GF! Weekly Wrap-Up #2

Introduction

Welcome to the GamesFirst! Weekly Wrap-Up for Friday, August 26, 2005. I’m Val Townsend, the Atomic Goddess, and every week I like to get together the best of the news, reviews, and previews posted on Gamesfirst-dot-com and read them aloud for your Podcat ching pleasure. This week we’ve got reviews of Samurai Western, Fantastic Four, and WWE: Wrestlemania 21 which go nicely with a preview of Trauma Center: Under the Knife for Nintendo DS. But before we get to all of that, let’s see what’s happening in the w orld of games and gaming.

News

Turner Broadcasting is throwing its hat into the gaming ring with their GameTap service, which is set to launch this Fall. GameTap is a games-on-demand high speed download service, and Turner announced this week that it would cost $14.95 per month for a s ubscription. The service is designed and priced to compete head-to-head with services like Yahoo’s Games On Demand, which has been around for over two years, and GameFly, the popular rent-games-by-mail service.

Hollywood trade magazine, Variety, is reporting that Fox and Universal will produce the Halo movie, which is set for a Summer 2007 release. After Microsoft’s creative script delivery tactics (reportedly sending couriers dressed as Master Chief to police s cript readings) and numerous demands made on the part of the software publisher, several other production companies passed on the Halo movie. Fox and Universal apparently recognize pop culture gold, and we can all rest assured that at least the game based on the movie will be worth playing.

In other Xbox news, the Xbox 360 pricing scheme has got plenty of gamers in a fit. Adding fuel to the fire is the first of the Xbox 360 preorder packages, posted this week on EBGames-dot-com. Although the system is priced at $299 for the Core Xbox 360 s ystem and $399 for the deluxe system, the EB Games bundles are priced at $599 and $699 respectively. If supplies are short and these kinds of bundles are the only way to get Xbox 360, you can bet there will be plenty of disappointed gamers this Holiday sea son. Because, really, can Perfect Dark Zero rock so hard that it knocks loose seven bills from your mom’s wallet" We don’t think so.

Finally, we end on an interesting footnote to industry culture. The International Game Developer’s Association (IGDA) has announced the formation of a special interest group to investigate Sex in Games. According to Brenda Brathwaite, lead designer on Pla yboy: The Mansion and chair of the Sex in Games group, Our main objective is to encourage responsible development. Whether a committee of concerned developers can help the industry maintain a full range of expressive possibility in the face of self-appoi nted moral guardians and their flawed logic remains to be seen. But in the meantime, the official IGDA Sex in Games weblog features loads of links to naughty games, mainstream and independent. Check it out at IGDA-dot-org-slash-sex (igda.org/sex).

Reviews

Moving from the sex to the violence, WWE: Wrestlemania 21 is this year’s wrasslin’ installment from THQ, and our man Eric B was tagged in to see if Wrestlemania could bring it on. Departing it’s Gamecube roots, Wrestlemania 21 is now exclusive to the Xbox , although we’re not convinced this is the thing Microsoft will be bragging about this holiday season. Featuring the same high quality motion capture and well-stocked roster as in previous years, Wrestlemania 21 looks good on the surface. Hell, with the nu merous match types, it really seems like this is going to be a great game until you get to the actual wrestling. Then it becomes clear that Wrestlemania 21 is not the king of the ring. The graphics would probably look sub-par on the Gamecube, let alone the Xbox, and the controls are stiff and sluggish. Combine all of that with poorly balanced characters and a blatant disregard for physics, and you’ve got a wrestling game that will keep us playing last year’s edition of RAW. We give WWE: Wrestlemania 21 a t wo out of five stars.

Proving that it just isn’t his week, Eric B also checks in with a review of the Fantastic Four, out now for PlayStation 2 and Xbox. After the fun we had with Spider-Man 2 and X-Men Legends, we thought there were even odds that Activision and 7 Studios wou ld come through with a fun multiplayer beat-em-up, but as Eric discovered, Fantastic wasn’t the F word we thought of when we played this one. After some drawn out character introduction (in which your cooperative compatriot gets to play an exotic droid with the combat skills of a hat rack), the best thing about Fantastic Four is switching between the four protagonists on the fly. But no amount of changing characters will save you from the lameness of this game. With a control style that is best describe d as jacked up and a storyline that apparently wrote itself without the help of human beings, Fantastic Four is yet another example of movie marketing getting mixed up with our games. We give Fantastic Four a rating of one out of five stars.

Rounding out our journey through a lackluster week of gaming reviews, Chris Martin slices and dices his way through the wild wild west in Samurai Western, out now for PlayStation 2 from Atlus and developer Acquire. The latest in the Way of the Samurai ser ies, Samurai Western centers on Gojiro, a wandering samurai who has come to track down his brother Raddo, but who gets caught up in the seedy underworld of the 19th Century American West. Of course, the whole thing is a bit like bringing a knife to a gunfi ght, and Samurai Western ends up disappointing both fans of the old series and potential new fans. The storyline has been crippled in favor of more action, but the action hasn’t been enhanced enough to stand on its own. The result is a fast-paced game of d odge-dodge-slash-repeat that quickly gets old. In a world full of Devil May Cry, Onimusha, and God of War, games like Samurai Western have a much higher bar to hit. We give Samurai Western a dusty two out of five stars.

Previews

Ending on a high note this week, George brings us a preview of Trauma Center: Under the Knife, coming to the Nintendo DS this Winter from Atlus. This medical drama game uses the touch screen on the DS to simulate performing a wide variety of operations. A t the outset, you play a young doctor who has just completed his internship and is making his way in the cut throat world of hospital emergency rooms. Called to help treat victims of a massively spreading epidemic, you must discover the cause of the disea se and continue assisting patients.

Surgeries are performed with the help of a nurse who provides some direction, but as the procedures get more and more complicated, the game begins to take on a decidedly puzzle-like quality. You will need use our acquired skills to their fullest potential as you work through brain-teasing, difficult surgeries. Surgical activities range from making incisions and sewing together broken organs, to using a variety of surgical tools, and these simulations are definitely more tense than your average game of Oper ation.

This Winter is likely to be remembered for the coming-of-age of the Nintendo DS, and games like Trauma Center: Under the Knife are showing us what kind of new gameplay becomes possible with such unique hardware. We’ll be honing our stylus skills and booki ng Wednesday morning tee times in anticipation of Trauma Center this Winter.

Conclusion

And that’s your GamesFirst! Weekly Wrap-Up. Remember, all of these stories and plenty more can be found every day at GamesFirst-dot-com, bringing you independent videogame coverage since 1995. That’s like a million years old in computer years.I’m Val Tow nsend, the Atomic Goddess, and you can Podcatch me again in a week.