GC 2008: Street Fighter IV Console Hands-On
By : Gamespot

After making us salivate over the arcade version for some time and finally confirming its perennial fighter would be coming to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Capcom took the wraps off the console version of Street Fighter IV. We had some hands-on time with the game at the Games Convention in Leipzig earlier today.

Anyone who's followed the franchise's rebirth will know that SFIV includes many of the characters and stages from Street Fighter II, while adding a few brand-new characters into the mix including femme fatale Crimson Viper, Mexican luchador El Fuerte, French fighter Abel, and the generously proportioned Rufus. While Dan, Fei-Long, and Cammy are expected to make an appearance on home consoles, they were missing from the character menu, so we'll have to wait and see if this will be the case in the final version.
We managed to snag a Xbox 360 controller, and we found the controls to be as responsive and natural as you'd expect without an arcade stick. We didn't get to try it with Microsoft's just-announced, revised Xbox 360 controller (complete with a more responsive directional pad), but as it's apparently a limited run, that's to be expected. Fans will be pleased to know that all of the combo moves from the arcade version will be the same on consoles. Ryu and Ken will still use a quarter circle and punch to execute fireballs, and Blanka will still execute an electric fury with rapid button mashing. Capcom took the time to emphasise the importance of the focus attacks in SFIV, describing it as a "game within a game," allowing you to pull off quick attacks on the fly. Each character executes it in the same way--by holding down the medium punch and kick buttons--but their attacks and reach will be different, with El Fuerte reportedly having the longest-reaching focus attack of all.
There are three tiers to focus attacks: light (performed by tapping the buttons), a medium half-charge (holding the buttons briefly), and a full charge (holding the buttons down until an attack is performed). You won't be vulnerable to attacks when performing a full charge, but you will be open to attack before then, so you'll need to watch out if fighting a quick opponent. You can also quit out of one in the flash of an eye, such as by blocking or dashing.
Fans of the arcade version will be relieved to know that the game looks just as smooth on home consoles and, in our opinion, is nothing short of gorgeous. While our preview was shown using a very early build, the characters, animations, and background levels all look spot-on and identical to the arcade version, as far as we could tell. Characters look fluid and realistic as they dance around and the amount of detail and animation that's gone into some of the backgrounds is almost enough to distract you from the foreground action.
While all 16 arcade characters were spotted in the selection screen, we were only able to try out a few in our time with the game, namely Ryu, Ken, Blanka, and newcomer Rufus. All of their costumes, moves, and animations appear to have made it across from the arcades, although we could've almost sworn Rufus' bulbous belly looked bigger than ever before.

Street Fighter IV on the Xbox 360 and PS3 looks like it's in safe hands, which will come to the relief of fans who don't live near--or perhaps even on the same continent as--an arcade cabinet of the game. We look forward to seeing the game in action again soon.

SIREN: Blood Curse Review

By:Gamespot

Once upon a time, survival horror games were defined not only by shambling corpses and creepy atmosphere, but also by protagonists that moved with all the grace and agility of a Sherman tank. Things have changed since then, but at first glance, Siren: Blood Curse, a horror game now available for download on the PlayStation Network, seems almost willfully behind the times, with play control that feels clunky and outdated. However, if you bear with the game and give it a chance to show off its strengths, you'll find that its episodic presentation, chilling ambiance, and terrific use of the Siren series' signature sightjacking system come together to create an enjoyably frightening experience.

Blood Curse returns the series to the doomed village of Hanuda, the setting of the original Siren. The game takes place in August 2007 and begins with an American television crew arriving in Hanuda and stumbling upon a horrifying ritual involving human sacrifice. Things only get worse from there. It quickly becomes apparent that virtually everyone in the village is a shibito, a corpse person. These shibito are more unsettling than your run-of-the-mill mindless zombies because even in their gruesome, decaying states, they maintain a shred of their human identities. Shibito farmers still till the land; a shibito cop patrols the town; and a young shibito girl spends time in her room drawing, producing nothing but mindless scribbles. The game's story twists and turns back on itself repeatedly, weaving a narrative that some will love analyzing but others will find needlessly baffling. The story's best asset, though, is in its cast of seven playable characters, a good assortment that includes a vulnerable 10-year-old girl, a brave high school student, and a mysterious, cool-as-ice Japanese doctor.
Unfortunately, Blood Curse makes a poor first impression. The graphics aren't very impressive from a technical standpoint and the incredibly short first episode puts you in one of the darkest areas in the entire game. You immediately learn that your characters control stiffly and that combat feels slow and unresponsive. At first, the game feels a bit like a relic of survival horror's past, with the one concession to new technology being the frequent, frustrating use of vigorous controller shaking as a gameplay mechanic. Whenever you're knocked down, you'll need to shake the controller wildly to get up and escape with your life. It quickly becomes tiresome, and you'll soon long for the good old days when you could just pound on a button as quickly as possible to get back on your feet.

Despite these shortcomings, Blood Curse eventually develops into a compelling, compulsively playable game. The biggest reason for this is the novel implementation of the sightjacking system. Sightjacking is the ability to see through the eyes of any other character, and it's vital for sneaking past patrolling shibito that are deadly when you're unarmed. Pressing L2 puts you in sightjack mode. While sightjacking, you can manually search for targets by using the right stick, which is similar to hunting for elusive radio stations on the dial, or quickly and easily cycle through possible targets using L1 and R1. The screen splits and displays the viewpoint of the current target on the right. You can assign up to three viewpoints to different buttons and lock on to one particular view, which is displayed on the right as you continue moving.
The game also has a mind of its own when it comes to sightjacking; if there's a shibito stalking or pursuing you, it will often automatically present its viewpoint on the right for dramatic effect. Sightjacking is crucial for getting through the game's stealth sections, and at times, it's also useful for revealing important clues, such as the location of a key you might need to progress. But it isn't just an interesting element of the gameplay. It also contributes significantly to the sense of horror and dread that permeates the game. It's quite terrifying to see a shibito's gaze linger on a closet where you happen to be hiding or to see yourself running for your life through the eyes of the shibito that's right on your tail.

Beijing 2008 Review

BY:Gamespot

Who knew that qualifying for the Olympics could be so difficult? Instead of a worldwide competition crafted around ideas that fit in with the modern gaming landscape, this is just an archaic compilation of mostly old, painful gameplay techniques that wore out their welcome decades ago. Not only do many of Beijing's events focus on the sadistic control method of making you rapidly tap two buttons until your fingers burn, but the unfathomable difficulty of the early rounds also makes the experience almost as grueling as training for the real thing. The minor redeeming elements only squirt a few drops of perfume on the overwhelming stench of the rest of this game.
Though all 36 events in Beijing 2008 have some problem, the biggest issue is the ridiculous attributes system that you use to level up your team during the qualifying rounds. For some reason, you command a group of athletes who are slow, weak, and embarrassingly out of shape. By winning qualifying events, you can pump points into categories such as power, speed, and stamina. This is in sharp contrast to real life, in which competitors show up to the games fully prepared to face off against the best in the world. If you fail to achieve the goal for the day (such as placing in three of the five chosen events), you are branded a failure and have to start that day all over again. Given that you are athletically inferior to all of your opponents, you'll find yourself bringing up the rear over and over again.

Every event in Beijing 2008 that involves racing is agonizing if you use a controller, which is developer Eurocom's recommended method. The 11 swimming and running events all require you to repeatedly slam on the buttons or wiggle the sticks to gain speed, which is not only painful but fairly unresponsive as well. Anything that requires pure speed--such as the 100-meter dash--is nearly impossible. After you take your mark, you'll have to anxiously wait for the starter pistol to blast before you can begin. The problem is that there are no audio or visual indicators to tell you when the gun will fire. You have to keep count in your head, which means that you will often find yourself starting well after the rest of the pack or suffering a disqualification for jumping too soon. Cycling has the honor of being the worst of the included racing challenges. You have to rotate both analog sticks for more than four consecutive minutes, a technique that is the polar opposite of fun.
However, these running events become too easy when using a keyboard. For some reason, rapidly tapping two keys instead of buttons is much more effective, which means that you'll not only be able to consistently place, but you'll also threaten world records without breaking a sweat. Nevertheless, this advantage swings the other way in most other types of events, in which contortionist maneuvers are required to hit all of the necessary keys. The controller discrepancies can cause a severe imbalance when playing head-to-head against a friend; the victor is all but decided before the starter gun fires.
Other sports have their real-life depth completely stripped away and replaced with a mediocre rhythm game. Most of the gymnastics program suffers from this insultingly simple mechanic, making it not only far too easy for anyone familiar with the genre, but extremely repetitive as well. There are only three different routines (easy, medium, and hard), so there is little reason to partake in these endeavors for more than a couple of times. The high jump is a mirror image of the floor exercise, which shows how ill-advised this control scheme is. The diving events ask you to spin the analog sticks to match the balls circling your diver. This is extremely tedious and in no way captures the extreme focus needed by real-life competitors. These shallow excursions are so distant from the real thing that it's almost laughable.
Even the tutorial is a failure in Beijing 2008. The rules of judo are never explained, so you'll have to figure out on your own what terms such as "yuko" and "ippon" mean. Not that it matters much; you'll only be matching directional arrows most of the time. The skeet shooting tutorial tells you to pull the trigger to fire but never explains how to actually hit the clay pigeon. You'll have to figure out on your own that you need to swing your gun while you fire and, unlike in real life, you're not supposed to lead the target. The pathetic learning tools make these simple events overly complicated.
There are some events that are utterly impossible even after you learn the necessary strategies and level up your athlete. Kayaking is a cruel joke. You have no control over your tiny watercraft. Even if you somehow manage to pass through the appropriate gate, the game often won't register your success. Table tennis is just as pointless. Your giant body covers up an insanely high percentage of the table, making it impossible to see the ball if it's coming directly at you. A higher camera angle or a translucent character would have fixed this problem, but in its current form, it's painfully bad.

For all of the gameplay faults in Beijing 2008, at least the graphics are fairly sharp. The athletes are large, detailed, and animated well enough to make you believe for a moment that someone really is floating backward down a river in real life. The pre- and postevent replays and posturing by the competitors show off their fine detail, but the monotony of seeing the same canned animations every time makes this superfluous eye candy another annoyance. Having to tap buttons during the competitions is bad enough; doing it before and after every event to skip through the worthless extras is just excruciating.
If you enjoy laughing at others' failures, there is a modicum of fun to be had in the multiplayer mode. Either online or off, you can choose exactly which events you wish to compete in, but like everything else in this game, this comes with its own drawbacks. The majority of these events are turn-based, so you'll spend most of your time simply watching other people curse and fail. Plus, the game isn't smart enough to ensure direct competition in one-on-one events. If you play two-player table tennis, you'll each have to defeat a few computer-controlled opponents before you can square off against one another.
Even if you're chomping at the bit to compete in these seldom-seen sports, you should still avoid this game. There is not one event that offers a genuinely fun, rewarding experience. Beijing 2008 is horrendous regardless of how many people you're playing with or what event you're trying to win.