We Need More Giant Robot Games. Also: Yes Kojima, You Really Should Retire Snake.

First I'd like to say, if you already know exactly what giant robot game I'm going to talk about, congratulations on your acceptance into my personal "You're Cool" club.

Close your eyes and just think to yourself, "When was the last time a good giant robot game came out?" Depressing, isn't it? Considering the we're closing in on what would normally be the twilight of a console generation, having to look to the previous generation for any worthwhile entries into the genre leaves any gamer that grew up on Voltron,Transformers or Power Rangers quite blue.

The Armored Core series has been pretty downhill since the second game; and Chromehounds did not help From Software, who developed both series, to reclaim any credibility within the genre. Applying the Dynasty Warriors formula to the Gundam Universe also disappointed quite thoroughly. There have been a few other attempts this generation...but all of them failed to impress. Some hope still exists for Activision's Transformers:War For Cybertron, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Especially with the average pedigree of developer High Moon Studios. Fingers crossed though...

Sure, we occasionally get some decent giant robot action thrown into our other games. Lost Planet, FEAR 2, Red Faction: Guerrilla and Killzone 2 (you know, that one part). In the end though, a giant robot game is just not the same as a game with giant robots. Porting Virtual-On to LIVE Arcade doesn't count either.

So what happened? I don't believe there's anything noteworthy, if anything at all, on the horizon for some giant robot-on-robot, city-smashing, love. We came from Armored Core, MechAssault, Zone of the Enders, Steel Batallion (assuming you could afford it and find a place for the controller) to a complete vacuum. I'm not even picky! Give me the slow, plodding T-A-N-K-! style play of Mechassault or the fast-paced, anime-flavored combat of a Z.O.E. game and I'll be thrilled.

The technology currently on the table, or rather entertainment center, is particularly good at rendering metal armor, stones, and the accompanying lighting effects (according to Cliff "not Cliffy B" Bleszinski anyway). Hmm, good at rendering metal, stone, lighting ef-GIANT ROBOTS! You know how they say some formulas just scream out the answer? Like graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate screams...? Exactly. Well that's one of them.

Am I to believe that Activision, Transformers, and whatever re-skinned Armored Core From Software decides to poop out are all I have to choose from? What happened to all the people making these games? Will people abandon their WWII soldiers, modern day soldiers, and futuristic soldiers to shoot bad guys with a giant robot instead? I think they just might, especially if it's pretty.

Which brings me to Kojima. Leave Snake alone. you've said you were going to do it every game for nearly a decade, just do it. The story of Solid Snake has been as neatly tied up as once could expect from the trip through "WTF"-land that was the Metal Gear Solid series. The stealth genre is changing drastically to accommodate a market that, by and large, wants to shoot things, not hide from them. You're halfway there with letting another team take Metal Gear: Rising in another direction (assuming he stays "hands-off" as a producer). A huge "thank you" for that, by the way because, as I've mentioned twice before, I have to see how Raiden went from whiny wanna-be to kick-ass cybernetic ninja. Then, however, you cheated by creating the Naked Snake storyline to continue on with an almost identical character to Solid Snake acting out almost identical gameplay.

Just leave them all alone. You've go other series to work on. Give us another Zone of the Enders, because the world needs giant robot games. Kojima's name on a giant robot game could bring out quite the audience with the accolades MGS4 managed to capture. With one successful giant robot game comes others. With other giant robot games comes competition. With competition comes awesome giant robot games. And that's what we're working for here, folks.

Just let Snake die, he's old. Move on to some other series, or even give us a whole new one. Let the stealth genre settle down a little bit, not even Sam Fisher just sneaks around guys anymore. If technology evolves or you come up with an entirely new, truly revolutionary game mechanic feel free to do a reboot. In chronological order would be nice, since MGS3 managed to take place before MG, MG2, MGS, and MGS2. For the uninitiated, that means the 5th game (called the 3rd) in the series took place, chronologically, before the first game, which was made over 20 years ago. A modern take on the earliest games in the series (Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2) would be quite the moment for long-time fans too.

In the meantime, give us back our giant robot games. Oh, and Kojima-san? While we're talking about reboots and reviving franchises and what-not, remember Snatcher...?

Bungie Running New Marathon?

(click to Master-size)

According to IGN, themselves through superannuation, Bungie has filed a trademark for Marathon. For those that weren't Mac gamers in the '90's Marathon was the series that put Bungie on the map long before Halo or Xbox. In fact, you can find references to the classic series in Halo, if you're paying attention anyway.

With no further details on Marathon, it's unsure if Bungie is looking to revive the series, or simply keeping a hold on the name. Given the nature of the last story Bungie appeared here in, reviving the series could potentially be good for all kinds of people.

Vanquish = Gears on (Japanese) Speed?

Well if this is the direction shooters are going to start taking, I may need to get my design molded into something playable real soon. (Come on Activision, where are those details? Help me out here.)

Shinji Mikami and his Platinum Games studio are ready to tweak yet another genre with their upcoming title, Vanquish, which has its very own preview over at 1up.com. Despite early comparisons to Gamecube dud P.N.03, likely due to the main characters suit more than anything, the game seems to have more in common with Epic's Gears of War games. Vanquish mostly sticks to the "stop 'n pop" style that Gears birthed, with a few uniquely Japanese additions.

What Zone of the Enders is to Armored Core, Vanquish looks to be to Gears of War. Namely: very Japanese in art direction and a a few notches up in terms of combat speed, notches that include the number of projectiles on-screen at once. Making the transfer from Gears is the cover system, icons to signigy environmental interaction, rolling between cover points, and reviving fallen allies. New, QTE's for runnign up giant spider's arms before taking out their kneecaps, assorted melee attacks such as uppercuts, acrobatic flips, bullet time and (ironically after the last one) the aforementioned boost to overall combat speed. Although, no matter what, it will still be a step down in speed from Platinum Games' frenetic last title: Bayonetta.

Comparisons aside, there are a few juicy tidbits of information found within 1up's preview. As with most of Mikami's games, Vanquish will focus entirely on single-player. The game apparently takes place mostly on a space station where a battle rages on between US and Russian military forces. Main character, Sam, is a DARPA employee that owes most of his ability (including combat-powerslide, I kid you not) to the "Augmented Reality Suit" that is of his own design, at least in part, as well as his transforming gun. (No, not that one.) The overall speed was elaborated on by breaking the game down to the player taking cover, firing a few shots, then moving to new cover as quickly as possible. By comparison, most cover-based shooters reward the player for staying behind cover and taking out each enemy from that position, rarely requiring the player to move before that. Players that master the new speed and over-the-top moves will be rewarded by the "Mission Stats" screen at the conclusion of each...mission, duh.

Aside from the fact that there will be weapon upgrades, such as a "+10 Damage," there was little else detailing Vanquish. Given the games pedigree, however, it looks like one to watch. Check out the full 1up.com article to see the subdued enthusiasm yourself.

Some Cheers, Some Tears, Mostly Huh?'s

Those of you interested in the status of your favorite "is it ever actually coming out!?" game can check out the latest "Life Support" article over at IGN.

This lists the general status of several titles whose development status has remained amazingly questionable, for years in some cases. (Yes, Duke Nukem Forever is still on there, 13 years and counting!)

There is one interesting tidbit for readers of Higher Tech, Beyond Good and Evil 2 has had it's status bumped up to stable. However, no new details have emerged since HT last covered the game, so I'm not sure what caused the slight status promotion. But feel free to check everything out at the link above.

Reach for this new trailer

There's a new trailer up at IGN for Bungie's latest (and supposedly last) entry in the Halo series, Halo: Reach. The trailer details some of the new play modes and features (did I see jetpacks!?) of Reach and seems to hint that players will get a taste of all of it during the open Beta that starts this May. You bought Halo: ODST, right? Of course you did, you're reading this. You can check IGN's impressions and conclusions at the link above and watch the trailer below. Enjoy!

Halo: Reach Xbox 360 Trailer - Multiplayer Trailer

Xbox has the DVD blu's or: Lost (content) Planet 2.

Since the start of this console generation, Sony fans have touted the merits of Playstation 3's Blu-ray format while those loyal to Microsoft have insisted the extra storage capacity of Blu-ray is insubstantial. If this article from CVG is any indication, however, that argument may very well be lost for 360 fans everywhere.

While it isn't exactly news anymore that Lost Planet 2 had to have a significant chunk of content cut in order to fit on the 360's chosen media format, DVD, the fallout continues to...well...fall. It was only this February that Lost Planet 2 producer Jun Takeuchi had this to say when asked about progress on the title:

"...the edited content was way too much and dealing with that was more difficult than anything.
This time, truly, the content that was cut was significant and at the end, we had to wrestle with disc space."

It was this particular event that led to the article on CVG , which shows how this detriment the DVD format imposed on Lost Planet 2 has shaken the faith of a die-hard Xbox 360 loyalist and may even force Microsoft fanboys everywhere to pull their fingers out of their ears on the issue of BD vs DVD. And who knows how much worse this will make the Sony fanboys...
While comparing the storage formats of the two mediums (a maximum of 50 gigabytes on blu-ray and 8 gigabytes on DVD) would seem to give the obvious advantage to BD, the fact that modern, and more or less identical, multiplatform games continue to be possible via DVD seemed to make the point moot. With more and more studios claiming that their games were only made possible due to the space afforded by the BD format, however, the relevance of a larger storage media seemed to be rising. No doubt affected by their failed backing of HD-DVD against Blu-Ray, Microsoft still refused to adopt the new storage format in the face of this, insisting just as adamantly as its fans that DVD was more than sufficient for today's games.

In fact, were one to look backwards to consoles past, he or she could even compare DVD vs Blu-ray to the cartridge vs CD-ROM debate that took place during the Playstation vs Nintendo 64 era. The oft-mentioned killing blow of that debate was when Square (now Square Enix for all you "noobs" out there. :-P) jumped ship from Nintendo to Sony based solely on the extra storage space the CD-ROM format provided over its cartridge-based competitor. Could Lost Planet 2 have that same effect? No, at least not yet. The fact that Capcom decided to cut content on the game (and possibly add it later as DLC) rather than move the project to PS3 exclusivity remains a strong indication of how much the company wishes to continue showing support for the system. While the reality is that modern games, with their high-definition visuals and audio, demand a larger storage space than DVD can provide the question remains in the hands of the consumers, and how happy they will be with missing out on content originally intended for the retail disc. Especially if Capcom decides to charge for the cut content.

In the end, it's a game of wait-and-see. Should Lost Planet 3 turn in to a Playstation 3 exclusive everything about the storage format war could take a definite turn for the blue.

Bungie is developing for Playstation 3...maybe. Also, an interview with the team behind Halo:Reach

In a brief, but potentially important, article from our brothers across the pond at CVG, some new light may have been shed on Bungie's post-Microsoft plans.

Having severed ties with Microsoft in 2007, the rumor factories immediately started spitting out stories of new titles in development for Sony's system. With the hugely successful Halo series as well as gaming classic Marathon games, Sony fans (who may very well have been claiming that "Halo sux0rz!" mere moments before the announcement) have good reason to be excited about the possibility. So it's good news that, while Bungie hasn't confirmed any rumors of creating a new IP for Playstation 3, they haven't denied it either.

In fact, when CVG fired the question point-blank at Bungie community boss Brian Jarrard he had this to say:

"I mean, I think our whole future's kind of undefined right now and it's definitely not something we're going to be comfortable getting into too much detail about.
We've had another team internally [other than those making Reach] for quite a while now they've been working on the genesis of what will become our next big thing.
It's a little premature to get into specifics, but you know I think we have a really good mix of old blood and new blood in the studio."

Let's hope that if Bungie does bring something new to the PS3 it will bring the goodness (story, characters...well most of them, frantic gameplay, even more frantic multiplayer) and the innovative (the Forge) but leave the wackness behind (poor, repetitive level design).

Speaking of Halo, if you want to check out an interview between CVG and certain members of the Halo:Reach team (creative director Marcus Lehto and the previously mentioned Brian Jarrard) you can head right over here.