The cinematic version of Avatar may well have collapsed under the weight of its own colossal hype machine if it weren’t for the fact it comes from the man that bought us Terminator, Aliens and Titanic (don’t laugh, it cleaned up at the Oscar’s). This man deserves our trust. The video game has no such weight of expectation, with your average game-to-film adaptation serving as little more than a device to separate film fans from the contents of their wallet. We caught up with Avatar: The Game’s lead script writer Kevin Shortt to learn how it will defy all expectations.

Set for release only scant weeks before the film, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game  (JCA: TG from here on) is set two years before the events of the movie and Shortt assures us there won’t be any spoilers. Expanding on the same conflict between the recklessly explorative humans and the three meter tall blue-skinned environmentalist warriors, the Na’vi, JCA: TG is set on the Na’vi home planet of Pandora. You take the role of Abel Ryder, a signal specialist for the RDA (Resource Development Administration), a human-run mega-corporation concerned with farming the universe’s resources.

The Scorpion ship packs great explosive power and tears through Pandora's lush environments.

Your role as signal specialist is to track down the source of an unknown signal believed to be a sacred sight of the Na’vi people. The Na’vi are wise to your intrusive human ways and have set about finding the sacred sight too, prompting a race to uncover the secret that may tip the balance of the war in favour of its finder.

Shortt is keen to emphasise Cameron’s willingness to create a fully-functioning narrative that will compliment the movie: “He didn’t want to recreate the events of the movie in a game”. Instead the game is designed to expand the universe and explore the world of Pandora and its indigenous life-forms from another perspective. This was achieved by Cameron’s decision to commission Ubisoft with the game at the earliest possible stage. “Work began on the game three years ago when we were granted unprecedented asset access, including the full script,” says Shortt. “We have wanted for nothing”.

No related posts.

Last week’s spicy news nuggets laced with the bittersweet herbage of half-arsed cynicism.

Cast a leisurely eye over the last seven days and you could be forgiven for thinking that all consoles and PC were designed exclusively to run Modern Warfare 2, all retailers founded in order to sell it, and all of human life ejected from the womb in order to play it.

Yep, Infinity Ward’s megaload of a gigaton of a killer app is responsible for most of the headlines, with Gamestop labelling the game’s 11th November release the biggest entertainment launch of all time. Not all news is good news, though – digital download operators Direct2Drive, Impulse and GamerGate are refusing to stock the title over the mandatory inclusion of Valve’s Steamworks software. Infinity Ward was also obliged to pull its controversial “F.A.G.S.” trailer on Monday after much anti-homophobic uproar over the weekend, and to top things off the first pirate copies found their way internet-wards on Tuesday.

Outside the Call of Duty bubble, Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford won this week’s trash talk trophy by labeling Valve’s antipathy to the PS3 “childish and narrow-minded”, and Bungie’s launch of the Halo Waypoint Xbox Live hub was comprehensively overshadowed by the maybe-possibly leaking of Halo: Reach screens.

DICE followed up its popular adherence to the dedicated server model by announcing a PS3-only multiplayer beta for Bad Company 2 (fortunate news indeed for those of us who evidently can’t play it for shit), and Epic declared open season on Unreal Engine 3 dev kits.

The financial news desk is awash in doom and gloom, with Ubisoft, THQ, Konami and – yes – even Nintendo coughing up negative statistics of one kind or another. Still more upsettingly, Rockstar wants pictures of your facial hair for its rootin’-tootin’ open-worlder Red Dead Redemption. Form an orderly queue.

Enjoy the weekend.

1. And the best part of Modern Warfare 2 is… Infinity Ward studio boss spills the beans....
2. Assassin’s Creed 2 has “Batman-like” bits Game director discloses 5-7 hours of linear "secret maps"....

As 2009 has now been officially recognised in Chinese astrology as the year of the beat ‘em up, Namco Bandai’s Tekken 6 is most likely the last entry of the year. It doesn’t have the status as the long-lost grand master as Street Fighter IV did, or as the hungry challenger as was the case with BlazBlue. No, Tekken has remained relatively mainstream, even throughout the more strained years of beat ‘em up popularity, and while it doesn’t push hardware sales in the way it did in the nineties, you’d be hard pushed to find a gamer that wasn’t familiar with King, Law and Paul Phoenix.

Given that arcades have all but died in the UK, this will be most gamers’ first contact with Tekken 6 so it’s only right to talk about what’s changed since the incredible PS2 conversion of Tekken 5. New characters are always the focal point of any fighting game sequel and to its credit, Tekken 6 has some very memorable new faces.

Tekken 6 is still heavily reliant on juggles. Energy bars have even been extended to accommodate lengthier combos.

Taking the lion’s share of attention (and space in the sofa), Bob is responsible for the new wave of obese but deceptively fast characters in fighting games and may well have had the “coolest new face” category in the bag if it weren’t for the nonchalant matador Miguel. Sporting an attitude matched only by his haircut, Miguel’s brawling antics translate wonderfully from bull ring to battle arena. Zafina is a middle-Eastern beauty that utilises a variety of unorthodox stances similar to SoulCalibur’s Voldo, while kung fu tom-boy Leo’s main claim to fame is causing endless speculation over her gender.

1. Mini Ninjas Review The creators of Hitman try their hands at pint-sized Oriental cuddliness. VGD tosses a shuriken at the Xbox 360 version....
2. Need for Speed: SHIFT Review After a lengthy stay in the pits, the multi-million selling Need for Speed franchise is once again gunning for a podium spot. But is it a match for the latest models?...
3. Brütal Legend Review Gleaming tempered metal or just a cheap alloy?...

Vince Zampella, studio head of Infinity Ward

“It’s just a matter of detail, little touches,” Zampella told us during a recent showing of Modern Warfare 2. “Transitions from wall to ground are now hand-touched by all the artists so that everything fits.

“If you see some of the Rio scenes from the trailers, there’s just like these uphill broken stairwells that are half-covered in dirt, weeds coming through – one of my favourite parts in the whole game is there’s a back alley there, and there’s just two dumpsters and a piece of garbage, some trash blowing in the wind and the weeds coming up through the cracks in the sidewalk.”

"Might I draw your attention, gentleman, to the exquisite brushwork on the tin can in bottom left..."

Cracks in the sidewalk. Not exactly “attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion”, is it? Next up, an in-engine showreel of Zampella’s favourite discarded shopping trolleys.

Check out our tongue-in-cheek “Quickfire Q&A” with Modern Warfare 2, and stay tuned for our full review. The game’s out for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on 10th November, like you didn’t know already.

1. Quickfire Q&A: Modern Warfare 2 FPS Gamer gets schizophrenic with Infinity Ward's epic shooter follow-up. Can you hear duty calling?...
2. 1-on-1: Modern Warfare 2 vs Left 4 Dead 2 Can Valve's grab-bag of southern comfort and zombie goodness overturn Infinity Ward's steamroller of an action blockbuster? Click on for our pre-release feature face-off....
3. Last week’s hottest headlines – 6th November Don't mention the (Modern) War(fare 2)....

In preparation for reviewing DJ Hero, I bought a pair of pink Calvin Harris-style fly-eye glasses and read a copy of Mixmag cover to cover. Really, though, I ought to have spent a little time with Amplitude. DJ Hero has far more in common with Harmonix’s early rhythm-action games than with Guitar Hero, Rock Band or anything that has come since.

It’s all about the peripheral, of course. The mini-turntable is undeniably cool. The spinning record has vinyl-like grooves in it and sparkly buts on the sides to make it look cooler when it’s spinning. There are three buttons, a crossfader that you move left and right to control the mix, an effects dial that messes with the sound or chooses your freestyle effects. It feels fantastic to play – it’s not much closer to actual DJing as Guitar Hero is to real shredding, but it really gives you the illusion of control over the music.

Caption editor's caveat: I know nothing about the DJ scene.

As notes scroll down a highway on the screen, you play by pressing the buttons, crossfading left and right or holding down a button and scratching back and forth. Arrows indicate when you have to scratch in a particular direction.

On anything below Hard, it’ll accept any movement as scratching, but on Expert you have to scratch back and forth with the same actions and rhythm as the actual mix, making the game a lot more technical. It’s impossible to actually fail a song in DJ Hero, but you can do spectacularly badly. You’re scored out of five stars, and the more stars you get, the more new setlists, decks, characters, outfits and other fun stuff you unlock.

A DJ doing authentically DJ-ish things. There may be music involved.

Playing DJ Hero is a zoned-out experience. It doesn’t lend itself as well to performance Rock Band and its ilk. It’s still a party game, but instead of leaping around in front of people you’re hidden at the back, controlling the music, regarding the screen with the customary rhythm-action gamer’s thousand yard stare. Hook up DJ Hero to a big TV and a good sound system and there isn’t a more quietly thrilling music games out there. It’s a very different experience to something like Rock Band; much more precise, but just as rewarding.

The quality of the presentation strikes you immediately. The opening cutscene is polished and brilliantly surreal, the graffiti-inspired art style in the menus isn’t garish, the effects whilst you’re actually playing the game are noticeably sleek – the vinyl-like sheen of the note highway, the bright, well-animated background visuals, the great animation on each of the selectable DJs. It oozes unselfconscious cool, too, managing to pull a rave-inspired style without appearing over-the-top or gaudy. All of it suits the music perfectly, of course, which is the most important thing.

1. Brütal Legend Review Gleaming tempered metal or just a cheap alloy?...
2. Mini Ninjas Review The creators of Hitman try their hands at pint-sized Oriental cuddliness. VGD tosses a shuriken at the Xbox 360 version....
3. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Review Off the charts, off the scale. Naughty Dog's latest PS3 action-adventure is one to treasure....

There comes a point in a developer’s career when you know they’re going to carry on producing decent games till electronics go out of fashion. Insomniac isn’t quite the platinum brand Bungie or Valve is, but the California-based independent has seldom put a foot wrong, quietly washing its hands of Spyro the Dragon before the series nose-dived into mediocrity, and treating PS3 owners to an uneasy but enjoyable marriage of realism and ridiculousness in the form of the Resistance shooters.

The Ratchet and Clank franchise is the studio’s longest-running success story, with nine releases (including the High Impact spin-offs), seven years and over 10 million sales under its belt. In the course of that lifespan high definition graphics have flourished, digital distribution has cast its shadow over brick-and-mortar retail and online functionality has become the norm, yet somehow this lean, lovable action-platformer is the same as it ever was, toying with new possibilities but subordinating them firmly to the age-old thrill of smashing stuff with a novelty wrench.

No Lombax can swing a spanner like that Lombax can.

So it is that Crack in Time, despite its up-to-date prettiness, is still a game about powderising huge chunky piles of shiny objects in order to hoover up still more shiny objects, thus upgrading your (equally chunky and shiny) means of destruction and enabling the delicate process to repeat. It’s a shamelessly tawdry experience, harkening back to an era before gaming knew what it was to be “respectable”, before the cool rounded blues of social networking sites and the sterilised family-friendliness of Mii avatars – back to Spyro’s gemstones and Crash Bandicoot’s crates.

Insomniac has served up some counterspin this time, admittedly: as Ratchet, you’ll break things for Bolts (the series’ plentiful universal currency), but as Clank you can also do so by repairing them. The diminutive ‘bot begins the game in the clutches of gesticulating, would-be universe overlord Dr Nefarious, imprisoned aboard a facility at the universe’s centre called The Great Clock. Clank eventually gets hold of a staff which enables him to reverse time, restoring objects to usefulness. It’s a sly bit of reciprocity – Ratchet trashing the galaxy in search of his friend (alternately aided and hindered by the hilarious Captain Quark), while Clank patches things up at the cosmic timepiece.

Clank doing a little house-keeping at the Great Clock.

Time manipulation also underpins the more severe of the game’s puzzles. In certain areas, Clank can create little “recordings” of himself performing certain sequences of actions to make up for Ratchet’s absence. Simpler scenarios might involve using one temporally displaced copy to weigh down a floor switch while another scuttles through; later on, you’ll have to synchronise the movements of three or four playbacks. Nothing tremendously original, but a nice change from the hover-races and arena battles which comprise Crack in Time’s other, more routine diversions.

1. Mini Ninjas Review The creators of Hitman try their hands at pint-sized Oriental cuddliness. VGD tosses a shuriken at the Xbox 360 version....
2. DJ Hero Review More bass! MORE BASS!...
3. Need for Speed: SHIFT Review After a lengthy stay in the pits, the multi-million selling Need for Speed franchise is once again gunning for a podium spot. But is it a match for the latest models?...

“As if people buy CDs anymore!” This line, spoken by the eponymous Tony Prince in The Ballad of Gay Tony, seems ironic in light of the game’s inevitable release as a physical boxed product in addition to digital download through Xbox Live, and is also a good example of how unashamedly blunt and with-the-times some of the themes in Rockstar’s latest (and final) instalment in the GTA IV series is.

Where Niko’s adventures introduced mobile phones, text messaging and the Internet to the world of Grand Theft Auto, The Ballad of Gay Tony touches on newer trends like social networking and “Bleeting” (Tweeting!), as well as up-to-the-minute perspectives on modern, urban club culture.

I know you want me. You know I want you.

For me, the area in which Gay Tony far surpasses The Lost and Damned is in its balls-out extravagance and to-hell-with it premise. This being the final episode in the GTA IV saga, Rockstar has obviously said to itself, “fuck it – let’s give this the send-off it deserves” – and I have no doubt that fans will be in for a real treat.

We’ll start with the themes on offer. Where Lost and Damned was all about bikers, bikes, and low-level gang crime, The Ballad of Gay Tony takes us to the very top of Liberty City’s underworld where money’s no object and our new cast can pretty much do anything they like. Tony himself is a veteran of the clubbing scene, being the first businessman to own the best gay and straight clubs in the city.

Tony and Luis' friendship is behind many of the game's laughs

We’re introduced to Yusuf, a friend who appears to have literally billions of dollars at his disposal, whose only objectives for players throughout the game are to obtain only the most unobtainable objects of desire – golden helicopters and the like. Yusuf is a fantastically moronic, hilarious character, and a great poster for this episode in the way that the limitless available to him pave the way for some of the most ridiculous, irresponsible and darkly amusing behaviour (and perhaps the foulest language in the series to date) you could really wish for.

We’re also brought closer to one of our favourite characters from GTA IV, Brucie, and also meet his older brother for the first time – a character whose interaction with his sibling shows us an entirely different side to a character we thought we knew so well, and the dynamic between the pair is quite an amusing one.

But by far the best moments come from the friendship between Gay Tony and Luis Lopez – Tony’s right-hand-man and bodyguard, and the protagonist that you take control of as the player. There’s no visible sexual tension between the two and Tony isn’t really your stereotypical, over-top-top gay either. He’s got way too much on his plate to be worrying about his sex life these days – in fact, it’s Luis’ colourful sexual adventures all over town that Tony’s more concerned about – and the effect it has on Luis doing his job properly…

Everything about this episode is PIMP.

You can tell Rockstar’s writers have had an awful lot of fun penning the script for the Ballad of Gay Tony. Where Yusuf offers the kind of mindless bloke humour which I can just imagine Dan Houser pissed himself at as he scribbled, the subtler comedy is in Tony and Luis’ interactions, and shows that Ballad is not a one trick pony when it comes to putting a smile on your face. There are plenty of moments that’ll make fans laugh, which I won’t spoil in this review. And it’s not just the outrageous script that delivers on the humour; sometimes it’s the silliness of the missions, like one early mission that sees your entourage racing away from attackers — in stupid little golf carts. It’s certainly the funniest GTA to date, no question about it.

No related posts.

After we bailed on you about one month ago – freezing all updates on Kikizo to focus on this relaunch – it’s been pretty much non-stop around here, and finally, we can give you guys an explanation.

What we have here is the product of about two years of reconstructive thinking. We don’t expect our relaunch to shock and awe the industry or anything, but we do expect it to be a vast improvement in the quality of service to our readers than we were previously able to provide, and we also think it’s a set-up that’s going to work better for us, too.

Without getting bogged down in the deceptively complicated, fast-changing details surrounding online publishing – and how we reckon our new approach is a real strategic answer to it – the key point we will emphasise here is being different: we think that’s what’s most important for smaller digital media companies right now.

Kikizo has always been different in a sense. In its earlier days, nobody really did video coverage like Kikizo did. Simply, nobody else was publishing 30-minute behind-the-scenes documentaries and high quality 60fps videos back in the midst of the last console generation. Over the years, Kikizo’s selling point transitioned to focus on interviews, both with the world’s top game creators and the industry’s most influential executives. That’s still true – and our reviews, features and popular preview coverage are all still part of the mix.

Today, Kikizo is renamed Video Games Daily. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to spell ‘Kikizo’ out to people, explain what it means (or actually what it doesn’t), how it should be pronounced and other trivia, which in fairness we only brought on ourselves in the first place. We’re keeping Kikizo as the company name, and as the name of our network of sites. But our flagship games site that WAS Kikizo is now Video Games Daily; we thought it sits rather nicely alongside our recently-launched Blu-ray Daily for one thing, and also we’ve learnt that at this level of the game, it just makes sense for a website’s name to be more… descriptive.

One of our highlight launch features on Video Games Daily is Gaming Idols: Top 50 We Ever Interviewed, in which we name (my personal) 50 best interviewees of the site to date.

Of course there’s a lot more to this relaunch malarkey besides Video Games Daily. We’ve got four completely new gaming sites that join the Kikizo Network, each bringing something genuinely new to the scene. FPS Gamer is, as far as we know, the first balls-out site dedicated solely to first person shooters – a game genre inexplicably under-catered to on a site-specific basis, when compared to other genres drowning in dedicated sites. Check out the site’s welcome article, and its highlight launch feature penned by Kristan Reed, The History of First-Person Shooters.

Next up, VideoGameTV is our early re-entry into the video space, with an emphasis on variety and usefulness – and some surprises up its sleeve. LevelSkip is NOT your typical cheats and strategies site; it has a personality. It’s a friendly, editorially-led destination that’s as much a celebration of rock hard games and a showcase of impressive gameplay achievement, as it is a gaming help aid. And finally Gaijin Gamer… well, we’ve been cooking this concept for a while, and this “foreigners’ guide to gaming culture in Japan” should be as amusing as it is bonkers.

All our sites have been editorially rethought, and are more inclusive, approachable and interactive than before. You’ll find fuller descriptions on all these sites in the PR that follows on the next page, as well as the website portfolio section of our new business site, Kikizo.biz, which also contains loads of updated info on our company, our history in the market, and other stuff.

The full press release for all this follows on the next page.

1. And the best part of Modern Warfare 2 is… Infinity Ward studio boss spills the beans....

One of the games industry’s few auteurs, there’s no mistaking a game that’s had the benefit of Tim Schafer’s golden touch. From his early forays in the Monkey Island series to the under-appreciated genius of Psychonauts, Schafer’s games are rich with memorable characters, wonderfully-woven stories and a genuinely twisted sense of humour.

Since he left the comfort and safety of the LucasArts nest, he has had more trouble than a designer of his calibre should ever have to deal with: Psychonauts was dropped not just once but twice, firstly by Microsoft and then by Activision, with EA finally picking up the pieces.

The Tour de Force - demons becoming forceful with your tour bus.

Thankfully it seems the new EA has been a force for good, Schafer’s vision equalled only by the company’s bottomless pockets. While his previous games (Full Throttle’s Ben) have alluded to his desire to be a rock star, Brütal Legend is the first to tackle that subject directly. Jack Black reprises the spirit of his roles in Tenacious D and School of Rock to play Eddie Riggs, a roadie with a passion for heavy metal and a loathing for whiney pop, who dreams of a time when music was more meaningful.

As the game begins, Riggs is thrust into a fantasy world where heavy metal is the answer to the universe’s greatest secrets – a world with a visual style rooted in the fiction of Frank Frazetta’s Heavy Metal animation, featuring a cast of mythical beasts that could well have leapt straight off the cover of an Iron Maiden album. Along your journey through Brütal Legend’s medieval landscape you encounter familiar faces in the form of Motörhead’s Lemmy, Judas Priest’s Rob Halford and Black Sabbath’s irrepressible Ozzy Osborne.

1. Tekken 6 Review The King of Iron Fist goes multi-format, as another generation of Mishimas fetch the hair gel and gloves. PS3 version reviewed....
2. DJ Hero Review More bass! MORE BASS!...
3. Need for Speed: SHIFT Review After a lengthy stay in the pits, the multi-million selling Need for Speed franchise is once again gunning for a podium spot. But is it a match for the latest models?...

Fallout 3 was last year’s towering success. It’s no surprise, then, to see later games mimicking its barren, dystopian, desert styling. Borderlands borrows a huge amount from Bethesda’s epic roleplaying/shooter crossover hit, and reviewing it without mentioning this incredible debt is akin to forgetting that the Life of Brian may have been influenced by the Bible. Borderlands is not the Messiah, it’s a very naughty game!

Super Soakers are the interplanetary mercenary's weapon of choice.

Borderlands makes its intentions clear from the opening cinematic. Life on Pandora is colourful, vibrant, ugly and easily splattered across the front of passing buses. The game stamps its own signature on post-apocalyptic bandit-ridden cliches with a refreshing cell-shaded comic look. Fallout 3 saw the future of the 1950’s gone wrong; Borderlands funnels Mad Max through a Futurama kaleidoscope. It’s a bold move for a game that looked good in development even before this radical change in direction, and gives it an instant charm which more serious games lack.

The graphical overhaul also complements the main philosophy behind the game; make it bigger, badder and more powerful. Borderland’s run & gun combat is surprisingly well-honed, and shooter fans will have no problems at all adjusting to the controls. While your starting weapons are the staple guns of the FPS genre, after a few hours play you’ll come across more interesting specimens.

That shotgun looks awfully puny in his hands.

There are machine guns which set people on fire, and sniper rifles which instantly take down enemy shields. You’ll find rocket launchers which splatter bandits with highly corrosive acid, causing them to run around screaming in a lime-green fountain of toxic waste. For those permanently on the lookout for the next big thing, Borderlands’ randomised loot drops and weapon caches are as big a draw as the stat boosts and skill points gained when you level up. Plenty of enemy variety ensures you’ll swap frequently between guns for maximum impact.

Four character types are available from the outset: the soldier, a generic all rounder; the Hunter, a sniper and long range specialist; Brick, a shotgun-toting berserker; and Lillith, a sneaky lady who can become invisible.

The gang's all here. Also starring some giant purple lobsters.

As each character progresses points are unlocked to spend in their skill trees, resulting in greater specialisation. With the ability to play cooperatively with 4 players, a tuned-up team can make short work of giant mutant bosses. Character progress can be saved at “New U” stations dotted around for all your DNA-restructuring and resurrection needs.

Role-playing elements are cleverly interwoven with the shooting action. As your character gets more statistically proficient with their chosen weapons, shots become visibly more accurate. Numbers showing damage inflicted on enemies spill from their bodies in place of blood.

1. Motorstorm: Arctic Edge Review Has Evolution Studios edged out the competition?...
2. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Review Off the charts, off the scale. Naughty Dog's latest PS3 action-adventure is one to treasure....
3. Mini Ninjas Review The creators of Hitman try their hands at pint-sized Oriental cuddliness. VGD tosses a shuriken at the Xbox 360 version....