No new big news today, since the Halo 3 beta details are still ringing in everyone’s ears. Or, because nothing much happened yesterday, except people got all indignant about Action Button and their zero-star reviews of God of War 2 and Final Fantasy VII. Heh.
So, incidental news! First up is today’s Xbox Live Arcade release of Boom Boom Rocket. This DDR-style rhythm game comes from the imaginations of Bizarre Creations, whose name you might recognize from the launch Arcade hit Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. It seems kind of odd to release this right around the time Guitar Hero 2 hit the shelves for the 360, but maybe there are some poor souls who feel drawn to musical games but can’t pony up for the GH package. Those poor souls can spend 800 MS points ($10) and get their fix, but the shit ain’t pure, man.
This month’s Game Informer scored some details on the upcoming Grand Theft Auto IV. Via Destructoid, it seems that the protagonist’s name will be Nico Bellic, there will be no god damn airplanes, and multiplayer is in the works. The article has more of the specifics, gleaned from demo time with the game, but we can just stop right there with "multiplayer." It has been a long time coming in a console iteration of GTA. We’ll have to wait for the official announcement. Also, the game apparently takes place in a single city, rather than in the sprawling counties of San Andreas. I’m hoping this indicates that Rockstar have focused on improving interactivity in the (potentially?) smaller gamespace.
We’ve still got a few months to go before Valve gift us with the bundles for Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2, which means you can expect the community at large to hang on every morsel of information. IGN has been handed a plate of crumbs from Valve honchos Doug Lombardi, Robin Walker, and Charlie Brown in the form of an reasonably informative interview. The enviable punks at IGN also got a chance to play the game, and will have hands-on impressions up by this Friday.
For those of you who have been dicking around with homebrew on your Wii, the killer app has been released. ScummVM has been ported to Nintendo’s console. If you’re not familiar with the program, it’s basically an emulator tuned specifically to the venerable adventure games of times past, such as Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Sam and Max Hit the Road, and more. The article holds the details. I’m giving it a shot this afternoon, but I’m scared to play Sam and Max because it will remind me of the original voice of Sam, which I miss terribly despite the quality of Telltale’s recent episodic games.
Yeah, John Romero has technical reasons for believing that PC gaming will soon eclipse consoles. Like most id folks, present and past, technology and gameplay are synonyms in the guy’s head. Poor fucker.