Pearl Harbor Trilogy – 1941: Red Sun Rising is the first title in a trilogy of air-combat action games for the Wii. In the first episode, which is available on WiiWare™ for 700 Wii Points, players are dropped into the cockpit of famous World War II aircraft and thrown into some of the most contested air battles of the Pacific Theatre such as Pearl Harbor, Wake Island and Guadalcanal.

The game has been rated T for Teen (Violence) by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), PEGI 12 (Europe), USK 12 (Germany) and AGCB PG Mild Violence (Australia and New Zealand).

For those who don’t know (which would have included me until roughly 24 hours ago), Battleforge is online RTS that is doing some interesting things in the genre. Taking inspiration from MMOs as well as other fantasy, RPG and RTS titles, the game is not going to have a monthly subscription of any kind, but will support micro transactions to give you more variety in the units you can deploy. There are to be 200 ‘digital cards’ that can be played, and users can purchase additional packs, as well as buy and sell unwanted ones on the built in auction site.

Concerned that this would lead to some balancing issues, I was quickly informed that EA would not sell individual cards, and that no matter how many you have available, you will only be able to take 20 into any given battle. The extensive open beta has allowed for some fine tuning with regard to making sure that there aren’t any over-powered creatures, and it should present a fairly balanced experience.

Another area it seems to be innovating in is the pacing. Because there’s very little resource management, and you don’t have to build up bases before deploying your cards, matches are pretty action packed and over quite quickly. Depending on who I asked, I got different answers over the standard length of game with the marketing guy claiming that if matches are longer than 3-15 minutes then “someone’s doing something wrong”, while the lead developer was keen to stress that for well matched players, the game would present a significantly longer playtime, which should be a relief to old school strategy fans.

And those are exactly the types who they should be targeting. The game does not look like its aiming at the casual demographic at all, with a typically ‘dungeons and dragons’ vibe to the fantasy setting, which unfortunately borders on clichéd judging from some of the folklore created for the universe. It’s also going to be PC only because, like many serious gamers, the developers believe that consoles are not at a stage where they can do the genre justice.

Graphically, it’s looking rather nice as these screenshots attest. Apparently it will work on a pretty wide range of PCs, as well as being optimised for the newest version of Direct X. The PCs we were using weren’t the fastest around, but it played smoothly and looked nice enough, with some especially nice effects on the spells and bigger monsters.

Now, for full disclosure’s sake I should point out that I’m not a hardcore strategy gamer, so some of these potential pitfalls may be completely irrelevant to you. Nonetheless, I do have a couple of concerns about the game. Firstly its hardcore fantasy setting doesn’t feel particularly welcoming to an outsider of the genre, and despite the new gameplay dynamics the whole thing doesn’t feel particularly far removed from genre mates such as Warcraft 3 and the Age of Empires series. There’s clearly some very clever unit balancing at work (and a very neat training area where you can test your newly acquired cards against any range of enemies for tactical fine-tuning), but for the casual player it’s likely to be just too much effort to get a good experience out of it.

For the hardcore, despite the designer’s comments, I’m concerned that reducing so much of the build up play that’s always been so important to the genre might cause a little frustration. It seems entirely possible that by trying to appease both the opposing hardcore and casual markets, Battleforge may end up appealing to neither and ending up as a limited niche title.

But from my brief playtime (the former World Champion Red Alert player was there – I didn’t want to embarrass myself!), it’s clearly too early to say whether or not these concerns are founded or not.

It’s out in the UK in 8 days time and I’ve been promised a review copy, so assuming it works on my slightly-long-in-the-tooth PC, I should have my more considered thoughts on the title at a later date.

Before I start, I should point out that it’s not just the cosmetic improvement to the console that it appears to be. Under the bonnet, there’s a lot of significant improvements that you won’t see in current DS games: the clock speed is doubled from 67mhz to 133mhz, memory is upped from 4mb to 16mb and it has 256mb of flash storage memory, where the previous console had none. Then there are some obvious changes: the Gameboy Advance port has gone, and it boasts a 0.3 megapixel camera – which really won’t be a selling point on the surface unless you’re never owned a digital camera (and if you have a phone from the last five years, the chance is you already have a better one in your pocket!)

So what use is a faster DS if it only plays the same software as the old one? Well, the reason is that in the long term it won’t. The DSi uses that internal memory to download games to it from the DSi store, which works in a similar way to the Wii Shop Channel, right down to using the same fictional currency. Right now there’s not a lot there – a web browser and a Warioware game aside, but there’s real potential and Nintendo themselves have said that it will consider whether to phase original DS software out depending on how the new version sells.

You could be cynical and say that this new version only exists to stop the rampant piracy around, and there’s probably some truth in that. If you currently use your DS Lite to play homebrew games, or run old LucasArts point and click adventure games, you’ll want to steer clear of the upgrade. This new version will take firmware updates like the PSP or Wii, which could very easily see your console bricked or locked out if you try to play in the way Nintendo doesn’t want you to.

But anyway, on with my impressions. Firstly, it does feel a lot nicer than the DS Lite – this is mainly thanks to the new matte coating, which unlike the Lite’s glossy finish doesn’t leave fingerprint smudges all over the place. The shoulder buttons now stick out a little, which is a welcome change, making them feel a little more tactile, while the remainder of the buttons remain the same. Both screens are now a little larger as well, and while this seems like a welcome idea, it does make the jagged edges of the current crop of DS titles that bit more obvious. The game I tried was Mario Kart, and in truth I almost preferred the way it felt on my trusty ol’ DS Lite.

The multimedia functions it boasts are either a lot of fun or completely baffling depending on where you’re sitting. I was able to take photos of myself and friends, and manipulate them in all manner of ways using the built in software. This could be as simple as bending and stretching images, scribbling all over them or blending two faces into one. There’s also some neat facial recognition software built in, which promises to do things like adding comedy features in the anotmically correct place, or comparing two people to guess whether they’re related. The image quality is a little patchy as both cameras offer only 0.3 megapixels (640×480 photographs), but I’m interested to see what games developers have up their sleeve with camera integration. Currently it’s a fun little diversion, but little more.

The cost still remains a bugbear. Even with its improved specs, a £150 retail price is quite hard to swallow. The PSP has better specifications and manages to retail cheaper than that, and you can even pick up the massively more powerful Xbox 360 for £20 less. I’d advise holding off on launch, but keep an eye on things, because as ever the exclusive software will inevitably be the deal breaker.

The DSi is out in Europe on April 3^rd.

Pure - New sports off-road action game for PS3, Xbox 360 & PC

Pure is a new action sports off-road video game due for release on 25th September 2008 for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

The much acclaimed and anticipated release of Pure - the computer game has been developed by Black Rock Studio, Disney Interactive Studios’ award-winning development studio based in Brighton and the quad racer and film director, Wes Miller.

Pure features vertigo-inducing massive aerial jumps and delivers heart-pounding experiences unique to the genre.  It has recently won the title of best racing game for the Game Critics Awards: Best of E3 2008.

The press release states that Pure takes off-road action sports to a new level. Featuring vertigo-inducing massive aerial jumps and spectacular airborne tricks in photo-realistic real-world locations all over the globe, Pure delivers heart-pounding experiences unique to the genre.

The video trailers make the game look awesome & we can’t wait to get our hands on a copy.

For more information, log on to www.purevideogame.com.

Playable on the game are the first three movie adventures including, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Thinking of the most recent film (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), could there be another Lego Indiana Jones game released soon, or a Lego Indiana Jones game that includes all four of them like the Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga game.

It is the next game in the Lego Video game series and I hope it turns out to be as good as the previous games including Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga.

The game is priced around £25 and £30 and will be released on the 6/6/08, only 8 days to go.