Two pieces of good news for the price of one. Firstly, House of the Dead Overkill charted at number 10 in the UK All-Formats Top 40 (single SKU) chart, and secondly, developer Headstrong Games has claimed it is keen on making a sequel.
Wii’s finest lightgun title to date couldn’t quite topple the Xbox 360 version of FEAR 2 as the week’s biggest horror-shooter, but outsold both the PS3 and PC versions of the latter as it reached fifteenth spot on the multiformat 40 - not bad for a single-format title, albeit still not the numbers it deserved. Perhaps positive word-of-mouth will push it even higher? We’ll know next week, though a raft of new titles are released this Friday which could nudge it further down the chart. (Wii Fit was, rather boringly, number one this week. AGAIN.)
Meanwhile, SegaNerds.com has a video interview with the guys from Headstrong in which they talk all about Overkill and how they’d definitely be interested in developing a sequel. Which is obviously very good news indeed.
(WARNING: the above video may not be suitable for under 18s)
House of the Dead: Overkill is almost with us, and ahead of its launch next month, Sega has released a story trailer showing some more action from the grindhouse-themed rail shooter. For my money, it’s looking great, although it’s clear not everyone thinks so.
While previews have offered up some very favourable first impressions, the game’s first review isn’t entirely happy - Swedish magazine Level awarding Overkill a paltry 3/10. And particularly in an issue where the awful Lord of the Rings: Conquest gets 6/10, that’s not good news. Of course, it may be that Level aren’t fans of the lightgun shooter in general, or perhaps the game is a little short (but then aren’t all games in this genre?)
Either way, I’m still looking forward to Overkill, although perhaps a little more cautiously than I was. It’s due out on Friday 13th February in Europe, and the slightly less spooky date of the 10th in North America.
IGN has an interesting feature about a Wii title from Geist creator n-Space named Winter - a game which, sad to say, is unlikely to ever see the light of day.
The concept seems to be a mix of Silent Hill-style survival horror, and the elemental obstacles of SOS: The Final Escape or even Disaster: Day of Crisis. It features a lone female protagonist battling against sub-zero temperatures and a host of otherworldly creatures, one of which - featured in the creepy trailer above - would look right at home in Silent Hill: Homecoming.
For a game developed in such a short time by a minuscule team, it looks pretty good - certainly comparable to Disaster, while the sections which see our heroine rummaging through drawers and cupboards aren’t a million miles away from Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse.
Of course, it’s no surprise to learn that, two years on from IGN taking a look at the game, it remains unpublished, even after a very positive critical reception to the game’s early demonstration. The studio’s creative director, Ted Newman, explains:
“We left GDC that year feeling very confident about placing the title quickly and on our terms. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be. In almost every case we got hung up with the sales and marketing groups. They simply could not get behind a survival horror title on the Wii. In spite of great sales for Resident Evil 4 and the Umbrella Chronicles, these groups were unable to support the projections required to create a viable P&L for the title. The idea of an “adult” game on what they perceived to be a “kids” console was simply too big a leap for them, regardless of the enthusiastic support of the PD department and the Wii’s total domination in the marketplace.”
There’s a tiny silver lining in that n-Space has been offered plenty of work on other titles since then, purely off the back of that impressive initial demo. Hopefully IGN’s story might convince a third-party publisher that Winter is worth investing in, particularly given Newman’s insistence that they could make it look even better. But I’m not going to get my hopes up - until more than a couple of core titles sell in big numbers, no-one is going to take the risk on anything that’s not aimed at Wii’s expanded audience, particularly in the current economic climate.
If you’ll permit me this slightly off-tangent indulgence, I’d like to bid a fond adieu to indie games show Consolevania, whose last episode was released today, and can be downloaded here. There’s little content in this particular vid pertaining directly to Nintendo (save for a nod to World of Goo in its ‘Best of 2008′ list), but for my money, this - along with BBC Scotland offshoot videoGaiden - is (or rather was) the best games TV show you never saw, and so is more than worthy of a brief eulogy.
Always frank, funny, brutally honest, and clearly deliriously in love with the wonderful medium we call videogames, Consolevania was the brainchild of Rab Florence and Ryan McLeod, two likeable Glaswegians with a sharp sense of humour, who crafted a ramshackle but genuinely hilarious show which celebrated gaming perhaps better than any other program ever has. The final show carries a slightly apologetic tone, as Rab suggests he’s not proud of the verbal batterings he’s dealt out to certain games over the years. But while these were undeniably amusing, Consolevania was never about scathing reviews. Instead, it revelled in gaming’s inherent daftness, embracing its glorious idiosyncrasies, and evangelising about its most transcendental moments. Some of the best Consolevania pieces had me buying games I never otherwise would have considered. Its review of God Hand remains one of my favourite videogame critiques of all time, and the show’s enthusiastic appraisal of Super Mario Galaxy - “a wee fat man in space having the time of his life” - was another highlight.
I had wondered whether the show was due for a renaissance recently after an endorsement from the Guardian Guide - a Saturday supplement of unquestionably good taste, clearly - but if Rab’s insistence that the show’s hectic schedule had led the team to fall out of love with gaming, even if only for a short time, then it was best for Team CV to bow out. The final show’s well worth a watch, and if you’ve managed to miss it and wonder what the fuss is all about, you can download episodes from the official site, with special streaming versions you can watch on your Wii here, here and here.
So long then, Consolevania. WiiWii shall miss you.
WayForward Technologies, creator of DS retro cracker Contra 4, has opened the official website for its forthcoming WiiWare title, LIT, which will be released in early 2009. It’s an intriguing blend of survival horror and puzzler, as you have to smash windows and turn on lamps to light your way to the exit of each stage. The game uses a mix of top-down and traditional third-person perspectives as you fend off some really rather weird creatures and use your torch as a weapon against these light-hating nasties.
Although it’s apparently suitable for ages 10 and up, the above trailer is more than a little creepy, so make sure you’re not watching it in front of any impressionable youngsters. I’ll bring you more info on LIT soon, but for now this is certainly an intriguing prospect for Nintendo’s download service. More original content like this please, WiiWare devs!
Right, then. I finally got round to uploading some videos of my Wii Music compositions. Above is version one of John Lennon’s ‘Woman’ which I recorded a few weeks ago. Yesterday, I did another, very different take -with one instrument remaining the same - just to compare and contrast, and to show how you can change the feel of a song by the way it’s performed. See below.
To some people this is still going to seem like a load of old rubbish, but hopefully one or two of you will be inspired to pick up Wii Music after seeing just what you can do when you put your mind to it. Not for nothing is it in my top five games of the year…
Nintendo knows which side its bread’s buttered on these days. With the DS audience just about a 50/50 split between male
and female gamers, it’s been more successful than anyone at getting girls gaming. So it’s hardly surprising when you see key franchises directly aimed at women, especially when Nintendo knows a large section of its loyal core (male) fanbase will be buying the game in question anyway.
It remains to be seen whether Nintendo of Europe will use similar marketing tactics when it comes to the game’s release on these shores - or, indeed, whether there’s a different ad targeted at Nintendo’s male fans. But either way, this ad works pretty well - even if it perhaps does more to sell the Wii Speak microphone accessory than Crosso itself.
Animal Crossing: City Folk will be released in the US next week, while its PAL equivalent, Let’s Go To The City, is launched on December 5th. I’ll be importing the former and will be starting a new feature - a weekly diary of my adventures in WiiWii village - shortly afterwards.
Okay, I’ve already rated World of Goo. But this WiiWare game - set to hit Europe in the early part of next year, in disk form but with an extra level - deserves every bit of promotion it can get.
Which is apt, as so does indie games show Consolevania, now in its fourth series, and featuring two of Scotland’s finest games writers in Rab Florence and Ryan McLeod. Season Four offers a wealth of bite-sized nuggets of gaming reviews, features and comedy skits, and you could do a lot worse than venturing over to the official site to check out some more (non-Nintendo-related) from the guys.
Be warned, though: it’s perhaps not something to have on with kiddies in earshot, as there are a few wee swears littered throughout.
A delightful little documentary vid over on GameVideos sees Shigeru Miyamoto demonstrating Wii Music to a group of young Japanese schoolchildren. Predictably, they absolutely love it.
Joined by the man who does the voice of KK Slider in Animal Crossing, Miyamoto revels in showing off his creation to an appreciative audience (he’s probably thinking “finally!”) and it’s difficult not to smile when you see the kids waving the controllers around like crazy, making music that doesn’t actually sound entirely tuneless like the sort of thing you hear when young ‘uns are learning musical instruments. Then Miyamoto and chums perform a decent rendition of the Super Mario Bros. theme and have a laugh with the handbell-ringing minigame.
All good-natured fun, and a bit of a tonic if you’re feeling miserable about Nintendo’s Christmas line-up. Unless you’re a total Scrooge, you’ll surely be pleased that they’re at least making someone happy this Yuletide, eh?
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