Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People just became about as cool and attractive as possible. Well, that’s not true — I won’t be satisfied until Senor Cardgage gets more than an offhand mention in the games, but it’s pretty close — Episode three, Baddest of the Bands, is going to contain the ultimate glam superstars, Limozeen! As mentioned earlier in today’s Nintendo press release, SBCG4AP Episode 3 is coming this month to PC and WiiWare, and Telltale has put up a new web page, along with new screenshots and the teaser trailer included at the end of Strong Badia the Free.

Are you ready to play a game in which someone else rocks?! The trailer and screens await you after the break.

Baddest of the Bands trailer:

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We’ve got screenshots and video from Sin & Punishment 2 — which will be released here in North America. Check out the new Treasure-driven madness after the break. There’s running, flying, shooting, swording, exploding, sinning, and punishing. It’s all there. Enjoy!

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Neverland Card Battles was originally published in Japan by Idea Factory as “Cardinal Arc” back in 2003, for the PS2. YUKE’S re-imagining of the game has left the story and gameplay intact, but also provides a thorough localization, improved visuals, and a widescreen presentation. The cutscenes have also all been dubbed with English voice acting — though YUKE’S told me they have considered offering the original Japanese voices as DLC for Neverland purists. The game’s most important new feature, however, is the addition of Ad Hoc Wireless multiplayer, allowing two PSPs to go head-to-head in card combat. As Nate Fitt, YUKE’S Marketing Manager, explained to me, “We really wanted to make sure that got put in there, just for the sheer fun of playing head-to-head against a friend.” We asked if Neverland Card Battles could also be played online, and the answer was “not yet,” though Nate said YUKE’S was “keeping their options open” as to adding an Infrastructure mode in the future. In the meantime, YUKE’S is confident that the Ad Hoc mode will provide plenty of hours of fun.

How, then, will those fun hours be spent? Neverland Card Battles tells a story which will seem awfully familiar to JRPG fans: The seal on a slumbering evil has been damaged; said slumbering evil intends to wipe out all life in Neverland; the fate of the world therefore rests on the broad shoulders of an exceedingly cocky youth with a sly grin, a deck of mysterious cards, and an assessment that his grim task “sounds like fun.” There are unique wrinkles, of course — the slumbering evil, “Hellgaia,” really only wants to wipe out humanity because that will put a permanent end to war, which is downright charitable, when you think about it. Plus, the protagonist, “Galahad,” is an obsessive gambler, so putting him in charge of a deck of powerful cards is obviously an ideal fit. In any case, this means that the player will control Galahad as he uses his growing card collection to fight off a slew of other card-wielding “dominators,” making his way through 18 pitched battles in the game’s single-player mode.

As attractive as the game’s art and cutscenes were, the M.O. of Neverland Card Battles was starting to sound extremely familiar. We asked Mr. Fitt directly: What separates Neverland Card Battles from familiar TCG duel games like Yu-Gi-Oh!? “The main thing that’s going to differentiate our title from the other ones out there is the unique game boards that the battles take place on,” Nate told us. “They vary in size, and have quite a few interesting elements to them that really make them unique from eachother.” The mere presence of an SRPG-style playing field, as it turned out, separates Neverland Card Battles from the standard TCG, but as our hands-on demo progressed, we were able to get a firsthand look at what Nate meant.

As with any SRPG, a match of Neverland Card Battles takes place on a large grid of squares, allowing characters to move in the four cardinal directions around various obstacles in order to reach their foes and engage in non-random, stat-based combat. The mechanics behind the battles are extremely simple: Each side has its dominator character, who can in turn place summoned units and buff-granting structures on the field. Each character on the field, both dominators and units alike, has an attack rating and a defense rating, and when they clash, each does damage to the other’s hit points in a simple attack-minus-defense manner. If a unit is reduced to 0 HP, they are gone, and if that unit happens to be the dominator, that’s the end of the match. The trick to winning in battle is careful movement of your units on the board, and the subsequent management of your resources.

At the start of the match, every square on the grid is neutral, but every time a dominator or his units move onto or through a square, it is claimed with his color. Each square that a dominator controls is worth another point to his “cost,” which in turn can be spent to play cards from his hand, each with an associated cost drain. Basic units can be played early, at a mere 3 or 4 cost apiece, while the game’s more powerful single-use spells and permanent “bases” — which confer lasting buffs on their surrounding units — may have costs of a dozen or more. Placed units also have an associated maintenance “cost,” so players must be careful not to overextend themselves: If a dominator controls 15 squares and has three 5-point units on the board, an enemy unit needs only to walk through a few of his squares to flip their control and force one of his units out of play. Territory control, and the efficient movement and placement of one’s units, is therefore vital to success, lending an intricate strategy to the game beyond the simple mathematics of the actual fighting.

The control of territory becomes even more crucial once the squares’ elements are brought into play: Each square on the board, after the first battle, has a colored border, indicating an affinity towards earth, fire, and so on. A dominator can always place a unit adjacent to himself or an existing unit, but if a card also bears an elemental affinity, he can place that unit on the field on any square of the same type — provided his opponent does not currently control it. A clever dominator can use this ability to sneak in a new unit behind the enemy, using it to sieze control of several squares of his opponent’s territory for a devastating shift in power.

Nate informed us that an average match of Neverland Card Battles, whether single-player or multiplayer, can last anywhere from 20 to 60 minutes, and progressing through the game’s story mode would take some 30-50 hours, depending on how many of the game’s 200 unique cards a player chose to seek out. We were a little disappointed to hear that Ad Hoc players could not trade cards with one another to speed up and refine their collections — especially since any cards and dominators are locked for multiplayer use until a player has acquired them, meaning a player will have to progress through the single-player scenarios in order to gain full functionality for the emphasized Ad Hoc mode. On the other hand, we were able to pick up the basics of Neverland Card Battles fairly quickly; Nate told us YUKE’S had engineered the game to be a very beginner/intermediate-friendly TCG, with roughly a one-hour learning curve to pick up on all its tricks. In addition, even that first hour will likely grant new players a healthy collection of cards, which are awarded at the conclusion of every battle — even against previously beaten opponents. Before long, players can expect to be browsing several dozen possible cards for their 30-card custom deck, which is built in an easily-navigated building suite.

YUKE’S is fully aware that both TCGs and SRPGs are something of a niche, but in the end, they are hoping to make Neverland Card Battles a good introductory title to each genre. The game will also be priced at only $29.99, making it a rather attractive proposition for players who have always been curious about card battling. “It’s a lot of fun at a reasonable price point,” said Nate, “I think you’d get a lot of fun out of giving this one a shot, because it does have a lot of elements that an introductory player would really find interesting.”

Neverland Card Battles is rated T for Teen and is scheduled to launch on October 28th, 2008.

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When we first arrived at the EA Studio Showcase event last month, my heart was instantly stolen away… by a GINORMOUS, fully-functional, belt-fed, air-powered, tripod-mounted Nerf machine gun sitting just outside the entrance to the game demos. (The young lady as left merely serves as sizing reference.) To make a long childhood tale short, I am a huge fan of flying foam, and even years after discovering the joys of electronic entertainment — where I can massacre zombies, Nazis and ninjas to my heart’s content — I still keep a small arsenal of plastic weaponry in my garage.

Though a set of watchful eyes and irksome barriers kept me from immediately commandeering the gun, I did spend a solid minute staring at it before disappointedly walking indoors… quickly rushing back out to take the above picture, and disappointedly walking indoors yet again. But said disappointment was short-lived, for just inside the door lay a game station equipped with Nerf N-Strike for the Nintendo Wii.

If you haven’t already seen the above document (leaked in analyst presentations back in February) then you might not be familiar with Nerf N-Strike’s claim to fame: it comes with an actual Nerf gun. Dubbed the Switch Shot EX-3, the blaster has a compact self-contained firing mechanism that is fully removable (you press an orange button on the left side to unlock the front retaining flap) to allow a Wiimote to take its place. While we weren’t particularly impressed with the Nerf gun’s power (more Scout than Nite Finder, for those in the know) a good gameplay session sold us on its viability as a top-notch Wii Zapper replacement.

Though the grip is obviously designed for smaller hands and the blaster is a little front-heavy, the samples we tried at the Studio Showcase had excellent heft and honest-to-god sights (imagine that!) built into a sturdy frame. Moreover, with the Nerf plunger out of the way, the Switch Shot has an extra space right behind the Wiimote — just large enough to fit your favorite dongle. Though creative director Dustin Hansen told us the Switch Shot’s companion Wii game wouldn’t make use of the Wii MotionPlus, he remarked that it will nest nicely in the blaster’s housing.

I wish I could say we were as impressed with the game.

Nerf N-Strike, developed by EA Salt Lake as one of the publisher’s many recent Hasbro-inspired titles – Operation and two versions of Monopoly were also present — unfortunately looks nothing like the excellent Nerf Arena Blast released in 1999. Billed as a family-friendly adventure for the 8-12 crowd, N-Strike is at its heart as simplistic and fixed a light-gun-style rail shooter as we’ve ever seen. The environments we saw were drab and largely non-interactive, the levels wide open, the progression slow and the optional targets glowing so as to be incredibly obvious.

Because the entire game relies on a single button, reloading is automatic (and thereby occurs at the most inopportune moments) and though the game features 25 different Nerf weapons, you cannot choose to select from them, but are apparently forced to use each in sequence when they appear in the approximately 7-12 hour story mode — wherein the stereotypical “cool kid” protagonist, recruited by a sentient floating metal orb, has to blast his way out of a hostile robot factory.

Multiplayer was a bit better, featuring 24 different minigames you can play with up to four individuals on the same Wii, but while some of these were rather clever (one in particular had players shooting spheres rolling around a shifting arena to toss them into score multipliers) others were more of the same mindless robot blasting action.

One interesting note for Nerf fans: Hansen told us that though only 12 out of the 25 Nerf weapons were licensed, the other 13 were approved by Hasbro designers — and some were actually prototyped in real life.

While the full Nerf N-Strike package is available November 4th for $59.99, and the first shipment of Switch Shot EX-3s will be dedicated solely to making sure every Wal-Mart in America has a full pallet in time for the holiday season, the blaster alone will be available soon after for approximately $15. At that price, I expect it to give even the Nyko Perfect Shot a run for its money.

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The Wing controller is still at least a month away, scheduled for release in October. As such, the controllers we got to try out at the Retrocade were hastily-assembled prototypes which Nyko had put together just for this event, and they repeatedly stressed to us that we were not playing with the final version. They also assured us that the controller’s flaws — which, unfortunately, were fairly major — would be ironed out in the final release hardware. These flaws included a fairly sticky D-pad, and a nasty habit of losing sync with the console at critical moments, leading to a number of frustrating deaths. Nyko promised us up and down that they were fully aware of these problems with the prototype, and that such issues would not occur with the final controller — “This isn’t our first wireless controller,” we were reminded. We certainly hope the promises are true; we’ll have to wait and see.

The look and feel of the Wing, however, was ready to be judged. Our greatest concern, naturally, was how well the controller stood up to the paper peripheral we had assembled ourselves. For reference, here is our initial version:

And, here is the sleek new plastic model with actual chips and stuff inside:

The upgrade seems fairly thorough. In all seriousness, however, the Wing felt good in our hands: Light and unimposing without feeling too insubstantial (roughly lighter than a wireless Xbox 360 controller), good size, proper button placement for easy access without scrambling or searching. The location of the Z buttons — now located next to the shoulder triggers, rather than in front of them, as with a GameCube controller — seemed a little odd at first, but was easy to get used to. On the whole, playing with the Wing felt like playing with a Dual Shock or a 360 controller; an intuitive and familiar process for any contemporary gamer which didn’t distract from the gameplay.

Apart from the wirelessness, which is obviously the Wing’s main attraction, Nyko pointed out another handy feature to us: the controller contains a small USB port, which will act as a built-in charging station if a gamer uses rechargeable batteries in the controller. The Wing will recharge said batteries when connected to any powered USB port, including the Wii, or a PC, or even another console.

The Wing’s similarity to other modern controllers was a conscious choice made by Nyko’s design team when work began 6-8 months ago. Amir Navid, Nyko’s VP of Product Development, cited the Dual Shock as his favorite controller. He told us, “It had some basis in popular controllers, obviously… but it is a very unique shape; I don’t think there’s been a controller that looks like that.” He want on to describe the impetus for the Wing’s major differences from the original Classic Controller: “I’m a big fan of Nintendo, but, definitely, I think the Classic Controller has a lot of problems as far as how comfortable it is to hold, how it sits in your hands. There were definitely certain things that I wanted to correct, as far as the company motto — we try to solve problems. I wanted to make something that’s really ergonomic, that sits well in the hand, that’s not oversized… any time you do a controller, there’s a lot of different issues that you have to take under consideration.”

On the whole, Nyko seems to have succeeded in putting together a comfortable controller, and as promised, there were no wires to be found — the Wing attaches to the Wiimote using one of Nyko’s instantly recognizable dongles. Still, the question remained — of all the things to remove wires from, why the Classic Controller? Are gamers going to rally around a new version of one of the Wii’s less popular peripherals, especially considering the increased price? We asked Michael Quiroz and Bernard Hoang, Marketing Associates at Nyko, just that question, and they had quite an explanation for us.

“It’s because people have been requesting it,” said Quiroz, “People have been asking for the wire to be cut, just like with the Nunchuk. We have, on our website, the ‘Submit a Product Idea’ form. Some companies won’t read that; we do. We send out a weekly product report of all those ideas to all of marketing, all of product development — we like to keep a pulse on what people are thinking. The idea of a wireless Classic Controller, a wireless Nunchuk, we thought of immediately when we saw that everything was going to be wired to that remote. And if we have an idea, and a lot of people are asking for that idea, we want to come out and make it. We want to be able to meet what the consumer wants, and we pride ourselves on trying to solve problems.”

As to the increased price, Nyko feels that the Wing qualifies as a “luxury item,” a controller that not only meets the wireless needs of gamers, but adds to the abilities and playability of the original Classic Controller. Quiroz remarked, “It is a little bit more expensive, but it’s a nice piece. We don’t want to make it cheap, we don’t want to make it lower quality. We want to make sure it meets and exceeds the standards that have been set by the first party.”

With more knowledge of the Wing than we knew what to do with, we were able to enjoy the classic titles on hand. The Wing lent some quick, responsive controls to Super Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts, thought the game remained as painfully difficult as always. I have to wonder how the lightweight Wing will hold up to being thrown against a wall. It also allowed for fireball-friendly controls at Street Fighter II, allowing me to mop the floor with my fellow editor in nine straight matches. I can say for sure that the Wing works just fine for controlling Ryu — I’m not sure about other characters, since I wasn’t able to change until Mr. Hollister finally beat me by resorting to using Bison (at which point I counter-cheaped him with Vega and won again).

Finally, we concluded our visit with a hands-on preview of Mega Man 9, the upcoming new entry in one of Capcom’s hardest franchises. A retro-styled text-and-still-graphics cutscene tells the new tale: Robot Masters are once again running rampant, only this time, they appear to be the creations of Dr. Light, and Dr. Wily claims he can save the world from these newly-evil machines if the citizens wire enough money to his bank account. Needless to say, it’s up to Mega Man to clean up the mess — again.

The game looks and plays just how an experienced old-school gamer should expect: deceptively cartoonish enemies will completely ravage you, and every pit in the game has a cruelly-placed baddie just waiting to ruin your jump and cause instant death. The look of the original NES titles has been replicated down to the last pixel, with all of the original sound effects and animations in place, accompanied by a new set of Mega Man’s iconic, catchy chiptunes. Mega Man fans are in for a major treat and a lot of swearing at the TV — I couldn’t even get past the first screen.

The Nyko Wing is scheduled to launch in October at a suggested price of $29.99. Mega Man 9 is scheduled to launch later this month for WiiWare, PSN, and XBLA.

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The one aspect of SARPBC which is not made explicitly clear by the title is the actual method by which the cars do battle: The game will allow up to 8 players (4 players locally plus bots, or up to 8 human-controlled players online) to drive around on one of three wide open playing fields, with a large ball in the center and a goal at each end. The game is thus played like a match of explosive mechanical polo or soccer, with cars tearing across the field, leaping and flipping into the air, and smashing each other to bits as they attempt to knock the ball into the opposing team’s goal. It sounds simple, and as a game developed as a downloadable application, it’s easy to think of SARPBC as a fairly underwhelming and basic game. However, though the premise may be simple, Psyonix has gone to surprising lengths to make their game truly rocket-powered; the game makes use of both the Unreal Engine 3 and the Ageia PhysX Engine to run its matches. In addition, the vehicle-based gameplay is in good hands — for those of you who may not remember their previous work, Psyonix is the studio responsible for integrating vehicles into other UE3 titles like Gears of War, and for bringing the popular “Onslaught” mode to Unreal Tournament 2004.

SARPBC is the result of Psyonix’s long desire to make their own game while developing for these other companies’ games. “One way or the other, this game’s been eight years in coming,” said Hagewood. “We started with the goal of getting a game published ourselves in 2000. We’re just now getting to the point where we’re making one, entirely independently. This game in particular, we started thinking about right after Onslaught, so, three or four years ago.” Hagewood praised Sony and PSN for allowing his team the creative freedom to bring their own game to the network and publish it themselves, and demonstrated the myriad ways in which it takes advantage of the PS3’s inherent features: SARPBC has trophy support, persistent stats and leaderboards, easy friends-list play and team/guild features, and the ability to drop your own music into the soundtrack from the XMB. Also, in addition to taking things from the XMB, SARPBC will allow you to place things on the XMB: The game contains an extremely robust replay editor, containing not just camera manipulation, but slow motion, a complete timeline with jump points and keyframes, the ability to lock focus on any one player, create jump cuts, and more — and allows you to save your videos to the XMB, or upload them directly to YouTube from an in-game interface à la PixelJunk Eden.

With the tour nearing its conclusion, it was time to grab some controllers and try the game personally. SARPBC controls as one might expect an action-driving game to control; the left analog stick steers while the R2 and L2 triggers control the gas and brakes, respectively. In addition, however, SARPBC mixes things up with a rocketing jump on the X button. A single tap will send your car hopping upwards, allowing you to dodge incoming opponents or intercept a flying ball, but double-tapping the button will execute an acrobatic double-jump in a direction indicated by the analog stick. In this way, players can get in contact with the ball without being directly lined up with it, hitting it from the side or even from behind — After playing for only a few minutes, I was able to race underneath a ball in mid-flight, hop up in front of it, and reverse direction with a double jump to flip backwards for a well-executed goal block. It looks terribly confusing at first, and one’s first few flips will probably end up landing upside-down, but SARPBC’s controls quickly become intuitive, and any player will soon be hopping, flipping, and performing game-changing maneuvers every few seconds.

It’s not uncommon for players to switch from offensive efforts to defensive ones, and back again, in short order; SARPBC moves exceptionally fast. Performing one of the aforementioned double-jump maneuvers will provide a small speed boost to one’s car, but there is also a short-lived boost meter, replenished through pick-ups on the field, that any player may trigger with the circle button for massive acceleration. Using this rocket-based boost for just a few moments, in fact, will send a car into the titular supersonic speed — their screen will go purple, their car will start laying down fiery tracks, and any opponent unlucky enough to be in their way will be smashed into so much vehicular shrapnel. SARPBC features infinite lives and only the briefest of respawn times, but being wrecked will reposition you elsewhere on the field, making it an effective way to end an offensive drive or remove a pesky defender from the goal area. In addition, this boost can be triggered in mid-air, allowing the cars to almost literally fly; an expert player can use this boost cleverly to get across the entire arena while performing mid-air turns and maneuvers, as was demonstrated to me.

Once these techniques and controls are mastered, SARPBC’s “soccer” matches can become quite chaotic. 2v2 games can allow for some clever strategy and impressive cooperative maneuvers — my teammate had come to an awkward stop between myself and the ball, allowing me to accidentally slam into him, fling him into the ball, and knock the ball into the goal. 4v4 matches can easily devolve into laughter-fueled, frantic efforts to keep near enough to the ball to drive it the right way down the field, efforts which are thankfully aided by SARPBC’s various visual cues. Each player’s display features an arrow pointing out of one’s car, indicating the direction of the ball. Or, if one is inclined, one can change his camera settings to lock onto the ball at all times (though aiming one’s car at the ball is still a manual operation, naturally). SARPBC also allows for any and all split-screen configurations, allowing for horizontal or vertical, one half-screen and two quarter-screens for three players, and so on. In addition, the game allows for ideal drop-in/drop-out multiplayer, allowing anyone to pick up a controller and take over from a bot at any moment — or relinquish control to a bot when they need a break.

SARPBC has some single-player extras to round out the experience. Beyond the obvious ability to play matches alone against bots, the game includes a collection of single-player “challenges,” most of which are geared towards improving your skills for the multiplayer matches. Players will complete objectives such as defending a goal, knocking balls out of mid-air, performing “penalty kick” style shootouts, and so on, receiving star ratings for each mini-game which will allow them to unlock new cars. Still, the multiplayer game contains only the soccer matches, with the variety consisting solely of the three different map configurations and the car selection — and even the cars are only different cosmetically.

When asked about this, Hagewood informed me that Psyonix’s aim in keeping SARPBC to one game type was to keep the experience pure: SARPBC should be played like a sport, keeping the game purely skill-based, rather than relying on random chance through items, or gaming the system through ideal car selection. SARPBC is a game for “purists,” said Hagewood, and while the single-player mini-games might be more varied than the multiplayer, their true purpose is to build one’s skills for the multiplayer experience. That being said, however, Hagewood pointed out that while the cars may all feature the same acceleration and speed, the in-depth physics engine still provides a different “feel” to each car based solely on their shapes (one car may be more top-heavy than another, or roll differently on a bad landing, etc). In addition, Psyonix has plans to add some new variety to the game for fans: DLC is “already in production,” in which the developer hopes to add new maps to the game, and perhaps new gameplay features and modes somewhere down the line, at no charge to players.

“If you’re looking for a multiplayer game, if you’re into multiplayer gaming, you’ve got to give it a try,” said Hagewood, “Because it is addictive.” Psyonix’s favorite part of creating this game, he told me, was the playtesting process; the team has tremendously enjoyed playing the game they have created. “I like to joke around, saying that even if nobody else buys it, we’ll be happy, because it’ll be out and we can play it whenever we want online.”

Other players will get the chance to join Psyonix online soon: Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars is scheduled to launch on PSN in “early fall.” The price has not yet been determined.

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The phrase that comes to mind when looking at Mount & Blade is “rough around the edges.” The game has been in development for several years now, and while TaleWorlds has spent that time building a number of exciting gameplay features and combat systems into their title, a few of the game’s visual elements are starting to show their age. The countryside environments of Calradia never seem to change much from one battle to the next, taking place on fairly nondescript plains or mildly-textured hills, and the game’s pitched battles frequently seem to feature enemies who gather together in a tangled mess of clipping limbs and weaponry. However, players may be inclined to overlook the aging graphics thanks to the game’s emphasis on engaging battles and groundbreaking horseback combat — there’s little reason to worry about the quality of the landscaping while you’re busy slicing someone’s face off at a full gallop.

Mount & Blade’s combat engine looks to be an exercise in unique and memorable moments, driven by detailed physics and a range of control options. TaleWorlds boasts that the flow of combat will be driven by a long list of vital statistics — the damage done by each swing of the sword will be governed by not only the hit location, but the angle of the blade, the speed of one’s mount (where applicable), and more. Players will further be able to conduct these detailed swordfights according to their own levels of skill; novice players will be able to use a simple directional system of attacks and blocks, while hardcore players will have the option to use completely manual controls for every parry, feint, and thrust. At its most basic, this combat system will see players facing off against single opponents or small bands of highwaymen, but as the game progresses and the stakes begin to rise, players will be riding and slashing their way through fierce battles against dozens of on-screen foes, alongside an equally large player-run army of mercenaries or loyal soldiers, involving up to 100 on-screen characters (not including horses). A wide variety of weapons (and accompanying tactics) will make themselves available to players and enemies, allowing mounted fighters to bash their enemies with maces or skewer them with polearms — unless, of course, their mount is felled from afar by crossbows, longbows, or even thrown weaponry.

The progression of the game, of course, will be dependent on the player’s choice of direction. Mount & Blade does not have a story, in the traditional sense — the game has no overarching plotline, nor does it have an ending of any kind. TaleWorlds has engineered the game to be a pure open-world experience, allowing the player to go where he wants when he wants, consort with any of the game’s characters and factions, and live out his life as a lowly merchant, a bandit king, or even a wealthy landowner. Our tour guide compared the game repeatedly to Sid Meier’s Pirates!, drawing parallels between the various optional quests, NPC factions, and infinite paths to player-defined success. Also similar to Pirates! is the fact that the game will never end — either in success or failure. An expert swordsman can befriend (or betray) every major character in the world, overthrow every kingdom and town, and raise an unmatchable army, but the game won’t conclude until the player decides they’re done. Similarly, a clumsy fighter will find themselves gutted, impaled, and crushed, their armies overrun, and will find themselves on the bad side of every major mover and shaker in Calradia, but will never find themselves facing a “game over.” Mount & Blade is a game that runs towards realism instead of medieval fantasy; there are no magical healing potions, but TaleWorlds allows for the players’ outstanding “heroism” to let them cheat death in the face of defeat — they will lose armies, reputation, and valuables, but never their lives — thus allowing them to rebuild. Players who want a stronger challenge, though, can set up the game to auto-save at every turn, thus removing the ability to quickload your way out of a battle gone sour.

As much freedom as Mount & Blade has, the possibilities for what can be done inside — and outside — of the game really have players excited. TaleWorlds has generated an enthusiastic group of amateur content creators for Mount & Blade, allowing players to make use of the game’s unique combat engine in new and unexpected ways through an officially supported mod community. The game’s developers are doing their best to include their community in the creation process, as well; apart from simply taking suggestions through the game’s forums on a regular basis, two of the staff writers for Mount & Blade are former members of the mod community. TaleWorlds intends to keep all of the modding tools freely available for download after the game’s official retail launch. Players of Mount & Blade can look forward to extending their game value through these amateur expansions and conversions, as well as a few game expansions that TaleWorlds are hoping to deliver themselves, in the future.

What’s really the most telling feature of Mount & Blade’s open-ended gameplay and development potential is the way in which TaleWorlds went about creating the game. We asked Armagon Yavuz, co-founder of TaleWorlds, what sort of combat study or motion-capture had gone into creating Mount & Blade’s deep combat engine, but Yavuz replied that it had been the other way around: “The real studies we made into medieval combat came after the combat system was designed. The combat engine was designed around the idea of directional defense and directional attack, and good timing, and feints. These are all active in medieval combat, as well — these are all concepts that are used in actual swordfighting.” He added, “Of course, we learned later that actual swordfighting is a lot more complicated, so in later entries in the game series, we’ll explore those, as well, and find ways to translate those into gameplay.”

In short, TaleWorlds is gambling that Mount & Blade’s in-depth combat will be engrossing enough that any number of game features and expansions will fit neatly around the engine, allowing for the game’s open world to have truly limitless borders. We hope to see more of Mount & Blade in the future — stay tuned for hands-on impressions later on.

Mount & Blade is scheduled to release for the PC, through digital distribution and traditional retail, on September 16th, 2008.

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After 36 hours of non-stop PC gaming at NVISION 08, some weary champions stumbled home, catching planes, trains and automobiles back to residences either temporary or permanent. Others passed out in not-particularly-comfortable chairs as they awaited a tremendous raffle at which thousands upon thousands of dollars in graphics cards, power supplies, motherboards were awarded. I? I went looking for my next story.

Just after I stepped into the NVISION exhibition room for the very first time, my eye was immediately drawn to a familiar red, blue and white color scheme. It was Mirror’s Edge… running on PC. There was no more and no less of the game than we’d seen up to now — I sped past the same solar panels and fence, overhanging pipe, structure, balancing act, wallrun and final leap of faith you see in the game’s brilliant original trailer — but for comparison’s sake, the demo suited my needs perfectly.

Though the PC build at NVISION demonstrated some vertical sync issues, it was otherwise (on an Alienware machine housing a pricey, but not outrageous Core 2 Duo E8500 processor at 3.12GHz, 3GB of RAM and a GeForce GTX 260) exactly what I’d hoped — smooth, quick, crisp and as intuitive as possible. First-person shooter fans will be right at home with movement on the standard WASD keys, Space to shift center of gravity upwards and Shift to shift it downwards, with Q and R bound to the 180° quick turn and Faith’s slow-motion focus ability respectively.

As I’d anticipated in our E3 preview, the addition of a proper mouse allows for that fluid first-person camera control that we found lacking in the PS3 build. Though we admit we haven’t seen PS3 in over a month, I got the feeling that all else being equal, these controls combined with the PC version’s notably higher resolution and smoother textures will give it quite the edge over consoles.

…and that’s before EA told me the official minimum system requirements for the game:

• Windows XP or Vista

• Processor: Pentium 4 at 2.4 GHz

• RAM: 1GB

• Video: GeForce 6 Series with 256MB VRAM or better

As always, there’s no telling exactly what kind of image minimum specifications will produce, but a volunteer at the show offered that the game might run on “medium” settings with a Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz thrown into that same mix. We’ll look forward to testing out the game’s scalability as soon as is humanly possible.

Being an NVIDIA event, there was no mention of equivalent AMD chips or graphics cards, but I can say that the ATI X1650 (or HD2400) graphics card, and the Athlon 64 2800+ processor are typically comparable to the P4/GeForce set listed. We’ve requested a full set of specs from EA as they become available.

In related news, 1UP reports that Mirror’s Edge will feature a new Time Trial mode where you can upload your own best times (on certain short parkour segments) to the online leaderboards, then challenge others by racing their ghosts to the finish. We’d much, much rather perform that feat in a synchronous versus online mode, but hey, what can you do, right?

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I’m no stranger to SRPGs, having spent my fair share of time with titles like Dynasty Tactics and La Pucelle Tactics. While Yggdra Union may not explicitly have “tactics” in its title like the others, its gameplay takes a very familiar tone: Players will spend a great deal of time prior to battles optimizing their team for ideal combat through gear and unit selection, and will then execute their battle plans on a top-down battlefield with a grid layout. Battles will have a specific set of victory/defeat conditions, explicitly laid out at the start of the scenario, typically along the lines of “Defeat all the enemy units; don’t let this story-critical unit get killed.” Completing these battles will then advance the game’s storyline, involving the trials of the titular Princess Yggdra as she fights to defend her homeland from invading forces.

Yggdra Union promises a large amount of story content, boasting three different endings and an additional hidden ending, plus plenty of unlockable bonuses for completionist players. It’s a simple and predictable enough plot to start with — timid-but-determined princess meets up with cocky leader of ragtag thieves, unlikely alliance forms to thwart inexplicably cruel invading dictator. The story is told through colorful and detailed still artwork, accompanied by very competent voice acting, with each battle being further prefaced by a Risk-like battle diagram showing the movements of the various armies. Curiously enough, though, the lush character art works to undercut the epic nature of the story. The enemy characters are simply too cute to convey too much of a threat, grinning mischievously at you from their big, adorable eyes. The units on the battlefield are simple and pleasing to the eye, undertaking their grand confrontations as a collection of colorful sprites. The game has a look that suggests simplicity and accessibility… which allows players to get completely blindsided by the fact that it demands some fairly complex tactical play.

From here, Yggdra Union starts to show off the unique game mechanics which separate it from the standard grid battler. Everything in the game is driven by a mysterious set of cards, which determine everything from your army’s movement and strength to the special skills it can carry into battle. Players must select a deck of cards at the start of each battle, and then choose which card to play on each turn as circumstances dictate. Proper card selection is critical to success, as the card chosen will affect every one of the player’s units on the grid; units must share a common pool of available movement spaces, and likewise all rely on the same card-based attack rating for any skirmishes they may get into. It seems simple at first — play a card; get into fights. However, the card-granted abilities are supplemented by a long list of other vital statistics, including terrain bonuses, special skills and feats, and a rock-paper-scissors advantage system that encompasses eight different types of weaponry. At first glance, it’s an incredibly daunting level of strategy that is belied by the game’s friendly and charming aesthetic.

Thankfully, for players who have a difficult time keeping track of the many statistics that make up the flow of battle, Yggdra Union summarizes each upcoming skirmish with a single symbol representing your chances. While success will obviously come much easier through careful planning and understanding of battle advantages, it’s possible to get used to the battle system just by watching the “Prediction Mark” to forecast victory. Furthermore, the game takes the time to ease you into each individual battle element in an extremely extended tutorial sequence, ensuring you’ve fought at least one battle with each new mechanic before allowing you to access the next. Soon, players will be making use of new skills and commanding their forces effectively through clever troop formations — the “Unions” alluded to in the title. The trick to Yggdra Union is that only one skirmish is allowed per turn of battle, but if units are placed in proper position relative to one another, they will follow each other into fights, allowing for much larger sequences involving multiple units on each side.

The skirmishes themselves allow the player to select real-time tactical choices, but otherwise play out automatically as the teams of sprites flail away at each other, steadily chipping away at each other’s numbers until only one side is left standing. It’s a system that’s been seen as far back as the original Defender of the Crown, though now it goes farther than simply putting units into offensive or defensive stances. Units’ individual feats will allow for various battle-shifting maneuvers, including critical hits, in-battle healing, equipment destruction, and other unique events which play out with a touch of extra spectacle and fanfare. Still, the majority of the fighting is done on auto-pilot, so Yggdra Union has politely included a fast-forward option to let you shorten any battles which are fairly straightforward.

Once a few battles are successfully behind you, Yggdra Union starts to ramp up the level of involvement and complexity. Early battles will see players going to war with a fixed hand of cards, units, and gear, but over time, the typical JRPG advancements start to appear — both your cards and your army units can be leveled up, weapons and gear can be altered prior to battle, and careful selection of skills is required to ensure your army’s prolonged survival against increasingly overwhelming odds. Statistical obsessives and bonus collectors ought to have plenty to look forward to in order to complete Yggdra’s long journey.

Our time with Yggdra Union has barely scratched the surface — the strategic elements look to be deep and complicated enough to warrant several hours of play in order to master them all. Still, if the game continues to progress as it has, Atlus could once again have a very solid title on its hands, making Yggdra Union a game to keep an eye on — especially for those of us who missed it the first time around.

Yggdra Union is scheduled to launch for PSP on September 16th, 2008, and is rated T for Teen.

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It’s not hard to pick Pure out of this year’s Disney Interactive video game line-up. Maybe it’s the grown-up look… maybe the inclusion of ATVs… maybe the conspicuous lack of Hannah Montana. Or, maybe, it’s simply because Pure is not quite like anything any video game publisher, let alone Disney, has ever produced.

Yes, Pure is an ATV racing game. But by borrowing the finest points of games like SSX, Pure is also an extreme sports game. As a Disney title, Pure is incredibly easy to pick up and play — but it’s also surprisingly deep. Find out what I mean after the jump.

Developed by Disney’s UK-based Black Rock Studios (formerly known as Climax Racing, and responsible for THQ’s MotoGP and the later ATV Offroad Fury games) Pure is first and foremost a solid ATV racer with spot-on controls, set in beautiful environments modeled on real-world locations. But as you’ve no doubt surmised from the screenshots above, those real-world locations don’t just feature the occasional hill — they drop you off the edge of cliffs that would make Evel Knievel himself jealous.

With all the air you’ll be getting, there’s plenty of time to pull off crazy tricks and rack up points during each decent; and as virtual skateboarders and snowboarders might expect, it is here that Pure’s first level of strategy is to be found. Do you go for broke, and risk chaining tricks together to create killer combos? Do you simply hold a trick midair for greater control? Or, over those smaller jumps where you’re only getting — let us say, one or two double-decker buses worth of hang time — do you play it safe and not trick out at all?

Due to a particularly intuitive trick control scheme where you simply press one of three face buttons and choose a direction on the analog stick to bust out death-defying stunts, those are pretty much the only questions you’ll be asking yourself midair — but considering how much your midair success influences your chances on the ground, there’s plenty of pressure to perform. Every time you land a trick, Pure gives you more precious boost (and, in the game’s Freestyle mode, fuel) that you can then immediately expend to gain a burst of speed.

Or not… because your boost meter doubles as your trick meter. The more boost you save, the more difficult, spectacular and rewarding stunts you’ll be able to perform — and the faster your boost will accordingly rise.

But then again, boost can also be used right before a jump to get even more air, to perform more tricks and gain even more boost. And the lovely part is while all this might seem like a tricky balancing act in print (and at a competitive level, it might be) the reality I encountered was that all the balancing is done behind the scenes, to ensure that the multitude of ways to use boost simply provide for multiple correct approaches to racing.

At the multiplayer press event where I picked up Pure for the very first time, I first tried to milk every jump, no matter how small, for a little bit of boost — and then use that boost to immediately catch up to the competition. It worked; but I soon found conserving boost for more powerful tricks worked just as well.

Unlike most racing games, Pure features sweeping changes in elevation throughout its real-world tracks, and if you properly preload the suspension, you can pull off tricks over even the smallest of jumps. But after watching me struggle to pull out of 11th place in an online match against fellow journalists, game director Jason Avent explained that as I became more experienced, I wouldn’t necessarily want to.

“If you’re flying through the air, your wheels aren’t on the ground. If your wheels aren’t on the ground, you’re not accelerating,” Avent said. “So what you want to try and do, when you get really good — and this really is an advanced thing — you need to know when to do tricks, when to get boost, when not to.”

By tapping the brake right before smaller jumps, he explained, you can gently hop right over them… and then while competitors are still in the air, haul ass to the finish line. It’s not always a winning strategy — “if you really want to go clear over maybe bumpy ground or three or four jumps to land on a downramp, you want to boost jump,” he said — but then again, no single technique really is. While arcade-y physics mean that players have far more leeway to react to the tracks in real time, there’s always an advantage to knowing the terrain — and in Pure, that terrain is three-dimensional.

When I had difficulty pulling around a particularly tight corner, I asked Avent for some advice. After he explained that the brake was my friend (and indeed it was; a quick tap help set up a nice, showy drift), he said something I won’t soon forget.

“There’s lots of ways of taking the corners,” he said, “but then you’ve actually got to think about sequences of corners… and you’ve got to think of the bumps and jumps in the track like they’re corners. You’ve got the two-dimensional left and right but also you’ve got the distance to deal with, which kind of adds an extra dimension to the racing. So you’ve kind of got a three-dimensional racing line.”

I’ve heard the phrase “add an extra dimension” more times than I care to count; but perhaps for the first time, the description was entirely apt — and gets right to the heart of what makes Pure different. Where other racers take place mainly on a plane, Pure draws on the conventions of extreme sports titles to render an experience that not only has 3-D graphics, but allows you to engage the terrain in 3-D as well, jumping over (and under) obstacles, taking drifts and drops in sequence while trying to stay on the dirt track.

While I wasn’t able to evaluate the single-player AI, and didn’t get quite enough hands-on time with the game’s non-standard racing modes to properly comment (Sprint is a slightly more realistic racing mode with smaller tracks and fewer jumps, while Freestyle pits players against their own fuel tanks, requiring constant trickery to maintain momentum as the precious liquid drains away) I had a great time finding the best routes, jumps and uses of boost in the game’s 16-player online racing mode; and was impressed by the wide array of licensed parts from which players can actually build (not just customize) their quads for style and performance.

Pure ships September 16th, and arrives in stores September 23rd, for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

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