Since the last entry, I…

*Missed writing yesterday’s entry because I was shuttling back and forth from a Sega event to a Ubisoft event to another Sega event. I played the “Sonic Chonicles” DS game at Sega, watched some relatively secret other games get played in front of me (the existence of most of the games had leaked), and played six more games at Ubisoft. I can talk publicly about the Sega stuff tomorrow; the Ubisoft stuff is off-limits until the end of the month. 

Next: Another meager update, though maybe I’ll get some gaming in on my flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I hope! I miss my game time on the NYC subway. C-train, I never thought I’d get nostalgic for you (though I enjoyed your cameo as a crashed train in “Ninja Gaiden II.”)

When I had dinner with Microsoft’s Shane Kim and Kudo Tsunoda on Monday, we talked about more than just “Gears of War 2.”

Kim is the head of Microsoft Game Studios and therefore a guy worth peppering with any gaming questions I could think of related to the Xbox 360’s Microsoft-published efforts.

Here’s some of what I asked him between bites of fish:

When will Microsoft make a game that requires and takes advantage of the Xbox 360’s hard-drive?

“You’re not likely to see a first party title that does that,” Kim said. I suggested that Microsoft had to have reached a point by now when the company could assume a large number of Xbox 360 owners have the drive. And surely the upcoming “Grand Theft Auto IV” downloadable content will require it. But still, Kim said he believed the games from MGS should be playable on all Xbox 360s and that it’s a software maker’s challenge to get the games to work without a hard drive.

Why was Microsoft just hiring new senior people for the Peter Jackson “Halo” project more than two years after it was announced?

Read more…

People went crazy. I’m not kidding. Walking around the MTV.com floor with Tracey’s copy of “Wii Fit” caused a commotion like I’ve never seen before for a video game. The thing is, this wasn’t your normal advance-copy-of-a-game-insanity from the gamers on the floor. No. This ruckus came from the people who I thought could care less about games. They came running out of the woodwork, asking if they could see it, try it, and even borrow it. The answers were yes, maybe, and no respectively. [Tracey’s note: Definitely “no” to the last one.]

If there were any doubts about how big this game is going to be all you would have needed to do was see the audience I attracted just to calibrate the board. “Wii Fit” is going to be huge.

Jason’s Pick:

Game Boy Musicians Talk Shop: Some of the most well know chip tunes artist talk about their beloved hobby.

Tracey’s Pick:

“Lego Star Wars” Creator: ‘Children Are Badly Served By Games’: TT Games producer Jonathan Smith says that young gamers give “the most valuable feedback TT can receive” and that traditional focus testing makes him “reach for my revolver.”

If you’re not busy at pre-E3 festivities, you’re probably playing a lot of WiiWare.

Which means some other games are getting the shaft — even some Wii games. While I’m thinking about trying “We Ski” (whose cover art I loved by the way), my colleague Jason Cipriano doesn’t even want to go down that slippery slope (sorry):

JasonCipriano: I’m too big a fan of “SSX” (prior to the last two releases) to offer up my downhill love anywhere else
TraceyJohn: there are racing modes in “WeSki”
JasonCipriano: yeah, there are
JasonCipriano: But they don’t appear to be even remotely close to “SSX” and all its glory
TraceyJohn: Would you like an “SSX” with the board?
JasonCipriano: If they are making “Skate” with the board, “SSX” seems like a natural next step.
JasonCipriano: I’d have to play it first, but I fear it could very easily suffer from the same problem as the Wheel
JasonCipriano: where it doesn’t offer the same level of precision that I’m used to.
JasonCipriano: So we’ve digressed to the point where we are talking about not playing games that may or may not exist.

Read on to see what else will get ignored this week with all the WiiWare madness… Read more…

“Boom Blox” made quite a splash when it was released last week, appealing to pretty much everyone that isn’t still playing “Grand Theft Auto IV.” Its creative and unique challenges, coupled with possibly be the best use of the Wii remote from a third-party titles to date, set it apart from the pile of party games already released on the Wii.

It has been said many times that “Boom Blox” is a game that you don’t fully understand until you play it for yourself, but seeing it in action can’t hurt either. Today, we continue our new feature “120 Seconds” by giving you a chance to see a little bit of what “Boom Blox” is about if you haven’t popped it in your Wii yet.

As he launched into a 30-minute demonstration of “Gears of War 2” yesterday at Microsoft’s showcase event in San Francisco, game designer Cliff Bleszinski volunteered an update on the length of the series.

He said it is not announced as a trilogy.

He explained that the decision to make a second game occurred only once Microsoft started receiving large retail orders for the first game and said a decision to make a third one would be made closer to the release of “Gears 2″ this holiday season.

And then there could be a fourth, fifth, or sixth game after, he added.

This marked the second time in two days that a top figure on the “Gears” series said that the series shouldn’t be thought of as a trilogy, so clearly it’s a point the creators want to stress. Why? I’m not quite sure.

Maybe they know that I’m skeptical about trilogies.

I sat through a half hour demo of the promising Xbox 360 role-playing game “Fable 2” yesterday at Microsoft’s gaming event in San Francisco.

And I got the impression that the game, which is made in England by Peter Molyneux and his design team at Microsoft-owned Lionhead Studios, is very British.

As in… the opening cut scene ends with close-up footage of a bird dropping feces on you character’s head.

As in… Molyneux himself cheerfully proclaiming that not only is flatulence back for the sequel but that “if we want to sell a million units in Britain, we just introduce farts.”

Very, very British.

So, after the demo, I asked Molyneux if there was anything American in the game.

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Before Epic Games‘ Cliff Bleszinski began playing his own demo of “Gears of War 2” for reporters at the Microsoft gaming event in San Francisco yesterday he had to boot up the game.

He navigated through a menu screen, selecting his level. This was a real in-game menu, as far as I could tell, done up in red and black like all real “Gears” interfaces. At moments like this, a game reporter’s job is to speed-read the menu screen, searching for features that the designers would rather you not notice just yet.

I spotted a prompt to press a “What’s Up” button.

I jotted down a note and asked Bleszinski about it after the session. He stonewalled. He wouldn’t say.

What could a “What’s Up” button on a menu screen be for?

The wheels in my mind are turning.

There was no malicious intent behind the brief scene Super Mario getting his head blown off in the debut gameplay trailer of “Banjo Kazooie: Nuts And Bolts,” a developer working on the game told me yesterday.

Salvatore Fileccia, the lead software engineer behind the upcoming vehicle-based Xbox 360 platformer, said his team has the utmost respect for the Nintendo icon.

He offered a simple explanation for its inclusion.

Read more…

At Microsoft’s press event in San Francisco yesterday I had a chance to play and/or watch most of the biggest Xbox 360 exclusive games of 2008.

And I heard some bold statements from the people who made them:

Game designer Peter Molyneux on his team’s “Fable 2″:

• “We have done everything we an do to make a story you can remember and will stick in your mind.”
• “‘Fable 2′ has as many features as I’ve ever seen in a game.” [After showing such features as cut scenes that can be interrupted by player-triggered farts, spotting a troupe of gypsies whose kids act out the plot of the first “Fable,” and explaining that many regions of the game will change dynamically over time based on the player’s actions.]

Game designer Denis Dyack on his team’s “Too Human”:

• “The game has the most content we’ve ever create. Even in the main menu, the Norn in the Well will probably talk for 30 minutes [if you don’t press the start button.
• “I don’t think anyone can experience everything that’s in there.” [After explaining that the game’s five classes each have 50 levels, which take about 50 hours per class to achieve — and noting that a single play-through of the game will only offer players enough time to get to the high level 20s.]

Game designer Cliff Bleszinski on his team’s Gears of War 2″:

• “A lot of people’s memory of ‘Gears of War 1′ is gray pillars. We wanted to change that.”
• “Thirty percent of [’Gears of War 2′] is underground. Cave games are cool, but this is not a spelunking game.” [After playing a level that took place entirely above ground and involved Marcus Fenix standing on top of a massive truck, shooting down mortars, mowing down enemy miners, and engaging huge tank-sized bosses called Brumaks].