GF! Weekly Wrap-Up #17

Intro

Hello Gamers, and welcome to the GamesFirst! Weekly Wrap-Up for the week ending January 27, 2006. I’m Val Townsend, the Atomic Goddess, and this week I’ve got a preview of Shadow Hearts 3 for PS2 and reviews of Dead or Alive 4 on the Xbox 360 and The Movi es, which is out now for PC. And, of course, we’ve got the latest headlines you definitely need to hear about, so let’s get into it: The News.

News

The state of West Virginia has partnered with Konami to bring Dance Dance Revolution into the Physical Education curriculum. Dance Dance Revolution is the hit arcade game from Konami, which has found popularity on multiple gaming platforms, from PS2 to mo bile phones.The game requires players to dance on special “dance mats” in time with the music and moves displayed on the screen. DDR, as the kids call it, has spawned a huge fan community, and tournaments are held featuring choreographed single and multip layer divisions. West Virginia is the first state to sponsor widespread adoption of DDR into its physical education curriculum, and it will roll out the videogame to over 700 schools in the next year. West Virginia’s middle and junior high schools will be first: 103 of them will receive DDR machines to accompany their PE classes this Spring.

The DDR machines are cost-effective, too. Compared to other workout equipment, they are not very expensive. And DDR has already been adopted into some other physical education courses. DDR gamers have always told stories of losing weight due to their addi ction to playing DDR, and anyone who has tried the game knows it will quickly work up a sweat.

While West Virginia’s children get smaller in the waist, the video game industry is focused on getting’ big. NPD Funworld, a videogame industry analyst, has released a report stating that videogame industry sales in 2005 totalled 10.5 million dollars. It was doubted whether the industry could maintain its growth in a console transition year, and NPC cites unusual reasons for the increase in sales last year. Handheld gaming set a new record, accounting for 1.4 billion dollars in 2005. In spite of the releas e of the PlayStation Portable and the continued evolution of Nintendo DS games, Game Boy Advance software led the increase in sales. NPD also claimed that growth in the female demographic has helped the industry. NPD labeled female gamers the fastest growi ng demographic and the most lucrative potential market for game publishers.

So the girls just wanna have fun, and some publishers have already seen the future. Nintendo affirmed its commitment to expanding the gaming audience and releasing the Revolution in 2006 in a recent interview with Nintendo of America’s Executive VP of Sal es posted on News.com. Reggie said that Nintendo would enter the new year with four resolutions. First resolution: Eyes on the prize! That’s pretty self-explanatory. Very “Rocky.” Apparently, the prize is “good games,” which is a good one to aim for. Numbe r two: “Keeping the mass in mass audience.” Nintendo plans on attracting a lot of casual gamers, but also entirely new audiences who would never touch a videogame until their unique controller and interface. The third resolution is to “stop turning away ne w players” who, from Revolution marketing so far, ranges from your little sister to your grandmother. The fourth resolution is to “turn game development into a democracy of great ideas.” That’s a pretty quotable phrase from a guy known for quotables. Reggi e elaborates, stating that current next-gen game development is incredibly expensive for publishers, growing exponentially with increases in technology. Nintendo promises to make the Revolution incredibly easy to develop games for and affordable for develo pers who want to take risks on unique and independent content.

The issue of next-gen game development has been lively online. One of the largest debates: The Xbox 360 and the size of the DVD9 disc. Some gamers and developers believe the disc size is too restrictive, and Sony’s Blue-Ray discs, which should hold twice the data, will be more suited to next-gen games. Without going into the gorey details, let me summarize that Assistant Editor Aaron Stanton has put together a study of trends in game filesize and growth over the previous generation and come to some interes ting conclusions about whether or not the Xbox 360’s standard DVD discs are big enough. In short, it looks like games only grew 77% in filesize over the first Xbox’s lifespan. Xbox 360 launch titles rarely take up more than half the disc, which leads Aaron to conclude that standard DVD9 discs should be sufficient for Xbox 360 games. For a much more detailed analysis of the issue, including pretty graphs and screen captures, check out Aaron’s article on GamesFirst.com.

And that does it for the News, on to Reviews.

Reviews

Kicking off the reviews this week, Tristan came through with a review of Dead or Alive 4, out now for Xbox 360 from Tecmo and longtime developer, Team Ninja. DOA4 brings an evolution of the fighting franchise to the next-generation, and fans of the series won’t be disappointed. Featuring lots of characters and expansive new arenas. The environments are gorgeous, obviously taking advantage of the 360’s power, and they are multi-tiered with destructive elements. The character models are not nearly so next-ge n. There are enhancements in the rendering, but overall these look a lot like the models from DOA Ultimate on the Xbox.

But graphics are just a part of the DOA package. There is a lot to do in DOA4, from unlocking new characters to unlocking new skins for your custom Xbox Live lobby. The Xbox Live component is very smooth, with no real noticeable lag and a comfortable sys tem where you can watch people fight and rotate in. It’s like a virtual living room, and it’s great for picking up technique and strategy.

If you’re a DOA fan, then you will not be disappointed here. DOA4 offers solid gameplay and is the first fighting game available on the 360. But this isn’t the series installment that is going to woo new gamers to the DOA series. It doesn’t exude that nex t-gen WOW that many gamers are after, and that will prevent some people from really getting to know DOA. In the end, we have to come down in the middle and say it could go either way for you personally. We give DOA4 a three out of five stars.

Moving from one end of the melodramatic spectrum to the other, Sarah took charge of her own studio in The Movies, out now for PC from Activision. The Movies comes from Lionhead Studios, the development team headed up by visionary game designer Peter Molyn eaux.

In The Movies you take charge of a budding film studio in the 1930s and progress through Hollywood history to present day. You’ll hire actors and directors, build sets and construct your studio lot. Designing your studio is a major part of the game. Makin g walkways and organizing buildings is important to maintaining an efficient work environment and helping your employees do their jobs better. You’ll also need to manage the social lives of your employees. Building bonds between directors and actors helps them all collaborate better on their films, which helps you get better ratings and make more money.

In addition to the fairly traditional story mode, which moves you through a set of challenges filled in with some clever film-history developments, there is a sandbox mode, which allows you to take full advantage of your film studio for your own creative purposes. You can create all kinds of films using The Movies, even editing dialog displayed in subtitles or adding audio to make a real-deal talkie. Filmmakers can then save out the files and post them on The Movies website, where anyone can browse and vie w gamer-created films. Some of these films are pretty good. One film about the recent French riots got a lot of press last month, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see more movies made in The Movies getting attention.

The Movies is a really fun game. If you’re into film history at all the story mode can be hilarious. It’s totally satisfying to build your movie empire and become a major Hollywood mogul, tampering in the lives of your stars and grooming tyrannical direct ors. There is some great fun to be had with The Movies, so we give it a solid four out of five stars.

And that’s it for the reviews. Cut and Print.

Preview

This week we take an early look at Shadow Hearts 3: From the New World, a role-playing game for the PlayStation 2. Shadow Hearts 3 is out now in Japan and coming to the US in the coming months from XSEED. Our resident import-gaming fanatic, Amanda, took a look at the import version to let us know what to expect.

The Shadow Hearts series gets good reviews from gamers who enjoy Japanese style RPGs, but it’s never really broken the mainstream audience in the US. But even if you have not played the previous games in the series, Shadow Hearts 3 should be easy to get i nto. The game takes place in 1920s New York, where gamers follow Johnny Garland in a quest to find out about his family and mysterious past. Expect some alternate fantasy-history and plenty of drama.

The whole package looks to bring Shadow Hearts to a new group of fans in the US. If you’re a fan of the niche RPGs, then you should put Shadow Hearts 3: From the New World on your radar for 2006.

Conclusion

     And that wraps things up for  this week, gamers. As always, you can get the latest news, reviews, and previews posted daily at GamesFirst.com, where you can also get more on all of the stories covered in this podcast. I'm Val Townsend, the Atomic 

Goddess, and I’ll be back next week with another podcast.