Blackmagic Computers

The majority of Microsoft’s E3 keynote was dedicated to Kinect, the camera system formerly known as Project Natal, and we learned the device’s release date and heard details about its use in several games. But one important piece of information was still missing: the price. Soon after the keynote, Gamestop listed Kinect for $149.99, and now further evidence has been revealed to support that number.

Firstly, we have Microsoft’s own store, which has listed Kinect as $149.99 for those who want to pre-order the motion control device. This isn’t an official price confirmation, however; the store says that “the advertised price for pre-order items may increase or decrease prior to the date the product is released to the public.”

Meanwhile, Develop has reported on information from a “highly positioned” anonymous source claiming that each Kinect unit actually costs Microsoft $150 to manufacture. If true, this would mean that Microsoft would take a loss on each unit sold for less than $150, whereas sticking to the rumored price would allow the company to break even on the hardware.

With Kinect not due to launch in North America until November 4, it could be quite some time before we get an official pricing announcement.

“One of the major objectives of our E3 was to stress that it’s important for Nintendo that we get this level of support from partners,” Nintendo of Europe’s Laurent Fischer told GamesIndustry.biz. “Of course we’re happy about it, but it’s more than we would have dreamed of with such support from our partners at this new time for consoles.”

According to Fischer, there are currently around 70 games—both first and third party—in the works for the new handheld, including titles from Konami, Capcom, Ubisoft, and Activision.

“For hardware that started its public life only days ago that’s amazing, and what I was pleased with was you can see very, very strong support from everyone. You can see from the line-up that we have huge titles that no other publisher is doing, without us thinking twice about it. I couldn’t see any publisher that isn’t very motivated by the console so we’re really pleased by that.”

The Nintendo 3DS still doesn’t have a release date, but you can check out our hands-on impressions from E3for further details.

There have also been some much more subtle changes to the game which help improve the overall experience. One example is the placement of the on-screen button prompts, which now appear at the edge of the screen instead of right in the middle of the battle.

“So, someone on the team had this idea—’Why do we have these buttons right in the middle of the screen? Why don’t we have them on the side and just use peripheral vision?’” Palamarchuk told Ars. “It’s something we absolutely love. It really lets you focus on what’s happening and you can watch and enjoy the graphics and the moves Kratos is pulling off, or whatever is going on, and not worry so much about the button presses. While they’re still there, they’re almost taking like a background role to you just enjoying the game.”

In the section I was able to play—which is the same as the one Ben wrote about earlier this week—one of the most striking features is the shift in perspective during the battle with Poseidon. You actually see his death through his eyes. And Palamarchuk says that we can expect more new ideas like this throughout the game.

“One thing about God of War, we don’t want to just have one idea and use it throughout the entire game,” he explained. “There are a couple new things that we haven’t shown, and I’m not actually allowed to even talk about, but as you progress through the game you’re going to see new things. For example, the new perspective that you have throughout the Poseidon fight. So we’re taking a lot of advantages of the technology of the PS3 with our design as well.

“So it’s just not about visuals but it’s also how can the new technology help with the design aspects. You’re going to see puzzles maybe based off lighting and things like this, because 90 percent of the lighting is dynamic, so we’re able to do a lot with that. And just a lot of animations that we weren’t able to pull off in the past and we really took advantage of incorporating that into our puzzles and the gameplay.”

God of War III will be hitting the PS3 on March 16. Look for our review ahead of the official release.

The content will raise the maximum rank to 50 with new Rank Rewards. It will also introduce two new playable characters, 20 new trials, a third weapon upgrade for each weapon, and five additional masks. Some of this content will only be available to players above rank 41.

The cost for all this content? 400 Microsoft points, or $5. If you’re more of a fan of the single-player game, don’t worry: you’ll get new content as well. “In the coming months, 2K Games will also be publishing downloadable extensions of the single player experience that provide new insight into the world of Rapture,” 2K Games announced. “These packages will include more narrative, new tools and new challenges that extend the lore and fiction of the failed Utopia under the sea.”

If you want the game in 3D, or you have multiple monitors, you’ll really see something special. Bad Company 2supports flagship technology from both ATI and NVIDIA. “In BC2 we support the NVIDIA 3D-vision technology. It is an awesome feeling to actually play the game in true 3D. We have had several incidents when someone who has tried it for the first time actually hits the screen when they want to point at something,” Gyllenberg said. “We do also support the Eyefinity tech where you can experience the game on several monitors. Besides that, we also have a support for the new keyboards from Logitech where you will get all the multiplayer stats you need displayed on the small monitor on the actual keyboard.”

The PC has some love coming its way

After playing the PC beta with a mouse and keyboard, it’s hard to imagine playing this game on consoles… but that’s just us. So far the game is slick and fun, and it’s only getting better; the fact the beta code is already so out of date gives us a lot of hope for the final product.

It’s good to see a game from a developer that’s embracing what the PC has to offer, not running from it.

Heavy Rain shouldn’t have much going for it. Developed by a man known for his failure to properly end his last big game and filled with what look like quick-time events, it’s endlessly dour and depressing… while being exclusive to the PlayStation 3. We said before that there is a good chance Heavy Rain is going to fail. That being said, our time with the game proved it to be a savvy, impressive, and often chilling experience.

If you’re a fan of story-driven single-player games, do yourself a favor and at least rent the game. Get through the first few scenes, and give it an hour or two to allow it to grab you. Yes, that’s a large investment on a game that is going to leave some cold. For those who are drawn in, however, this is something of an achievement in the art of gaming.

The Story

This is a game that will be more enjoyable the less you know, so we’ll try to keep details of the story and the characters light in this review. You’ll be asking yourself who the protagonist of the game is, and when the story actually began, and you could possibly change your mind about both questions multiple times throughout the game.

Heavy Rain is the story of four people who find themselves dealing with a dark time in their lives. How they get through this period, and what they do to themselves and others, is up to the player.

The main characters are a father, a private investigator, an FBI agent, and a… well, a woman. How you figure out who that woman is and what she’s doing there is an amazing piece of stagecraft—a character says something off-handedly to himself in a seemingly unrelated scene and the player is electrified. There are more than a few scenes like this, where tiny pieces of information are given out, and these point you towards the conclusion. The dour atmosphere owes much to the ever-present rain, and in another clever touch the rain itself ties into the main storyline.

What happens to these four people and the characters around them? That’s up to you. The game can end well, or it can turn into a tragedy. During my first playthrough for this review—and I can’t wait to play again—I tried my damnedest to keep everyone alive. I failed.

The graphics are an uneven bag. Some scenes look much better than others, although nothing looks bad. It can feel somewhat jarring at times to move from environment to environment and see a jump forward or a fall back in detail and polish.

Inaction: the only thing scarier than your decisions

Everything in the game is controlled by context-sensitive movements and button-presses, but the way they are shown on screen and how they influence the action is where the genius of the control scheme shines through. In some cases, you’ll have to hold down one button, and then another, and then another. This can lead to your hands doing weird things on the DualShock 3, and you’ll have to get rid of your notions of how the controller fits in your hand during some of these challenges.

This may sound weird, or even counter-intuitive, but these challenges are put in places where your character is being subjected to heavy emotional or physical stress. You’re supposed to feel like you’re on the edge of failure and pushing your dexterity to the limit, because that matches what the game is putting its characters through. I can’t describe what I mean in detail because that would ruin a few plot and character moments.

What happens if you fail a challenge? Maybe you get punched, maybe the action of the screen alters, maybe nothing. If you continue to fail, however, you’ll go down the list of adverse outcomes. It’s very possible one of the characters will die. When that happens, the game soldiers on, and the narrative continues without that character’s participation.

Being put in some of these positions while knowing that death is a real possibility gives the game an edge that I wasn’t used to, and that made some of the scenes uncomfortable to play.

You’ll also be forced to make very quick decisions, and what you do or don’t do may can to death for you or someone else. This isn’t a game where you get a binary choice between a “good” action or a “bad” action. In many cases, even after the scene was over, I asked myself if I had done the right thing. Don’t take too much time to weigh your options; inaction may lead to something you’re even less comfortable with.

You’ll also need to be extremely observant. Things that seemed like small details, actions that didn’t seem to have any consequences, details that seemed too small to matter—they can all come back and bite you in the ass if you’re not paying attention. Again, the consequences may be nothing, or they could be great. The game doesn’t play by the rules you’re used to, and that’s refreshing

David Caruso would love this

One of the characters is an investigator with the FBI, and he has a very special set of glasses that allow him to take video of his surroundings, find clues, and then analyze them later. From a gameplay standpoint, that means you’ll be scanning the environment to find things to investigate further, and then you’ll dig through those clues in a virtual interface back at the office.

It’s a neat little mechanic, but it seems somewhat out of place to have this kind of technology in what often feels like a crime-noir title.

What’s interesting is that the clues you find and analyze may lead you down the wrong path if you’re presumptuous or don’t dig long or far enough. There are dead ends and easy answers, both of which are frequently on offer. When the game asks if you want to give up looking through your files, is it saying that there won’t be anything to find? Or is it suggesting that your character is frustrated, but stopping the investigation would make you miss out on something? You never know, and the game forces you to make frequent gut checks. This is the closest thing to table-top role-playing that we’ve seen in gaming.

The fact that you constantly put on and take off the glasses, called ARI, may lead to a few CSI jokes, and sometimes searching crime scenes can seem a little linear, but don’t be fooled; you’ll have to be precise and diligent in gathering evidence and then putting together the puzzle of these murders.

On the voices

In a game that tries so hard to be cinematic, it’s a little shocking how uneven the voice acting can be. It’s clear that Heavy Rain was both written and performed by actors that may not speak English as their primary language—check out how many times the word “wasteland” is used in the opening hours. The rhythm of the speech is off, and the accents can be distracting.

Our partial solution? Pretend the game takes place in Canada. It’s also interesting to listen to the game in French while adding English subtitles. Listening to the dialog in English is simply distracting in too many places, with some examples of odd phrasing. The writing itself can often be cheesy, as well. This game is going to be lauded by some critics for its virtual performances, but it just shows how low the bar is for gaming; in no other medium would this voice acting be tolerated.

That said, it’s not terrible; it’s just not as good as the story and graphical presentation, and that’s a real shame.

In conclusion

There are some major problems with Heavy Rain in terms of pacing and voice acting, but after watching the credits roll, the entire experience, taken as a whole, felt very good. The game takes a lot of risks and most of them pay off, and there were legitimate surprises in many places. That’s a rarity in this business, and should be celebrated when it happens.

David Cage has an uncompromising vision when it comes to creating games, and it’s gratifying to see a company like Sony sit back and allow Quantic Dream to create something this idiosyncratic. Heavy Rain is unlike anything else on store shelves right now. This game may have stumbled in places, but it’s much better than Indigo Prophecy, and you don’t have to worry about a disastrous final act.

Some people are going to be turned off by the style of Heavy Rain and the game’s insistence on moving at its own pace—and this pace can be very inconsistent—but hopefully the game will find an audience that loves it for what it is. It deserves it. David Cage has a masterpiece in him, and this may not be it, but he’s getting closer. What he did achieve here is damned impressive if you go into it with the right attitude.

The Good

• Emotional experience that pulls you in
• Choices have weight and consequences
• Trivial details may come back to haunt you
• Characters can actually die, and the story continues on
• 10-hour play time, but you’ll want to play through more than once to make different choices
• Complete story with satisfying conclusion
• Male and female nudity is handled with something approaching class

The Bad

• Voice acting can be weak, and heavily accented
• Game can be short if you only play once
• It may sound weird or aloof, but much of the emotional punch may be missing if you don’t have children
• A few subplots seem to peter out to nothing… at least in my playthrough
• The pace can be terribly slow in places, especially in the first few hours
• The game can sometimes feel like a Choose Your Own Adventure book
• Some of the science-fiction elements feel out of place

The Ugly

• Is it possible to animate a kiss that doesn’t come out like two people chewing on gum while being very close to each other? So far, the answer is “no.”

Dante’s Inferno has weathered its share of criticism for its aggressive marketing campaign, as well as its topical resemblance to the God of War titles. To be fair, much of that criticism came from us. Jonathan Knight, the game’s executive producer, was kind enough to talk to Ars about the game before its release. We picked his brain on the marketing campaign, dealing with a property with as much history as Dante’s Inferno, and why gaming can be a transitory art form.

It was an interesting discussion, and proved that the game may not be as easily dismissed as we might have thought.

The first question was an easy one: what did Knight think of the various marketing and publicity stunts that surrounded the game?

“As a game developer, you basically dream of having a marketing push like this. The topic of the game and the campaign, dealing with sin and hell, locked in gluttony and greed, those are big topics that lead to controversial implementation or content. At the end of the day we’re just thrilled to have this level of support.” His favorite gimmick? Dante’s Circle Cycle. Considering the game came alongside a rereleased version of the original poem, a comic book series, a DVD, an action figure, and all sorts of other cross-promotion, the Circle Cycle is pretty clever satire.

Of breasts and ratings

Dante’s Inferno deals with some pretty adult scenes and ideas, and the blood begins flowing only slightly before the naked breasts make an appearance. This is a game you’ll be playing after your children fall asleep. Was content a concern?

“We definitely wanted to make sure we weren’t going into AO territory, so we checked with [the ESRB] and involved them, as we do with any game, to make sure there aren’t any surprises at the end,” Knight told us. EA didn’t have to remove or censor anything; it was a smooth process. The nudity was also not as big of a deal as many have assumed. “It’s not harder to get [nudity] in; there’s a nudity descriptor, and the AO rating is basically sexual intercourse, which isn’t a big deal in our game. Nudity is talked about more—particularly in the US, it’s often seen as more controversial than the over-the-top violence that almost doesn’t get mentioned.”

Knight pointed out that this is a conversation that’s uniquely American. “In Europe it’s far less of a topic of discussion. I don’t know why that is; they have just been cooler with nudity for a lot longer than we have.” The publisher was no problem; EA wanted them to make the game they wanted to make; the team didn’t have any pressure from the top to tone things down.

He also downplays God of War questions, claiming many titles influenced the game from the early stages. “The thing that was important was to build a really great and responsive combat system. It’s a video game at the end of the day, and we wanted to make sure the combat felt great.”

It was important for the system to be responsive, to flow from move to move with plenty of cancelling so you were never locked into long attack animations. “When you do something with the controller, the hero should instantly respond.” He pointed to two games that provide that feeling: Devil May Cry and God of War. “When we get that comparison that it feels like those games, it’s very flattering.”

It’s odd to be conducting an interview like this having already played the finished game; most of the time we’re talking to people at shows like E3 or GDC after a quick demo. In this case, we’ve had the retail code of Dante’s Inferno for a week or so, and the review has already been written. The thing is, the game is good, and I point out that it must be galling to hear about people saying it’s a God of War clone, as if that’s a simple thing to rip off.

“I appreciate your mentioning that. There is no God of War check box in Maya that makes that all happen, orDevil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden. It’s very hard, and we have combat designers who look at the milliseconds and the frames and that are steeped in the genre,” Knight replied. They tried to stay away from the feeling of watching an animation after hitting a button. “Having a system that lets you shape and control how animations play and how they cancel [each other] out so something else can play so you have more control over the character… we spent months at the beginning of the project making sure we got that right.”

The Divine Comedy as a video game

People have also been somewhat amused and/or horrified at the idea of such a classic of literature being tackled as, of all things, an action game.

“I’ve read a fair amount of that sentiment, but I’ve also read a lot of the opposite—people who would have gone through life never reading this poem now are reading it because the game has gotten them interested. We have 17,000 facebook fans, and I’m on there every morning and I see it over and over again: people saying they picked up a copy of the poem and are reading it,” Knight told us. He also says that teachers have contacted him to say that students are now interested in the poem. “True Dante lovers want people to know about who he was and what he did, and that’s something the game is making happen.”

Knight is also realistic about his place in the history of the Divine Comedy. “I don’t think it’s Botticelli, toGustav Dore, to Rodin, to Visceral Games, I don’t think we’re playing as much of a lasting and sophisticated role in the history of Dante as those guys… our medium is sort of brief,” he says. “Rodin’s sculpture is what it is, and it endures; in video games, five years from now people don’t even have the systems to run them. We have a less easily referenced record. I think in general you’ve got an issue where I don’t know if video games will stand up in the way books and movies do where they’re easy to go back and look at 20, 30, 50 years from now.”

That being said, he stressed that Dante is still relevant, 700 years later, remarking that it’s “pretty cool” to be a part of that history.

Dante’s Inferno will be released on February 9, on the Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.

Can you imagine your soul laid bare, every sin and broken promise shown in grim detail to the one you love above all others? “You don’t know what it was like!” Dante screams, anguished, as his beloved witnesses a particularly heinous act from his past.

“Yes, she does,” Satan replies. “I have shown her.”

Dante’s Inferno is not for the faint of heart. It’s also not exactly true to the source material, using names and ideas more as a jumping off point than as straight inspiration. The story follows Dante, who fans of the original work may be amused to find is a powerful soldier, as he fights to save the soul of a woman. As he travels through the circles of hell, we witness the immoral acts he took part in during his time with the crusades, through both computer-generated and traditional animation. This is a beautiful game, both during gameplay and during the story sections, with a strong sense of both purpose and design.

But how does it play?

After playing the demo, we said that this felt exactly like God of War, and that opinion hasn’t been changed after playing through the full game. The two games share almost every mechanic: the same combo-heavy gameplay, the same collection of orbs from dead enemies to upgrade attacks, the same items to find in out-of-the-way places. After doing enough damage to enemies, you can choose to either absolve them of their sins or punish them, and the decision you makes determines whether or not you level up on other the holy or unholy side of things. To gain the most attacks, you’ll want to balance your decisions here.

Just in case you’re interested in more than melee combat, you can also find a cross that you can use to blast baddies with holy light. Leveled up, it becomes quite the helpful ally in the game.

In addition, there are certain souls in the underworld that offer bonuses if you put them out of their misery, and these may allow you to play a rhythm game where you push buttons as dark spheres—sins—move towards the center of a cross. It looks like a gothic Guitar Hero, and plays similarly.

The fixed camera, the avenging hero, the button presses and rhythm needed to hit the high combos… you’ve seen all this before in God of War. The epic boss battles are also usually ended by quick-time events, but they’re so bloody and satisfying that you won’t mind the old and hoary trick used to make to a game more cinematic. You’ll unlock magic as you go, and using said magic does add another layer of tactics to the battles, but this is a pure, balls-out action game.

All of the action requires tight control and a solid frame rate, and luckily the game provides both. We keep bringing up how much of the gameplay mechanics are ripped directly from God of War, but if you’re going to rip off a game, rip off a great game and do justice to the ideas that made it so much fun. Dante’s Inferno is a joy to play, front to back.

It earns the M-rating

It’s rare for us to talk about how a game earns its rating, but Dante’s Inferno deals with sin as its main topic, and is loosely based on one of the most popular treatises on the failing of human morality ever written. It gets creative when it deals with these topics.

You’ll fight unbaptized babies in Limbo, there were scenes in the Lust section that made me gag in revulsion, and nudity and sexual topics are common. The game’s marketing department were creative in getting the game discussed in the press, but the game’s designers were even more creative in showing each of the discrete sections of hell in order to make a point.

The game uses its setting and source material with creativity, and may not be the dumbed-down version of the original text that we first anticipated. This isn’t high art, by any stretch, but the story and voice acting are much better than expected.

In conclusion

The game was a pleasant surprise, and it matches its high graphical polish with responsive controls and familiar—if well-worn—gameplay. A few battles felt cheap in places, and some of the swinging puzzles were a little touchy, but those are our only complaints. There is even an online co-op mode with user-created content called the Trials of St. Lucia coming in April… the game will be getting more content and modes to keep you interested after launch.

EA will be forgiven for “borrowing” with such heavy hands due to the quality and polish on Dante’s Inferno. If you’re in the mood for an action game, and don’t mind some rough subject matter, this is a trip to hell you’ll want to sign up for. On the other hand, most people won’t care enough about future content to want to hold onto the game until April, and you’ll be able to beat the game in under 10 hours or so if you don’t mind not finding everything. This isn’t an automatic buy, but it’s much better than it has any right to be. If you do drop the $60, we won’t blame you.

Verdict: Rent