...and he's ready to **** up some monsters for another badass movie!

[video=cXYwxjOs5bwIvDPc]

Oh yeah, ...kick ass...

...that the weridest mash-up since Kingdom Hearts would happen in the reknowned Soul Caliber franchise. If you haven't been keeping up with news from CES, let me fill you in... Yoda and Darth Vader are going to be in Soul Caliber IV!!! Why Namco and LucasArts decided to partner up for this one, I'll never understand, but who cares when they're including such badass characters!

On a side note, Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines is an absolutely fantastic game. It's sure to whet the appetite of any depraved Buffy fan.

I just joined steam, so in case anyone else uses it, my SteamID is NeW_SpEcTrUM77.

Curious thing is, when I registered my Half-Life CD key, not only did it register HL, HL: Opposing Force, and Team Fortress cla$$ic, which I have, but it gave me HL: Blue Shift, Deathmatch cla$$ic, Counter Strike, Day of Defeat, and Ricochet as well... Why, I have no idea, but when you get 4 games free, it's hard to complain...

During the Holiday break I went to see I Am Legend, mainly because I'm a sucker for both thos 'end of the world' kind of movies, and, of course, Will Smith. I had really high hopes going in, maybe too high. It turns out the movie sucks. Smith gives a damn good performance, as he always does. His level of acting is nearly untouchable, but the rest of the movie is weighed down by plot holes and falls for cheap and predictable horror plotlines. Turns out the whole movie is predictable. Within a few minutes of going in, you can figure out the ending. I'll try not to give away too much, but one of the biggest plot holes is in one scene, while Smith is driving around the city, he spots off to his left down a bridge one of the mannequins he placed around the city to give him some sense ofnormalcy, being the last human and all. So anyway, he drives up to investigate, and by now you can clearly see he is going insane, so he shoots Fred, as he calls the mannequin, to ****. He walks up to Fred, and for some reason, gets caught in a trap. (One of those wire traps that catches you by the ankle and lifts you up in the air.) He eventually cuts himself loose, but the thing is, this goes completely unexplained. He certainly did not set the trap, and Ana, who arrives later in the movie, wasn't even IN the city at that point! Not to mention, the Darkseekers certainly didn't set it... Besides that, the movie falls for a predictable plot, and not the earthshaking drama that was promised. Overall, a 4/10.

That's the bad news, the good news is that Jade Empire 2 exists. Here is the article from IGN on the story:

January 2, 2008 - While most of us were gorging ourselves on holiday meals and napping away our vacations, news of Jade Empire 2 leaked to the net via The Mercury News. Dean Takahashi published an article stating that he spoke with someone who saw code for Jade Empire 2. "It's coming for the Xbox 360, and it's real," claims Mr. Takahashi. Rumors of the title have been floating around for years, but it is interesting to hear that the code exists for Xbox 360.

Whether the Jade Empire franchise will stay a PC/Xbox 360 exclusive or not remains to be seen. According to Microsoft the franchise is owned by BioWare, a company that was recently purchased by EA. It's no secret that EA prefers to publish its games for as many platforms as possible, putting any thoughts of exclusivity in limbo.

Microsoft, as usual, did not comment on the rumor. When we contacted EA, we were forwarded on to BioWare as the PR is still being handled separately. Representatives for BioWare could not be reached at this time, giving us a trio of no confirmation.

Thankfully, IGN's own David Clayman was willing to go on record with this statement, "There is no truth to the rumor that I have already awarded this game a perfect ten in the IGN databases. As far as we know the title may not even exist. However, if the game does come to fruition I will not dismiss the possibility that it will deserve a score of ten or higher."

Keep 'em coming BioWare! First, we get a masterpiece know as Mass Effect. Then, we get news of a KotOR MMO, and now, the code for JE2 exists. For those who haven't played JE, go do so, now!

Also, think there might be a glitch with the leveling system... I just gained 2 levels in one day...

lBefore the 2008 begins, I want to share which games I thought were the greatest. The catagories are: (insert drum roll)

- Best Single-Player Game

- Best Multiplayer Game

- Best Story

- Most Surprisingly Good Game

- Most Surprisingly Bad Game

- Best Graphics

- Best Atmosphere

And the nominees are... (insert another drum roll)

- Best Single-Player Game

• Mass Effect
• Clive Barker's Jericho
• Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
• The Orange Box (HL2)
• BioShock

- Best Multiplayer Game

• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
• The Orange Box (TF2)
• Warhawk
• (and sadly) Halo 3

- Best Story:

• Mass Effect
• Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
• The Orange Box (HL2)
• Clive Barker's Jericho
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

- Most Surprisingly Good Game

• Clive Barker's Jericho
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
• Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
• Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

- Most Surprisingly Bad Game

• Lair (Yup, that's it...)

- Best Graphics

• Mass Effect
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
• BioShock
• Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

- Best Atmosphere

• Mass Effect
• BioShock
• Clive Barker's Jericho
• Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

And the winners are... (insert last drum roll)

- Best Single-Player Game ... The Orange Box (HL2 + Ep. 1 & 2)

- Best Multiplayer Game ... Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

- Best Story ... Mass Effect

- Most Surprisingly Good Game ... Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

- Most Surprisingly Bad Game ... Lair (duh...)

It doesn't deserve a picture. :P Okay, maybe it does...

- Best Graphics ... Tie! Mass Effect (Artistic) + Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Technical)

- Best Atmosphere ... BioShock

I know it's not very extensive, I mean, I only have access to so many games, but I tried to be fair, and those are my top choices of 2007. Happy New Year to everyone!!

There is a very annoying trend in gaming that is becoming very irksome to many, especially myself. This trend tends to favor FPSs most of all. I'm talking about...

Silent PCs

In this blog, I want to focus on two examples from some of this year's biggest hits. Jack from BioShock and Dr. Gordon Freeman from the Half-Life series. Let's begin with BioShock...

With 2007 coming to a close, all the awards are going out and it seems that critics almost unanimously agree that BioShock is Game of the Year. Well, I disagree. Why? While 2K Boston's atmospheric FPS is a very enjoyable game with outstanding art direction, it lacks in its story presentation. The game does raise quite a few humanitarian and moral questions, it fails to answer any since it lacks the character to do so. Instead, Atlas, Andrew Ryan, Tenenbaum, and Fontaine all end up babbling to themselves instead of actually having a conversation. It's sad, really. It's not like the budget ran out for such a high profile game, why not get a voice actor for Jack. This ruins the chance of BioShock being a memorable story.

The Orange Box is definately a fantastic video game deal. Five superb games in one package,with Valve's wildly popular FPS Half-Life series to lead it. HL is a fantastic series. The original lacked any kind of cohesive narrative, but 2 decided to ante it up a LOT. The characters in Half-Life 2 are some of the most expressive and well-voiced out there today. So why doesn't Gordon Freeman, the famous hero of the series, have a voice or personality to go along with the rest of the characters. How is humanity inspired to follow a man who can't speak orshow any expression? More importantly, how is Alyx Vance attracted to a man who hasn't ever said a word to her... The games have such awesome potential for fantastic narrative, and in many ways, it succeeds, but because of Gordon's inability to talk, the story is dropped a couple notches.

...And just what is the cause of this trend? Laziness. That's it, laziness on the developers part. 2K Boston and Valve should take notice of a few companies like BioWare and Naughty Dog, and look at how they build a games narrative. Now I'm not saying, "don't be unique in how you present your story", just do it in a way, that well, makes sense. BioShock could have been much, much better if, say, depending on your choices, Jack slowly went insane like the rest of the populace of Rapture or rose above the madness and anarchy of the failed utopia to lead the Little Sisters to a new life. And what if Gordon Freeman was able to deliver an inspiring speech to a group of resistance fighters or mess with Barney or build up a relationship with Alyx. Hell, if that was the case, HL might be better than a BW game.

But, in the end, this is just wishful thinking...

I never thought a 16-bit game could startle me so bad, especially now, with how far horror has come.

So here's what happened, I just reached the Royal Chapel area, and I found this small room, right off of where the giant Puppet Sword flys around, it was basically a confession booth. At first, I didn't see anything, but I sat down in the chair on the far side of the room. All of a sudden, this ghost of a woman fades in. This caught my interest, as I wasn't expecting it...

You can bet I definately was not expecting what happened next...

So this ghost sits down across from me. As she does, the curtain closes around her. About two seconds later, this giant spear bursts through confession booth, wangpangling Alucard to his seat.

It doesn't sound one bit scary when you read it, but when you're playing at 12:30 in the morning, half asleep, in total darkness, with the volume up real loud, stuff like this tends to make you jump...

The funny part is this only did like 1 damage to me, which was strange since I just gotfrickin' speared in the face.

Yesterday, I came across an interview with Guillaume de Fondaumière, co-founder of Quantic Dream.

Here it is in its entirety:

GamesIndustry.biz: You've upgraded your in-house motion capture studio for the PlayStation 3 exclusive that you're working on for Sony. How important is it to have that technology in-house rather than relying on outsourcing?

Guillaume de Fondaumière: We've been running our own motion capture studio since 2001, but this is a brand new studio for us. Our games are really about creating emotions. Having virtual actors, as we call them, or 3D characters, that are as realistic and faithful to the actors that they embody is extremely important to creating this emotion.

We've worked with motion capture to recreate the motions and the expressions of actors just like in the movies. On Omikron: The Nomad Soul we worked with an outsourcing studio and we saw a limit with that exercise. We understood that in order to make best use of this technology we needed to adapt a number of tools to our technology and also to a certain extent we were a bit frustrated as to what was on the market.

Outsourcing studios have extremely powerful tools but they aren't really making the best use of them. We found that we needed a system in-house in order to test things. Fahrenheit was produced using this system. With our older technology we produced the maximum we could in terms of precision that the system was capable of doing.

We've acquired the new system as it's an extremely powerful tool, it has extreme accuracy and gives us the possibility to capture very very small motions, which means we can not only capture full body movement but also facial movement and expressions.

And you see capturing emotions, not just movement, as a vitally important part of your games...

It's the next frontier to a certain degree. We've had this system in-house since April and it's been really beneficial for us to push this technique and our surrounding technologies further. Most of the efforts that we've put into creating these virtual actors are for our upcoming title on PlayStation 3 that we're currently developing with Sony.

I think when we showed The Casting everyone agreed it was nice and it really showed that there was a potential for creating virtual actors, but we're still at this frontier where we don't totally suspend disbelief. We still have this uncanny valley to bridge. But today, I can officially announce that there is no uncanny valley any more, not in real-time.

With our next project we're going to demonstrate with hundreds of characters that we can have extremely realistic characters that not only move like real actors but express themselves through facial animations and speech like real actors, and are extremely accurate to the actors they are portraying.

How important is the actor in this process compared to the technology?

It's one hundred per cent important, and that's the big difference compared with what we were doing in the past. In the past the limit was the technology. In the production of our next title what we're discussing with Sony, is not "does it look good?" but "is the actor right?" Now we are really casting actors and we're looking for a performance because we've bridged the technological gap.

Is there a problem with actors understanding what you're trying to do? Do they understand the challenge of virtual acting - do they take it as seriously as theatrical or other 'proper' acting?

When we show actors what we're capable of doing they now understand what they have to do. In the past you had to tell them that it's motion capture and it's not totally accurate, so they had to overact or downplay certain things - things that we weren't able to capture. Now we just show them what the technology can do and we ask them to do it. It's closer to theatre acting. It's very close to what actors do on a regular basis.

Is it important to have established actors in your project? Heavenly Sword had Andy Serkis who's well known for virtual acting in Lord of the Rings and King Kong - is it important to have a successful name like that attached to the project or just a skilled actor?

It's a question of performance. The thing is that ****A actors are not just good because they look the part but because they know how to act and perform. Of course we want to work with the best actors and the better the actor the better the performance. It's critical.

We had a meeting with Leonardo Di Caprio in 2004 and we tried to convince him to play in one of our future games - at the time we had Fahrenheit to show him. He liked it very much, but he politely explained to us that we still were not at the level that he'd expect the technology to be at in order to give us his time and be able to portray his performance.

Today, it's very different. We're talking withc*lass A actors. These Hollywood actors are asking us about the scenario and the stories as the technical aspects are taken care of. We've been able to demonstrate that we're capable of portraying the performance. They are asking, "what's the subject matter, what's the role?"

When are you likely to be able to show this technology off and convince the media that you've taken this big step forward?

That's something now that Sony is controlling. There's no need to hurry to a certain extent. It's always a bit frustrating for fans and for us to not be able to show what we're doing but we have to find the right time. We're now in the process of creating something that's playable in real-time and in the coming months the time will come when we start showing it to the world.

So what attracted you to working on an exclusive title for Sony? Why the PS3 over other options on the market?

One of the most important things was the people at Sony. When were presenting The Casting, and this next project, we'd seen a number of publishers and had received a number of offers, but the most positive feedback and the sense of a real exchange we got from Michael Denny [VP of SCE Worldwide Studios] and Phil Harrison [president of SCE Worldwide Studios] - we immediately felt that these people understood what we are trying to do.

It's vitally important that the developer and the publisher, right from the very beginning, really work on the same title. They understand where we are putting the quality bar, and we felt that they would let us do the game we really wanted to do. We've been working together for 18 months and we still have this very good understanding.

The other point is the PlayStation 3 itself. We started very early on it back in June 2005, we hadn't even released Fahrenheit when we received the first development kits. Although we're very supportive of what Nintendo and Microsoft are doing, we felt that with the PS3 Sony has given us a tool to really to express ourselves. With Fahrenheit we've initiated what we call 'interactive cinema' and we believe that this new format is best served on this versatile and powerful machine.

So you were happy to sign the deal as an exclusive - you're not concerned about limiting your market to one home console?

We believe that the PlayStation 3 is going to be extremely successful, as successful as the PlayStation 2. The other point is that when you look at the architecture of the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 you see huge differences and it's extremely difficult to create games of the same visual quality on both platforms. Even from an economical standpoint, if you really want to give the best shot on both platforms you have to invest far more money than just spending the money on the one platform. Or you have simple ports, which are of less quality.

At Quantic we have high standards and we really want to give our fans the best possible experience with our creations and we didn't want to downgrade any version by porting a game. It was far more important to chose the right machine where we could express ourselves and give it the best shot.

Can we assume you're working on other projects other than your exclusive PS3 title?

We're starting to think about new projects. We're working on very different things to Heavy Rain and the interactive cinema format and we're also working on extensions of this format too.

There seems to be more viable alternative routes to market with things like PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade. Are these something Quantic is interested in?

This is something that we're of course taking into consideration. We'll be able to announce something towards the end of 2008. It's ages away but big projects take time to make. As I said before we're working more and more with Hollywood and we see how it makes its big productions. A triple A movie takes five or six years. The shooting can be short but the preparation takes time.

Wow, for once one of my videos actually uploaded. Its a miracle!!

Sarcasm aside...

This is the teaser trailer for Resident Evil: Degeneration, the upcomingfull-length CG movie from Capcom and Sony Pictures.

[video=dSdmlTT_5bwOszLY]

The movie apparently picks up a year after the end of RE4. In the teaser, we see both Claire and Leon, but many of your favorite characters are confirmed to appear: Chris, Jill, Barry, Rebecca, Ada, and Billy to name a few.

I'm not positive this is true or not, but I believe Degeneration is going to Blu-Ray only.

This is the fulfillment of any RE fan's fantasy: a true RE movie featuring their favorite characters and great story. Not the craptastic turdpiles Paul W. S. Anderson started...