1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF FEBRUARY 11 | IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE!
Lavos and Chrono Trigger's Otherworldly Roots
Cover Story: The giant space parasite that destroyed the world reminded us how truly alien something could be.
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ixty-five million years ago, a meteor hit Earth, causing a dramatic climate shift that ended up killing the dinosaurs and Reptites off. Humans evolved and survived, inheriting the future of the world for themselves. Magic soon developed in some humans thanks to an encounter with a piece of the asteroid that broke off, creating a natural division between those who could use it and those who couldn't. The magic users built a simple class system based on this, exiling the magic-less to Earth in poverty as they lived in a floating utopia. But experiments with the same meteor that made the dinosaurs extinct caused another cataclysmic disaster, wiping out the kingdom of Zeal, and magic along with it.
Humans persevered, though, and built a civilization that would endure for millennia. But in 1999 A.D., the mysterious meteor cracked through the Earth's crust and rained down destruction on the world. Soon, the surface became near-uninhabitable, throwing the planet's weather patterns out of whack. All possible food supplies slowly dried up, and what remained of the human race were forced into protective domes as what remained of their food depleted. By now, it's clear that the meteorite is a life form, causing cataclysmic calamity across history. Yet even with this knowledge, its true nature remains obscured, giving it a truly alien vibe that we rarely see in media.
As one of the most highly funded videogame projects on Kickstarter -- only Obsidian's Project Eternity and Double Fine Adventure have collected more through Kickstarter alone -- a lot of eyeballs are going to be on Wasteland 2 as it approaches its release. That's even truer because this is a game that aspires to be a worthy follow-up to a classic game that led to the creation of the original Fallout. Now that we've finally gotten a real look at it, so far, so good, it would seem.
Over the weekend, developer inXile released the first gameplay footage of Wasteland 2. While it was sure to attract complaints from those who didn't get precisely what they wanted (like having it mirror everything the original game did), it does look promising. And that's reassuring news -- inXile's track record has been inconsistent, with past projects including The Bard's Tale (a solid game) and Hunted: The Demon's Forge (not so much). No definitive conclusions can or should be drawn from a single 15-minute video demonstration, particularly when the game in question is far from complete, but we can better glean what the game is shooting for.
I love the Dragon Quest series, but I confess it's a taste I've only acquired in recent years. After playing the original Dragon Warrior on NES, I didn't touch the series again until Dragon Warrior VII arrived on PlayStation a decade later. And, in all honesty, I kind of hated what I played of DQVII. It felt slow, tedious, ugly, and incredibly backward. The gorgeous Final Fantasy X was slated to hit the U.S. a few weeks later, so DQVII seemed like some sort of weird relic of a bygone age. I played a couple of hours, got bored, and wandered off.
Since then, I've come to realize my mistake in writing off the game so hastily. My tastes have changed since then, and so has my appreciation for the good, old-fashioned game design ethos Dragon Quest represents. Needless to say, I've been looking forward to the new 3DS remake of DQVII with great anticipation; it's not so much an occasion to give the game a second chance and see if I'll like it -- I'm sure I will -- as it is a chance to finally play the thing, period. As my tastes have changed, so has my freedom to enjoy a 100-hour RPG experience, and the prospect of having such a slow burn of an adventure on a portable system makes me a lot more likely to play all the way through it than I would in its original console form. (Thank you, San Francisco Municipal Transportation System, for my 90 minutes of quality gaming time each weekday... or 150 minutes if you're having one of your all-too-frequent system meltdowns.)
Much of the recent talk about Durango, the code name for the next-generation Xbox, has been about its rumored always-online requirement. Aside from the fact that you'd need an Internet connection in order to use the system, this would also supposedly block the use of secondhand games, potentially eliminating used game sales, game rentals, and maybe even something as simple as borrowing a game from a friend. It's difficult to imagine for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the disadvantage it would put Microsoft in if Sony doesn't do the same with the PlayStation 4. As with everything we're hearing, even if that is the plan right now, Microsoft could end up changing its mind before the system hits, though these reports do still make for interesting points of discussion. The latest report brings yet another detail fans will likely rage over, but it also promises a feature I find myself immensely interested in.
Undoubtedly the most noteworthy bit of information reported by Kotaku today involves the role Kinect will play in the next Xbox. A new iteration of the motion-sensing device will be included with every sold system, something that doesn't come as a major surprise considering the prominence of Xbox 360 bundles that pack in a Kinect sensor. What is unexpected is the fact that Kinect will have to be connected and set up for the console to be used.
1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF FEBRUARY 11 | IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE!
Star Fox: Charting Possible Courses for the Future
Cover Story: What lies ahead for Nintendo's space adventure?
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his year marks the 20th anniversary of Star Fox, the Super FX Chip-driven shooter which helped usher in the age of 3D on the Super NES with a crew of anthropomorphic wildlife mercenaries piloting sophisticated spacecraft to shoot at lizards and save the Lylat System.
But though we're on the cusp of celebrating two decades of ferocious flying furries, Nintendo has been mum about any sort of plans to celebrate, leaving us to question what-- if anything-- the company has planned for the future of General Pepper's pet guns-for-hire. Though Fox McCloud and his Zoo Crew nearly made the cut for Nintendo Land's range of attractions before being ousted in favor of Metroid, our last "new" Star Fox experience came on the Nintendo 3DS two years ago, though it was but a remake of the Nintendo 64 title Star Fox 64.
We know that the future is nigh. We already shared all of our insight into what Sony has planned for February 20, and it's all-but assured that Microsoft will be holding some form of equally-profound event at some point in the near future. But while you dream about the number of strange technical numbers associated with your console du jour, Game Informer has given us a tangible glimpse at what those the next-gen hardware is capable of via their most recent cover story centered around The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
We know that CD Projekt is working on it, and that the game will wrap up Geralt's trilogy. We also know that it's supposed to be big (at least one million Skyrims). But the real information can be gleaned from the handful of screenshots that GI gathered. Take a look.
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