News: SEGA to show Natal prototype at E3

Motion controlled Mario & Sonic coming? SEGA West boss Mike Hayes has said the company is already working on a Project Natal demo – and will be showing it off at E3. It’s not just Microsoft’s motion control technology SEGA is interested in, either. “All credit to Microsoft and Sony, they’ve given us early development kits,” Hayes told CVG. “We asked our Japanese studio to create something for [Natal] which we’ll show off at E3. They had a brilliant prototype up and running within six weeks. I mean a genuinely entertaining prototype you could just play.” Read more…

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News: SEGA to show Natal prototype at E3

Natal Has At Least One Sega Project On Board For E3, "Several" More Later [Xbox 360]

Sony has already showed its hand in the upcoming motion control battle, debuting playable PlayStation Move games at GDC last week. Looks like we’ll see Microsoft’s response with at least one Sega game in tow at E3. More

News: Molyneux: Natal is bigger step than Move

Thinks Sony wand may be “for the core”. Peter Molyneux has told Eurogamer that he doesn’t think PlayStation Move is the same kind of step forward as Microsoft’s Project Natal, but admits he fancies a crack on Sony’s new magic wand controller. “I have seen some of it. We’re not really surprised, are we? I mean at E3 last year we saw they were having a wand, and that’s kind of what I expected. It looks like they’ve taken a step forward but it’s not as big a step as something like Natal, I don’t think,” Molyneux told us in an interview at GDC. “This is purely me talking personally, but I think maybe it’s slightly more a device for the core than it is for the casual market, because I think it’s quite precise. Read more…

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News: Molyneux: Natal is bigger step than Move

Bungie’s Next Project?

Bungie Project [untitled] (tba) It might not be a game at all.

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Bungie’s Next Project?

GDC 10: New Info On EA and 38 Studios’ New RPG

Copernicus [working codename] (X360) Writer R.A. Salvatore talks Copernicus, Project Mercury and how to deal with death.

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GDC 10: New Info On EA and 38 Studios’ New RPG

WarioWare Papercraft The Easiest DIY Project At GDC [Gdc10]

Nintendo is making a big deal of upcoming Nintendo DS game WarioWare D.I.Y. at this year’s Game Developers Conference, handing out miniature Warios that are not only easy to build, but make a great distraction when people are trying to post. More

Curt Schilling’s All-Star Role-Playing Game Has A Publisher And A Mystery Title [Ea]

Call it Project Mercury, and as of today, call it an EA game. The epic role-playing game that won’t — confirmed! — be called The Adventures of Curt Schilling has a home and a whole lot of mystery around it. Last week, top people involved in Project Mercury briefed Kotaku on the news being made official today that 38 Studios, the game company founded by former Boston Red Sox ace and avid gamer Curt Schilling, has signed a deal with Electronic Arts to have its mysterious, epic role-playing game published by EA’s Partners label. That’s the same EA Partners program that has brought gamers projects from other non-EA development studios, including The Orange Box from Valve, Rock Band from MTV Games and Brutal Legend from Double Fine Productions. But new details? Few were to be had. As had already been reported, Schilling has partnered with comic book guru Todd McFarlane and best-selling fantasy author R.A. Salvatore to create a universe within which 38 Studios’ Big Huge Games is creating a role-playing game. Heading the project at Big Huge Games is Ken Rolston, former lead designer of the Elder Scrolls games. Kotaku joins gamers in wishing we knew anything more about the game. Referencing Rolston’s resume, we theorized that this epic role-playing game might be similar to an Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. But 38 Studios CEO Jen MacLean said that supposing that “would do a disservice to Todd and R.A.’s involvement.” Those two men and Schilling, she said, have envisioned a novel fantasy world. We may be in the dark, but EA Partners dealmaker David DeMartini told Kotaku that two very good role-playing game experts, EA’s own leaders of its RPG powerhouse studio Bioware, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, were involved in vetting 38’s game. “I would be a fool if I didn’t tap into one of the best RPG developers in the world with Ray and Greg,” he said. “They were involved in the collaboration and discussion of the project.” Schilling and company’s game will be released for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. No release timeframe was specified. The game won’t be called Project Mercury when it comes out, and, as noted above, it won’t be called The Adventures of Curt Schilling either. We threw that one out there. We asked. No chance.

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Curt Schilling’s All-Star Role-Playing Game Has A Publisher And A Mystery Title [Ea]

Major League Baseball 2K10 Review: Pitching With Two Strikes [Review]

If MLB 2K9 had been an actual ballplayer, last year’s performance would have sent it to the minors, if not the waiver wire. After a soul-searching offseason, 2K Sports decided to focus on the fundamentals for MLB 2K10. This year’s game fixates on the batter-pitcher matchups that infuse every at-bat with suspense and dramatic potential. That is, of course, one component of a much larger simulation sports consumers expect. Is Major League Baseball 2K10 a short-term specialist, or can it deliver a complete game? Loved Pitching Power: Mapping your pitches to the analog sticks is not new to this game, but I came away from MLB 2K10 feeling the designers finally nailed what they set out to do last year. By incorporating a pitch-selection button (last year, it just interpreted your gesture), the game provides a truer fidelity to what you intend to throw while still incorporating variables in its effectiveness. The overall effect is to make you feel very much in charge on the mound, and not subject to a battle of pitch and swing ratings. It’s also very satisfying. When you crank a 12-6 curveball, which requires you to wind the right stick 8 pm to 10 pm, and freeze the No. 5 hitter for a called strike three, it’s a fists-in-the-air moment. The analog controls are better tuned than last year but not so unforgiving that, say, cutting the corner on the slider’s motion results in a wild pitch. There’s always the pitch analyzer to show you the path your stick traveled, and you can enable it for every pitch or just the ones you blow. After three or four games you’ll build a quick familiarity with the standard pitching motions. After five, you’ll really get off on putting them over the plate with oomph. On Pro difficulty, it’s a little too easy. I threw a lot of 10 strikeout games, including with Carl Pavano (who hasn’t done that since 2003) but that was on Pro difficulty, so serious hurlers will want to pitch on a higher difficulty or with tuned gameplay sliders. My Player: 2K Sports’ first stab at a singleplayer career mode in baseball is mostly a success – if you pick a pitcher. I did, so I found it enjoyable. This is the quarterback position of baseball, offering the most interaction with the game, and in this mode is a more likely choice so I give My Player a passing grade. My Player’s biggest drawback is the lack of a difficulty selection (by default, I think, you’re playing at the Pro level. And that’s it.) Superior players will probably get bored with My Player after two full seasons, either as a smoking ace or a hitter stranded in the minors, toiling for upgrade points. There’s a bit of a balance issue, though. Pitchers, by the volume of career events in which they’re involved, advance very quickly. You’re given one set of call-up goals and after that, it’s automatic to the majors. Or it was for me, anyway. While the training drills were routine enough that I didn’t feel my player was learning the trade entirely in live-fire action, he still ended up in the majors with just three pitches, with movement and control ratings in the 50s. While hitters may spend a realistically long time in the minors, it will feel like too long for some. If you’re a power-hitting outfielder, you’re looking at four plate appearances and a handful of outfield chances a game, and that, plus the drills, makes for a long bus ride. If you want to go hitter, I definitely recommend an infield position. MLB Today: My knowledge of this is largely drawn from the preview I got in January. As the Major League Baseball season is not yet underway, I can’t testify to this in practice. But I love the concept. MLB Today will provide you your team’s roster – both reflecting the real-life matchup of the day and any platoon arrangements (righty-lefty lineups) the team commonly uses. For those without intimate firsthand knowledge of how their favorite team has adjusted its lineup or reset its rotation midseason, MLB Today will do all of that work. Underneath, it’s built on the same concept as NBA Today in NBA 2K10 – in that the announcers’ commentary will adapt to and remark on past performance in a dynamic season. This is true for the persistent modes, too; I heard it even a few games into the My Player season, and it sounded lively. Booth Revue: It’s vogue to bag on sports commentary, but Gary Thorne, Steve Phillips and even John Kruk provide some very strong, well written and delivered dialogue. If you play with the same team you’ll certainly hear the same anecdotes, especially establishing the starting pitcher or a superstar’s first at-bat. But the commentary engine does a good job of blending real names with variables such as the previous at-bat’s result, what pitch got him out, what he blasted, etc. And then MLB Today should step in to cut down on the repetition. (When you’re playing opening day all the time, you’re bound to hear the same stuff.) If you play a plethora of teams and situations it is apparent how committed the game is in delivering a live broadcast. Kruk is by no means my favorite broadcaster and when I tried to discern why I disliked him in this game, it’s because I realized even he was in natural character. Hated Mangled Multiplayer: Early on the game was hamstrung by a freeze during the multiplayer ready screen – so bad that the only way to get back to the game was to quit back to the dashboard and start all over. It appears it will require a patch to completely resolve this, which tells you how bad this problem is. Game invitations sent to friends in your list are not affected, but I was unable to connect in a ranked match against a random opponent until the weekend. When I got in, I found the game completely warped to the favor of the pitcher. This is largely because of the palpable lag in your commands. (They’re there in pitching, but don’t do as much damage.) I was late on every swing. On the hill, with the Cubs’ 67-rated Carlos Silva against the Yankees, I chucked fastballs down the pipe and my opponent still fouled them off. I don’t prefer multiplayer in sports sims anyway, but the problems weighing down this experience mean I’d only take on someone in my friends list as a casual challenge, and I don’t think any of mine have this game. Subpar Visuals: Yes, they’ve solved the terrible framerate problems in last year’s game. But still, visually, MLB 2K10 isn’t an immersive or particularly visually appealing game, and that’s even without knowing what it is up against in MLB The Show. While the project takes pains to incorporate two-player animations – such as broken-up double-plays or collisions at the plate – these are not frequent enough occurences to raise your overall impression of the action. There is a lot of stop-and-start, and jerky transitions out of, say, a swing animation into running. Players at the end of a fielding play don’t stand around reacting naturally, they drop into a hands-up ready posture. The players faces have been upgraded, but oconsidering how bad MLB 2K9 was, the game still has a long way to go. Tim Lincecum looks like a skinny, brunette Chris Griffin from the Family Guy. And the poor quality of the uniform backs has been discussed before. You’re going to be frequently reminded that you’re playing a game, not watching one, and not in good ways. Airhead Intelligence: While the game strongly improves the physics and the actual gameplay, the decisions driving both remains simplistic and predictable. In My Player, as a pitcher, your manager’s leash will be based solely on your pitch count. I got into terrible late inning jams, emerged still with a lead, and still found myself batting in the bottom of the seventh or eighth. Pitchers won’t sacrifice bunt on you even with zero or one out and the booth crew calling for the obvious attempt. Opposing defenses will largely play you straight up rather than shift. Trading players and grabbing free agents in franchise mode, the game will mostly indulge whatever you intend to do, realistically to your advantage or not. Swing Shift: This seems like a conference-room bright idea that never materialized in the design process. MLB 2K10 incorporates what is essentially an intentional foul swat to prolong an at-bat and harass the opposing pitcher into making a mistake or throwing a more preferable pitch. Against a computer AI, it was too easily implemented – sometimes even for hits. And as a pitcher against a bot hitter, it seemed like the game was still working on the assumption that a human would be fouling off the two-strike pitches I threw. I got a ton of backward Ks, in other words, and saw nowhere near the rate of foul balls you get in a game like MLB The Show. The defensive swing also isn’t a natural feeling, flicking the stick to the side instead of forward. Add to that the herky-jerky check swing mechanic that was patched in very late and you have four different swings, only two of which are meaningful: Straight up and power. While the game’s cut down on cheap home runs, power overall has really taken a hit. You’re going to have to guess correctly with the power swing to clear the fences. I won games with base hits, walks and a double or lucky triple. Small picture, MLB 2K10 is a winner. (If, however, you’re looking for multiplayer baseball, wait until the game is patched.) It delivers on its marketing promise and creates some truly memorable individual matchups. When you pitch your way out of a bases-loaded, no-out jam, under this control scheme, you feel it for a long time. Backing out to the bigger picture, it’s not really a high quality sim, although I’ll allow that MLB Today, once it can draw on a reasonable sample size of stats, might deliver a higher fidelity. Still, too much about My Player and Franchise seems to be stage managed or indulgent of user whim. But for what it had to get right, MLB 2K10 came through. It’s a recommendable game on the Xbox 360. The gameplay is well tuned and, melded with the more deterministic batting and hitting controls, doesn’t seem as inscrutably random as you can encounter when unknown players face pitching meters. That may sound like damnation by faint praise, but it’s not. More than anything 2K Sports had to hit the core gameplay square or else it was looking at total product failure. MLB 2K10 is not a perfect game. But it is a quality start. Major League Baseball 2K10 was developed by Visual Concepts/2K Sports and published by 2K Games for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on March 2. Retails for $59.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played all game types in both single and multiplayer modes. Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ .

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Major League Baseball 2K10 Review: Pitching With Two Strikes [Review]

News: Molyneux: Natal improvements "countless"

Recent demos out-of-date, insists designer. Peter Molyneux has moved to dampen fears over Project Natal lag, insisting there have been “countless revisions of cameras and countless revisions of software” since the demo units shown to press and celebrities in recent weeks were produced. Following a recent London showcase, British TV personality Jonathan Ross commented via his Twitter account that Natal was “not quite there yet”, which prompted Microsoft PR to confirm the hardware and game demo Ross played dated back to summer 2009. Molyneux, who hosted an event with non-specialist media early last week at the same venue in London’s Fitzroy Square, expressed his frustration at not being able to show the latest iteration of the Xbox motion-control technology. Read more…

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News: Molyneux: Natal improvements "countless"

News: Molyneux: Natal upgrades "countless"

Recent demos out-of-date, insists designer. Peter Molyneux has moved to dampen fears over Project Natal lag, insisting there have been “countless revisions of cameras and countless revisions of software” since the demo units shown to press and celebrities in recent weeks were produced. Following a recent London showcase, British TV personality Jonathan Ross commented via his Twitter account that Natal was “not quite there yet”, which prompted Microsoft PR to confirm the hardware and game demo Ross played dated back to summer 2009. Molyneux, who hosted an event with non-specialist media early last week at the same venue in London’s Fitzroy Square, expressed his frustration at not being able to show the latest iteration of the Xbox motion-control technology. Read more…

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News: Molyneux: Natal upgrades "countless"

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