Index
My first appointment at E3 takes me to the Marvelous & XSeed booth. They had quite the variety going for them on the DS. Unfortunately Little King’s Story was not shown, but we’ll have some media posted of that later along with the other titles that were shown or otherwise.
Having never played Populous before I can’t honestly compare it to other versions. So going from there I think it looks great for the DS. Players control gods and try to build cities. The point of the game is to build more cities and have more people than your opponent. Having a bigger population means victory because after the time limit, Armageddon comes and your two civilizations go to war until the other is dead.
Controls used both the stylus and the buttons, though it seemed that the buttons were easier to use in this case. A mini map allows you to quickly look around the area for whatever you’re planning on. Animations on the top screen allow you to see if you’re being attacked or not which adds a nice touch of management.
As for the animations themselves, they do look nice though some may need to be cleaned up before the game officially releases. The sprites when navigating look great and fit. Each level will have different themes. A candy level was the one demonstrated to me and looked similar to Candyland. Overall, the theme and animation just all seems to work fine.
I found myself just transfixed by watching the demonstrator level land quickly using the buttons on the DS. While watching I was told while there is no difficulty options, each level ramps up in difficulty accordingly.
This is shaping up to be a great title for strategy folks and doesn’t use the features of the DS that would be frivolous for such a title.
KORG DS -10 Synthesizer
The first thing I really wanted to know from this title was how extensive the manual would be. This is due to the complex nature of the beast. Not knowing what the original looked like or was used made this demo a bit dizzying with everything you were able to do. It has options for everything and you can create some pretty good music with it like the original I imagine.
The demonstrator played a rap tune he was working with along with more familiar themes such as Tetris and Super Mario Bros. with a techno feel to them. He explained the controls were scrollable using the stylus or using the L/R buttons as he flew through all the menus to different options for instruments.
Multiplayer is very similar to Band Brothers in the respect that you’ll be able to sync up to 4 DS units together. Each person will be able to make different notes, but they’ll all be timed to the same beat so that it doesn’t create musical chaos.
I was quite overwhelmed with everything that is being offered with this title and look forward to seeing it and experimenting with it after I read the manual.
First off, this is a pretty unique title. It’s a collection of arcade games that are similar to their famous counterparts like Space Invaders. For obvious reasons they’ve been remade and renamed. The game has two boys hanging out in a room on the bottom screen with an elongated Famicom sitting in front of them as their console. On a shelf in the room holds games as well as magazines that will have strategies and cheats for you to use in the games you choose to play.
When you finally play the games you’ll get to go through a selection of carts that are in the shape of Famicom games and again are very similarly styled. Once you’re playing, the controls are exactly like those of the NES or Famicom, in that you only have two buttons to use besides the D-pad to control what’s going on. It’s basic, yet very satisfying on the DS. While playing arcade games is good and fun for a high score, achievement-like goals have been added to give the player a goal to shoot for. One game stuck out in particular, an RPG in the game. While other achievements are short, one of the goals is to complete the entire game. This particular game is several hours long.
With everything they managed to fit into this game so far and with a potential release date for sometime this winter, I can see this being a great game to keep around for playing in short bursts.
I honestly didn’t know they even made a first, but that’s probably why I’m NintendoGal and not SonyGal. Anyway the game is an RPG and looks pretty good for the PSP. Maybe not quite Crisis Core quality, but still it looked nice. It seems to try to eliminate some elements that many RPG fans hate such as random encounters. You can see all the enemies on the map which makes planning your route a little less tedious. Each enemy has an area that players can be seen and attacked from. Using the sneak ability lowers their range by quite a bit. The sneak ability can be used in the other direction and you can get the jump on enemies for a bit of extra damage. On the down side, I did see enemies start to respawn. If you need to grind XP for your party, this shouldn’t prove to be an issue, except with the enemies that scale to your level. Great for XP, but if you’re just trying to get by you’ll need to slow down and sneak past.
If going around and killing constantly isn’t your thing, you can do quests. Quests are a big focus in the game and they’ve added some nice touches such as a quest completion tracker. The rewards and experience are also listed. This is great for on the go if you’re in the middle of a quest.
As for your party, it consists of you plus five other NPCs. Unlike other games with UIs that generally are dumb as bricks, you can customize your NPCs individually so they’ll attack more in line with what you had in mind for them. As you level, you’ll gain points to put into different categories for different focuses for each.
At eighty hours to finish the basic storyline, this might be a good candidate for those PSP users looking for bang for their buck.
Overall
I’d say they had a decent showing even if Little King’s Story and Avalon Code were not present at their booth.
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