Regardless of the 'cool innovations', it will still be a Japanese MMO

As Final Fantasy XIII is on sale, we can’t forget what is happening behind the scenes at Square-Enix, with the development of their Final Fantasy MMO, number XIV in the series. And fan website FFXIVCore.com has some facts about the game taken from the recent Famitsu magazine.

I’ve added the ‘More Game Info’ below, but check out the link above to view the rest of the points, talking about job classes and battles.

Everything done in battle in FFXIV increases TP, including casting

Defense can happen both automatically and at the will of the user

The PC version will be able to run on PCs from a few years ago, but the alpha version will only run on high-end PCs

Can be run on 512MB of VRAM and above

Alpha test starts soon

Square wants to make it possible to play with your friends from FFXI

Character customization won’t be fully available in beta (can’t change facial features)

There’s a mode for restoring HP while moving

The plan is the make the maximum number of members in a party between 6 and 8, and there will also be alliances

The important things in battle are distance, range, and direction

There will be magic you can use while moving

There are screenshots in the magazine of the alpha version, and it looks like there have been a lot of small changes

“Aggro/hate” has a different name in 14 (Translates to something like how much the enemy views you as a threat)

Enemies will not be set in one area in order for people to pull them to camps; places that enemies will appear will be scattered around

If it can be better than  FFXI in terms of playability, I’m probably going to be interested in giving it a try. It’s just that high-end PC thing I may have re-consider…

Disney have today released a new trailer for Tron Legacy, a Tron sequel, funnily enough. Revel in the Daft Punk, the digitalness and Jeff Bridges and somehow, the fact it’s still a 80’s throwback.

It’s in Digital 3D, or whatever that is quite supposed to mean, I’m not sure, but it sure looks good, even if I know practically nothing about it. But I do know we’re going to have to wait all the way till December 17th in order to see it in theatres.

Getting this image proved a good reminder why searching "Lady Gaga" on Google images is a bad idea.

I’m a big South Park fan, rightly or wrongly, but less of a Lady Gaga fan, if I’m completely honest with you. Ok, well maybe not completely honest, but who doesn’t know how Poker face, Bad Romance and Just Dance go now? Guys? Oh.

Well, following Eric Cartmen’s performance of Poker Face in the South Park episode “Whale Whores” on Rock Band, it seems that Harmonix have taken the popularity of this on board, and are releasing the Lady Gaga Pack 1 as well as the special Cartmen version of Poker face, which I’ve embedded for you below

It’s always cool when developers include the more comedic or lighthearted songs as DLC, with “Still Alive” from Portal as well as a World of Warcraft tracks making it over in the past, though I may of missed a few. Obviously, Gaga fans will be going gaga (sorry) about the fact you’re going to be able to “rock” out to four tracks from Ms. Gaga’s collection, being “Poker Face”, “Just Dance”, “Monster” and “Bad Romance”.

The packs are making their way to Xbox 360, Wii and PS3 next week.

In this episode Carla visits a mental asylum (which is suffering from power cuts) to talk to one of the patients about the murders, Lucas tries to get to his ex-girlfriend’s apartment but it is being watched by police so he has to find another way in…

You are far more in control that this screenshot would have you believe

Just Cause was one of those late generation games that nearly, but didn’t quite, bridge the gap between the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube and the release of the 360. People who were adament they were sticking to their current consoles were told to “look at Just Cause, try that on your PS2!”. The developers certainly did, and apart from having an massive environment, far bigger and, on the surface, prettier looking, than we’d seen in GTA San Andreas, the fact that the rest of the game world, and the game itself, was pretty devoid of content, screamed “Tech demo” at us. And whilst the PS2’s chugged, sluggishly loading the environment, the Xbox 360 simply performed, not really offering any major benefits to warrant an upgrade.

I always thought that if Avalanche Studios had made Just Cause for just the 360, it may well not have sold anywhere near as many, but the quality would of been hugely improved, on a concept, using a parachute to take off from cars in a ’stunt position’ that was already unique. So Just Cause 2 is rolling onto the 360, PC and PS3 this month, and perhaps it’s probably been the greatest benchmark of how far the 360, if not this generation, has come forward. Or, maybe, as I got to play a half an hour timed demo recently.First things first, if you want gritty realism and localised bullet detection, and a helicopter simulator, this ain’t it, never will be. Instead, Just Cause 2 appears to make you suspend your disbelief and literally fly away from the chaos and destruction you cause. And chaos is the name of the game here. My demo threw some very basic contextual awareness at me, explaining that I was a ‘comrade’ of the Reapers, an anti government group on the island of Panau, and was there to basically cause chaos, uprisings and all the stuff you’d expect in a very ‘cuban’ game. One thing I will say is that returning character Rico Rodriguez appears a little more self serious this time round, especially in cutscenes, to the degree you just feel like saying “look at what you are doing!?! Lighten up!”, but it’s a minor quip.

This is where I spent the demo, looks very calm doesn't it...

After getting used to the controls, especially the gun control, which feels ever so slightly loose, but then, we haven’t had many third person shooters like this, so could just be me, I base jumped out of the base and went for quick fly. Yes, the fastest inflating and deflating parachute does its job and feels really good to control, you can get some good speed on it, but it is a parachute, so expect to eventually make it to the ground. One of the big complaints last time was the lack of a way to get around the map on foot, with cars being scarce. It appears they have listened, by giving you a tool that I didn’t stop using throughout the entire demo. The grappling hook allows you to rapple yourself to pratically any surface, vehicle, person, drag objects around, but a futher function is that it allow you to grapple two objects together. It gave me some pretty interesting ideas of what I could achieve through a bit of ingeniuty and grappling…

The demo was based in a desert area to the south west, so a lot of the towns were quite run down, with low, sandbrick buildings or military installations. You have to cause chaos by wandering through these settlements and doing just that, blowing stuff up, especially things with the government symbol on it, and doing this enough allows you to unlock missions, black market items and open the game out. This wasn’t so much a problem with a half hour demo, but if they are using the chaos mechanism as a way to stretch the game out, similar to what happened in Red Faction Guerrilla with the constant generic sidequests, that will simply to be an obstacle to enjoying the game. From what I saw, you can cause small amounts of chaos just by destroying stuff, or you can go to guarded power plants and piplelines, which allow you to hack a console which blows the entire place up. One of these involved a pretty frantic escape sequence from an underground bio fuel plant, but these will quickly get tiring if repeated several times.

Excuse me a moment...."STUNT POSITION"...Ahem

My faction mission was a little more involved, first I had to go to a radar site in the mountains (I was really impressed by the map by the way, even the small section I was allowed), but because I stole a helicopter earlier, I just flew there and blew the hell out of that place, before landing and getting on with the mission. On foot enemies can be pretty tough, with the more ‘heat’ you get leading to greater numbers and power, but I found that if you run around aimlessly, you will die, but if you actually focus on killing the troops, it’s not tricky, with a forgiving health system. Then I grappled onto a friendly helicopter and then jumped onto a small convoy. JC2 uses quick time events to let you take control of a vehicle or hack the consoles, which are basically simple button presses, but again, could get annoying if you’re doing it at a lot.

Complaints? Well, I’m more concerned about what I’m actually going to be doing when I’m playing the game. Will it be a mission based experience that actually keeps you playing, with GTA IV being the best example of this, or will the focus on side ’stuff’ detract from the experience? Or will the side stuff be actually interesting and engaging enough not to become repetitive, my biggest gripe with the open world third person games I played last (Saints Row 2 and Red Faction Guerrilla, although they were both developed by the same people). Generally, whilst there seems a lot to do, even in my taster of Just Cause 2, the challenge will be to keep it interesting and relevant.

Having said all that, there are a lot of positives I can take away from my two half hour play through’s. Once you are comfortable with it, it plays really well, driving is responsive and varies from car to car, with a comprehensive damage and physics model to make it feel right and the parachuting/grappling mechanics work well together, once the learning curve is got over. The environments, especially the more urban ones I haven’t even seen yet, look brilliant and surprisingly interesting, building on the positives of the last game. If the game continues on an upward trend in something that I think is called ‘fun’ (we don’t see it too often now) then I will most definitely be very interested and so should you!

Just Cause 2 is coming out on March 26th on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3

You’ve seen the trailer for the movie. And now what about the game? Well despite not having ‘technically’ anything to do with the PoP movie that is on the way, Ubisoft are bringing out the next Prince of Persia title which fills the time between the “Sands of Time” and “Warrior Within” where the Prince goes all…Dark. So hopefully should make a relatively interesting story and finally fill in what the great big tragedy was.

It’s a bit strange for them to change from the relatively successful Prince of Persia 2008, with it’s Nolan North free running his way round a heavily stylised and death free world. I enjoyed it, but then I did like the series before it went dark, as it sucked the life out the dynamic prince. Whatever your view of the series, the video above will give you some idea of the direction they are taking….and ze all zpeak french…

Despite all the rumours of a direct cross-over, it doesn't appear that Half Life is ready for a Portal Gun just yet

Following a multitude of patches to the original Portal which added a series of radios to find and a slightly different ending, and an official announcement from Valve that Portal 2 is coming at the end of this year, we at least knew we were getting a new Portal game. However, we had no idea what it was going to be based upon, until a few images of the recent Game Informer magazine gave us some much needed facts.

The magazine says that Portal 2 is set “hundreds of years” after the events of the original, but you are still going to play as Chell, the original protagonist and don’t worry folks, GLADOS is back. Apeture science’s lab has been overgrown, but you are still going to be solving some puzzles, don’t worry about that. A two player co-op mode that promises to be ‘unique’ is also going to be there, and yes, finally, it will be coming to Mac.

Here is the bullet points taken by someone PAL Gaming Network

• Portal was a ‘trial’. Size and assets specifically kept minimal. Had no idea it would be this popular.
• Portal was a ‘test bed’, Portal 2 is a ‘game’.
• GlaDOS returns as the antagonist.
• Chell returns, and we play as her.
• Portal 2 takes place a long time after the original. Hundreds of years, in fact. The complex has overgrown.
• Those orbs seen at the end of Portal are personality orbs. They’ve cornered off sections of the labs as their own, and are concerned about the decaying state of the complex.
• Portal gun remains unchanged.
• Physics will now be part of portal puzzle solving. EG: A vent that sucks air in can be combined with a portal to ’suck’ from a different location.
• “Paint” mechanic, various liquid substances that cause some reaction. For example, in the demo shown a orange substance on the floor caused Chell to be propelled upwards. Using portals you can apply these ‘paints’ to other areas of the level for puzzle solving.
• Reflection cubes will allow Chell to reflect lazers for various puzzles.
• The co-op campaign will have you playing as two bipedal robots. The like to hold hands.
• Splitscreen for people playing on the console, and ‘picture in picture’ available for those playing remote co-op (eg: PC). This allows you to easily communicate with the other player and combine efforts for puzzle solving.

We’ll have more news when we know it.

On this weeks episode of Ignition we talk about what’s been going on at Infinity Ward (including why it was Matt’s fault) and argue whether or not it spells the end for independent developers in 1 minute, 5000 questions. We also cover all the latest news including: Sony’s degrading game demos; the next Tomb Raider game; the Microsoft Courier tablet; Ubuntu’s re-branding; Indiana Jones 5; Space Invaders: The Movie and much more.

Duration: 64 minutes

Download

Google's Chrome browser has been heavy hit by people claiming it has serious privacy issues.

After an interesting discussion with people who are, “relevant to my interests”, the topic of Google Chrome soon came up. Most predictably what was mentioned was the privacy issues raised with it. As a believer in the open-source vetting process, I heavily disagree that Google could be doing anything subversive to our personal data.

To settle this argument in a non-subjective way I decided the best course of action would be an experiment. Essentially, what I wanted to test was the difference in packets between Google Chrome on first boot-up and search term “test123″ and a comparable browser with similar conditions. This way, we test Chrome against a vetted control browser. A few conditions before we get started:

• Experimental Browser: Google Chrome Beta for Linux (Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 x64) with experience reporting disabled.
• Control browser: Midori 0.2.3 (Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 x64), a WebKit browser licensed under a similar permissive license as Chrome.
• Analysis Method: A tcpdump, sudo tcpdump -w testbrowser.pcap -s 1550 dst www.google.com, command and Wireshark analysis.
  • This tcpdump commands monitors all traffic going to the Google domain (216.239.32.0 – 216.239.63.255)
  • Wireshark was to make the dump look pretty.
• Procedure: Start the dump, load up the browser and enter a search term to Google for “test123″. Stop the packet dump after this and monitor the results.

What I found:

The results actually surprised me in a very positive way. Not only did the two browsers communicate on exactly the same ports but Chrome also used around 60 less packets in the final dump. A cruel twist of irony that a third-party browser communicates with Google over 100% more than Chrome does. Anyway, without further hesitation, here is the dump from the different conditions.

Before I get flamed for a really subjective experiment, I would like to carry on the “armchair-science” theme: Why the hell would Google want to monitor everyone’s information anyway? Google, as a company, are openly liberal, against censorship and has only ever given information away about users when the law forced them to. Second of all, their mission is to pull all the information of the world into one place, not to control it or control people.

A little sense is a good thing.

Anyway, the tests I did convinced me Google isn’t eavesdropping and so does my basic common-sense. I hope anyone not using Chrome because of privacy issues really does reconsider their stance as the reality behind it is even more subjective than this crude experiment. Anyway, now that this little matter has been cleared up, have a good day!

Carla and Tyler discover Lucas is the killer and so go to his apartment to arrest him. Lucas becomes possessed as he walks past a Laundromat, then when he arrives back at his apartment building he is greeted by cops with their guns drawn…