Pro Evo 10: No game face required

After the fun I had making my ‘game face’ in Fight Night 4 I’ve been reading up on what improvements we’ll be treated to in the next installment of Pro Evo (thats PES10 to you newcomers and Pro Evolution Soccer to the console philistines amongst you). So, will there be anything similar to game face in the next Evo?

No, but there’s a good reason for this: the developers at Konami have concentrated their efforts on overhauling the graphics and lighting to improve the realism of the gameplay. Last year’s game gave the graphics a touch up for the HD consoles but as you can see from the screenshots this year the detail has been taken to the next level.

Some of the improved detail is no doubt due to the expansion of the development team into an international unit rather than the solely Japanese squads of the past, giving Konami access to more expertise and technology. The key difference visually is the inclusion of realistic in-game lighing which includes facial and object shadow. This allows for the creation of near perfect likenesses of the beautiful games’ best – and sometimes ugliest – players. It also means if they were to attempt to integrate a ‘game face’-style system into the game, us punters might come off looking a little worse for wear.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Edited: August 2nd, 2009

Fight Night 4: Bring your Game Face

The latest installment of the best boxing video game ever is settling in to life at my house nicely. There has been some jealousy and resentment towards our new arrival – mainly from ‘UFC Undisputed’ – who feels like he’s being replaced but he moaned about me playing favourites with Pro Evo so it’s to be expected. All the hype beforehand centred around the addition of Iron Mike to the franchise, meaning that for the first time in console history the legendary Tyson can take on Ali for the G.O.A.T acronym.

To be honest, just having the unique skills of Tyson in a game for the first time since ‘Punch Out’ (that’s if you don’t count Balrog or those crappy SNES Tyson games) gives the heavyweight division more variety. Ali has been featured on EA games for a while now since they released ‘Foes of Ali’, a concept game where you battled with Ali’s contemporaries.

For me the best part of any game is the career mode – it’s fun bashing the snot out of your mates but it grows tiresome quickly, especially if its one sided. Now that Evo has 2 career modes, ‘Master League’ and ‘Become a Legend’, the stakes have been raised to new heights. Fight Night has its own offering with the usual training scenarios, customisable fighters and control over your rise up the ranks. The difference this time is that you can put your own face on your fighter thanks to a new innovation: ‘Game Face’. There’s nothing that makes a computer game more addictive than realism, and a boxing game where you see your own mug get pounded is the biggest incentive to up your skills.

Game Face is a fairly simple process of uploading your photos to your EA Sportsworld account (you gots to have one of these to play online), editing the image via the online instructions/templates, then saving your snaps to download to your PS3 or Xbox later. After having a go with my own lovely mug I began to explore the true potential of this advance – basically, you can manually create any gladiator you feel the gamemakers have overlooked. As I entered the realms of fantasy and wondered which legendary fighters I could reanimate with this nifty tool my mind wandered over the great names of boxing past. Prince Nas, Steve Collins, Benn, Eubank all raised a patriotic nod of approval but I wanted someone more topical, an epic battle between two titans in their prime in 2009.

So I set about creating the fight of summer 2009. The trash talking had started months ago and it was time to put these two in the ring. Of course I’m talking of a rematch between Perez Hilton and Will.I.am, the most talked about fight of the year. After picking out a couple of Perez pics, including a perfect one of him complete with bruises from the first bout, I downloaded them to my PS3. The next stage involved setting markers on the pictures so the face could be accurately mapped and stretched out in 3D. Then it was onto editing his hair, weight and fighting style, as well as customising his shorts and robes in Perez’s trademark pink.

Suitably satisfied with the results of my virtual Perez Hilton, I was ready to take on the Black Eyed Peas beatmaker and general Cheryl Cole aficionado Will.I.am. This did not go as well as project Perez but so satisfied was I with my ‘Sweet Pea’ Hilton (as he is now known in my house) I ploughed on. Once complete I was ready to stage my rematch but also delighted to know I can upload Perez for others to use on their game. This gives me a sense of optimism in that someone might be able to do a better job of digitizing old Will and that we could have an epic winner-takes-Fergie battle online. The gauntlet has been dropped. See y’all online…

Popularity: 11% [?]

Edited: July 27th, 2009

Allow me to reintroduce myself

Its been a long time I shouldn’t of left you… but as a 90′s guy I know only too well you can’t turn back the clock. Believe me I’ve tried. So I’m here to make ammense and reintroduce myself to the 40 or so people who’ve been checking my blog while I’ve been away… thanks people.

Its gonna be a different format from now on and a bit more random than just my musings on the past, you gonna get the benefit of seeing everything interesting that crawls across my path on the daily. First as way of an apology for not posting for months here is some of the visual shizzle I’ve seen since I left you:

A Tribe called creps

Its not often that you get a homage to an album cover from 2 seperate world famous sports brands but the Tribe have become the first musicians to receive the honour. Midnight Marauders gets the treatment from Puma and Adidas but I still haven’t seen these anywhere.

Lego album covers

Nobody seems to know who made these or why and I don’t care either, they just made me happy.

I’m getting this one

I say this all the time then can’t be arsed to part with the wong when it comes round to it but I have a feeling I’m gonna want this bad enough to cop it. I mean DJ Hero? Really? If the soundtrack is true to the turntablist visions stirring in my head this will be dope and I will finally be able to live out my DMC fantasies.

USB Sick

Who needs a plain old stick when you can get these sick little puppies

Football photoshops

Okay so some of these might go over a few heads but I’ll try and point the footie phobic in the right direction

Just google Joey Barton nicked and you can work out what this is getting at

This is a reference to the club versus country row between England and Spurs & nothing to do with Cobra kai…

just google ‘Ronaldo prick’ and erm… oh fugedabout it

5 criminally talented footballers plot to lift a trophy from an obsessed scot… probably whiskey in that ‘Iniesta’ mug

classic yellow pages advert going on here with a Michael Owen twist

courtesy of the gallery

Terrorism cards

Charlie put me onto these they’re from 1987 or so and are proof the illuminati have been plotting this war on terror since the 80′s. Why do I always get onto these moneymaking schemes too late? I could’ve invested my pocket money in gas masks and teflon.

And finally… this made me laugh

South Park came up trumps with the Kanye West ‘Gayfish’ episode which I’m sure you’ve seen by now but this just shows how far the episode reached into popular culture

Popularity: 13% [?]

Edited: July 13th, 2009

90′s wiki: Pit Fighter

Pitfighter was the revolutionary arcade game that paved the way for the great 90s fad Street Fighter II, as well as Mortal Kombat, Tekken and many others, by taking the best elements from existing beat ‘em ups like Double Dragon (weapons) and International Karate+ (3 player gaming) and mixing them up in a 3D environment. The biggest innovation came in the graphics department where live actors were filmed performing the movements of the characters against a blue screen and the subsequent footage was then digitised. This was a first for the time and was quite a contrast to the Nintendo-esque cartoon-style graphics that were the norm in 1990.

Innovation was the mantra of this game. You could pick up weapons like barrels, knives and bar stools to use against your opponents, but you also had to be wary of the crowd who would invariably step into the pit and stab you or throw knives at you. The fact that it was the only three-player fighting game around, and had a tag team mode, grudge matches and you could deliver an array of taunts to your opponent made this game totally unique.

Graphics and innovation aside the gameplay was pretty good too. Though perhaps not as fast or fluid as later fighting games, it still had a number of plus points. For the first time combos and special moves could be delivered – a feature which would be a crucial part of the Street Fighter franchise – and players could move up and down to sidestep opponents attacks, a key development in the later Tekken series. The three individual players Ty, Kato and Buzz had their own unique moves and characteristics which lent a bit of an Enter the Dragon feel to the game, although if it is based on any movie it would have to be classic Van Damme foreign legion flick A.W.O.L.

Trivia

Was originally made for the primitive Atari 7800 console but the prototype never saw the light of day.

Clips

Arcade footage

90s Guy says

This game was awesome when it first came out! The graphics were unbelievable, you could really see the gore close up. I kind of expected every game to be digitised after this but sadly it wasn’t to be and the technique was only used sporadically over the next few years, mainly because in the post Street Fighter II era consoles killed the arcades off and consoles just couldn’t replicate the graphics of their bigger brothers. Pitfighter is probably the best example of a what happens when a coin-op conversion goes wrong, the console, ST and Amiga games were totally shit.

Links

Pitfighter 2 – Site which lobbys for the release of a sequel

On the DL

Popularity: 27% [?]

Edited: September 5th, 2008