Star Citizen: Chris Roberts' Next Frontier

Chris Roberts has done more in his life than most of us can dream of. He created the Wing Commander franchise (including several sequels) but eventually burnt out and sold his company to Microsoft. After that, Roberts went on to produce several Hollywood films; work that he feels helped him learn more about telling better stories.

Years have passed and the technology powering games has grown exponentially, unlocking the potential to create something Roberts has been envisioning for well over a decade. Today Chris Roberts is coming back to games. Today Chris Roberts wants to champion the return of the space combat genre.

Roberts aims to create a whole new world for us called Star Citizen, a space-combat game where you’re not just a ship in a universe, but a person living a second life in a galaxy full of possibilities. How open-ended Roberts will make it remains to be seen, but conceptually Star Citizen sounds like the ideal game for anyone who has ever watched Battlestar Galactica, Firefly or Star Wars and wished they could have a chance to live in those universes.

Single-player games often manage to create worlds that feel believable, but Roberts wants Star Citizen’s world to be huge and populated by players, rather than NPCs. Thus while Star Citizen will feature a single-or-multiplayer campaign mode called Squadron 42 (playable offline if you desire), the bulk of the experience will revolve around player interactions in the universe at large. If you want to be a privateer and prey on the ships of others you can do that. If you want to hunt bounties players place on the heads of said privateers you can do that too. Heck, you can even just run goods, selling them in the safer parts of the universe or risking piracy and other threats by taking them to the outer-reaches, where they’re much more prized.

The level of interactivity and immersion Roberts desires comes at a cost, though, most notably that it requires great PC hardware. Developed in CryEngine 3, Star Citizen is at least two years out from release and is being designed for advanced hardware, the results of which are already stunning; A small, pre-alpha demo showcased ships with hundreds of individual parts, all of which contributed to the physics driving its movement. On top of looking like something out of a current game’s cinematic, each ship has an exceedingly realistic damage model, allowing players to damage each component and have it dynamically affect a ship’s performance.

The gorgeous look of Star Citizen extends far beyond the hull of your ship, too. During the hour long presentation I watched Roberts fly his ship into the hangar of a kilometer long, highly-detailed battleship, only to get out and start running around in it on foot. Each running light, girder and handrail looked incredible, and to get out of it and experience it all firsthand – rather than have it be a facade – left me bewildered. One second you and your friends could be flying a mission alongside this behemoth, the next someone could be in the bridge waving at you as you do a fly by.

For all the beauty Roberts longs to bring to the Star Citizen universe, he also wants it to represent life – which is to say it’ll feature a truly ugly side as well. Travel outside of the heavily governed areas and you’ll find yourself without police protection. Journey out into space in search of treasure or to do a quest and another player might just decide to gang up on you with his friends. When pitched a scenario where me and my friend are piloting a freighter, Roberts said the plan is for it to be entirely possible to have one person flying while the other runs around in the ship to man stations and turrets – like the freaking Millenium Falcon. If things go way south and, say, the attackers want to take your ship, they can board you and it can come down to shooting it out, gun in hand, just like a first-person shooter.

So much of Star Citizen’s design is conceptual at this point, but some things have been figured out...mostly. The plan is to support Star Citizen in a similar fashion to Guild Wars 2. You buy the base game, get the single player Squadron 42 campaign and access to the Star Citizen universe, and then have the option to buy cosmetic and other non-balance-altering items for either real money or the in-game currency you earn. The hope is that an entrepreneur (read: bounty hunter, pirate, smuggler, trader, etc.) will be able to earn their money in a way that’s fun and not at all a grind. If you want to buy Star Citizen, that’ll become an option in the very near future. Roberts isn’t using Kickstarter, but he is going to let interested parties support the game through early purchase packages that include a number of to-be-determined benefits.

Yup, it really does look this good.

As the lights came up after my two-hour demo with Chris Roberts I realized two things: 1) PC games in the next few years are going to look better than we expected and 2) I’m a believer in Star Citizen. Not because I’m already convinced that Roberts and team will be able to pull off the lofty goals they’re setting out with, but because his passion is so infectious, his love for the PC platform so palpable, that I can’t help but fall in love with the ideas powering this game. Two years is a long time, but if Star Citizen matches Roberts' expectations it’ll be more than worth the wait.

Anthony Gallegos is an Editor on IGN's PC team. He enjoys scaring the crap out of himself with horror games and then releasing some steam in shooters like Blacklight and Tribes. You can follow him on @Chufmoney on Twitter and on at Ant-IGN on IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Battle Angel Still a Go for James Cameron

Back in May, James Cameron revealed that, after the Avatar sequels, he's completely done directing or producing any more narrative films, claiming, "I'm not interested in developing anything. I'm in the Avatar business. Period." However, there's still one last franchise for the filmmaker to tackle: Battle Angel.

"We'll focus on 'Avatar' for the next four or five years," producer Jon Landau told Coming Soon when asked about Cameron's interest in the property. "Hopefully right after that... I am confident you will see it. It's one of my favorite stories. I think it is an incredible story, a journey of self-discovery of a young woman. It is a movie that begs the question: 'What does it mean to be human? Are you human if you have a heart, are you human if you have a mind, are you human if you have a soul?' And I look forward to bringing that film to audiences."

Based on the '90s manga series, Battle Angel takes place in a post-apocalyptic future and centers on Alita, a cyborg girl who has lost all her memories and doesn't even know who she really is.

Laeta Kalogridis (Alexander, Shutter Island) provided the latest draft of the screenplay, which combines the first three graphic novels into the film's story.

Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he desperately seeks your approval. Show him some love on Twitter and IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Hold Your Horses on that Fourth Avatar

Remember back in June when James Cameron announced that he would be shooting three Avatar sequels simultaneously? Well, now it seems that the filmmaker may have been getting a little ahead of himself.

Indie Wire reports that Avatar 4 will not be a part of Cameron's back-to-back film shoot, according to producer Jon Landau. Additionally, it is still uncertain when production for Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 will begin as the former is currently slated for release no earlier than 2015.

The delays carry over into Cameron's World of Avatar attraction at Disney's Animal Kingdom, which was announced around this time last year. Due to creative differences between Cameron and Disney's Imagineer development team, it seems as though we'll be waiting even longer on that project as well.

Source : ign[dot]com

Soulcalibur V, Naruto UNSG Sales Pass 1 Million

Namco has revealed its earnings for the first quarter of the current fiscal year, posting sales figures for two of its recent sequels. 1.38 million units of Soulcalibur V have been sold worldwide since launch, while sales of Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations are at an even one million. Sales of both, in addition to solid portable game sales in Japan, led to an overall increase of 200% for Namco Bandai profits for the quarter.

Namco Bandai earned $1.39 billion for the quarter overall, up 23.2% from last year. The publisher’s upcoming release slate includes Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition this month and Tekken Tag Tournament 2 in September. Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, Star Trek: The Game and Ni no Kuni will be released in early 2013.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Need For Speed: Most Wanted is How Open-World Racing Should Be

Criterion doesn’t make sequels to other people’s games. They’re quite emphatic about that. Hot Pursuit wasn’t a follow-up to any other Need for Speed, but rather Criterion’s personal take on the theme. Need for Speed: Most Wanted shares its name with another game in this genre-spanning racing brand, but the interpretation is all Criterion’s own. It does feel a bit like a sequel, though, in some ways – not to any of EA’s previous NFS games, but to the developer’s 2008 open-world racer Burnout Paradise.

Most Wanted is an open-world racer too, setting the player down in a shiny, good-looking American-style city with luxuriously wide roads, extremely car-friendly urban architecture and absolutely no cyclicsts to get in the way. You can leap over the freeway, drive up stairs, drift crazily around the end of a pier, antagonise the police and (naturally) take part in street races of every imaginable variety. And here’s the best part: every car in the game is open from the start, hidden somewhere in the city. All you have to do is get out there and find them.

No more staring longingly at greyed-out shiny Ferraris in unlock menus. No more accumulating XP or cash or whatever other arbitrary value for 10 or 30 or 35 hours before you’re allowed to drive the cars that everybody actually wants to drive. There’s just you, the cops, and a secret-packed urban playground designed for absurd driving. And, via an updated and improved version of Autolog, the constant presence of all your friends.

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Like Hot Pursuit, Most Wanted is a social racing game, making every tiny challenge into a social leaderboard.

Like Hot Pursuit, Most Wanted is a social racing game, making every tiny challenge into a social leaderboard. Autolog is everywhere, populating the city of Fairhaven with competitive gameplay and turning every speed camera and visible billboard into a competition. Fly through the air for the longest time after smashing through a billboard, and your face will appear on it, adorning that same billboard in your friends’ game until one of them beats your record. The game’s hook, really, is the desire to become the most notorious driver amongst your own group of players.

The city of Fairhaven is full of distractions and incentives, security-gated alleyways and secreted cars and underground shortcuts, all designed to make you want to explore its 100-odd miles of road. Open-world racers can often feel directionless, leaving you to tool around in a city without giving you all that much to actually do – Burnout Paradise suffered from this problem – but here Autolog provides you with a constantly-updated list of new score challenges and people to beat, in addition to the races and events that Criterion constructs for you.

“The city has to be inviting and it has to be interesting, and at any point in the game you’re parked up and going zero miles an hour, there should be something interesting to look at,” says creative director Craig Sullivan, whom you might recognise from Most Wanted’s E3 appearance. “A jump in the distance, a ledge you think you can drive onto, a billboard somewhere high up that makes you think ‘How do I get up there?’, or an interesting drift corner, or some back allyways that have security gates up and make you think, if I smash through them what’s down that alleyway? Is it a car? Is it a hidden route that lets me go faster during a race?”

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Some back allyways that have security gates up and make you think, if I smash through them what’s down that alleyway? Is it a car? Is it a hidden route that lets me go faster during a race?

When Need For Speed: Most Wanted’s emergent gameplay isn’t throwing up anything that grabs your interest, the Easy Drive menu is where the single-player races and challenges are hiding. Lifted straight from Burnout Paradise, it’s a real-time d-pad operated menu that you can use to switch between different cars, find events and tinker with your car’s mods without leaving the driving seat (although it’s a bit difficult to read and operate a menu at the same time as driving at 100mph down a freeway without smashing into other traffic). You can jump around the map straight to specific races from the menu, so you don’t have to drive around looking for events unless you want to. There are bespoke races and challenges for each individual car, and completing them unlocks mods (nitrous, different tyres that make life easier in off-road  races, all sorts), giving you an incentive to stick with each car for a while rather than switching between them every five minutes.

This being Criterion, of course, the cars aren’t treated with po-faced reverence. They’re there to be crashed, shunted and generally abused. “These are the best-looking cars Need for Speed has ever had. That’s just a fact,” says producer Matt Webster. “But it’s in our nature to take something beautiful and want to smash it up.” This is best exemplified by Most Wanted’s totally chaotic multiplayer, which drops you and a big group of other racers into the city and just throws races at you, sending you careening all over the map to meet-up points.

Before the races even start, there’s a melee at these meet-ups, with everyone ramming into everyone else and screeching around the vicinity. A familiar slow-motion takedown cam rewards you for nudging opponents into pillars or oncoming traffic. Most of the time you don’t even know when the race is going to start, or what direction you should be facing in when it does, resulting in absolute carnage when the 3,2,1 countdown appears on the screen. So far we’ve played drift and jump distance challenges as well as straight races, the latter of which resulted in an awesome mid-air crash.

If Forza is car-worship, Burnout is crashing and Hot Pursuit is cops and robbers, Most Wanted is chaos. It’s about doing the most outrageous things possible in a city designed for vehicular mayhem, motivated by social competition as much as the game’s own challenges. It feels like open-world Burnout that Paradise could have been, with extra structure and motivation provided by Autolog and a smarter, more fluid and intuitive single-player system. Play that uproarious multiplayer for more than five minutes, and you can’t wait to see more. Most Wanted takes many of Criterion’s best ideas and runs with them, and if it works it will play like a career best-of.

Keza MacDonald is in charge of IGN’s games team in the UK and still thinks Burnout 3 might be the best racing game ever made. You can follow here on IGN and Twitter.

Source : ign[dot]com

Pokémon Black 2 and White 2: Something Old, Something New

We're about two months away from the October 7 launch of Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, the first numbered sequels in Pokémon history. While I’ve been messing around with the Japanese version of Black 2 since late June, I recently had the opportunity to see the North American version in action. From what I’ve seen, PokéFans should be excited.

Here’s what I found out… but beware, minor spoilers follow. If you want to go into the game knowing absolutely nothing about what’s new or what to expect, your ride ends here - and you’d do well to avoid the Internet for the next two months.

Picking Up Where Black/White Left Off

As we already knew, Black 2 and White 2 takes place two years after the events in Black and White. You begin your journey in Aspertia City, on the opposite side of the Unova region - and quite a bit has changed. The part I went hands-on with at the demo was from the beginning of the game, right after running into a couple of familiar faces from Black and White - Bianca and Cheren. Bianca, who gives you your starting monster, is now Professor Juniper’s assistant, and Cheren is the first gym leader you must conquer.

Leave that low level Purrloin alone, you big jerks!

Without giving away anything past the game’s outset, it looks like Team Plasma is back to its old tricks, but this time without N’s leadership to guide them. Reassembled as a band of pirates rather than knights, their ultimate goal is to fulfill a Unova prophecy by finding Kyurem and joining it with Reshiram and Zekrom. As you’d expect from direct sequels, Black 2 and White 2 feel very much like a continuation of the same thought process as Black and White, but with a brand new adventure to battle your way through and some well-done adjustments and additions (which I’ll get to in a bit).

A Link to the Past

Like all Pokémon games, Black 2 and White 2 are designed with accessibility in mind, so even people who’ve never thrown a Poké Ball in their life can jump right in. Even so, BW2 include some incredible nods to the past, most notably the Pokémon World Tournament. Here, trainers will have the chance to go up against every single gym leader, Elite 4 member and Pokémon Champion from all the core games. From Brock and Misty to Cynthia and beyond, they’re all here and ready to put your monsters to the test once more. While I didn’t get the chance to try the tournament for myself, as someone who’s played all of the games since the beginning, I’m terribly excited to finally have a quick, easy way to battle all my favorite gym leaders and so on from games past.

What happened to N?! Only one way to find out...

It was also revealed during my demo that those who played through the  original Black and White will be amply rewarded via Memory Link. This new system allows you to transfer over your save data from the original games for the purpose of unlocking special vignettes that tell the story of what happened between these two sets of games. Want to know what befell N and other juicy character details? If you played Black or White, the answers await you in this new adventure. The further you made it in the game (for instance, whether you just completed a few gyms, beat the Elite 4, or went the whole nine yards and tracked down all Seven Sages), the more vignettes you’ll unlock - a great incentive to finish Black or White before the October release date.

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em

A few other new additions that were on display include an area called Join Avenue. The person who runs the place is apparently in over his head, and has asked you to take over as manager and help bring the building to life by populating it with merchants and customers. You do this by inviting people you’ve battled against, traded with or met via Tag Mode to join in on your little social experiment. The more people you meet the livelier the place will become, and the more you’ll be able to upgrade the variety of shops that pop up, which sell all manner of cool items you can’t get anywhere else in the game.

That better be one tasty dinner for that price.

The game has also added a new feature to the Pokédex called Habitat mode. This addition allows you to see which Pokémon you can catch in each section of the map, designating which ones you’ve caught and giving you a stamp for nabbing all the monsters in a given area. This should prove a useful tool for those on the prowl to catch all 649 monsters - as well as those who are just to eager to finally catch an Eevee in the wild for the first time. In-game achievements in the form of medals will also be rewarded to Poké Masters who reach certain goals, from catching a certain number of monsters to saving often to beating the Elite Four.

While I only went hands-on with a very early segment of this new adventure, which I'd actually already played through on the Japanese version, what I was shown from later in the game has me pretty jazzed to get my hands on the English version. If it is indeed an improvement over the exceptionally well-made Black and White, it's safe to say we can expect great things from this Poké sequel.

Audrey Drake is an Associate Editor at IGN and a proud member of the IGN Nintendo team. She is also a lifelong gamer, a frequent banisher of evil and a wielder of various legendary blades. You can follow her wild adventures on her IGN blog and Twitter. Game on!

Source : ign[dot]com

Sick of Sequels? Don't Lose Hope

In the crescendo to Christmas there’s a lot of talk about just how rife with sequels 2012 is. Established properties and firmly-entrenched franchises are ruling the remainder of this generation. The landscape for the rest of this year and beyond is dominated from every angle by sequels, sequels of sequels and even prequels.

This is not a phenomenon unique to video games. Most of the year’s most eagerly anticipated movies are sequels (or prequels). Look at The Avengers, Prometheus and The Dark Knight Rises, or the upcoming Expendables 2, The Bourne Legacy, Taken 2, Skyfall or whatever Twilight book adaptation they’re up to by now.

"Yes, I love my men pale and corpse-like," said no-one, ever.

The problem that gamers who crave fresh, new experiences face is their peers who fundamentally do not. Unfortunately for those of you who want something new, the public just wants sequels.

Results from a survey conducted in the US by media research group Nielsen paint a pretty grim picture for both developers crafting brand new non-sequels and the gamers who want them. For PS3, all of 2012's most anticipated games were sequels. The top 15, from top to bottom, were Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Madden NFL 13, Assassin’s Creed III, Resident Evil 6, NCAA Football 13, Borderlands 2, NBA 2K13, Darksiders II, NHL 13, FIFA 13, Far Cry 3, Need For Speed: Most Wanted, Hitman: Absolution, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, and WWE ’13. It was a pretty similar story for Xbox 360, with Halo 4 slipping in at number one and Fable: The Journey also making an appearance alongside Medal of Honor: Warfighter and NHL 13. Not a single new property made the cut. Not a one.

In fact, the only brand new games in the Nielsen data were two Wii games: The Last Story, and Everyone Sing. Every single other title was either a sequel or a licensed property. Nielsen surveyed more than 4,800 players between the ages of 7 and 54 years old.

Speaking with Eurogamer two weeks ago Viktor Antonov, visual design director on Dishonored, lamented dominance of sequels in the industry.

“There have been too many sequels, and too many established IPs that have been ruling the market. And a lot of them are war games. And they're great projects and great entertainment, but there's a lack of variety today,” he told Eurogamer.

And where’s Dishonored, easily one of the most exciting titles of 2012, on Nielsen’s list of eagerly-anticipated games?

Where indeed?

Speaking with MCV a few days ago Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford expressed a desire to see more new potential franchises released – despite the age of the current consoles – saying the original Borderlands is proof that a new franchise can launch at any time.

“Part of the reason there are lots of sequels is because that’s what people are investing in,” he told MCV. “I’ve never understood that.

“We launched the first Brothers in Arms in March 2005 and we sold 3.2m units. Xbox 360 launched in November 2005 so that’s about as end of the lifecycle as you can get. And you know what else launched in Q1 of 2005? God of War. You can create IP at any time. You just have to make something that people want.

“Some companies look at the market leaders and try to beat them at their own game. That’s a fine strategy if you’re capable of it. But it’s like going to the ice cream store. Everywhere serves vanilla ice cream, but if you eat that a lot, you will beg for a bowl of rocky road.”

If you want games without numerals on the end of them, we all have to start buying and playing more of them. Here are half-a-dozen new 2012/2013 games set to hit before this generation shuffles quietly off into the night that may be just the shot in the arm your sequelitis needs.

Dishonored

It's bordering on criminal that more people aren't looking forward to this incredibly imaginative thinking-man's shooter. With this year's FPS heavy-hitters doing little to distinguish themselves from last year's FPS heavy-hitters, why Dishonored isn't being discussed between more gamers as one of 2012's must-play shooters is a complete mystery.

Sleeping Dogs

Consistently mistaken as little more than a True Crime sequel, which it isn't, Sleeping Dogs is a big and bold open-world action-adventure that works hard to carve out a spot between the likes of the GTA and Saints Row series.

The Last of Us

With Naughty Dog at the helm (and Sony coughing up the cash) The Last of Us won't exactly have an uphill struggle ahead of it to gain traction. That said, it's not Uncharted 4 – and for taking that slightly risky leap somebody deserves a pat on the back.

Beyond: Two Souls

As with The Last of Us, Beyond: Two Souls is a first-party title and thus is better poised to cut through the onslaught of sequels. However, that doesn't mean desperate gamers will be any less excited to see something new and fresh.

Watch Dogs

Watch Dogs illustrates perfectly exactly the kind of splash you can make with a non-sequel when you time it right. At an E3 where gamers were being force-fed new franchise instalments at every corner, we were all well-and-truly starved for something new. Enter Watch Dogs: proof you don't need a II, or 4, or a colon in your title to steal the show.

And many more...

How about Enemy Front, the over-the-top WWII shooter from one of the minds behind Criterion's Black that supposed to have Clint Eastwood coughing up his cornflakes? Or Insomniac's Overstrike, or perhaps whatever it is Respawn Entertainment is currently beavering away on? What games that aren't either sequels or based on licensed properties are you most looking forward to?

Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. You can chat to him about cars, Die Hard and why South Park: The Stick of Truth is a licensed game he can get behind on IGN here or find him and the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia Facebook community.

Source : ign[dot]com