DemonSlayer.com

In Academy of Champions, you’ll play as a new recruit who has joined the academy run by soccer legend Pele. You’ll be able to play as either a boy or girl and your quest in the game is to assemble the best possible soccer team. There are 30 possible recruits to choose from that can join your team and it won’t be as simple as just asking them to join. You’ll have to meet certain requirements in order to get someone to join. For instance, there’s a character that won’t join your team unless you have a couple of girls in your starting lineup. This is a soccer game so enough about the story! Hit the break to find out how Academy of Champions handles. Academy of Champions (Wii) Developer: Ubi Vancouver Publisher: Ubisoft To be released: September 2009 The controls are pretty straight forward. Press A to pass or tackle, shoot at the goal with B, Z is used to dodge on offense and sprint on defense and C will switch your control to a different player. As you pass your ball to your teammates, a special meter will fill up. Once it’s filled up all the way, players will shake the Wiimote and your character will perform a special move. I was playing with the Ubisoft team made up of Jade, The Prince, Altair, Sam Fischer and Rayman and each special is unique to the player. Sam’s special is just pure awesome. Everything turns dark, Sam’s goggles turn on and he sneaks his way to the goal to score. The special attacks will always score a goal so make sure to pass that ball a lot! Using your sprint drains the super meter so it's not going to be simple to abuse your special. The Wii MotionPlus attachment also works with Academy of Champions and gives players one extra special move that they can use. The Balance Board is good to use too, but it’s just used for the games 14 mini-games. There will be two-player local multiplayer as well. Overall, I really liked Academy of Champions. It’s one of those games where I don’t ever see myself buying it, but I’ll totally play it if it’s in a friends console. The art style is very fitting and the controls work pretty good. One thing that I found annoying though was that I had to cycle through my entire team a lot of the times in order to get to my player that was closest to the soccer ball. The game should automatically throw you to your player that’s closest to the ball when the opposing team has it. You only have four characters that you can cycle through on your team so it’s a pretty minor complaint. The game is promising a lot of replay value with all of the unlockables. There’s going to be about 20 hours worth of gameplay too, which is surprising for what this game is. If you’re into arcade soccer games, then this will definitely be worth the purchase.   from destructoid

Late last week, Red Steel 2's creative director Jason Vandenberghe spoke to members of press -- by way of satellite, all the way from France -- in Ubisoft San Francisco last week. He gave a little run down on all things Red Steel 2, and had some really interesting things to say about the development on game.  For instance, we found out that Red Steel 2 was in development since the end Red Steel 1:

The game has actually been worked on in one way or another pretty much since the end of Red Steel 1. The core team for Red Steel 2 is made up of largely the same people that did Red Steel 1. So there’s a lot of continuity there. There was a lot of work being done in terms of research [and] about gameplay. What are we going to do? How can we make it great? The team wanted to make the next one really killer, really awesome. So we spent a lot of time really looking at the core mechanics, looking at the technologies, rebuilding that from the ground up. Making sure we can get the absolute most we could out of the Wii. There was a lot of questions amongst the team about can we really make this work with the basic Wiimote. We tried a lot of things and certainly we got a long way. But when the Wii MotionPlus showed up, it was like “Oh okay. Well, [laughs] this is how this game should work!” was pretty much our response. When we plugged it in and tried that, wham! What happened it that [Red Steel 2] went from a shooter with a sword in it, to a sword game with guns in it. We really shifted the focus and that let us sort of go down and take our setting apart and look at it again. We created this new hero from the inside out based on that gameplay.

So it looks like the MotionPlus saved us from another generic first-person shooter game and instead we're getting a "first person brawler" game. I love FPS games but I feel they just don't really work all that well on the Wii. Metroid Prime 3 did a great job, but that's the exception, not the rule.     from destructoid

We thought WiiSpray - a Wii mod put together by a couple of German design students - was pretty neat. We're not the only ones, as the judges of the iF Communication Design Awards are equally impressed. Held by German firm International Forum Design, WiiSpray was one of 377 finalists in the prestigious awards, from a total 1,368 entires coming in from 24 countries. So for it to win one (it picked up a "product interface" gong) was pretty damn impressive! So to WiiSpray's creators, Martin Lihs and Frank Matuse: congratulations! Maybe the award is enough to convince somebody at Sega tha ta Jet Set Radio remake would be a good idea. To see what WiiSpray looks like in action, you can watch the below vid. » Wii Spray honered with iF design award [WiiSpray, via GameSpot]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up aims to combine not only the best of Wii fighting games with the TMNT franchise, but also to combine the best parts of the franchise into one game. To that end, there will allegedly be different characters from the new kids TV show, the old kids TV show, the comic books and possibly even from the other video games. Unfortunately, Ubisoft is saving most of its announcements about TMNT's stage and character lineup for San Diego Comic Con later this month, but from what few characters were available, it looks like the April O'Neil they're working with is the anorexic-looking chick from the new show. Alas. What Is It? TMNT Smash-Up is a brawler in the same class as Super Smash Bros. Brawl. It even looks like Brawl probably due to the fact that the developer, Game Arts, did preliminary development on Brawl for Nintendo. Gameplay is a straight-up smackdown between for playable characters in various stages with environmental hazards like man (or turtle) eating crocodiles. What We Saw UbiNintendo's schedule was running a little bit behind, so journalists only got about 20 minutes of hands-on time with the brawl mode. The build we were on only had four selectable stages and just seven characters (although an additional two were announced at E3 and more are still to be announced at Comic Con, we're told). How Far Along Is It? Not very, based on what stages and which characters were available. The game is due out September 22, 2009. What Needs Improvement? My Thumbs For A GameCube Controller: Currently is only demoing two control schemes – a Nunchuck/Wiimote setup and a sideways Wiimote setup. Because this is a fast-paced brawler where you have to tap twice on the D-pad to dash, that second control scheme is absolute murder on your thumbs. I asked if the GameCube controller would be an option and was given a definite yes. Although, the associate producer did tell me that Game Arts is aware of Smash Bros. fans' preference for the GameCube controller. I'm Uneasy About Motion Controls: I noticed a mechanic where if a player's grab was broken or they took a bad hit, they'd get dizzy and an icon would encourage the player to shake the Wii Remote to restore them. This was hard to accomplish with the sideways setup because you had to turn the controller around in your hand to a normal Wiimote position to shake – and it was border-lining on the tacked-on feel many Wii games give into when integrating motion controls. Again, the associate producer says the developer is aware of the revulsion many gamers have to waggle-fests. Ugh. April: I'm sorry, but I just don't like this version of longtime turtles ally April O'Neil. Her character model isn't very attractive and the yellow ninja outfit she's sporting is even more of an eyesore than the yellow 80s jumpsuit she wore in the cartoon of my childhood. Bring back the raincoat-wearing, jean-sporting April from the comics; she was cool. And a computer hacker! What Should Stay The Same? Yay For Brawling! I rather liked the fighting styles of most of the characters and the controls were easy to figure out by virtue of knowing Smash Bros. inside and out. Donatello had a good range with his bo staff and Raphael had speedy combos with his sai; the special ninja attacks were easy to trigger even with the sideways Wiimote setup and the grab system allows for players to break free and inflict dizziness on the jerk who grabbed them. Detailed Environments: One of the cityscape stages maybe a little bit too much like something out of Smash Bros. (think Earthbound levels), but I could tell the sewer and jungle levels were all turtle. Each environment was interactive in some way – like the jungle level, you can destroy the hanging platforms that would normally protect players from crocodile attacks – and it looks like some stages will have multiple parts. Final Thoughts It's early days yet, so I'm not really sure how I feel about TMNT Smash-Up. On the one hand, I'm glad to have another Wii brawler, especially one developed by the guys who had a hand in Brawl. But on the other hand, I don't really watch the new cartoon and I haven't seen enough homage done to other parts of the Ninja Turtle franchise for me to justify buying it. Guess I'll just have to wait and see what turns up at Comic Con.

from kotaku

Best thing about this video? It's short and too the point — that, and there's kicker at the end. Be sure to stay after the credits! Created in Raleigh, North Carolina, the Donkey Kong was made from a pile of post-it notes. Real life stop motion Donkey Kong [I Heart Video Games] [I Heart Chaos via Topless Robot]
from kotaku

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fighting game from Ubisoft and Game Arts is getting at least two cameo appearances, whether you like it or not. Two pesky rabbids popped up in the Wii fighter at this weekend's Japan Expo. Expect to see Splinter Rabbid and Raving Rabbid playable, from Splinter Cell and the Rayman spin-off series respectively. Surely there must be a rabbid in Altair's costume nestled away in the source code. Is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up the right place for a rabbid, one of them decked out in Sam Fisher gear? That's not necessarily our call, but we suppose Ubisoft thinks it's a good decision, one that might help move a few more copies of Rabbids Go Home to impressionable Wii owners. How about it TMNT fans? Does the roster have room for rabbids, or are the hideous little things simply taking up spots that could be reserved for more obscure Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters? Thanks to The S for the heads up.

from kotaku

 

Mario Super Sluggers

 

Looks like Mario SS for the Wii is almost half off today only! That is a $24 savings. 

 

click for more info:

Mario Super Sluggers

On August 1, Wii title Monster Hunter 3 (-tri) will whip Japan into a frenzy when it hits retailers. The game was originally planned for the PS3, but announced as a Wii title.

from kotaku

Remember those "HD" Wii videos? This is just like them! Only, it's Mario Galaxy, not Smash Bros. And they're lovely big screenshots, not blurry little internet videos. To refresh, these games are displaying in what is essentially high definition, as they're being run through a Wii emulator on a PC. So if the Wii could manage high definition (which it can't), this is probably what Mario would look like. Nice, no? [Wii emulator can do 720p @ NeoGAF, via VG247]

from kotaku

The Wii's September 29 prequel to last year's Dead Space has a control scheme EA's Visceral Games couldn't put on an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. A new EA trailer shows how it works. Dead Space Extraction will be out September 29. As you watch, remember, EA calls this a "guided first-person experience." Different platform. Different style of game. Do you like what you see?   from kotaku