago between the portable gaming machines and the home console.”

Mr. Miyamoto believes that these days, our living room ecosystems are far more accommodating.

“The challenges we experienced at that time – not everyone had that complete ecosystem and hardware environment, so we couldn’t have those experiences be made available to our entire user base.”

Whereas with the Wii U, the experience can be had straight out of the box.

“It has the definitive advantage (because) it’s coupled with our experience with creating unique gameplay for this very specific type of ecosystem.”

Mr. Miyamoto is cautious with his wording on the subject of other company’s software efforts – “everyone has their own unique ideas” – but does voice his concerns over the medium’s violent landscape.

“Sometimes I get worried about the continued reliance on making games that are so centered around guns, and that there are so many of these games," he says. "I have a hard time imagining – particularly for young generations of gamers – how they sit down and play and interact with that.”

Mr. Miyamoto says Nintendo is still focused on provide a safe environment for kids, particularly in an online space. The company is currently preparing community management systems for the Miiverse, building on the lessons they learned around moderating user-generated content for Flipnote Studio on the DSi.

“Previous forms of media, like books, made it easy for parents to know and understand what they’re buying for their children. With the transition into digital mediums it becomes more difficult for parents to have a full grasp of what’s going on. From a game developer’s standpoint it’s important to take that into account.”

As the dubstep loops around again, we ask how Mr. Miyamoto feels about being ‘Mr. Nintendo’ at an expo with such an aggressively competitive culture at its core.

“It’s something that’s tough for me to objectively look at, and I think to me, what’s most important, is that I don’t betray the trust that people have in me. At a show like this, it’s my job to show we’re all having fun. People come to E3 and they want to talk about competition and who won the show, and all these companies combating one another.

"But what we’re meant to be doing is bringing fun to the world. So rather than focusing on competition, I feel it’s my job to go up on stage and show how I can bring fun to the world by having fun myself.”



Source : ign[dot]com

Watch Dogs Movie Already in the Works?

Hot on the heels of Ubisoft's E3 unveil of jaw-dropping game footage from forthcoming action-adventure Watch Dogs comes news that a movie might be in the pipeline.

That’s because the game-maker registered a series of domain names last week that include WatchDogsmovie.com, WatchDogsthemovie.com, Watch-Dogsmovie.com, Watch-Dogsthemovie.com.

Fusible.com spotted the multiple registrations, but it’s quite normal for a developer to ear-mark potential movie domains early in a game’s gestation, so file this one under speculation for now.

But the game certainly lends itself to celluloid treatment, with the story set in a near future when our lives are controlled by machines, and revolving around anti-hero Aiden Pierce, who can hack into anything at any time.

Whatever the case, Watch Dogs isn't set to hit shelves until 2013, so don't expect a movie version anytime before that.



Source : ign[dot]com

The Last of Us: Silence and Violence

At what was ultimately a somewhat flaccid E3 in many respects, it was non-sequels like The Last of Us that stole the show.

The attention is much-deserved and there have been plenty of column inches filled about just how terrific The Last of Us looked. But there’s been little said about how good it sounded.

Watch the E3 demo again, but this time pay close attention to the audio.

The incredible richness of the audio design in The Last of Us was even more evident in the behind-closed-doors session, an extended and slightly different take on the segment showcased at Sony's E3 press conference. A more measured and patient playthrough, it was even clearer here that sound is an immensely crucial part of The Last of Us equation. From the ear-exploding report of a shotgun in a small room to the subtle metallic rattle of a vibrating aluminium ladder, it seems nothing has been spared.

“We actually discussed it very early on that audio was going to be very important throughout the experience of this game,” says Phil Kovats, audio lead on The Last of Us. “We really wanted to play up the stealth ideas and we needed a lot of detail.”

“One of the biggest things is to really help Joel and Ellie feel alive to the player, and to help the world come alive we had to make sure it was a fully realised environment.”

Quiet. Too quiet.

The approach to recording can be staggeringly straightforward at times, as the team highly values real-world sound. Want a clip of coat hangers softly clinking against one another in a closet?

“You just go to your closet,” says Kovats. “You use what’s there.”

“ We just really wanted to keep it as real as possible.

“We record the water footsteps in a puddle of water, you know? Not on a foley stage; we actually did a live recording out in a pond for that. We just really wanted to keep it as real as possible. I think anything you get kind of ‘gamey’ or big takes you out of the experience.”

One of the key focuses in The Last of Us is juxtaposing moments of eerie and empty post-apocalyptic silence with moments of deafeningly loud shocks. You can hear this in the demo, which begins with the serene chirp of insects and ends with a shotgun blast of buckshot and brain.

"Fingers in your ears please, sweetheart."

Kovats stresses it’s an important element of the game’s atmosphere.

“We wanted to have a lot of dynamics in the game,” he says. “So there’s a lot of quiet moments compared to the loud moments. The loud moments are really loud in this game.”

“A lot of different games, I think, use guns, explosions... Those kinds of things are kind of on level with dialogue because that’s the whole experience. It’s a fog of war kind of thing. Here we want to bring it into a very tight, visceral, intimate feel, so we want to make sure there’s a lot of dichotomy there.”

“ The loud moments are really loud in this game.

So after three Uncharted titles is there a great deal of excitement at Naughty Dog around the warm reception for The Last of Us so far?

“Absolutely, says Kovats. “I think the whole idea when we split to a two title studio was really exciting because we could really take on something new and give it a life of its own.”

“When they brought me aboard and I saw the pitch for this game it was like a light went off. It was like, ‘Wow, this is just something amazing we can sink our teeth into.’

“And we’ve really come at it from a really collaborative point; I think this is the tightest team I’ve ever worked on.”

Kovats is most satisfied that people seem to be getting on board and becoming emotionally invested in the action.

“I think, honestly, the thing that really hits me the most is the point where people really get drawn in,” he says. “Story is very important to me; I come from a post-audio background so I love movies and TV and things like that and I moved into games. I think the ability to tell stories the way we do is huge, and it really gives an opportunity to the gamer to really experience something different.”

“So any time that we can get the player to get involved and really feel something, whether through humour or through shock or anything like that, it’s just very, very satisfying. So last night in the demo when Ellie threw the brick at the guy’s head and people were cheering, that was a huge moment. It’s not a huge audio moment, but it’s just one of those things where it all came together... It’s about bringing people alive, getting them into the story making them feel like it means something.”



Source : ign[dot]com

Xbox 720 Price, Features Revealed in Rumored Document

An unconfirmed document allegedly leaking out of Microsoft reveals the company's five-year plan, price, and features for the Xbox 720. The 56 page document looks at the possibilities for Xbox 360 in 2011 leading up to the launch of the next generation in 2013, which includes a new Kinect sensor at launch in a $299 bundle. Notable changes include a blu-ray disc drive, as well as a focus on and tablet integration. IGN is already confident that the next-generation will begin in 2013, and the plan for tablets to talk to consoles recently rang true.

Notable goals and features for the Xbox 720 include an improved Kinect sensor with four-player games, accessing your media library anywhere via cloud streaming, and not needing to upgrade hardware ever again. Most notable is the rumored plans to create glasses that give players a heads-up display/virtual reality interface dubbed Fortaleza.

Fun fact: Fortaleza is a state capital in Brazil, as was Natal.

Remember, none of this is information is confirmed, so take it with a grain of salt if you suspect it's an elaborate hoax. We've reached out to Microsoft for comment on its validity.

What do you make out of this alleged leak? Is it totally fake, or is it the beacon of our future?



Source : ign[dot]com