Wii Preview - 'Red Steel'
by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Paris
Release Date: TBA
Nintendo has been pimping Red Steel unusually hard for it to be a third-party title, especially a third-party FPS with a Western developer. It's because Red Steel embodies Nintendo's promise that the Wii's games are going to cater to every possible type of gamer, including the aggressive, predominantly male demographic of FPS fans that felt distinctly ignored by the GameCube. Red Steel is not just an FPS, either, but almost a tech demo that shows third-party developers just what kind of an experience they can create
We live in perilous times, my friends. These days, the game industry is either all about the single-player experience, or the dynamics of (God help us, sometimes massive) multiplayer. Remember back in the day, when it was only about two people? In games like Streets of Rage, Contra and Final Fight, you had to help out your partner every step of the way, or face mutual destruction. These days, we're lucky to get a "cooperative mode" in the games of our choice.
This year's E3 featured an astounding number of PSP titles that were just plain fun to play, which is something that the handheld console has been lacking until now. Tekken: Dark Resurrection was among those titles, and it was perhaps the single game I put in the most time with during E3. While it is largely a straight port of the limited arcade release by the same name, T:DR is certainly more portable than an arcade machine.
It's been long enough that quite a few gamers have never heard of the System Shock games, two benchmark PC games that set the bar for challenging FPSes and, in their own way, for survival horror. When you hear older gamers talking about SHODAN or crawling through hallways with only a wrench to defend themselves, they're referring to the arguably classic System Shock 2.
Fuller Auto
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Crytek, the makers of Far Cry, are back with another $2,000 first-person-shooter for the PC: Crysis. It promises intense action, amazing physics, and the kinds of graphics that'll make you shell out for a new video card.
Around this time last year, when the Xbox 360 was six months away and pre-release hype was at its heaviest, one of Microsoft's big promises for the system was that it would have support from Japanese developers. Specifically, it would have Japanese RPGs. Fans hoped this meant the biggest name Americans can think of for J-RPGs: Final Fantasy. But instead of the Final Fantasy XII port or even a system-exclusive spin-off that 360 fans were hoping for, they got)
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"We're a team based in Germany," the developer said, "and we're making a World War II stealth action game."
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