Rift: It’s got potential

With my interest in MMORPGs recently renewed, I’ve been looking hard at upcoming games within the genre. Unfortunately, I’m mostly interested in games incredibly far from release (EverQuest Next, the next Blizzard MMO, Project Copernicus).

Outside of Star Wars: The Old Republic, I haven’t found much else interesting – or rather hadn’t.

I stumbled upon once nice surprise called Rift: Planes of Telara.

I’d heard the name before, but I judged a book by its cover. It sounds like a generic free-to-play MMO so I was quick to write it off. Admittedly, I was wrong.

Rift has an interesting class system that seems a bit too daunting at first, but hearing how it works cleared things up a bit.

You start out with a basic class of Warrior, Cleric, Rogue and Mage and within that structure, you can get ridiculously customizable with the varying advanced class system.

So, a Rogue could spend some points souls into the Blade Dancer class for melee while also allotting points to the Ranger class for ranged attacks. Each basic role (Warrior, Cleric, etc.) has seven different sub-classes to branch out to.

I can’t say I know his full story, but I do know that Scott Hartsman is often associated with EverQuest 2’s evolution into a much better experience. Hartsman is now the COO of Trion Worlds, developer of Rift, lending a little credibility to a solid looking game.

I’ve still got a lot of digging to do on Rift, but don’t be quick to judge. While the name still fails to grab me, the game looks great.

Be sure to check out the video up top for a much better description of how the class system works. It helps that the game is gorgeous, too.

I say all this fully knowing that like so many MMOs before it, Rift could be a total disappointment.

Catherine trailer: Of sheep people and Japanese hip hop

Having heard a little about it and its creepy sheep people, I figured watching the Catherine trailer was a necessity. Now that I’m in the other side of it, I have a few questions I’d like to ask.

First off, what? It’s a weird ass trailer, but Andriasang helps clear it up a bit.

Catherine is a 360 and PS3 title from the Persona team, a first for them I believe. The trailer appears to mix a few different art styles, but based on the one or two clips of gameplay, the in-game assets look a little rough.

Before you go watching this video, I should warn you that while it doesn’t show anything too explicit, there are multiple scenes of sexy time in the trailer. So, you know, you might not want to watch it at work anything.

Catherine has my intrigued, even if I have no damn clue as to what’s going on. It seems interesting, and people seem to love what the Persona guys make so I’m sure this game will turn out alright.

Work on tightening up the graphics on level 3 though, they’re pretty ugly.

Musically Inclined — EverQuest

I’ve been stricken with an odd fever to play an MMO lately. It’s been a bit of a build up thanks to my friend finally convincing me Star Wars: The Old Republic is something I have to play. I was sent into overdrive when SOE announced the temporarily named EverQuest Next.

I started pondering which MMO to start exploring again. In the process, I may have resubscribed to the dinosaur that is EverQuest.

I’m not sure how to describe my relationship with that damn game, but an analogy with substance abuse and an inability to permanently quit would probably be appropriate.

It’s nothing too serious, I’m mostly just exploring the classic zones I love most. There’s still something special about EverQuest — I’m talking old world EQ – that continues to bring me back.

The load screen music that plays while readying you for Norrath gets my nostalgia flowing every time. With time too short for updates today, I figure it would make for a good Musically Inclined.

Enjoy it in all its MIDI glory.

And Yet It Moves launches, gets fancy trailer

While I’m one of only a few who take notice of some quality WiiWare releases, it’s been pretty rough in recent months. There hasn’t been much of anything lately, and making matters worse is Nintendo’s decision to damn near kill off Virtual Console support.

Finally something noteworthy released, however.

And Yet It Moves is a WiiWare game I’ve had my eye on for a while and it launched yesterday. It looks like a puzzle-platformer (there’s a lot of those these days) with an interesting aesthetic centered around paper-like environments.

While the slick trailer focuses on tilt controls, the game actually makes use of four different control schemes including the classic controller.

I’ll be scoping out opinions to see what folks are saying about it.

As a side note, there actually was a Virtual Console release this week. It’s another Sunsoft title, this time an old NES game called Ufouria: The Saga. It never made it to the US, so it should be interesting pick up.

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EA Partners boss talks Suda, Mikami project

For as long as we’ve known about the EA Partners published Suda51 and Shinji Mikami project, you’d think we would’ve heard something by now. Suda is finally getting the budget he deserves, and aside from knowing it’s a horror game, we really don’t know a thing about it.

Thankfully it still exists and we should be hearing about it soon.

EA Partners boss David DeMartini was quick to emphasize the creative freedom they’ve given Suda.

“We’ve allowed him the opportunity to fully explore his creativity,” DeMartini said. “The key thing is not for us to tone down Suda or try and Westernize Suda, but to try and make sure the game gets broad enough exposure that more people appreciate it.”

EA is trying not to repeat Ubisoft horrible marketing job with No More Heroes by actually supporting whatever this upcoming game is with, you know, marketing.

“Obviously with EA’s publishing and sales team, we’re going to have this game in all theatres. It’s going to be in all the retail outlets,” DeMartini said. “People are going to get an opportunity to finally listen to what you guys have been writing about Suda for a long time.”

This information comes courtesy Eurogamer who was left with a nice little hint that Suda’s mystery game could be unveiled at this year’s Tokyo Game Show.

So far, the game has been confirmed for a 360 and PS3 release.

Cant. Frickin’. Wait.

SR388 gets new look in Minitroid

You may have stumbled on it already, but there’s a fantastic looking Metroid fangame in the making called Minitroid. It’s being created by fan of the series Tokinsom who also worked on the now-canceled Metroid+H project (check out the awesome teaser).

It’s likened to a “Metroid II minigame” which isn’t surprising considering it looks to be on SR388.

I like when people give Metroid II love. I always felt people were overly critical of the title due to the limitations of the Game Boy’s green and dark green color scheme.

Speaking of Metroid II fan projects, it looks like Project AM2R is still going. There’s an update as recent as August 10 with DoctorM64 saying he’s “preparing the tileset and backgrounds for the final area.” Hopefully that’s another way of saying “we’re wrapping it up.”

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Nintendo debuts live-action Metroid: Other M commercial

Metroid: Other M commercials have finally hit Japan, Europe and North America. Europe got hosed in the process with an ad that feels like something Nintendo would’ve made three years ago. The Japanese ones are nice. One focuses on story, the other on gameplay (complete with awesome classic Metroid references).

It looks like Nintendo spent most of its marketing budget on North America with a really slick live action commercial. Not surprisingly, it starts out focusing on story before getting into the gameplay.

It reimagines scenes from the original Metroid trilogy beautifully – I geeked out pretty hard when the scene shifts to Samus interacting with the baby Metroid on SR388 (Metroid II).

Rather than give you a play-by-play, I’ll kindly suggest you go watch the damn commercial for yourself.

Mortal Kombat actors in action

There were some recent (awesome) screenshots of the new Mortal Kombat, but this post isn’t about that, this is about the original Mortal Kombat. Thanks to the “reimaging” take on the series, we’re now stuck with two identically named games so I guess we’ll have to refer to the old one as Mortal Kombat 1 or classic Mortal Kombat.

I’ll forgive NetherRealm Studios because the new Mortal Kombat looks wicked.

Remember how rad the characters were back in the day? Maybe older fans of the series always saw the cheese factor, but as a kid I thought the characters looked bad ass.

It took real live actors to actually dress up like a bunch of dorks and perform those totally awesome moves. The actual Johnny Cage actor Daniel Pesina opened up a YouTube account and uploaded some videos of the both him and Kano performing some moves for the camera.

It’s a pretty interesting watch. Check out all the videos here.

Credit to NeoGAF

Torchlight II trailer gives first look at co-op play

I’ve actually only just started playing Torchlight, but we’ve all heard (and mostly agree) on one thing: it needs co-op play. It’s a high quality Diablo clone with an interested look and feel, but the complete lack of multiplayer baffles me.

Squeals of delight came with the announcement of a Torchlight II complete with multiplayer. Clearly Runic listened as evidenced by the above Gamescom trailer that has quotes from both paid critics and average gamers griping about the topic.

It’s in there and it appears to be up to four players.

Now I just need to finish Torchlight so I can be all caught up for Torchlight II. It has a release window of spring 2011, so I’ve got plenty of time.

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From Starry Skies to Dark Dawn

I’ve just about finished Dragon Quest IX and I have to say, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my stay. Keep in mind by “finish” I mean played through the main storyline – I’m a bit too busy to do every sidequest or get overly involved in the alchemy system.

I wasn’t sure I still had it in me to blast through a 40+ hour RPG, but lo and behold, I do.

This has effectively made me realize that I do indeed still enjoy the genre, and allows my hype level to escalate for games like Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

Unfortunately for us North Americans, Golden Sun is noticeably absent in Nintendo’s recently released list of upcoming 2010 games. Sad, but it’ll come eventually.

There’s a new Japanese trailer that hit and it looks pretty brilliant. The DS isn’t particularly well suited for 3D but like DQIX, Golden Sun appears to overcome the limited tech, churning out some impressive graphics. I find the battle scenes particularly nice (admittedly, I still would have preferred 2D sprites).

Speaking of battle, it looks like the game features random encounters which is a bit of bummer for people like me. I’d much rather see the monsters on the overworld map then get the lovely surprise battle, no doubt packed with a startling sound and twisting screen animation.

I can deal with that though because watching this trailer and listening to the music gets me wanting to play this game now. Too bad what I want and what I get are two separate things.