up.
il numero nuovo di famitsu e' super fat, e molto succoso.
si parla del nuovo metal gear di kojima, per psp, di kingdom hearts 2 e del Man of the Year.
ecco un po di highlights:
Citazione:
Quote:
Open the magazine, and what do you see on the first page? It's Solid Snake from the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 4, smoking a cigarette, holding a rifle, and asking, via a big, bold headline, "Will you come with me?" This is a recruiting advertisement. According to the small print, Kojima Productions is hiring "creators": programmers, designers, scripters. Here's my chance! I can quit this job at last, and go work for Hideo Kojima!
Citazione:
Kingdom Hearts 2
"Battles better than in the first game." "The best action-RPG to date." "The Gummi Ship is more fun."
Citazione:
commenti del traduttore
As for this being the "best action-RPG ever," well, I have to disagree violently with that. It's more of an RPG than an action-RPG, for one thing. Again, semantics. The more important point is that the game is, as I have said elsewhere, just a big, bumbling, pulsating bag of parts. It lacks cohesion. It begins with a series of portentous dialogues about "him" "awakening," and then a kid waking up, and a title card saying "The first day." The next day, there's a title card saying "The second day." Come on -- we've got Disney characters and Final Fantasy characters meeting (with CRAZY consequences); shouldn't that be enough? Do we need the game to dramatically tell us what day of the story we're on?
Regardless, when I say this game is a shambling sham show, it will sell a million copies, hands down. I have its box sitting on my desk as I write this. It's silver. It shines. The back of the box is so shiny you can hardly read the text. That's what people want.
Citazione:
Year-end news round-up
Famitsu runs a feature in the last issue of the year, every year, covering what readers and editors considered the biggest news stories of the year. This year, "The Xbox 360 Launch" comes in at number one. The list does not mention any specific angle of the Xbox 360 launch: just that it happened. The reader makes his own conclusions. The rest of the year wasn't that exciting, apparently: the DS's success comes in at 4, the Revolution controller unveiling comes in at 5, Gameboy Micro is number 7, and Brain Training's smash hit is in 9.
Last year's top stories, for comparison, included the DS's release, the slim PS2's release, the PSP's release, and the Famicom Mini Gameboy Advance SP. On top of the list was "Dragon Quest VIII on sale." In number four, if I recall correctly (and I do), was "Dragon Quest VIII's release date announced." Ahh, that was a good year; not often is a Dragon Quest announced and released within such a short period as twelve months.
Citazione:
Man of the year
So yes, a young up-and-comer sits in number two. In number one, it is my pleasure to announce, is none other than my personal pick for Man of the Year, 2005: Hironobu Sakaguchi. Sakaguchi, too, like Hino, has a life-changing connection with Yuji Horii: it was Horii's successful Dragon Quest that inspired Sakaguchi to refine, revise, and complicate the formula in Final Fantasy, his fledgling company's last-ditch effort to not die.
Sakaguchi has been, for the last eleven years, an unrelenting risk-taker. While Dragon Quest stayed blissfully the same, Sakaguchi pulled Final Fantasy every direction except down. Battle systems changed, characters changed, themes changed. His unmaking was the Final Fantasy movie -- it scored millions of dollars of damage points on all investors, and resulted in Sakaguchi being filed away at an office in Hawaii for nearly five years.
This year, that is, 2005, he literally stood up from his desk and walked out of the company he had made. He started a new studio, one called Mist Walker, and announced two games for the upcoming Xbox 360. He is engineering his game based on one concept: that current Japanese brand loyalty is not indestructable. This assertion is not taken lightly by the stone-faced men of Japanese business-war strategy -- it's enough to get him kicked out of perhaps any major Japanese corporate meeting. Which is why, perhaps, his new company's offices are in Hawaii.
His approach is very refreshing; he wishes to remind us that, before Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy were the talk of the town, they were nothing at all. Right now, Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey are nothing at all. His gusto at making new franchises is far, far more than just admirable. He has clout, he has experience, and I'd wager that his life has been genuinely interesting. In person, he talks and smokes a lot like Bill Murray's character in the movies "Rushmore" and "Lost in Translation." I'm told that, years ago, he lacked this aura.
Citazione:
quarto titolo della Mistwalker annunciato
It is no enormous surprise that his just-announced game for Xbox 360 is, then, called "Cry On," and that "its theme is tears. And not just tears of sadness -- tears of happiness, tears of renewal. . . . Basically, all kinds of tears."
The main character is a blue-haired little girl named Sally. (Okay, so the Japanese spelling would be best Romanized as "Sari." That's not as much fun, even if it's the name of a type of Indian dress.) Sally has a pet golem named Boguru (which might end up translated as, I don't know, "Boggle"). They set off on a quest to reach a land far away.
Action RPG
The character design and game design is by cavia's Kimihiko Fujisaka, of Drag-on Dragoon fame. Sakaguchi hand-picked him for his art style, and promises that, unlike in many earlier games, where the character design and the on-screen characters differ drastically in appearance, Cry On's presentation will retain the artist's style. This is a popular trend in recent games -- Dragon Quest VIII being the groundbreaking example.
The game will be an action-RPG. Yet, says Sakaguchi: "Rather than have Sally swinging a sword and running around, we figured it would be more interesting to make the game design primarily puzzle- and problem-solving based. We want the feel of it to be, you spend fifteen minutes thinking up a solution as Sally, and then execute the solution in one (satisfying) minute as Boguru."
Fujisaka points out the Boguru starts out rather small -- small enough to barely support Sally on his shoulders. Yet, as he receives more items and blocks, he grows larger and larger. Fujisaka says, of the design: "The concept is to invoke a feeling of accomplishment in the player after he's come a long distance as Sally, and cleared much terrain as Boguru. As the scale changes, so does the viewpoint of the character you're controlling. And thus catharsis is born. By manipulating this catharsis carefully, we can create a refreshing, pleasant action experience." Sakaguchi descrives his scenario is "pleasant and simple": "According to the scenario, you help people: for example, lift a boat as Boguru and carry it to safety. Lots of simple, pleasing action situations."
These are very interesting comments indeed. I will not hesitate to say it's apparent Sakaguchi and Fujisaka have played both Katamari Damacy and Shadow of the Colossus, two games dealing with scale. Fujisaka even mentions that the golem will control with both analog sticks: "Pushing, pulling, lifting, grabbing -- no one's made a game yet based entirely on these kinds of motions."
The most interesting comment, by far, though, is Fujisaka's declaration about "catharsis." Shadow of the Colossus was indeed very catharsis-invoking, though I personally felt a greater catharsis at the end of the first Katamari Damacy. If handled expertly, a game in a persistent world, with a driven scenario and an interesting quest, about gradually growing larger and larger might be mind-blowing. It all depends on the execution. (And probably a heartbreakingly profound conclusion.)
The question, though, is this: will the Japanese even care about these great games Sakaguchi is making? Will it be enough to get them to buy an Xbox 360? In the beginning, there will be a few weirdoes who buy a 360 just because of the promise of Blue Dragon. Games like Cry On are both poppy and artsy -- perhaps the direction the medium is heading in Japan. Will these be strong enough to become more interesting message board topics than the pages-long cast of a new Final Fantasy game? Time will tell. I remain optimistic.
Citazione:
altre news
DRAGON QUEST: YANGUS' MYSTERIOUS DUNGEON
Square-Enix releases information on Dragon Quest: Yangus' Mysterious Dungeon. The first Dragon Quest [Character Name]'s Mysterious Dungeon" game was Torneko's Mysterious Dungeon. The Mysterious Dungeon series, by Chun Soft, is pretty much an RPG for people who don't like to read. I'm not insulting it, either -- it's good at what it does. Namco's ancient arcade game Tower of Druaga recently got remade as a Mysterious Dungeon. Final Fantasy's Chocobo has taken a trip into the Mysterious Dungeon -- and most recently, so have Pokemon. Mysterious Dungeon has the curious habit of showing us that RPGs are merely collections of characters posing, and sometimes fighting. You play one, and you don't miss the story at all.
The original Dragon Quest: Torneko's Mysterious Dungeon was based on the chubby merchant Torneko, the surprise most-popular character from Dragon Quest IV. Well, the chubby bandit Yangus was the most popular character from Dragon Quest VIII, though I doubt it surprised anyone. Enix knows what the public likes by now.
It's interesting that Yangus, in this game, is no longer chubby. He's a kid. His big bone helmet barely fits on his head. The game is for PlayStation 2, and will feature graphics equal in quality to Dragon Quest VIII. This is what makes this game big news: it has good graphics. The Mysterious Dungeon games have always looked the same. Well, now they mature into 3D. Like the Dragon Quest series after Dragon Quest VIII, this Mysterious Dungeon sets a new benchmark: if the presentation quality ever dips below this again, heads will roll.
SECRET OF MANA IS BACK
First real information on Seiken Densetsu 4 -- it's for PlayStation 2. The graphics are nice enough. It will play, apparently, just like the old ones, which is great. The presentation is 3D, the game is 2D. The main characters' names are Eldy and Ritzia, and Ritzia has a pet Rabbite named Pukku, which makes me wonder, again, if they found those names in a cereal box. The real clincher in this issue is a fold-out mini poster of the game's gorgeous box art. It looks like Secret of Mana, only grown up. Remember, in Japan, Super Famicom boxes were vertically oriented (as opposed to the horizontal Super Nintendo boxes), so we got a lot more art on Secret of Mana's box. This one is lush and gorgeous, with a killer logo. At the bottom of the Mana Tree stands a young blonde girl in a windswept white dress. Man, it looks nice.
VOTE FOR THE FAMITSU AWARDS -- IF YOU DARE
The Famitsu Awards are coming. You can vote for your "game of the year 2005" using the handy eight-page list in this issue. The list, by the way, is completely out of any logical order. Not alphabetical, not release date, not anything. So if you want to vote for Kingdom Hearts II, you have to look very, very carefully. I guess the bizarre list orientation is a tactic to keep people from voting insincerely. You have to have a game you believe in, and then search for it. I wager anyone who would be able to beat Kingdom Hearts with all 101 Dalmatians has a hell of a lot of free time, so they'll find it on here.
STOP THE PRESSES: SQUARE IS SPOILING THEIR OWN GAMES (AGAIN (AND AGAIN))
It just wouldn't be a week of Famitsu without Square-Enix spoiling one of their soon-to-be-released million-seller titles. This time it's Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII again. The spoiler is: Final Fantasy VII's Tifa and Barret make guest appearances. Mark your appointment book. If you weren't going to buy the game because someone you trust said the large-breasted, T-shirt-and-shorts-wearing Tifa wasn't going to be in there, Square-Enix would like you join the statistical subgroup of "potential buyer" as soon as possible.
They'll probably reveal Cloud next week. He's the only Final Fantasy VII character that hasn't been confirmed yet. So stay tuned!