Shocking coffee spilling early morning revelations occur as Nintendo offers up the first video glimpse of Mistwalker’s The Last Story – also known as one of two Japanese Wii RPG’s that need a fancy North American date.
Despite the long wait for footage, the game’s still carrying a 2010 release date for Japan, and you can catch a peak at a very fluid looking battle system after the break.
It only takes a few quick minutes to be bitten by and become smitten with Little King’s Story. Words like magical and charming get tossed around plenty with videogames, and certainly I’m as guilty as anyone in generating hyperbole when the right title sways me. This time around I want to suggest that both those words apply, insomuch as Cing offers an earnestly heartfelt passageway into the storybook premise, preying on the lingering traces of childhood imagination by not drowning the player in cuteness. It’s a fine line, a complete matter of opinion, a general sense of using only so much narrative tradition as is required to feed the play of the game itself, and allowing space for results and rewards that help the narrative and play blossom together to put an earnest smile on the player’s face.
A young boy follows a pack of pastel colored rats into a ragged kingdom, sparsely populated by a handful of idol subjects and a few cows. It’s a tiny Kingdom for a tiny King, captured in scenes of colored pencil sketches that curiously remind me of the shorts the National Film Board substituted for cartoons during my early morning Canadian television years. The result is an introduction I immediately wanted to show to others, and I certainly dragged more than a few people to watch it, after taking so long to finally dive into the game myself.
Like plenty of others, I allowed Little King’s Story to pass me by when it originally released for the Wii late last year. I’m at a loss for a good reason aside from the sheer volume of titles vying for attention, but recently I’ve wondered if the cute aesthetic played into it – that the visual style that proved love at first sight didn’t punch through the box art hard enough to mark the importance of the title.
Despite the dismal sales associated with third-party Wii releases, the game is already on plenty of must play lists, and all I can do is add a voice to the choir, affirming the game’s worthiness of that praise, and perhaps alleviating a bit of guilt for not having done so sooner.
Soldiers scramble through the ruins of a forgotten yet familiar city, finding footholds in crumbling buildings as swarms of genetic mutations fly across the skyline like scurrying schools of fish darting through deeper waters. In the foreground, futuristic helicopters and mobile infantry patrol broken stretches of freeway, filling the screen with missiles and bullets as Isa and Kachi make a desperate break for freedom.
Exactly why Isa and Kachi are on the run is unclear, along with the motives of the shadow organization pursuing them – staffed by ominous assassins who speak with the comfort of established relationships that forever remain a mystery to the player.
Way back in the dark days when I wondered when Sin & Punishment 2 would release and how much of a push Nintendo would give it, there were a few people who said –
“What do you expect them to do for a niche title? Give it a television ad?”
That was fair game back then too, because there was zero chance of something like that happening. And yet, if you continue on after the break, you can catch the television spot reminding you that the game releases this Sunday.
Incredibly strange amazing days – if I actually see this on tv during the week my head might explode. Has there ever been an ad for a Treasure game on television before?
Also, touche Nintendo, touche – though you should have asked me for a quote for the spot too.
Since it’s mentioned with enthusiasm in our video for Conduit 2, I thought I should post an image of PDP’s Headset – which at the moment is being talked of as a great peripheral for High Voltage’s fps sequel, but I’m more immediately thinking of Monster Hunter Tri when I look at.
The headset is due out in October for $24.99. I would have posted this last week when it was more topical, but because the headset tethers gamers to the Wii via the USB cord I wanted to find out how long said cord was, which I’m now told is over 10 feet.
More specs after the break.
On the list of weekend surprises that go down in history, add Nintendo sending an email to remind me about the imminent arrival of Sin & Punishment 2 – Star Successor – June 27! Dig it!
The Big N even entitled the email “prepare to be punished,” but chances are many of you have the same email and I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Still, I’m elated to see the push for a long awaited Treasure title, including the game’s website, which you can check out here.
I’ve vehemently hated the wait for this release, but this is one hell of a sweet game to get just as the E3 buzz is calming down.
Finding Kirby’s Epic Yarn playable on the show floor after hearing the announcement of the title at Nintendo’s Press Conference was a complete joy. Even the length of the lines could not deter me from a demo playthrough, and so I adamantly waited in line for my turn.
As proof that you never know who you might be standing next to at E3, I asked the man next to me if he wanted to join me with the game only to discover that he was out of Nintendo’s top game composers, credited with having worked on quite a few memorable titles.
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