Features

Hasbro Reveals Fall Of Cybertron Toys

2012-02-11T23:00:00Z

Today, Hasbro is formally announcing the first toys that will be tied to the upcoming release of High Moon Studios' Transformers: Fall of Cybertron. Not only will these new figures be directly inspired by the video game, but in a move sure to excite toy collectors, five of the announced figures all combine into one giant figure -- Bruticus.

Old-school bot enthusiasts will recall that Bruticus is the combined form of the five Decepticon-aligned Combaticons. We spoke with Jerry Jovoin, director of Transformers Brand, and Joshua Lamb, director of design for Transformers Brand at Hasbro, to learn more about the inspiration behind these new figures, and exactly what goes into making toys from an existing video game property.

After you read the interview, don't miss our complete gallery of Bruticus and the Combaticons, which shows images of the toys, and the art that inspired them. You can also see the first revealed screenshots of the playable Bruticus character from Fall of Cybertron.

War for Cybertron included a small number of toy figures adapted from the game designs. How did you make the decision to broaden that plan to do more toys, this time tied to the sequel?

Jerry Jivoin: Overall, there was so much excitement from the fans of the first game and the toys we did for them. We did a limited run of four toys the first time for War for Cybertron. And every convention we went to -- whether it was San Diego Comic Con, New York Comic Con, BotCon -- we always would get questions about whether we’re going to do more War for Cybertron toys. So, we were very aware of that. So, when we saw the Fall of Cybertron game, when Activision came in and showed us, it just blew us away what they were doing. We were seeing the assets in 2D. We saw how cool it was shaping up to be. They showed us the trailer and some of the game demo; it looked incredible. We were immediately, like, we’ve got to do toys of these. We know the fans want them. This is a great character lineup, with great styling, and with how big we think the game is going to be, this was almost an easy decision. It’s too rich to pass up on. We think the fans are going to love it.

For fans not immediately familiar with Bruticus and the Combaticons, can you explain who these characters are, and why it might be exciting to see all five together in a single toy line?

JJ: The characters are from the original classic storyline that came out in the 80s. The Combaticons are a Decepticon force of five different characters that actually combine into a gigantic character called Bruticus. Originally, he was one of the first combiners, which is a technology in the Transformers universe where a group of robots transform on their own, individually, but they also transform to combine into one gigantic character. So that’s the origin of the character. And now, Activision and High Moon are taking those characters and bringing them into the game. It’s just a perfect way to reimagine how we want to do Bruticus and the Combaticons.

Joshua Lamb: One of the great things, back in the original G1 was that Bruticus was a really strong character. He was very powerful and headstrong. A character like that; it’s exciting to get to recreate in a toy. Obviously, with the game coming out, and seeing some of the animatics, and how the character is represented in the game, it’s like, wow, that’s so powerful, hitting you over the head with this great character, and we just want to recreate that sensation in the toy.

JJ: Not all Transformers combine like this. For fans not familiar with it, you have these special teams within the Transformers universe, that combine into these gigantic characters. So it’s a unique type of Transformers within the fiction.

How will these new Fall of Cybertron toys fit into the wider rollout of Transformers toys in the coming year? Will they be part of an existing line, like Generations? Or an independent Transformers toy line by themselves?

JJ: These toys will be part of the Generations line. It fits perfectly in it as far as who the consumer is. The style fits within Generations. So we’re excited to bring them out as part of that line.

We’ve released other combiners over the years within the line. But it will be the first in that scale. These characters are in the Deluxe scale. That is a first for us to do. That these Deluxe size figures will combine into this really giant figure.

JL: Traditionally, our combiners have tended to be of a smaller scale, and they combine to create a Deluxe size or a little larger. In this case, each figure is already Deluxe size, so when you put them together you get this very impressive scale.

From a story perspective how do toy characters from Fall of Cybertron relate to characters who appear in the Transformers: Prime television show and toy line?

JJ: The characters in the video game, like Optimus Prime and Megatron, also show up in the Prime show. It’s another story that we’re telling and the characters that are a part of that universe. It’s another chapter of that story. This story takes place on Cybertron, whereas Prime takes place on Earth. It’s just another story within that timeline. This is that part of the story.

JL: The great part about that is that by taking these stories and putting them in different locations and running side by side with each other, it opens up the door to more and more unique characters. Instead of having, say, six characters from the show, the movies, or the games, we’re able to bring in new characters to fill out these separate stories.

JJ: It’s the same continuity. The story that is going on in Fall of Cybertron, this is before they’ve left Cybertron. This is before they come to Earth. Prime is after they’ve come to Earth. It’s all the same continuity, it’s just different points in the timeline.

Are the Combaticons going to be each packaged separately for sale, or together as part of a Fall of Cybertron set?

JJ: They’ll be sold as the individual characters within the Deluxe assortment, and so that we ensure that they all get out there at the same time, we’re going to put them in the same case pack. They should all show up at retail at the same time.

JL: One of the great things about that is knowing that we’re going to launch these as their own individual Deluxe characters, where a consumer can pick one of these up and it’s a figure within itself. It really challenged us to make sure that each character on their own was a fully functional Transformer. You have a vehicle mode and you have a robot mode. You have the weapons. All together it stands as its own product. And, as a phenomenal bonus, you get this uber character. But they are, individually, their own character.

Back in the day, when you’d get combiner figures, you’d sometimes get individual pieces that were meant to be part of the larger figure, like the head or hands. Will there be those sorts of pieces with this set?

JL: The larger figure’s parts are all drawn from the individual character’s transformations. There are no floating pieces that you have to store or hold on to and wait until a later date. Each one on its own – it’s all there. Again, it’s a challenge from designing them, but they came out magnificently.

While you're announcing the Combaticons as figures drawn from the Fall of Cybertron games, can fans expect any other characters from the game to show up within the toy line in a later announcement?

JJ: Yes. We do plan to do more Fall of Cybertron toys, which will be revealed later. We’re very excited about doing additional toys as well. [editor's note: Hasbro also revealed Fall of Cybertron toys for Optimus Prime, Jazz, and Shockwave earlier today]

When do you expect fans will first be able to purchase toys inspired by Fall of Cybertron?

JJ: Currently, right now we’re targeting Fall of 2012. It will be around the August-September time frame at retail, which should put it in line with the video game release.

So, that’s when you’ll have a lot of collectors scrambling around trying to find all five characters?

JL: One thing that we designed and worked in early on is that Brawl is the center character, but as far as the arms and the legs, we designed them all appropriately so that they can all be hands or legs. For some reason, if somebody just has to put together that larger figure, and they find two Blastoffs, but can’t find a Vortex, they can do that. There is room for customization within the character himself. We worked really hard to have each character have a hand or a foot in it. You can really swap it around.

As a toy designer, is it more or less challenging to work with an existing visual design for a character, as you have with these characters drawn from visual designs crafted at High Moon Studios? Are those challenges compounded by the decision to make a combiner toy, like Bruticus?

JL: There’s two parts to to a designer’s job. Part of it is designing the product, but the other half is trying to sell it internally to the sales team and through the whole corporate structure. When you get incredible artwork, like we’ve gotten from High Moon, that shows off these characters, the selling just happens immediately. That half of my job is all of a sudden tremendously easier. Because I have this gorgeous art, and I can say, look what we’re going to do. And everybody in the company just says we’ve got to do that. On the flip side, when you’re trying to create a transformation that matches up to the designs, that is very challenging. It’s something that we’re very fortunate that we have this incredible team of designers that work on these projects that just know how to manipulate the pieces around and create the plastic to match the art. It is more difficult than when we’re coming up with it on our own, but that’s part of the fun. The more challenging it is, the better off the product ends up.

Why is that?

JL: It’s just a passion and a love for what they’re doing. If you have a passion for something, and you’re challenged at it, you strive to make it the best that you can. If it’s all easy, you just start saying, yeah, I can do this during my lunch time, and it’s no problem. It’s easy to not put as much effort into it. With Transformers already being such a challenging toy to design already, on top of that, getting artwork and character designs from wherever they come in from – it’s awesome. It’ s a huge challenge. And it really creates some of our best Transformers.

Can you walk me through the process of an individual toy's creation, from concept to final colored version? Are changes often made along the way? How long does the entire process take?

JL: Overall, it’s about a two year process, from early concept to when the product hits the shelf. Sometimes it gets scrunched a little more. So, in this case, we got it kicked off a while back, which is why we’re so excited to finally discuss it. It’s been on our plates for the last year. The way the process works, and the process is a little more complex with Transformers than with some of the other brands within Hasbro, is that the product line is really a marriage of two companies. There’s Hasbro and there’s Takara Tomy, in Japan. Even though we’re two separate companies, the people at Hasbro working on Transformers, and the people at Takara Tomy working on the brand, we are really one team. We are a complete partnership. What happens throughout the design process is finding a designer in our Rhode Island building here, and a designer at the Takara Tomy building. The designers work really closely with one another. What kind of features do you want to hit? What playability do you want? What kind of novel feature are we trying to put in there? Together, with these goals in mind, we come out with these incredible products. They really go from a sketch stage to an early quick model stage, then the next step is a fine-tuned model that is completely hand built. We have one of those in front of us right now. These models are incredible. Both the team at Hasbro and Takara Tomy are so vested in designing Transformers, and they understand the process so well, that even though they’re incredibly complicated, you watch these designers work on these, and it’s like magic. They’re working on them, and the next thing you know, you’ve got this Transformer in your hands. It’s a hand-built prototype. Because these guys are so talented, what they deliver as far as the hand-built prototype, is almost always dead on to what we ship in production. We take that prototype out to be tooled up – there’s a process by which that prototype goes out and they make the tools at the factory. The handwork that goes into one of these – it’s so detailed that the prototype is really very similar to what you hold in your hands as the final production model.

Are those hand models built to scale?

JL: Yep. They’re built exactly to scale, with all the articulation, everything. All the details, all the scribe lines, face sculpting detail. It’s a hand built model. It’s amazing to be able to play with these. Not only are they hand built with all the detail, but they fully transform, and they’re robust enough that you can transform them. Not like a production model – I could break this pretty easily. But with careful movements I can transform it from a vehicle back into a robot. That’s what we use, not only to evaluate, but these hand built models are also what we end up painting up to sell the product in. So when we go to presentations internally and externally, we use them, as well as the package shots – when you look at the back of a package that is a hand painted model that you’re looking at. It’s usually a hand painted model that we played with, trying to figure out what we were doing. If you want to see how good those models look, just look at any package.

Being more fragile than a production model, do you have these break from time to time?

JL: Oh, every day.

So, there are extras?

JL: It depends on the character. Obviously, with a character like Bruticus that we’re very excited about, we probably have maybe ten sets built and decorated. The first set we built to figure out what we’re doing. The other hand built sets are put together for different types of sales presentations, to be shipped around globally.

After these hand-built models are put together, there aren’t a lot of changes made?

JL: When we come to the manufacturing process, there are changes with some articulations. Not with how the character articulates overall, but some of the joints. Do we want to use a ball joint or a pin? Usually, once you built the model, you’re 99% there.

What is the experience like working with High Moon Studios? Is there much interaction and iteration on a design with the team there when putting together a character's look?

JJ: The great thing is High Moon and Activision are great parnters. With Transformers, we have this great brand, and Hasbro really drives the process of working with Activision and High Moon. Aaron Archer is our vice president of Transformers, and he works on a lot of the storytelling and IP creation, and he works directly with Activision and High Moon to really drive the story and the character selection, the look and feel of it. Once we get into the actual design, there’s a lot of back and forth to really represent the characters and the brand in the best way possible. We’ll work with Takara Tomy on the toy design and the transformation, but the early stages of the brand are really driven by Hasbro and our IP group led by Aaron Archer, along with Activision and High Moon.

JL: Jerry is absolutely right. Aaron has his office, and it has the map of the brand, and where we want it to go. You can go into Aaron’s office, and be talking about 2015 or 2016 – years away. What’s going to happen in 2016 as far as where the Transformers story is going. Archer has all that. He doesn’t have it all solved. He has the ideas. It’s all mapped up there. It comes out of his office and his team and gets funneled to Activision or other media. The great thing for Jerry and I, we’re very fortunate, Archer is just great to work with, and he includes Jerry and myself in his meetings on where the brand wants to go. And once all that is worked out, we can go back to our teams and say: here’s what’s happening. Here is this character. It’s going to be Bruticus.

In recent years, as evidenced by these toys, Hasbro has been looking increasingly at toys tied directly to video games, rather than always a tie to a cartoon. Why is that happening? What is it about video games that has Hasbro offering increased support in that direction?

JJ: When we look at video games, they’re great storytelling devices. The high quality of the game makes it another great way to tell another part of the Transformers story. And we’ve got many fans of different expressions – whether it’s the video game format, or Prime, or the movie, or classic G1, there’s a lot of variation in Transformers fans around the world. And this is just a great way to tell another story along that timeline. And we’re excited to bring that to the fans.

What Does The Academy Of Interactive Arts And Sciences Think Of The Spike Video Game Awards?

2012-02-11T16:19:00Z

The Spike Video Game Awards is a divisive show. Every year the awards become both a source of complaint for those who want to the see the entertainment medium treated as art, and an exciting spectacle for those who like to see their favorite hobby spend time in the spotlight.

Some of the people involved with the show have complaints about the VGAs’ tendency to ignore the games in favor of the celebrity guests and extraneous non-video game related segments. Then there are others who enjoy the bright lights and music. Hideo Kojima, the man behind the Metal Gear series, tweeted that future announcements regarding his game may even be at the VGAs instead of E3 or other comparable shows.

The folks in charge of the Interactive Achievement Awards seem to appreciate the show. Here’s what a few members of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences think of the Spike VGAs and how it compares to the annual IAAs (don't forget to check out the just-announced Interactive Achievement Award winners this year):

“I think they’re highly entertaining. I go every year.”
-Ted Price, president and CEO of Insomniac Games

“Well, um, personally I think all the pornography awards are bad. Oh wait a minute, that’s not the question.

"Sorry, that wasn’t a shot at the other guys, there are just a tremendous amount of award shows out there of all kinds. We’re a part of that real estate. There are great awards like BAFTA [British Academy of Film and Television Arts] that are the product of long standing organizations trying to be relevant in our business and trying to reach the customers that they increasingly understand are a part of the broader audience that they want to talk to, in their case, about films. And we think that’s great. We think that when BAFTA has awards about what we do we think that does nothing but make us look like a part of the entertainment business, that’s great. I think the VGAs are a good example of an award that tries to talk to the customers and ask what they want and what they think is great. The customer-oriented awards are an important expression that you really want to hear and I know that when people win those they know it’s the product of customers speaking their minds about what they think is great. At the end of the day, I think our little spot is that we represent the crafts people love, what our business believes are the best of the best, and that’s usually a special responsibility that’s a little different than those other guys.”
-Rich Hilleman, chief creative director at Electronic Arts and co-creator of Madden

“I think the VGAs are a fantastic show as entertainment, as well as a vehicle for publishers to announce a new title. It has a very broad reach and the show is very good at producing constant entertainment value and the positioning and timing of it prior to any other awards coming in typically starts toward the end of the year through the early spring time frame. It kicks off kind of the whole awards streak, so people have some additional interest to look up which are the games that we will be seeing in many other awards shows and selections. It’s very interesting and fun to watch, and some announcements are very exciting. Yeah, I like it.”
-Shuhei Yoshida, senior vice president of product development for Sony Computer Entertainment

“I think they all have their place. I think that one thing that sets the academy apart is an award by people’s peers. And that’s something that the people that receive the award, they really are flattered by because it is voted on by basically their peers in the industry. Much like the Academy Awards, it carries that level of prestige. There is certainly a place for the other awards and they do a good job and it’s great, and they help us all in the industry, but there is something to be said by being recognized by your peer in the industry.”
-Denny Thorley, President of development at Day 1 Studios

Replay: MediEvil

2012-02-11T14:00:00Z

The PlayStation served as a training ground for many developers looking to tap the new market for 3D games. One such game is MediEvil, a goofy, Halloween-coated action game that put players in the greaves of the deceased knight Sir Dan. Does the 1998 gameplay hold up? Or is it showing signs of decomposition?

Join your host Andrew Reiner, Ben Reeves, and myself as we dust off this PlayStation relic and have another go. We confront hordes of over-caffeinated zombies, conquer piles of broken glass, and engage in a harrowing battle with a stained glass golem.

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Want more Replay? Check out every episode over at our hub page.

Super Replay: Overblood 2 - Episode 16

2012-02-09T16:44:00Z

Our original plan for Super Replay was to give the best games of all time a lengthier treatment than our standard Replay episodes. I kicked things off with my favorite game ever, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. We continued with the classics by playing through Super Mario Bros. 3 and Resident Evil 2. However, things changed as soon as I picked an unassuming 1997 PSone title for our Replay Roulette during the Revolution X episode. We were so intrigued by what happened during the initial minutes of Overblood that we knew it needed to be the first obscure title to get its own Super Replay treatment. A year later, and the GI staff has Pipo t-shirts, the community has created remakes in Unreal and LittleBigPlanet, and we've watched (and participated in) the rise of an active Overblood/Replay fan group on Facebook. Now, it's time for us to play through Overblood 2.

The circumstances around this sequel are even more odd than our discovery of the original. Never released in the United States, Overblood 2 was widely reported to contain a game-breaking glitch that makes its completion impossible. Ignoring these warnings, we decided to order a UK version of the game off of eBay and try our luck. Can we finish the game, or will the bug result in our first-ever incomplete Super Replay? Will we see the return of Raz and Pipo? Can it possibly live up to the original? Watch below, and find out along with the Game Informer staff.

(Each episode will feature myself, Tim Turi, and Andrew Reiner, with a rotating cast of GI editors filling the fourth seat)

Episode 1 (Guest: Matt Helgeson):

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Episode 2 (Guest: Ben Reeves)

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Episode 3 (Guest: Bryan Vore)

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Episode 4 (Guest: Phil Kollar)

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Episode 5 (Guest: Phil Kollar)

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Episode 6 (Guest: Phil Kollar)

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Episode 7 (Guest: Jim Reilly)

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Episode 8 (Guest: Jeff Cork)

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Episode 9 (Guest: Joe Juba)

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Episode 10 (Guest: Andy McNamara)

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Episode 11 (Guest: Jeff Marchiafava)

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Episode 12 (Guest: Jim Reilly)

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Episode 13 (Guest: Andy McNamara)

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Episode 14 (Guest: Aram Jabbari)

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Episode 15 (Guest: Matt Helgeson)

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Episode 16 (Guest: Phil Kollar)

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Want to catch up on all of our previous Replay episodes? Visit our hub, then head over to the fan-created "I Watched The Entire Overblood Super Replay" group on Facebook for discussion.

Replay: Alex Kidd In The Enchanted Castle

2012-02-09T03:39:00Z

During the console wars of the early 90s, Nintendo was represented by Mario and Sega had Sonic in their corner. While these faces were the most famous, Sega had a popular platformer of their own before Sonic took off. In this week's Replay, we take a look back at a series that has essentially been abandoned as the industry moved forward.

Watch below to see Andrew Reiner, Bryan Vore, Phil Kollar, and myself take a look back at Alex Kidd In The Enchanted Castle.

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Want more Replay? Check out every episode over at our hub page.

The Story And Environments Of The Last Of Us

2012-02-08T17:15:00Z

With the release of Uncharted 3 behind them, the next creation to leave the hallowed halls of Naughty Dog is an original game called The Last of Us. The team at the Santa Monica-based studio has spent the last two years creating an entirely new world. The game is a post-apocalyptic tale about survival, but the team at Naughty Dog hopes that the journey of the main characters and the green environments will help them stand apart from anything you've seen before. The game director Bruce Straley and creative director Neil Druckmann are putting a heavy emphasis on the story, and now is your chance to learn how that story begins. Watch the video below to hear about the early portions of the game and what kind of environments Joel and Ellie will be exploring as they strike out on their adventure. The creative team also addresses the idea of a potential sequel to this story.

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To learn more about The Last of Us, please click on the link to our content hub below.

Reiner And Phil Play The Darkness II

2012-02-08T01:30:00Z

Reiner and I love shooters and comic books in equal measure, so an FPS based off Top Cow's The Darkness seems right up our alley. Find out how this second game fares in our 25-plus minute look at The Darkness II.

Be prepared for some gross-out kills, colorful bloodshed, and a lot of repetition in the video along with a few surprises. Once you're done watching, check out our many previous Reiner and Phil videos on our hub page.

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Digital Issue 227 Is Live: Read About The Last Of Us Now

2012-02-07T19:07:00Z

Get the full story on The Last of Us and much more in the latest digital edition of Game Informer Magazine.

If you're already a subscriber, make sure you're signed in to gameinformer.com, hover over the "Magazine" tab in the upper right of the site, and click the "Read Current Issue." On the following page, click the "Launch" button and enjoy. Check out our graphical guide on getting to your digital subscription for more details if you need help.

Or you could just bypass all of that and launch the magazine here. Still make sure you're signed in, however. We've heard a few issues related to the launch button showing up in the Chrome browser so try Firefox or use the direct link for now.

Those who are interested in subscribing to the digital edition of Game Informer Magazine, which includes all the content from the print edition plus loads of bonus content, can sign up here and have the issue delivered to your inbox within one business day. You'll also gain access to over a year of past issues in the process. If you'd like to switch from print to digital, click here.

Take a look at a free, complete sample issue to get a sense of what it's like. You must have an Internet connection to view the issue that is compatible with Adobe Flash. PCs and Macs running Firefox are preferable (the issue can be read on mobile and tablet browsers but the experience is very limited and not recommended).

Visit our troubleshooting guide if you're having difficulty accessing your issue.

Watch Alex Kidd Reflect On His Time As Sega's Mascot

2012-02-07T17:30:00Z

In our most recent issue featuring The Last of Us (#227), we look back Sega's former number one guy, Alex Kidd. In the magazine's Classic GI section, you can relive all of his gaming entries, but this long-lost video just has to be seen by any self respecting, hardcore Sega fan.

In 2001, Sega released a game on Dreamcast in Japan called Segagaga. In this RPG/management sim, you play as a young man trying to save Sega's gaming business. It's a darn shame that this bold, yet wacky title never made it to the U.S., but we can shed some light on one part of the game. Alex Kidd doles out some uplifting advice to the player character when he's at his lowest. Unfortunately for English speakers, it's all in Japanese.

We reached out to Sega and the translators there were gracious enough to help us bigtime. Our video guy, Jason Oestreicher, did a great job editing the text in with the game footage. Watch the video below as Alex Kidd reflects on the good old days before Sonic took his job and he ended up in game retail.

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Advanced Tactics: The Search For A Smarter Military Shooter

2012-02-07T17:17:00Z

Military shooters have a long and venerable history in video games. Before Call of Duty and Battlefield began their war for complete market domination, smaller series like Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, and SOCOM provided different takes on digital warfare. These series differentiated themselves – and the military shooter genre – from other FPS franchises like Quake and Halo by emphasizing strategy and realism. Forgoing roller-coaster spectacle and nonstop action, they presented gamers with a pseudo-authentic military experience where every shot counted and tactics played a larger role in the outcome of a mission than itchy trigger fingers.

In the last few years, the first-person shooter landscape has radically changed. Guns-blazing military shooters now take center stage, with Modern Warfare 3 selling a record-breaking 6.4 million copies on launch day. But along with the genre's newfound audience has come a redefining of what a military shooter entails. Detailed mission briefings and pre-operations planning have been replaced by convoluted storylines pasted together with all the skill and flashiness of a Michael Bay film. NPC squads of stat-differentiated team members have been reduced to exaggerated stereotypes with "follow" signs hovering over them. Dynamic, open battlefields have been streamlined into linear campaigns with action scripted down to the explosion. Online play affords gamers more opportunity for strategic thinking, but regenerating health, kill cams, super-human perks, and killstreak rewards ensure the action remains fast-paced, unrelenting, and far removed from reality.

Are strategy-oriented military shooters dead? If you're looking for a console release with the level of planning offered in the old Rainbow Six titles, the answer is yes. But that doesn't mean all military shooter fans have assimilated into the Call of Duty horde. A small but dedicated group has switched platforms, moved online, and has been enjoying a level of realism and strategy-focused gameplay that simply doesn't exist in mainstream gaming.

The following games might not offer the bombastic moments that the current crop of triple-A military shooters do, but if you're looking for an experience that makes you feel more like a soldier than a one-man army, here are some titles worth enlisting in.

Arma II

"You have to be skilled. Most people think that all you can do is get in and start doing great when you can't. You start at an airfield and have to pick your gear and move to a targeted town through airlifting, which could be on C-130s, helicopters, or air-to-air combat in jets. You have to land a distance out and move in with a squad and be aware. If people would like to experience realistic war, I would suggest getting this game because it's as real as it gets." – Austin Farley, Commander of Arma II's Virtual U.S. Military clan

Ask Internet-goers what the most realistic military shooter on the market is, and Arma II will be the overwhelmingly popular response. This large-scale tactical shooter for PC was developed by Bohemia Interactive Studios, creators of the original Operation Flashpoint. That game's proprietary Real Virtuality engine was so realistic that Bohemia created a sister studio to develop VBS1, a full-fledged military simulator licensed by the United States Marine Corps for training.

After a falling out with Operation Flashpoint publisher Codemasters (which retained the rights to the franchise), BIS began working on the Arma series. The latest release is Arma II, which uses Real Virtuality 3 to provide a level of realism its fans swear by. This includes the game's 81 real-world weapons and a comprehensive ballistics simulation that takes into account bullet drop, muzzle velocity, and realistic material penetration and ricochet depending on the angle of impact.

In addition to the arsenal, Arma II also features more than 120 accurately recreated vehicles, as well as real-world terrain constructed from topography scans, day-night cycles, and changing weather and wind conditions. Perhaps the best testament to Arma II's authenticity is the recent flub committed by the UK's Independent Television network, which aired a documentary that mistook camcorder-captured footage of the game as video from a 1988 IRA attack.

Despite Arma II's attention to detail, the game was criticized at its 2009 release for AI issues and bugs, both of which Bohemia has attempted to address with subsequent patches. In June of last year, the company released a free-to-play version of the multiplayer -component of Arma II, which allows gamers to partake in its massive 50-player matches with owners of the full game.

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad

"It's not flashy or based on Hollywood-effect warfare. The realism also is a bit humbling; you aren't blessed with perfect accuracy, and you are going to die gory, inhuman deaths frequently. It has a learning curve that rewards players who are equally concerned with keeping themselves alive as they are with killing the enemy, but perhaps most refreshingly of all it brings the player back to the core of why wars are fought: land. You're not tasked with simply annihilating the enemy, you must seize and hold key ground, ground that is for the most part very faithful to the actual battlegrounds and strategic points within the city of Stalingrad itself." – Vittorio Rinaldi, Platoon Leader in the 51st Guards realism unit

This realism-oriented WWII shooter started off as a total conversion mod for Epic Games' sci-fi multiplayer FPS Unreal Tournament 2004. The mod won Epic Games' and nVidia's Make Something Unreal contest, leading to a standalone retail release and the eventual sequel, built using Unreal Engine 3.

A lot of Red Orchestra 2's realism lies in its presentation. This PC game features a minimalist HUD to simulate a true first-person view. For example, there is no aiming reticle in Red Orchestra 2; instead players must rely solely on iron sights while compensating for gun sway and breathing. There's also no onscreen ammo indicator, so players must manually check their ammo count or mentally keep track of how many bullets they've fired. As with Arma II, Red Orchestra 2 features full ballistics modeling, including bullet drop and material penetration.

The realism extends to Red Orchestra's 2 damage system. Wounds continue bleeding until bandaged, which doesn't actually regenerate health but at least prevents any further loss. More often than not, however, your first gunshot wound is your last.

Another lauded feature is the game's realistic simulation of tanks. Unlike most first-person shooters that feature vehicles, tanks in Red Orchestra 2 have fully modeled interiors and realistic armor (meaning where you shoot a tank matters). Tanks also require multiple people to effectively operate, via either an AI crew in single-player or fellow players online.

Like Arma II, Red Orchestra 2's single-player campaign was criticized for its poor AI. Multiplayer is where the game really shines, thanks to massive open-world maps, a 64-player limit, and a military hierarchy featuring commanders and squad leaders for each team who can issue commands and call in artillery strikes.

A Beginner's Guide To Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning

2012-02-07T02:30:00Z

Many eager RPG fanatics will be picking up Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning tonight, the new title from Big Huge Games that introduces 38 Studios’ new fantasy IP. While you’ll have to wait until later tonight to read my full review, a game this gigantic deserves some guidance. Here are a few tips to get you started on your journey through Amalur.

Installation

If you’re playing the PS3 version of Reckoning, you’ll note the forced installation at the beginning. If you opted to go with the Xbox 360 version, take my advice: Install it to your hard drive. Not only does the installation make some of Reckoning’s tiny bugs less frequent, but more importantly it decreases the load times. When you’re wandering around out in the open, loading isn’t a big issue, but once you start fast traveling everywhere or trying to explore all of the buildings in a city, you’ll be hitting loading screens all the time. The install makes a difference and is worth it in the long run.

Taking out the trash

Reckoning’s menu and inventory system isn’t particularly new or groundbreaking, but it is fairly elegant once you get used to it. Every time you loot a treasure chest or a fallen enemy, you can scroll through the list and quickly compare any armor pieces or weapons to what you currently have equipped. If it’s not an upgrade, a simple button press will send the piece to your trash list. The next time you’re at a vendor, you can auto-sell all of your trash with a single button press instead of needing to sell each item individually. You’ll be picking up a lot of non-upgrades throughout the game, so making a good habit of using the trash feature early on will save you time and annoyance.

Window shopping

Every time you enter a new town, be sure to check in with every vendor in the area and do a thorough look through their goods. In addition to crafting recipes, specific vendors throughout the world of Amalur sell backpacks that will permanently upgrade your inventory space, which becomes increasingly important and helpful as the dungeons get bigger. While you’re at it, don’t be afraid of buying armor or weapon upgrades. The deeper into Reckoning you get, the more you’ll find that money is not at all a concern thanks to huge quest rewards and piles upon piles of loot to sell.

Searching for secrets

In addition to traditional skill points, you’ll be able to power up one of your non-combat skills with every level – stuff such as lockpicking, blacksmithing, and enchanting. All of these are helpful and by the end you should have a fairly well-rounded mix, but I recommend focusing on pumping points into the Detect Hidden skill early on. This priceless ability allows you to find hidden treasure caches around the world and even passively increases the amount of gold and loot you find at all times. It also eventually lets you detect traps and the Lorestones hidden in each zone.

Conquer The Old Republic With These Tips

2012-02-07T01:01:00Z

Stave off repetitive stress injuries and dramatically improve your reaction times in the game by learning from this sage keybinding advice.

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Resident Evil: Revelations Is Amazing With Two Circle Pads

2012-02-06T23:02:00Z

Many folks scoffed and teased Nintendo when it announced the bulky piece of 3DS hardware, but the Circle Pad Pro’s extra control nub and shoulder buttons make playing Resident Evil: Revelations a revelation in itself. The added control makes moving and shooting – a Holy Grail for the series – an empowering reality, while smoothing out the overall experience.

My 3DS automatically detected the extra circle pad upon booting up the game, which made getting started a snap. Once the gameplay kicked in I immediately noticed the default action button gets swapped to a shoulder button so you don’t have to reach your right thumb all the way from the new circle pad to the d-pad. Your melee attack is also mapped to a shoulder button, without the circle pad add-on you are normally required to select a knife or other similar weapon from your inventory first. I love the fact that I can now deliver a flurry of stabs with the push of a button.

The extra circle pad controls the camera when moving in the standard third-person view. Being able to glance around the environment and steer your character with your right thumb is a welcome addition. It gets even better when you enter combat. With the extra circle pad you can finally move and shoot. At one point I circle strafed around an autopsy table, effectively keeping two zombies at bay in a deadly game of Ring around the Rosie. I also managed to out-maneuver I giant slug-like enemy and dispatch it entirely with a knife without taking damage – something that would have tedious and annoying without the extra circle pad. Finally being able to apply sensible strategies to enemy encounters is a welcome improvement.

The welcome gameplay improvements come with a couple drawbacks. The extra circle pad I used didn’t feel as smooth as the one built into the 3DS. You have the option to calibrate the second circle pad, but I didn’t notice a beneficial change. Additionally, there were several times I felt I was battling the camera‘s auto-center function, which gets annoying when examining environments. Finally, I didn’t like that putting the 3DS to sleep caused the system to forget the circle-pad was attached. Reactivating it isn’t difficult, it’s just a slight hindrance.

Don’t let my small gripes deter you -- this is the definitive way to play Resident Evil: Revelations. I’ve already played and enjoyed the game a ton without the Circle Pad Pro, but I’m as excited as ever to do it all again with this added level of control. The ability to move and shoot and control the camera reduces the already narrow gap between Resident Evil: Revelations and its console counterparts. We haven't seen hide nor hair or any rumors hinting at a Vita version of Revelations or a new 3DS model with two circle pads, so there appears to be little gained by waiting it out. I’m purchasing this peripheral for Revelations alone, and it’s a choice I know I won’t regret.

Naughty Dog Almost Made A New Jak And Daxter

2012-02-06T15:00:00Z

From Crash Bandicoot to Uncharted, Naughty Dog has a history of putting out top-notch entertainment. The studio is jam-packed with talented game creators. So many, in fact, that two years ago the company expanded to form a second team, which would eventually develop The Last of Us. But before the first glimpses of Joel and Elle’s post-apocalyptic survival tale wowed gamers, Naughty Dog was working on a next-generation reboot to the lauded Jak and Daxter series. This is the story of how Naughty Dog’s new team started work on a Jak game that would never see the light of day.

Following the success of Uncharted 2, Sony wanted to license out the game’s engine to make more great-looking blockbusters, but, due to technological factors, Naughty Dog ended up being the only studio that could actually use it. The game’s warm reception also brought up the inevitable side effect of competitors trying to poach the talented team. Thus, Naughty Dog proposed creating a second team in order to release more games using their engine and Sony agreed instantly. It also opened up new promotional opportunities for talented staffers and helped keep the headhunters at bay.

The thumbs-up from Sony meant the brain storming process could begin, and one of the first ideas was to return to Naughty Dog’s PlayStation 2 duo. “We’d all talked about it in interviews with fans asking ‘When’s the next Jak and Daxter?’ says Wells. “I don’t know if this is going to make them happy or sad, but we did explore the idea fairly extensively.”

Naughty Dog wanted to find a way to apply elements from Uncharted 2’s award-winning game design to Jak and Daxter. The team experimented with implementing Uncharted-style narrative techniques and rendering Jak and Daxter in the same realistic style seen in the company’s gorgeous PS3 games. According to Wells, the new project would be a departure from slapstick, comic book-tone of previous games. But before full-blown work could begin on the game Naughty Dog would have to create new, more realistic versions of the titular heroes.

“We dug around trying to find the core of Jak and Daxter,” says creative director for The Last of Us, Neil Druckmann. “Who are the characters? We had to reboot it essentially. Every time we got excited about an idea we’d take a step back and look at it and be like ‘It’s not Jak and Daxter, are we just slapping the name on it for marketing reasons?’”

The lighthearted Daxter proved to make the transition from wacky hijinks to a more grounded experience particularly difficult.

“There’s a lot of baggage that comes with Daxter,” says The Last of Us director Bruce Straley. “If he’s not lighthearted and slapsticky and fun then he’s not Daxter to the fans. We were thinking what if he’s mute? What if he’s this? We had all these ideas that made Daxter interesting, but then we’re still trying to be creative within that box of ‘I have this rodent on my shoulder.’”

“It started feeling like a compromise,” says Druckmann. “The more we tried to make Jak and Daxter like we wanted to, it didn’t feel like things were matching up. We have folders and folders filled with scrapped ideas.”

Note: The artwork in this article is not from the abandoned Jak and Daxter game

Naughty Dog opened up a select few of these folders to offer us a glimpse of early concept art for the abandoned Jak and Daxter reboot. We saw a much more humanoid version of Jak, lacking pointy ears but retaining similar clothes, features, green facial hair, and fit physique. His signature yellow locks remained, however, with sketches showing it off in everything from dreadlocks to messy spikes.

Early examples of Daxter’s transformation were more extreme. We saw an orange, goggled, ferret-like animal with expressionless eyes perched upon Jak’s shoulder. Several additional sketches highlighted Daxter’s beastly qualities, in accordance with the attempt to reboot the series with slightly more realism. Daxter’s expressive facial expressions and big eyes returned in other pieces of concept art, but the non-cartoony look still made the critter difficult to recognize.

Things just weren’t clicking into place.

“All the ideas just started to feel like they were going so far away from what made Jak and Daxter Jak and Daxter,” says Wells. “Even though we wanted to give fans another Jak and Daxter, we felt we weren’t going to give them the game that they wanted, and that we would end up either limiting the direction that the company had this passion for while simultaneously not creating the game that fans wanted. We just realized we were going to just do everybody a disservice.”

Shelving the Jak and Daxter ideas meant the team could begin work on a fresh idea. Shedding the restrictions of an existing IP allowed directors Druckmann and Straley to let their creative juices flow and explore whatever they wished. One day Straley arrived at work having watched an interesting episode of BBC’s Planet Earth. He enthusiastically told Druckmann about the disturbing yet beautiful footage of a fungus that would effectively turn colonies of ants into zombies. Enthused, the two talented creators would mold their inspiration into the team’s new project, The Last of Us.

Fans shouldn’t see Naughty Dog’s halted attempt at a Jak and Daxter reboot as an omen that the series will never return, however. There is still hope.

“Never say never,” warns Wells. “It could happen. Naughty Dog’s got a long history and I think it’s got a long future so to say we’ll never go back is kind of crazy but right now we’ve got [The Last of Us] that we’re definitely going to be supporting. I guess there’s a possibility that the Uncharted team could move on to Jak and Daxter. It’s still up in the air, but I wouldn’t think that’s going to happen, because I think we’d run into all of the same problems with that team that we did with this team.”

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Classic GI: I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream

2012-02-03T21:48:00Z

While some younger readers might find it hard to believe, our culture’s interest in post-apocalyptic settings didn’t originate with the Fallout series. Harlan Ellison’s 1967 short story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” is an early landmark, offering readers an unimaginably bleak look at humanity’s future, with five desperate souls enduring the constant torture of a deranged AI. Despite its sparse characterization and lack of a traditional narrative, it was adapted into a computer game of the same name in 1995. Here’s the story of how Ellison and a pair of designers transformed the story into one of the most disturbing point-and-click adventure games of all time.

When David Sears heard that publisher Cyberdreams was adapting one of Harlan Ellison’s short stories into a game, the longtime fan’s mind began racing. “I was thinking ‘Oh, it could be ‘Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman’; or maybe ‘A Boy and His Dog’; and it’s going to be some kind of RPG or something,’ Sears recalls. “And they said, ‘No, it’s ‘I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,’ and I was like ‘What?’ At the time, in the game-development community, people said, ‘Oh I love Ellison’s stories, but there’s no way you could turn that into a game.’ I thought, ‘Wow, what have I gotten into?’”

To make the task even more daunting, this was Sears’ first job in game development. Previously, he was a writer and assistant editor at Compute magazine. A feature he wrote on Cyberdreams’ H.R. Geiger collaboration Dark Seed led to a job writing a clue book for the adventure game in the pre-Internet era of 1992, which in turn led to the current offer: Spend a week with the notoriously prickly author Ellison and distill his iconic work – one of the top 10 most reprinted stories in the English language – into his first game-design document.

Finding An In
Sears says that Ellison immediately made him feel welcome. The two talked for a while about Ellison’s writings, science fiction, and other areas of common interest. Sears’ fears of being seen as a fanboy or as being ignorant were unfounded. “I don’t want to damage his reputation, because I’m sure he spent decades building it up, but he’s a real rascal with a heart of gold – but he doesn’t tolerate idiots,” Sears says.

Now came the tough part: turning a tale set in a hopeless world featuring five characters with no real histories into something playable. The story ends with four of the characters dead, with the remaining survivor transformed into a shapeless mass of goo (see sidebar). Super Mario Bros., it wasn’t. The breakthrough came with a simple question. “The question David posed to Harlan that got them started was ‘Why were these people saved? Why did AM decide to save them?’” recalls David Mullich, who produced the game. Ellison was put off by the question, which he told Sears he’d never been asked before. Realizing they were onto something, the pair began working on their concept. The story would be split into five vignettes, each based on one of characters.

“That was going to be the premise of the game – finding out why these characters had been chosen by AM to be tortured and resurrected endlessly and forever,” Sears says. “And then he immediately sat down and started typing on his Olympic manual typewriter.”

Over the next few days, Ellison and Sears began fleshing out each of the five characters, creating deeper histories for them and delving into why they were selected. “I went to work, and I started making my notes, but he had to go first and come up with a premise,” Sears says.

“Harlan wanted to touch on controversial themes,” Mullich recalls. “Each one dealt with a very strong theme.” Some of the issues the game explored included the nature of guilt, sexual assault, and, perhaps most famously, the Holocaust. It was an early attempt to tackle genuinely mature subject matter in an era where “mature” typically meant showing a heroine in a bra.

Since Ellison was responsible for steering the adaptation’s creative direction, Sears found himself with free time in that first week while he waited for Ellison’s notes. The writer would offer Sears distractions, such as recommending that he go out onto the home’s balcony and enjoy the view. When those didn’t work, Ellison dug into Sears’ interests. “What do you like to read? Do you like comics?” Sears recalls Ellison asking, with Sears replying that he liked Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. “Dialing from memory he makes a call and says ‘Hey Neil, this is David, I’m collaborating with him on a game for Cyberdreams. He’s a fan and he’d love to talk to you about your work.’ So Neil Gaiman talked to me for about an hour, straight off the plane from Mississippi.” Later, Sears had lunch with Babylon 5 writer and producer J. Michael Straczynski, and was among the first to see the show’s pilot episode. “Harlan went out of his way to be a great host.”

Of course, there was still plenty of work to do. “I worked with [Ellison’s notes]over the course of a week in collaboration with Harlan to turn out what we both thought was a really, really good design document,” Sears says. “Cyberdreams disagreed, and they said it was just a proposal.” Sears collaborated with Ellison for an additional week before returning home to Mississippi, where he finished his work on the document over the next six weeks.

This article first appeared in issue #225 of Game Informer.