Dylan Cuthbert has done it again. PixelJunk Eden was released last week for the PS3 via download on the PSN. This makes two of the best games on the system from the same damn guy. That’s a pretty impressive feat.

Now, PixelJunk Eden is in line with the whole PJ theme of “using a ton of meticulously hand-drawn 2D art instead of 3D modeled graphics, we have tried to re-create the feel of some of those older classics”. But I feel like this is a big step for Q-Games. Eden is meticulously unique in both design and aesthetics. Eden, is their best game since Digidrive, and in many ways it’s leagues better.

Both the other PixelJunk games were either too silimar to another style of game, or nearly a complete mechanical rip-off of others. Digidrive was something unique with a visual style and appeal that neither of the first two PJ games had, then comes Eden, seemingly out of left field. The sound and aesthetic design are very similar to Digidrive, yet also unique to itself. It is quite the accomplishment for such a small company to be so bold and so successful at the same time.

If you have a PS3 I feel like this is perhaps the first must buy title on the system. Yes, over Everyday Shooter (which is now on Steam too), and yes over any blu-ray Disc released title. Get it now if you haven’t. At least give the demo a try, it’s free!

Well, I guess I should celebrate as one of my all time favorite games–Umihara Kawase–is getting brought to the US, finally. Unfortunately it’s the PSP version and not something great like an import on the PSN store for my PS3, but I’ll take what I can get.

Umihara Kawase is a strange and wonderful game about mastery and giant walking fish. I did a write up about the game a couple years ago for GameSetWatch (found here). That says just about all there is to say about the original.: UK:Shun (which the PSP version is based on) is not all that different, but mechaniclly it is a bit looser and the design is a bit more complex, but overall a very similar experience.

While there’s no release date yet (not even a fake one at Game Stop), you can play the PSP demo (JP, but works on all consoles) from here. Natsume is the US publisher which will be releasing the game in the states under the new title Yumi’s Odd Odyssey. I don’t know what sort of planetary alignment happen to make this possible, but I’m just glad it did. It seems like there’s less and less games left abandoned on the shores of the land of the rising sun these days than ever.

E3 is over, and nothing really new has been said. How uneventful. One excellent thing did come out of it all though: the demo for Siren: Blood Curse is now up on the PSN for your shiny PS3 that sits around being used as a media center and PS2 machine without any lovely games of it’s own to keep your interest (outside of MGS4). Well, that could just be my PS3 anyways.

The original Siren for the PS2 is an excruciatingly difficult game for reasons that are hard to explain without playing through it. It took me and Sara probably a good year of starts and stops and over a hundred hours, but we did eventually finish the first game. I even liked it enough to purchase the sequel which was only released in Asia, but never got around to playing it in hopes of an eventual US release which never came about.

Even though the demo for Blood Curse is new to the US, it’s been available in Asia for a little while now, and this game was announced quite a while ago. So, honestly, E3 brings most of us nothing new. If you go about looking for information on Siren at IGN or any of the major news sites, you’ll probably come away with less information than you previously knew about the game, or less than you get from spending the 10 min with the demo that it takes to complete. Ultimately I’m severely disappointed with the only thing announced that was previously unconfirmed: the US is only getting a episodic (though, you get three episodes per… episode) release of the game in four parts for $15 each or $40 for all.

[Sidebar: I don’t like Sony’s trend to release full games as downloadable items. It’s not that I’m against digital distribution for full products (you should see my Steam list of games), It’s that they have the audacity to think that the PS3 is the same as a PC. You’re offering me proprietary software on a proprietary system that I am pretty sure Sony’s going to drop support for in the next 5 - 7 years. Something like this doesn’t really make me feel comfortable or safe plunking down that much money for, and I’d rather have something tangible that I can use to SELL and get retribution for if it’s shite. Now, calm down, I know what some of you are saying: “but Matt, the first game was a disaster sales wise, why would they want to release a physical version just to lose money on again?” First, it’s not like they lose money on it, they have all their other games supporting the occasional failure. This is how all other publishers work. By making it digitally distributed it actually lowers the amount of people who will know about the game, and hence worsens sales yet again. To top that off, it’s not like there’s a wealth of other great games for the system that’s going to get your average customer to overlook this one (which was much more the case with the PS2 release). So, in conclusion, I’m going to wait and see if the Asian version (which isn’t region coded, nor is any other PS3 game) has English menus and pick that up. This way I support the game, but stick my nose up at Sony’s inflated ego.]

Whatever, back to the game at hand. As I said there’s a new demo for Siren: Blood Curse on PSN, go download and play it now. I want to explain exactly what’s exciting about this demo, because honestly it gives initial impressions of being very mundane. The game starts off both feeling way too dark, and–ARGHmyhand–brings back awful tank controls. There’s also an new focus on combat, which is a bit misleading because your fists really aren’t going to do you any good. And, top this all off with the little niggling bit of needing to press the up button on the d-pad twice to make your flashlight turn on or off.

Moving along, the demo decides to give your your first weapon: a rusty pipe. How suiting. Now, you find that using this pipe with the control scheme is a bit unwieldy, and if there’s other survivors around you even hit them with no apparent way to avoid hurting your partners. Then the demo give you a gun. See this is where the real control scheme shines through: as soon as you pick up the gun hit R3 and never look back.  This puts the player into first person view. With no obscuring HUD or pesky aiming reticule, suddenly I’m completely absorbed into the tension and horror of the situation. The control scheme becomes natural, and the camera movements only enhance what was being shown from an outsider perspective previously.

The cherry here is that the auto-aim system is seamlessly integrated into aiming effectively feeling more like they game’s reading your mind than that it’s auto-aimed. While experimenting with the fps view on subsequent replays of the very short demo I went back to a previous area where I left a zombie (shibito) alive. I had unequipped my gun for a shovel (I don’t know why the demo makes you wait to get a gun to go into the fps mode) and try to find him. While running down some stairs, suddenly from the darkness he emerges. I swing the shovel in hopes of knocking him out, but he deftly avoids my swing and heads straight for my partner. Now, I don’t realize what’s happen at first, because after I swung the shovel the zombie disappeared below my field of vision, but the auto-aiming tracked them in a way that slowly turned me around (as though the character was looking for the zombie, rather than quick snapping zombie-locked-to-center-of-the-screen) to face them. Brilliant little moment.

After initial impressions I wasn’t so excited about Siren:BC, but now after playing around with first person perspective I’m stoked once again.

As a special bonus for all you horror fans, I’m mirroring the greatest B-Game wallpaper ever created here for your PS3’s pleasure. It reminds me of Bio-Zombie for some reason.

I just realized that I had completely stopped caring about Little Big Planet. When it was first shown a little over a year ago it seemed like just the thing to pull people towards the PS3, a task similar in difficulty to pulling teeth.* It was cute, little burlap sac men/ladies running around attempting to conquer physics with their box of toys. You could even make your own levels and share them with your friends.

When the game was shown it was not only playable, but it also had the world creator already done. I’m not really all that sure what the wait is for. I mean, perhaps the game was far less along than it looked at GDC ‘07, but then I have to say: Bad Sony. You blew your marketing load on interest too early in the game’s launch schedule to keep things alive. The PR is falling in on itself like a deflating balloon. When the game is finally released, who knows, the PS3 may be in the lead of the “console warz,” or something.

Sorry, I’m not trying to sound like a hardened jaded punk who’s just too cool for burlap sac men inside a physics playground. It’s just that I don’t have the same drive or desire to play the game like I use to. There’s been so much footage of gameplay shown that I kind of feel like this is a game that my friends have had for months and I just haven’t gotten around to picking it up yet. When it finally is released what difference does it make if I wait a couple weeks or months before I finally get around to it.

*Unless you also wanted a blu-ray player, in which case it’s not that hard.

I was very recently turned onto the upcoming Xbox 360 and PS3 game Rainy Woods (trailers here). Otherwise a fairly corny looking game that was debuted at TGS ‘07, the game has more than a couple striking similarities to David Lynch’s work (most notably Twin Peaks, with a bit of bit of Mullholand Dr./Blue Velvet in the mix). Other similarities seem to be heavily rooted in Silent Hill (particularly SH4) and otherwise unmentionable b-games in the survival horror genre. Games like this tend to pique my interest in sick ways so I started to poke around in the credits for RW and came across something interesting.

The Executive Producer of Rainy Woods is Yasuhiro Wada–the man behind Harvest Moon–which makes sense since the game’s being published by Marvelous Entertainment. The director/lead designer is SWERY who also directed Spy Fiction and Extermination (PS2). I then made the connection that Extermination was developed by Deep Space which was part of the team that broke up from Whoopee Camp. Diving a bit deeper into the staff list it turns out that Hidetaka Suehiro, one of the writers for the game, also worked with Swery on Spy Fiction. The other writer, Kenji Goda is responsible for the Parasite Eve II story (unfortunately). The character designer, level artist, level designer, writer, art director, and a few other carry over from Deep Space and most worked together on Extermination. The only person who’s a mystery is the art director, Hitoshi Okamoto. He could be the guy who I’ve found with the same name that previously worked on sound and audio for games like Riviera, Summon Night: Swordcraft Story, and (of all things) Dragon Ball Z: Budokai.

In the special thanks appears Yoshihisa Ohbuchi who was the producer of King of Fighters EX2: Howling Blood, and also appeared on the special thanks of Valhalla Knights (an XSEED published game). The other person in the special thanks is Eishin Sasaki, who I believe to be in Killer 7’s special thanks as well.

At the very bottom of the credits–where I should have looked first–I find that the developer for RW is Access Games, the combined staffing remains of Deep Space and Whoopee Camp. There is a long and interesting history behind the creation of Whoopee Camp which starts with Tokuro Fujiwara. Ghosts ‘n Goblins was his first major undertaking, and as stated by Play Magazine, the greatest 8-bit platforming game ever (though I disagree with them). After GnG he went on to create another Capcom legacy game, Mega Man (aka Rockman in Japan).

After being the creative force for the first two games in the Mega Man series, Fujiwara took the producers seat in which he sat through the Super Nintendo. Credited on all regular MM games, and Mega Man X games through X3 (as well as the oddball Mega Man Soccer) the series stayed quite faithful to its roots, and the worst you would hear about any of them is that they are “more of the same.”

During his time as the caretaker of Mega Man he was also involved in the creation of Street Fighter (1), Breath of Fire, Strider, and Resident Evil (Biohazard in Japan). Strider turned into a fan and cult favorite receiving many ports (some more faithful than others) which also continues to be ported as recently as 2006. Resident Evil is the last game that Fujiwara worked on before he left Capcom. We all know what ended up happening with Resident Evil: many sequels, multiple re-releases and re-prints, and has spawned three films (so far). While only the producer his creative hand could be felt in the game all over from the unique control scheme to the level of difficulty.

In 1996 Fujiwara and Yoshiki Okamoto (Creator of the 194X series, Time Pilot, Street Fighter II, and also worked with Fujiwara on Biohazard) created Whoopee Camp. While Fujiwara left Capcom, Okamoto stayed around and even picked up where Fujiwara left off on a few projects (Mega Man, Mega Man X, Breath of Fire, Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts GBA, Biohazard, and went as far as to produce the Resident Evil films). Whoopee Camp was started with “the mission to create high quality games based on creative sense, experience and close calculation.”

Aside from Fujiwara and Okamoto, Kenji Kaido has been associated with the forming of Whoopee Camp. He went on to be the production manager for Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Kaido started his career at Taito arcade games and was project leader and lead game designer for Cameltry and a few other games. Though, this information only comes from an IGN article, and I can’t seem to find their source of information.

The first game to be released by this new venture was Tomba! which Fujiwara himself explains best in his own words: “I have designed a lot of different games in my career, and while Tomba! may have been my biggest challenge, it is certainly my greatest personal achievement as I believe the character and the gameplay have the ability to attract and challenge gamers of every age and skill level. […] Nothing satisfies me more than imagining parents playing with their children as well as challenging those hard-core gamers who want to experience a whimsical fantasy world with extraordinary gameplay. Tomba! will capture the hearts of everyone.”

After Tomba! 2 Whoopee Camp seems to have fallen off of the face of the earth. At one point in mid-2001 Tomba! 3 was announced for the PS2 only to disappear along with the company. Backing up a bit, in 1998 Fujiwara was appointed to the Executive Producer spot of the Deep Space joint venture company between WC and Sony Computer Entertainment International with games published by SCEI. Deep Space created Hungry Ghosts and Extermination (which listed Whoopee Camp in the Special Thanks section of the credits). In early 2002 the remains of Whoopee Camp and Deep Space created Access Games (which has only really released one game, Spy Fiction), while the original companies disappeared. According to Archive.org, the last time that WC’s website was updated was on August 8th 2003. The website has also since disappeared.

But Tomba! 2 was released in 2000, and Extermination was released in 2001, what happen to the rest of the team? Mega Man Powered Up, the re-envisioning and re-creation of Mega Man 1, was absent of Fujiwara’s name. Then, in late August of 2005, Ultimate Ghosts ‘n Goblins is announced (then titled Extreme GnG which is closer to the Japanese name) and Fujiwara is back in his old seat for the series, and completely removed from what’s left of Whoopee Camp. The rest of Access Games has been in a state of limbo as well since 2001 and it’s interesting to see that so may players have come back to work together with Rainy Woods.

While the company’s track record hardly instills confidence (nor does the trailer) I’m still looking forward to Rainy Woods‘ release as a curiosity of whether it will be a loving homage to auteur director David Lynch, or just an aping of his aesthetics.

A while back I bought a game on faith of the company alone, PixelJunk Racers. The company is Q-Games and the slogan for the PixelJunk games are “High Quality Casual Game (1080p Play Style)”. Cute, catchy and full of Engrish, who wouldn’t bite. The main reason I have faith in the company is more to do with the founder Dylan Cuthbert. He’s probably best known for the work he did for the Super Nintendo with Star Fox, but that’s not really why I like the guy. When the bit Generations games came out for the GBA back in 2006 all but one game was developed by Skip ltd.: Digidrive. Most of the other titles followed a similar design aesthetic, but few followed through with gameplay beyond the initial level of being just a puzzle. The style and complexity of Digidrive stood out as unique, modern, and multidimensional.

With the dearth of games on the PS3, I was happy to give a new (downloadable) game a shot with a company I mostly liked. (Honestly, my wife wanted that LocoRoco game and since I hate navigating the PSN store I kind of need more than one reason to go there in the first place so Racers would have to do.) Now my definition of casual games usually entails both simple and easy to pick up. This usually turns into monotonous and/or gameplay that’s too easy. Not all of them mind you, but a good amount. Either way, Racers is neither easy or simple. The only thing similar from race to race is the slot-car-esque aesthetic. In one race you could have to hit every car to gain speed, and in the exact next you have to avoid every car to keep your speed. This isn’t even including the multitude of wacky requirements. It’s a hodge podge of ideas that can be done within the confines of simple mechanics, and after finishing most of the events in the game I still never felt like I knew what was going on. So, when Q-Games’ second project came around (PixelJunk Monsters) I assumed it was going to be a similar mess and ignored it.

I actually had no idea it came out so recently, but I was talking with a friend of mine who was telling me how much fun PixelJunk Monsters was. I retorted that I really disliked Racers, so I didn’t really care about it. The game is nothing like the other though, and I was informed that it’s more like Tower Defense games. Now that’s more a concept I can get behind, similar mechanics and character design throughout. Tower Defense is one of those games that’s been around for a long time with a lot of different versions created by everyone and their brother. Most are fairly simple and, honestly, a bit boring at times. TD is just the kind of game I’d play to kill some time at work.

Monsters takes the TD design ethos and expands on it by both making it more personal and cohesive than other versions I’ve played. The player is some sort of tribal chief who must defend the young tribe members. To do so he can (somehow) turn trees into towers which will attack the oncoming enemies. There are both ground and air enemies and towers that can attack both or either type. The interesting additions are more than just aesthetic though. Each new level allows for unique and varied goals and formations. A personal favorite of mine is where the enemies don’t give you any coins and you have to defend the children with only your starting money plus what you earn in bonus.

What really makes Monsters a much better game than their first outing, Racers, is that once you’ve figured out the first level you know just what to do for the rest of the game. While the obstacles may change from level to level, what you learned and know will keep you going from the outset. There is also another kind of spin on the “casual game” that gives me hope for the genre’s future: the game is challenging. After a few levels the kid-gloves come off and the game really puts you in your place. Most casual games don’t do this until quite late, if at all, and it’s a nice enough change in pace that the game no longer feels casual at all. The level designs become more intimate after a few tries and the strategy of the game type really shines for all the levels. Once you get just about tired of similar looking landscapes the tilesets change up to a snow covered land or a field in the middle of a downpour.

The visual design is something that Q-Games should be proud of as well. A quick visit to the PixelJunk site will show the developers intention and roots in classic pixelated games and style. By following what made the original pixel graphics iconic in spirit Cuthbert and his team have recreated and kept true to the iconic spirit of those days.

“By using a ton of meticulously hand-drawn 2D art instead of 3D modeled graphics, we have tried to re-create the feel of some of those older classics”
-Dylan Cuthbert

Personally I don’t know what to think about the future of the PixelJunk line of games. Right now it’s a severely mixed bag and the next title is as much a toss up as is its identity. The thing is, I probably won’t have anything else to play on my giant black shiny monolith, so I’ll pick the game up anyways.