October 2006 Issue

[rickjames]

The writers of the Gaming Chronicle will add their video game impressions, reviews, previews, and general opinion columns below this post.

(If you are interested in writing for the Chronicle, then click on the groups link in the header. Then chose the Chronicle usergroup, and then click join.)

[rickjames]

360 News:


Chance to play Gears of War (October 4th)

[danizduhman]

Get Ready for the Game Console Wars Elizabeth Millard, newsfactor.com
Tue Oct 17, 11:31 AM ET



Let the games begin. Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony are gearing up for the end-of-year buying season, and the Internet is abuzz with predictions about which next-generation console will win the hearts and wallets of gamers.


So far, it appears that Nintendo will have the edge with its new Wii system, which will be shipping in November. Major games retailer GameStop noted that preorders of the Wii system exhausted its limited quota in just a few hours. Nintendo intends to ship at least four million units worldwide, the company noted, compared to the two million PlayStation 3 units that will be available from Sony.

However, Sony is expected to make major announcements soon about which games will launch with its system, and, more notably, about the features of an online service that will compete with Microsoft's Xbox Live gaming service.



As the holiday season looms, it is possible that Sony will have trouble competing with Microsoft and Nintendo because of the lower number of available units, said Forrester analyst Paul Jackson.

Even if consumers want a PlayStation 3, seeing only a Wii or an Xbox on the shelves might make them rethink their decision, he said.

"There could be lots of little Johnnies horribly disappointed on Christmas morning if they don't get a PlayStation 3," he said. "But that's where Nintendo can do quite well because parents will buy a Wii just to have something for the kids."

Tech Time

Past the holidays, Sony might still have a hard time catching up, Jackson added. The difficulty for Sony is that the PlayStation 3 has advanced components, such as a Blu-ray drive, that could create production delays for Sony.

The advanced technology has also boosted the PlayStation 3's price above that of its competitors, Jackson noted, and that could have a definite impact on sales.

"You have a multicore processor in there that can calculate landing projections on the sun," said Jackson. "That component, and a few others, are in short supply, and they all have to come together to make that unit. Sony is actually stretching the boundaries of today's production standards."

Nintendo and Microsoft, on the other hand, have been using off-the-shelf components that are abundant, Jackson noted.

"The Xbox 360 and Wii aren't the most cutting-edge because there isn't the complexity that PlayStation 3 has," he said. "But they'll be on the shelves."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20061017/bs_nf/47029

[danny12]

PS2 Review: Kingdom Hearts 2
* Warning if you havnt' played Kingdom Hearts 1 some of this won't make sense*

[img]
http://img280.imageshack.us/img280/3687/kh2fw7.jpg


My review is split into these sections.

Story
Gameplay
Graphics
Replayability
Faults
My Opinion
Final Score

Story: We begin the story with the song "Santucary" playing in the background showing a compilation of old and new video footage clips. Eventually we begin our story properly introducing us to the young man name Roxas and his three friends who all live in the world of Twlight Town. The 4 youung friends are being accused of stealing photographs from the townsfolk. The person behind the allagations is the town's self appointed disciplinarian Seifer. I can't really reveal much more to the store without spoiling it to you but let me assure you folks Sora DOES return.

Gameplay: Starting gameplay as Roxas scared me at first as i thought to myself "Where does Sora come into this?". However after the first two hours of taxing to say the least gameplay things pick up drastically well and soon things are back to normal. A problem which arose constantly in the last game and almost ruined it entirley was the camera. I can now assure you that the camera problems have been fixed. In fact it was a delight to play this game with such a good camera system always being in the right place at the right time. Lots of new features this time around with one of those being the Reaction Commands. Similar to the Resident Evil 4 style pressing Triangle at the correct second will unleash a special attack or defensive move which may lead to more moves causing massive damage to the charecter you are fighting. With so many different moves and so many different enemies to try them on its almost worth buying the game just to see how many different ones you can get. Another new feature included in KH2 is the drive form. This is whenever Sora can fuse with either Donald or Goofy to form a much more powerful form. Goofy's will give Sora two keyblades and enhance his strength vastly whilst Donald as you would expect will enhance your magic to great lengths. The excellent thing about these forms is that every time you level them up regular Sora will learn their abilities too which will come in very handy later in. The only form i can reveal to you which is recieved very early but is actually one of the best forms once enhanced is the Valor Form. The qualities which made the first game great have made this game fantastic and more. Many more minigames from the first game are a welcome sight and with Jimminy returning so is his Journal which just cries out to be fully completed 100% you never know what it could earn you.............. Brand new worlds along with old worlds make this story one of the most interesting stories ever to be told in a videogame. I have said it before and i must stress this again Disney and Square Enix may seem like an odd match but trust me it is the best pair up since Hideo Kojima and Konami. The best new feature perhaps in the game is the inclusion of Limit Attacks. This is where you and a buddy initiate a special attack depending on who was picked for the attack. For example pick Donald's attack Fantasia and his Staff turns into a Magic Firing Gun shooting at different enemies for as long as the attack lasts whilst Sora goes around attacking enemies with his Keyblade. Goofy also has one called Knocksmash where Sora throws him at enemies causing major damage to them thanks to Goofy's high attack power. These attacks can cause major damage if used correctly but if not can be a waste of magical power. The Gummi ship has retained its basic system of travelling from Kingdom Hearts, but major changes have been made. For instance, now in the Gummi world map, the player does not pick the world the player wants to travel to by moving the cursor to it. Instead, the player must control the Gummi Ship from a top-down view and fly to the worlds the player wishes to enter. These worlds are not open from the beginning as the player must unlock the routes that separates Sora from them. When the player enters these routes, a new level loads and the player will be controlling the ship from a third-person point of view. Once a route has been unlocked, the player is free to travel to that world without having to battle enemy ships again The new improved system of gummi ship flying is incredibly stable and much improved from the very boring system that plauged the original game. As the Heartless come back to haunt you bigger and badder than ever two brand new sets of enemies come to haunt you.



Graphics: The graphics are just plain awesome. Hollow Bastion's ruined castle standing in the distance, Twilight Town's sun, the heart-shaped moon in the final world, everything looks downright amazing. Beast's Castle, the Land of Dragons, Agrabah, nothing feels the same. The enemies each have their own unique qualities, some are overweighted, others are slim and agile, some are graveyards, and others can shift their shape into swords, shields, or winged creatures. In Port Royal, the world for Disney's Pirates of the Carribbean, it was hard to tell that those characters were pixels and not real. The cutscenes there were like watching the movie itself, reduced by only 2%, yes, two percent, of its graphics. Tron's world is no different. Great graphics grow, consume it, such as its nature. Then again, don't judge everything by Graphics. The dubbing was great from Japanese to English, don't get me wrong, but the mouth movements were flawed in the Pride Lands, where Japanese dialogue was evidently much longer. You could tell the difference, but nonetheless, the game has great graphics.


Replayablity: Almost garunteed is the fact that you WILL need to play this game again at least once to see everything fully. For example to get the secret ending you will need to complete the entire Jimminy Cricket journal on Standard Mode and just completeing the game on Proud Mode. This expands the game massivley making it much longer than the original which was very long too. Also with an abundance of mini games, hidden bosses and items to find the game will take at least 1 week of solid non stop play to finish.

Faults: However as a reviewier i do have to point out the bad things as much as i dislike doing it with such excellence as Kingdom Hearts 2. The one thing which did stand out in the original game was the seemingly button mashing sequence. Unfortunatly this hasn't been improved much just altered really with special attacks and combo's to keep things interesting. However in the last game you needed summons and magic etc.. to help you out when things got tough in boss battles therefore reducing the buton bashing a lot more. This isn't the case in KH2 as the bosses are somewhat easier therefore making them destoryed much easier by just button mashing your way to victory which isn't helped by the drive forms. Also the stories seem to be less important as the last games as in KH1 ALL the worlds had ties with the main story whereas hear there is very little to no links to the worlds therefore making it much harder to keep interested. Don't get me wrong this is one of the most gripping stories on PS2 its just not as brilliant as the original stories were.

My Opinion: With the original being such a masterpiece this game had a lot to live up to and it done so brilliantly with almost everything from the original improved 10x better.

Final Score: With such an improvement over the original everything that made the original game good makes this game excellent and should be an essential buy for your ps2 collection. 10/10

[danizduhman]

Sony battery woes to burn deep hole in profits

by Daniel Rook




TOKYO (AFP) - Sony Corp has warned that its flammable battery crisis would burn a deep hole in its profits this year in a major blow to foreign chief executive Howard Stringer's efforts to revive the business.



Sony more than halved its operating profit forecast for the year to next March to 50 billion yen (421 million dollars) -- about one-quarter of last year's levels and down from 130 billion previously forecast.

The electronics giant said as many as 9.6 million Sony-made batteries could now be recalled at a cost of 51 billion yen due to fears they might catch fire.

Sony also told investors Thursday to brace for heavy losses in its games division as a result of a price cut for its delay-hit PlayStation 3 which faces fierce competition from cheaper rival consoles from Microsoft and Nintendo.

The success of the PS3 is considered vital to a revival at Sony, which under Stringer is in the midst of major restructuring including 10,000 job cuts.

Sony also cut its full-year net profit target to 80 billion yen from 130 billion but left its revenue target unchanged at 8.23 trillion yen.

Sony chief financial officer Nobuyuki Oneda apologised for the battery defects and said the company could not be sure the costs would not rise.

"As for the exact number I cannot say for sure but we have consulted manufacturers and this is our best estimate for now," he told reporters.

And he said Toshiba Corp, which is recalling 830,000 Sony-made batteries, had informed the company it was considering requesting compensation.

The group predicted "a significant improvement in profitability" next year as it puts the battery problems behind it and starts to recoup the huge costs of developing the PlayStation 3.

The troubles have hit Sony just as a painful restructuring drive had appeared to be paying off at the iconic company that brought the world the Walkman but fell behind rivals like Apple with its hit iPod music player.

Even so Mizuho Investors Securities analyst Mitsuhiro Osawa said the outlook for Sony's electronics business was positive in the medium term.

But he added: "We remain cautious on the prospects for the game business, due to an expected slow start-up of PS3, which will make it harder for the company to recover its huge investments quickly."

Welsh-born Stringer scored an early victory after reporting unexpectedly robust full-year profits in April driven by rising sales of flat-panel televisions but his honeymoon with investors has come to an abrupt end.

Sony shares fell 20 yen to 4,790 on Wednesday and will be in sharp focus when trading resumes Thursday following the after-hours profit warning.

At one point Sony saw as much as 15 percent of its market value wiped out after the battery problems surfaced in August, undermining its reputation for quality and setting back its recovery from a profit slump.

"The management team regards this situation as quite grave and severe. It is true that we did not explain the situation adequately," senior vice president Takao Yuhara told reporters.

Last month Sony announced a global replacement program for Sony-made batteries used by other laptop makers and on Tuesday recalled 90,000 power packs for its own Vaio computers across Japan and China.

There is also concern about prospects for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) after Sony last month slashed the price in Japan by one-fifth, preparing for a dogfight against cheaper games consoles from rivals Microsoft and Nintendo.

Sony was forced to delay the global launch of the PS3 by six months until this November and more recently pushed back the rollout in Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Africa and Australasia until March.

Sony still aims to ship six million PS3 consoles globally in the fiscal year to March 2007 and still has a solid customer base, particularly in Japan.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061019/tc_afp/japanitelectronicscompanye arningssony

[Holymonkey]

FIFA is one of the biggest franchises in the world as it controls all world football so we expect them to know enough of it to produce a good game. The core basics are pick a team and play a season. Right, understand? Lets begin the review:

Gameplay

The key conponent to any game is the gameplay, thats why we buy them. Well EA hasn't disappointed in this installment. In fact the gameplay of FIFA 07 should make any hardened football fan cry in awe as if their team has won the World Cup. So the basics of FIFA is to play football and EA reall have made the beautiful game beautiful in this sense. In previous FIFAs the ball usually just oes straight to the next player. Not anymore..... EA has spent most of the development time focusing on the ball physics and it shows. The ball moves precisley like it should with every second. If a player hits it with the wrong angle of their foot the ball isn't going to go straight, it will instead react to it and go somewhere else. The ball physics have a huge impact on the game giving extra tension with you anticipating every move and being caught in surprise when a move goes wrong. The AI of the players has really improved since FIFA 06. All players will try and judge what you may try to do next even before you think of the plan making it much harder to reach those 10 - 0 scorelines you could quite easily get in FIFA 06. Instead you'll be lucky to get a second goal. The Keepers react as they should and try not to catch every ball like before but instead parry it or kick it away in a hurry. Also if a player makes a mistake a small cutscene will play where you see the disappointment on their faces as they are jeered by the crowd or hassled by fellow team mates

SFX

One word sums this up.......excellent. The cheer of the crowd, the runnig commentary, it all blends together so well. The roars of the crownd make it seem you are at a live match with every move cheered or jeered by the crowd. The comentary is flawless, every move reported, every mistake commented on and analysed by the commentators. However I feel the commentators need a bit more life in them, a bit more emotion to really give the game that extra edge.

Graphics

The graphics are okay. Nothing special. They seem similar to FIFA 06 wih some players still having faces that look nothig like them in real life. The crowd itself still seems to be one big blob just rising up and down continously which is also disappointing. Overall EA could have done a lot better with this.

Overall score 8/10

by Arandeep Suddi aka Holymonkey