Spike Announces “Michigan”

Interesting tidbit from Polygon:

Japanese developer Spike, perhaps best known for their popular wrestling and racing game franchises, has confirmed plans for survival horror game entitled “Michigan” on PlayStation 2. Tentatively scheduled for release in spring 2004, specifics regarding the game, its storyline and associated features remain largely undisclosed. Spike reportedly plans for formally unveil Michigan at a special event in the coming weeks.

As soon as there is some concrete data (like a logo or a screenshot), I’ll add this to the database.

Siren Ad Pulled

From The MagicBox:

Sony has suspended its Japanese TV ad for the PS2 horror adventure game SIREN, the TVCM was said to be too scary, and they have received a number of complaints after children got too scared after watching the ad.

Anyone have a link to the commercial in question?

New Media

The Magic Box has posted some cool looking new movies for Nebula: Echo Night and Kuon (“Nine Grudges”).

Kuon looks like it will be quite a different take on survival horror: the game is apparently set feudal Japan, and the entire presentation gives one a sense of pre-Meji era spookiness. Nebula: Echo Night also looks like a break from tradition, with a storyline apparently set on a moon base in the close future. The movie reminded me of Magnetic Rose from Katsuhiro Otomo’s Memories comic/movie.

Nebula: Echo Night is scheduled for release in Japan “on Winter,” while Kuon is set to come out in the Spring of 2004.

Site Updates

I’ve made a few changes today. First of all, I’ve added some more links to the side bar, including The MagicBox, which is where I get almost all of my news lately. I’ve also enabled comments in the news archive (they were broken before). Finally, I’ve noticed that some people were using the new rating system to rate games that have yet to be released, a practice that I must take issue with:

**BEGIN RANT**

Games must be judged on how fun they are, not the license they represent or the graphic engine they employ. Judging a game based on screenshots and movies is not a useful practice: you haven’t the slightest idea if a game will be fun or not until you’ve played it. In fact, I think that part of the reason we get so many crappy games is that people often decide how high quality a game is based on external factors (such as license and graphics style/quality) alone.

Case in point: everyone pretty much agrees that Enter The Matrix is a horrible game, yet it has sold over a million copies. Why? Because people hear the word “Matrix” and suddenly decide that they must own the game. Remember The Bouncer? This game received an extraordinary amount of hype, and featured an incredibly high quality graphics engine. But when the game came out, it was universally panned. It turns out that even having wonderful graphics can’t save a bad game.

When you judge a game based on marketing and hype, you are encouraging developers and publishers to make games that are easy to hype. That is, you are telling them “I want the prettiest graphics, or the best license, even at the expense of fun factor.” Fun factor should be number one here: if a game isn’t fun, then it is a failure, right? By judging games without playing them, you are telling the marketing guys that you don’t care about gameplay; you’ve already made up your mind. This trend only encourages game publishers and developers to make awful games.

Don’t judge a game until you’ve played it. Don’t buy into hype… graphics, license, etc do not matter if the core gameplay isn’t fun.

***END RANT***

So, the net result is that you may no longer rate games that have not yet been released. Please only use the rating system to rate games you have actually played, otherwise it is useless.

More Siren Stuff

The MagicBox has yet more info and screens on Siren.

They also have this interesting snippet:

Capcom mentioned they will reveal a brand new Biohazard (Resident Evil) title in the next issue of Famitsu in Japan.

A new Resident Evil game?? Lets just hope it isn’t another Gun Survivor debacle. Apparently, no further information is available yet.