Assassin’s Creed II Gets More Kristen Bell

Once again actress Kristen Bell answers the call of Ubisoft, reprising her role as adorable blonde woman in Assassin’s Creed II.

The adorable blonde woman in question is Lucy Stillman, the Abstergo employee with a dark secret of secretive darkness. Lucy plays an even bigger role in Assassin’s Creed II, and the former Heroes and Veronica Mars cast member was Ubisoft’s only choice to fill her shoes. Well, Patrice’s only choice.

“Kristen Bell is a talented actress that brought the depth and emotion necessary for the mysterious role of Lucy for the first Assassin’s Creed video game. She breathed life into her character in a way that deepened the gaming experience,” said Patrice Desilets, creative director for Assassin’s Creed II. “She did such a fantastic job for this character that, for me, Kristen Bell is Lucy Stillman and no one else can play that role.”

If I were Kristen Bell I wouldn’t be writing up this story, for one, and I’d probably be worried that I would be typecast as an adorable blonde woman until the end of time. She seems okay with it though.

“Being a part of the first Assassin’s Creed video game was an amazing experience. Video games is such a creative entertainment medium, and to be able to see and play myself as a video game character was surreal. As an actress, it’s both challenging and rewarding to play a complex character with this great mysterious background. I’m very happy to be Lucy once more, and I look forward to fans discovering more about her – they will be pleasantly surprised.”

I am always pleasantly surprised by Kristen Bell.

Episodes From Liberty City: Meet Armando, Enrique, And Brian

Rockstar’s latest clip for GTA: Episodes from Liberty City acquaints us with The Ballad of Gay Tony’s dynamic duo, Armando and Henrique, with a shot of The Lost and Damned’s Brian on the side.

While Armando and Henrique seem like a couple of nice guys, they aren’t the type of folks I’d run into in the social circles I travel in. Brian, on the other hand…well let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised to walk into my living room and find Brian or a reasonable facsimile thereof sacked out on my couch.

Ninety-Nine Nights II Hands On: Not A Lot New

Ninety-Nine Nights II, much like the original Xbox 360 game, is light on subtlety.

In both the original and the Feelplus-developed sequel players run around in a world of light and dark, smashing through shoulder-to-shoulder waves of goblins and demons to rack up absurdly-high combo counts.

My time spent with the sequel on the Tokyo Game Show floor last week gave me a chance to check out both a routine battlefield encounter and a super boss battle.

The combat feels fairly unchanged in Ninety-Nine Nights II. Players use two attack buttons, a jump and a dash button to chain together attacks, slicing through crowds of enemies and clearing screens as they try to keep their combo meter flowing.

As with the original, the individual enemies offer little challenge, instead it’s when these lesser characters amass to attack you as an army that a player has to be wary. While clearing a section of a battlefield can feel rewarding, over time doing the same sorts of combos over and over again to annihilate hundreds or thousands of enemies gets quite old.

This sequel also suffers from the invisible boundaries that plagued the original game. Often awaiting hordes of enemies will stand by patiently while you work to clear out their nearby brethren, not attacking until you walk across some sort of invisible trip line.

While N3 II seems to be promising a different look from its predecessor, I didn’t notice much of a difference. The night settings did little to change the feel of the game and the plentiful interior settings were so large, so cavernous that they might have well been outdoor settings.

So far, it doesn’t look like Ninety-Nine Nights II is trying very hard to improve on the formula copied for the original N3. For better or worse.

Heroes Over Europe Review: A Flying Shame

Let’s face it: When it comes to World War II-based games, it’s easy to skimp on plot. All you need are two words: “Kill Nazis” – there you go, instant storyline.

Heroes Over Europe pretty much falls into that category. The arcade-style air combat game loosely strings together 14 missions from the perspectives of three airmen – an American, a Brit and a New Zealander. However, aside from the overarching theme of beating back Hitler’s forces, the missions form no real coherent narrative. They’re just excuses to fly around shooting at stuff – and, sorry to say, not great excuses, at that.

Loved
Breaks Between Dogfighting: I found I enjoyed the game most when I was given something else to do besides chasing around yet another wave of Nazi fighter planes. For example, one mission puts you in a Mosquito, a twin-engine British bomber made of wood, and sends you out to disrupt celebratory Nazi festivities in Berlin. The mission ends with a very low-altitude escape through the streets of Berlin, like a Death Star run, Nazi-style. Another mission has you in a Swordfish bi-plane, using torpedoes to take out enemy warships. Unfortunately, though, there weren’t enough such diversions.

Ace Kills: When dogfighting, getting close to a target – and keeping him in your sights – initiates the chance for an “ace kill.” In close range, a bar around the reticule will charge, and, when ready, pressing a button slows down time for a few seconds and gives a zoomed-in view of the enemy plane. Most times, hitting the yellow weak spots gives you an instant kill. Although I didn’t use the feature that much – often it was easier to take the extra time to fire away from afar than to work my way up close, making the maneuver more a novelty than necessity – I’m placing it in the “Loved” category simply because, after about the 10th time trying to shoot down the final German ace pilot (an end-level boss who has about four times as much health as other enemies), I finally got him with an ace kill, ending his misery and mine.

Hated
Repetition: I enjoy hack-and-slash games, but not the kind where you face seemingly endless onslaughts of enemies over and over again. There were plenty of times when Heroes Over Europe felt like that, only in a plane. I would think I’d reached the end of a mission, only to hear someone say something to the effect of, “Hey, look! More bandits!” Moreover, there were times when I would complete an objective without shooting down all the enemy fighters; those that I didn’t kill would hound me in the next objective, which would have been fine, except that the game wouldn’t let me target the leftover fighters, so I couldn’t tell who was shooting at me.

Useless Wingmen: While I would see my wingmen pursuing enemy aircraft, I don’t think they ever actually shot anyone down (and there’s no way to command them to). During missions, I also could’ve done without the endless chatter – mostly comprising cheesy zingers and one-liners that only served to further the stereotype that all fighter pilots talk like Iceman and Maverick.

The Invisible Wall: I understand that, although the sky looks limitless on screen, it’s actually not – fly too far in one direction and you’re told to circle back while your plane automatically turns around. That’s fair. However, at a key point in one mission, in which I needed to kill off German fighters that were hounding a group of bombers I was escorting, the bombers and lone remaining Nazi plane were allowed to progress past the “invisible wall,” preventing me from following and completing the objective. This happened to me multiple times, forcing me to purposely crash or restart from the last checkpoint to finish the mission.

Cutscenes: The graphics overall were unremarkable, but the cutscenes – basically, a camera zooming in on hand-drawn stills with melodramatic voiceovers from the various pilot characters – looked to me about the quality of what you’d find on the Nintendo DS. There were also scenes taken from old black-and-white newsreel footage, but they seemed fairly superfluous.

Online: Hello? Is this thing on? To be honest, I didn’t play this one online – the times I tried to, there was no one else on Xbox Live playing it. That can’t be good.

I’m not sure if there was much anticipation for the release of Heroes Over Europe, so perhaps there’s not too much disappointment that the result is a big, tall glass of “meh.” With just 14 missions – and checkpoints that are frequent enough that you won’t lose much progress during do-overs – the single-player mode is short enough that you can get through the game in a few days. With a severe lack of interest online, though, the replay factor is pretty low.

If you’re desperate for an arcade-style air-combat game, Heroes Over Europe is bland, but not unplayable. For anyone else, there are far better options.

Heroes Above Europe was developed by Transmission Games and published by Ubisoft for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on Sept. 15 and for Windows PC on Sept. 22. Retails for $49.99 USD and $39.99 USD for the PC version. Played entire single-player campaign mode on medium difficulty. Tested hard difficulty. Was unable to find anyone to play against online.

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Witcher Developer To Be Acquired By Polish PC Company [Update]

Not all the in-game boobs in the world can save The Witcher developer CD Projekt from apparently being acquired by Polish computer company Optimus. But this might not be a bad thing. It could be a very good thing.

Polish site Polygamia reports that a nearly defunct public PC assembly company Optimus S.A. is going to buy out CD Projekt. From the sound of Polygamia’s story, it sounds like this buyout is to enable CD Projekt, a private company, to enter the stock market as a publicly traded company without the necessary formalities.

The owners of CD Projekt, it seems, will then be the owners of the new company, which will then be traded on the stock market. An official announcement is expected, and Kotaku is following up with CD Projekt.

Update: According to a CD Projekt spokesperson, the company has signed a letter of intent — not an agreement. “In short,” the spokesperson explains, “this is a kind of share swap between Polish stock company Optimus S.A. and CD Projekt Investment (which is the holding company owner of CDP Publishing, CDP RED, GOG.com, Metro and Porting House).” The end result result is that the shareholders of CD Projekt Investment will become the owners of Optimus S.A. “Since Optimus is a stock market company,” the spokesperson states, “CD Projekt will in fact go public and have access to all stock instruments. Ultimately, this means money for future development of the whole company.”

Optimus kupi CD Projekt? [Ploygamia via GI via VG247]

EA Finds a Home for Spore Movie Project

Electronic Arts and Twentieth Century Fox have reached a deal to produce a movie based on Spore, with the director of the animated film “Ice Age” assigned to the project, Variety reports.

“I’m always looking for unique worlds to go to in animation,” said the director, Chris Wedge. “From every perspective – visually, thematically and comedically – the world of ‘Spore’ provides the potential to put something truly original on the screen.”

Variety says Patrick O’Brien, of Electronic Arts’ EA Entertainment division, will executive produce the picture with Lucy Bradshaw, the vice president of Spore developer Maxis.

Spore joins a number of other EA titles that have reached deals with Hollwood, including The Sims (Fox); and Army of Two (Universal). Dante’s Inferno, Dead Space and Mass Effect also have been set up for production.

EA sets up ‘Spore’ at Fox [Variety]

Sleuths Dig Up Microtransaction Language in Old Republic TOS

The terms of service agreement for Star Wars: The Old Republic, included in its recently announced Game Testing program, mention both “points” and a “game store,” possibly tipping off plans for microtransactions.

According to DarthHater, the terms (above) state

:• You acknowledge and agree that all points acquired during the Game Program are non-refundable and have no monetary value.

• You acknowledge and agree that all items acquired for points during the Game Program are non-refundable and non-tradable.

• You acknowledge and agree that [BioWare] reserves the right to add or remove points to your account at any time and without warning.

• You acknowledge and agree that [BioWare[ reserves the right to change/add/remove points rewarded in the Game store at any time and without warning.

Sounds pretty definite that some sort of Old Republic game store is at least being pondered for The Old Republic. This is language for a testing program of course, and DarthHater points out BioWare could be testing out how the system works by deliberately glitching it, thus requiring this kind of protection in the TOS.

But, DarthHater points out, nothing confirms that the currency used in this store is pegged to anything of real world value. They point out the TOS' statement that Bioware retains the right to "add or remove points from your account without warning," whereas Microsoft's Xbox Live TOS only reserves the right to "cancel suspend or ... limit access" if fraud is suspected. "This would suggest that these [Bioware] points are connected to purely in-game actions, more similar to “gold”, “isk” or “Credits” then something purchased with real money.”

Either way, it’s an interesting find. It’s still worth reminding that this is not final code at all, just a testing program.

Could Star Wars: The Old Republic have BioWare Bucks? [Darth Hater via MMORPG.com]

Does New Super Mario Bros. Wii Really Play The Game For You?

Nintendo’s hand-holding feature for New Super Mario Bros. Wii, dubbed “demo play,” may not be as forgiving as we’d originally thought. One official description of the helpful option throttles back the level-clearing capabilities of demo play.

The Nintendo of Europe product page for New Super Mario Bros. Wii, spotted by Siliconera, says the “dynamic help system” will allow players to “access a mode showing how a level can be completed if you are stuck,” which sounds more like helpful tutorial and less like you’re outsourcing platforming skill to the Wii.

That description sounds a bit different from the way Shigeru Miyamoto pitched it to USA Today, saying “if a player is experiencing an area of difficulty, this will allow them to clear troubled areas and take over when they’re ready.”

Going back to the NOE version, it adds that “the best thing about this mode is that you are free to jump into the action you’re watching on screen at any time!” Which, err… sounds a lot more like what Miyamoto said in the first place.

Maybe the European product page’s description had some specific details lost in translation and we’re splitting hairs. My personal hope is that the automatically playing version is the accurate one and that Nintendo of America will get back to us with clarification soon.

Multiplayer mayhem galore in new Mario adventure! [Nintendo of Europe via Siliconera]

How To Rock In Brutal Legend Multiplayer

We’ve seen so much about Brutal Legend’s single player mode, but what about the multiplayer? This Xbox 360 tutorial walks you through the basics of rock combat.

Honestly I’ve been so excited about getting my hands on the single-player game in Brutal Legend that I’ve not given multiplayer more than a passing though. Luckily for us it seems like Doublefine put much more into creating the multiplayer mode, which looks like it might be good for a giggle or two.

The Incredible Machine Incredibly Returns

The grandfather of the physics-based puzzle genre has come home to roost, as co-creator Jeff Tunnell regains the rights to The Incredible Machine, repackaging and re-releasing the classic series on GoG.com.

Designed and coded by Kevin Ryan and produced by Jeff Tunnell, The Incredible Machine took PC gaming by storm in the early 90’s, winning over casual and hardcore gamers alike with its challenging, Rube Goldberg-esque physics puzzles. The convoluted path the franchise took to get back into Tunnell’s hands is right in line with the convoluted nature of The incredible Machine’s puzzles. The rights were lost in limbo after parent company Sierra scrapped publisher Dynamix in 2001, with Sierra then being scrapped by Vivendi Universal three years later. Now the property is squarely in the hands of PushButton Labs, a company co-founded by the game’s producer, Jeff Tunnell, who couldn’t be happier.

“TIM was a genre defining franchise and I could not be happier to have the property available to PushButton Labs. I’m very excited to see what we can do with it moving forward.”

While we imagine what sort of greatness will come of the franchise in the future, we can explore its past today. PushButton Labs has packaged up the bulk of the series into one giant, Windows Vista and XP compatible package, available for $9.99 today through CD Projekt’s GoG.com.

I will be staying far, far away from this re-release, as I fear for my free time.