Twitch racer.

It takes great talent to drive a Formula One car. The vehicles are set up to go as quickly as possible within the given (and complicated) FIA regulations, and this season's new turbocharged cars are horribly twitchy and snappy, particularly if you don’t know what you’re doing. In the hands of a normal driver, they'd spit you off into a wall at the first corner. This is what happens very early on in F1 2014.

Then again, that is the point. Sure, there are myriad of driving assists to help keep you on the track, but the real appeal of F1 is in keeping your car planted without any help at all. Assists for braking, steering, traction control, and so forth do play their parts as you learn the braking points of a track and get to grips with the twitchy handling of this season's cars, but as time goes on, you find yourself lowering the artificial assistance to the minimum, and racking up some respectable lap times.

Smooth movements, correct braking points, and the right amount of steering lock are key to finding your way around corners with any degree of success. The learning curve is steep, and the game doesn't do a great job of teaching you the finer points of driving an F1 car, which you need in order to turn off any of the assists. That you need to be as alert as you do to get the cars around a track is a testament to the quality of the simulation on offer, though. As with real F1, make one mistake and your race is ruined, presuming you prefer not to make use of the replay system. Excellent tyre physics let you feel every twist and turn in a track, while a surprisingly accurate degradation model means you've got to keep an eye on tyre performance during the longer races, lest you lose grip and spin off the track. The same goes for fuel management, which requires a keen eye and good pit stop management. Ultimately, if you look after your car, it'll look after you. Abuse it, and you'll find you have no wing, no grip and barely enough go to make it to the pits.

While the updates to F1 2014's simulation mean that the cars handle differently but accurately for this season (or as best as a person that's not actually driven an F1 car can tell), there are some underlying issues with that game that this year's update fails to resolve. For instance, modulating the throttle is still frustratingly difficult on the Xbox 360 controller, and I often accidentally wheelspan away from the line, or simply gave the car too much juice over an apex. The brakes are easier to modulate on the pad; the steering less so, but it's manageable.

The best way to play F1 2014 is with a wheel and pedal. A quick spin on the PC version with the proper kit (in this case, the excellent and fully supported Thrustmaster T500 RS) not only made the racing more manageable, but far more immersive as well. The focus of F1 is on precision, but that's not to say there aren't some exciting moments to be found outside of a well-executed gear change. I often found myself chasing a car, repeatedly telling myself "I’ll take him on the next corner," or hoping to a deity that I could outbrake him to get ahead, only to be pipped to the post in a furious pedal-to-the-metal finish on the home straight.

F1 2014 is beautiful. Each car is shiny in all the right places and covered in all the right sponsors, making those fast-lap replays look fantastic. It all looks even better in the rain, when the track becomes covered in a watery sheen and a fine spray rooster-tails its way from the back of competitors’ cars, blocking your view in close quarters racing. Aesthetically, it’s hard to fault F1 2014 in all but two areas: the wing mirrors and the drivers. The former are blocky, indistinct, and not all that useful in a race, while the latter look rather sickly. Perhaps the drivers are suffering from the grueling hours of a full F1 season, or maybe the Xbox 360 and PS3's ages are beginning to show, but considering the cars look so good, the ugly drivers do take you out of the moment.

F1 2014 falters further when it comes to its selection of modes and extras. In comparison to F1 2013, aside from the tweaked handling, all you get are a few new car models and a couple of new tracks. F1 2014 actually removes some of last year's content with the loss of the awesome classic mode. That was a major selling point of the old game, so not having it here is a significant step backwards. Still, what is in F1 2014 is decent, if not at all that different to last year.

Rivals, Career and Scenario make up the meat of the game: in Rivals you enter a back-of-the-grid team as a rookie and fight your way up the rankings to beat a chosen rival in a best-of-three battle. Your chosen rival is supposed to be someone in a higher-tier team than you so you can steal their drive, but they're often so much faster that what should be a nice challenge turns into a frustrating experience. Swap a rival out for a fresher, slower driver and he'll miraculously speed up as well. Moving the goalposts in such a way makes for a frustrating experience.

Career mode takes you all the way through a race weekend from practice to qualifying, and then on to the big race itself. Again, the AI drivers are hard work, but keep plugging away and eventually you can shave seconds off your lap times to steal a podium spot. Handily, you can choose how long your season is, so you don't have to commit to too much if you don't want to. Scenario is by far the most interesting mode to play in. You're given specific tasks to complete, such as having to complete a wet race on less than appropriate slick tyres, for which you're awarded a medal based on your performance.

Despite F1 2014's good points, it's hard to get away from the fact that it's little more than an inconsistent update of a great game. The cars are good fun once you get the hang of the new handling model, the visuals are surprisingly sharp (for the cars at least), and there's more than enough punishing difficultly on offer for those after a real racing challenge. Ultimately, though, how big an F1 fan you are is going to dictate the value proposition here: if you're fair-weather and already own the feature-packed F1 2013, just how badly do you want to drive the new cars?

Virtuoso.

According to the film Fantasia, Mickey Mouse was not much of a sorcerer, but he's always been an enthusiastic conductor, which means that the mouse and I have a few things in common. One of many ways in which Disney Fantasia: Music Evolved differs from the film that inspired it is that it makes me feel both like both a fantastic conductor and a talented wizard, capable of not just manipulating the sounds of the orchestra, but of commanding sea life and city dwellers to do my musical bidding.

To be clear, I've conducted both choirs and orchestras in my (former) life as a violinist and composer, and Fantasia does not replicate what it's truly like to conduct a symphony orchestra. Instead, the game is a flight of fancy, reproducing the furious gesticulations you perform at a stoplight when listening to public radio, or the spontaneous performance art that occurs when your latest favorite jam appears on your shuffled playlist. It resembles other rhythm games in the sense that it displays prompts on the screen in time to music, and you perform the appropriate actions within the necessary time frame. In games like Rock Band, success involves pressing buttons on plastic instruments; in Dance Central, it means performing dance moves and striking poses. In Fantasia, triumph comes from sweeping your arms up and down, and pushing them forward and back. (Needless to say, the game requires you to own a Kinect.) At last, a game has come that gives you permission to sway about in your living room, waving your hands about as if you're a wannabe Leonard Bernstein while Vivaldi's Four Seasons blasts from the speakers.

Fantasia's musical selection does not just include well-known classical tunes--Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusic and Mussorgsky' Night on Bald Mountain among them--but also comes with modern music by way of contemporary hits from artists like Drake and Lorde, along with essentials from The Who, Elton John, Queen, and many others. It's likely you know most of these tunes, whether or not you've been to the symphony or turned on the radio in recent months. When the a capella harmonies of "Bohemian Rhapsody" spill from your television, you naturally understand the attitude you must take, even if you don't know exactly what motions the game will expect of you. It's one of Fantasia's many wonders that those required motions so beautifully complement the melodies and rhythms they accompany. When trumpet fanfares and wailing guitars fill the room, the game calls for dramatic sweeps and swift punches; when plaintive violins and cellos encourage quiet contemplation, your hands swish about in graceful arcs.

If you're like me, you will be more concerned with matching the motions than looking elegant, at least on the first couple of attempts. Fantasia is forgiving in exactly the right ways, however, giving you credit for proper motions whether you perform a grand karate chop or lightly thrust your wrist downward. In time, I was just as concerned with how I transitioned from one move to the next as I was with matching the arrows on the screen. Unless the move calls for both arms, Fantasia typically doesn't care which arm you use, and an enormous part of the fun comes from experimenting with different methods of physically linking one motion with the next. At first, I approached Fantasia like a robot might, flinging my arms up, down, and forward as the game required. Now, many hours later, my arms craft figure-eights in the air and my hands flitter about like butterflies. Well, I might be exaggerating my own sense of grace--but at least it feels as though I have become one with the music, even if my perceived elegance is greater than the elegance an outsider would witness. (And word has it that I can look pretty clumsy while playing Fantasia.)

Not only is that creature a glorious sight, but his candelabra horns are a musical instrument!

Fantasia can be a bit of a workout, like a low-impact Dance Central.

Fantasia is not just an elaborate game of Simon Says: you actually contribute to the soundscape as you play. Each song comes with three mixes in total (including the original mix), and while playing, you often have the opportunity to incorporate various aspects of those mixes together. You can stick to the original if you prefer, but doing so means you miss the pure joy of hearing a big-band version of Dvorak's New World Symphony. I don't love every mix--some of them are too reminiscent of the cheesy Hooked on Classics series--but for every mix that didn't gel, there were two that had me looking at the music in a new light and finding new ways to perform gestures. The watchtheduck mix of Cee Lo Green's "Forget You" (yes, I wish it were the uncensored version as well), for instance, plays so much with vocals and rhythm that you must renew your focus on the assigned motions lest you fall victim to the mix's abundant musical tricks. Should you play with a friend performing at your side, selecting a tricky mix is a good way to trip her up and earn a higher score.

Mid-performance minigames also grant you control over the music by allowing you to create little melodies or rhythms by, for instance, moving your hand up and down a vertical keyboard of sorts, or by manipulating a ring that adds synthesized effects to a vocal or instrumental line. This aspect of Fantasia is a mixed blessing. On one hand, you can make some fairly random motions and end up adding an attractive musical line to the track; developer Harmonix ingeniously ensures that the notes and sounds you can choose fit within the harmonies and beats of the musical line. On the other hand, the tools' limitations can be frustrating, particularly when you lower your arms to save your melody and unavoidably glide through more notes or hammer on another drum in the process. It's best just to create something that sounds nice and be done with it, rather than to attempt a specific melody or drumline.

When trumpet fanfares and wailing guitars fill the room, the game calls for dramatic sweeps and swift punches; when plaintive violins and cellos encourage quiet contemplation, your hands swish about in graceful arcs.

The tracks are framed by a cute but throwaway story involving you, the wise wizard that cleaned up after Mickey's Fantasia disaster, a young woman named Scout, and a vague aura threatening the universe called "the noise." Given the masterful way Fantasia and its sequel tell their musical tales, it's disappointing that the story is such fluff, though it's fortunately over and done with before you know it. Nonetheless, the Fantasia legacy is not just about the integration of animation and orchestration, but about the fables that integration can share. Fantasia depicted a world of flowers dancing the troika and the hushed prayers of the deeply devout; Fantasia 2000 brought to life the story of the Firebird, whose death and rebirth is echoed in the natural world. I wish Fantasia: Music Evolved's story had mirrored the diverse emotional arcs of the films that came before.

Nevertheless, the game is overflowing with charm, and the success of the story mode is not in the narrative but in the worlds it guides you through. You access songs through interactive portraits of undersea hijinks, arctic floes, and pastoral forests. These worlds are gorgeous playgrounds, letting you produce little melodies and patterns by manipulating creatures and foliage. Where most of Fantasia involves semi-scripted performance, these worlds represent musical improvisation; waving around to Missy Elliott is the concerto, and poking around in a busy city is the cadenza.

The motion controls are rarely a problem, making it easy to enjoy the sights and sounds.

I wish for more from Fantasia: Music Evolved, but that's because it is already such a delight to watch, to hear, and to perform. The game is more pop than Pachelbel; I have visions of entire Mahler symphonies released as future downloadable content, even though I know that Avicii and Lady Gaga are DLC priorities. Until that dream comes true, I am more than content with Fantasia, which makes me feel like a graceful performance artist, a skillful sorcerer, and a master musician all at once.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

A City Sleeps is a music-driven, bullet hell shooter with an invigorating soundtrack and a colorful, comic-like presentation. The hybrid of concepts feels fresh and fun in the beginning, and there are moments when the ideas harmonize, but the game rapidly runs out of new stages and music, and you're left with nothing to do but replay the same levels at higher difficulty settings. At that point, your enthusiasm quickly falls through the cracks, well before you get access to the game's advanced upgrades. Shoot-em-ups have a reputation for being challenging by design, especially the bullet hell variants, but for A City Sleeps, there are more hurdles than bullet patterns to overcome and it's all to easy to find yourself tripping over the bumps along the way.

It's interesting to see how A City Sleeps toys with the general makeup of a bullet hell shooter, though. Games such as Ikaruga, DoDonPachi, and Mushimesama are members of the infamous sub-genre, which are defined by their screen-filling, curtains of bullets. Nearly every bullet hell shooter scrolls in a unidirectional fashion, be it horizontally or vertically. Enemies come from one part of the screen, and thus, so do their bullets. The background scrolls from right to left in A City Sleeps, but in reality, this is a twin stick shooter like Geometry Wars, with a static field. The background may be moving in a single direction, but enemies and their bullets come from every direction, drastically increasing the amount of ground you need to monitor at a given moment.

It's good that your weapon can fire in any direction, too, which affords you the flexibility to evade incoming fire and attack your enemies from any angle. You can close in and attack with a katana, which charges a meter for every successful strike. Once your meter is full, you can then slash at large swaths of enemies with a screen-sized spirit sword, which is invaluable during boss fights.

You're also able to tap into the power of spirits by possessing idols that appear at fixed intervals throughout levels. Once possessed, these idols can emit healing energy, fire at enemies, or freeze them in their tracks, depending on the spirit you assign to them, and you have the ability to reassign spirits on the fly with a simple button combination. Exploiting this mechanic is an important aspect of your strategy, and thankfully, the game also slows to a snail's pace when you initiate the possession process. You can unlock new properties for each spirit type, but only after you complete levels at advanced difficulty levels. In theory, the progression of abilities should work in step with the game's difficulty, but you always feel like the game is two steps ahead of you, and unlike most shooters, you don't earn weapon upgrades during levels. It's frustrating that you have to beat levels to get the most useful upgrades when you feel woefully ill-equipped in the first place.

The background may be moving in a single direction, but enemies and their bullets come from every direction, drastically increasing the amount of ground you need to monitor at a given moment.

As is tradition, your character, in this case Poe the Dream Exorcist, is only vulnerable at the very center of her character model. Here, her hitbox clearly represented by a green beacon. Being able to quickly identify her weak spot is critical when you're caught in the middle of a bullet wave, and in this instance, Harmonix has given you an advantage that you wouldn't normally have. Feel lucky, because you move at a slightly lazy clip, and though you can dash at a fixed distance, it's too big of a bound and thus not good for frequent use.

A City Sleeps is painfully difficult once you get past the first round of levels. This is partially because there are times when enemies attack you from every direction, pummeling you with dozens of bullets, but it's also due to the way in which the background music influences your weapon. The music is great, and firing your weapon contributes to it in a satisfying way by emitting sounds to the beat, but your rate of fire is also dictated by said beat, which fluctuates throughout each level. In other words: you can't count on your weapon firing in a consistent pattern at all times. In order to predict its behavior, you need to be in sync the music. Nevertheless, when enemies move at a consistent speed, regardless of the music, you're at a disadvantage when you can't defend yourself just the same.

Though it limits your potential firepower, the connection between the gameplay and music can be downright mesmerizing when you aren't stuck in an insurmountable situation. The tracks are simple and mellow in the beginning, but as stages progress, your weapon, and the actions of possessed idols and your enemies, add new layers to the orchestra. As the combination of instruments ramps up, you feel increasingly engaged in the action. It's not hard to feel in tune with the soundtrack, but this feeling fades away once the onslaught from your enemies reaches its peak and you struggle to find your footing.

You could argue that this connection between music and your weapon presents an unusual chance to balance multiple skills, but A City Sleeps ramps up the challenge too quickly to facilitate a proper learning curve. It would have been so much more enjoyable if the challenge grew in a smooth manner, because after you beat the game's three levels, a paltry selection, all that's left to do is replay them at harder difficulties. Not only is the game too repetitive as a result, but it's hard to get much enjoyment from the process when it feels like you don't have the tools you need to succeed. If the disbursement of upgrades were different, then maybe this wouldn't be the case, but as is, you feel alienated by the odds well before you get the chance to equip yourself for success.

A City Sleeps leans on hardcore difficulty to compensate for its lack of content, and its use of music, while interesting, is a source of frustration, especially as the difficulty increases. It's disappointing, because at its core, there are a lot of good ideas, but they never truly shine in the presence of the game's issues. Highly-skilled shoot-em-up fans and bullet hell veterans will find an experience that lives up to their maniacal expectations, but unless you count yourself among the shooter elite, don't expect A City Sleeps to hold your attention for long.

Guillermo del Toro Says Pacific Rim 2 Will Lead to Third Film

Even though Guillermo del Toro has another four or five months to go on the Pacific Rim 2 script, the director says he'd like to have the sequel lead directly into a third film.

Speaking to Collider at a press event for The Book of Life, del Toro confirmed that the first draft of the Pacific Rim 2 script is complete, and he expects to begin pre-production on the film by next August or September. The Hellboy director also let slip that he'd like to not only handle the sequel as something "radically different" from the original, but plans to have it set up a third film, reintroducing familiar characters.

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ign.com
kotaku.com

Halo: The Master Chief Collection's 'Blood Gulch' Remake is Awesome – IGN First

Of all six Halo 2 maps getting the Anniversary remake treatment as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection (joining Ascension, Lockout, Sanctuary, Zanzibar, and Warlock), most are being faithfully adapted with very few and very minor changes.

But not Coagulation.

Arguably Halo's most famous map, the boxed desert canyon that's been home to countless CTF matches and Red vs. Blue episodes is getting a substantial update on Xbox One. In the video above, original Halo 2 lead multiplayer designer and current-day president of Certain Affinity, the studio that's handling the multiplayer portion of Master Chief Collection, gives us a walking tour of the new Gulch, called "Bloodline" in this iteration. See the new midfield base, the addition of Halo 3's Hornet, and much more. Plus, learn all sorts of behind-the-scenes secrets and then check out the other video below, where you can see Team IGN (Alfredo Diaz, Sean Finnegan, Brian Albert, and me) get completely wrecked by Team 343).

Also be sure to stop by our ever-expanding IGN First hub page for this ongoing month of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, the one-stop shop for everything we're doing.

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ign.com
eurogamer.net

Take a Closer Look At the Art of Dark Souls II

From Software released Dark Souls II Design Works, a massive book covering the art production of Dark Souls II and its DLC trilogy, The Lost Crowns.

For now, it's only available in Japanese. From Software listed the book for sale on its website today for the price of 3780 yen, or roughly $35 USD. The description is below, with a few translation issues.

" Covering all of the art production of "DARK SOULS Ⅱ", is the official art book From Software complete supervision. In addition to the visual article published the interview comments and development staff. Was also recorded treasured art of large DLC "THE LOST CROWNS" Series trilogy Furthermore, ultra-luxurious and large volumes, is the one book of permanent preservation version."

A similar art book for the original Dark Souls was released first in Japan as well. It arrived in the West nearly two years later.

Stuck on The Lost Crowns DLC? Check out IGN's extensive Dark Souls II DLC wiki.

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n4g.com
cheezburger.com

Hands-on with New Nintendo 3DS

New Nintendo 3DS maintains the high build quality and high standards of the previous model, but this iteration offers some neat improvements that make it (so far) a faster, better handheld gaming device. IGN imported a New Nintendo 3DS from Japan, but you should be aware there’s also an XL model. After extended hands-on, there’s certainly a lot to talk about. So let’s dive in and take a closer look.

From the second I first held New Nintendo 3DS, one thing was clear: This is a solid piece of equipment that’s up to par with Nintendo’s design standards. The device is slightly larger than the original, and Nintendo has abandoned the multi-layered look of the system in favor of a flat base, two-tone exterior that’s flush from all sides. The rounded corners and matte finish feel good, despite losing the cool metallic finish of the previous model.

In terms of overall hardware changes, Nintendo shuffles around a few key features: The cartridge slot is now located at the front base of the unit, a few inches away from the 3.5 mm headphone jack and the stylus. The power button is also moved to the front of the device, as well. Nintendo has opted to support high-capacity MicroSD cards with this unit. But wirelessly transferring data over a local network to the new card takes a long time if you have a lot of games purchased digitally from the Nintendo eShop. We recommended using a PC to switch the content manually instead.

The processor and Wi-Fi capabilities show significant improvement over the current available model. It can quickly boot up an SD Card installed copy of Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS in roughly 15 seconds. (It took 30 seconds off of an SD card on a current 3DS XL) The system can quickly boot up side applications like Miiverse and webpages must faster too.

The LCD screens are at tad bigger, but New Nintendo 3DS still used the same 800 × 240 pixel resolution for its top screen, while the bottom screen remains 320 x 240 pixels. The colors on screen appear more vibrant, but it’s not a huge difference.

Improved glasses-free stereoscopic 3D is the most pronounced feature on New Nintendo 3DS. A nifty head-tracking feature helps maintain 3D images longer, and I don’t have to worry about losing it because of momentarily shifting my hands. It works so much better than the previous model, in fact, that I’m considering revisiting lots of games in the library just to see them without the accidental double vision I suffered the last time around.

Looking away from the screen by turning my head right or left did cause the head tracking to lose me for a second. But it takes a quick moment for the system to find me and correct the 3D effect.

Nintendo also introduced a C-stick above the A,B, X, and Y buttons. The stick itself has the rubbery, stiff feel of a small pencil eraser. It senses drags, pulls, and flicks fairly well, which helps in Smash Bros for Nintendo 3DS if you need a C-stick option. As a primary means for camera control in a third-person action game like Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, it feels up to snuff. But I have to wonder if a faster-paced first-person shooter could still get the same use out of it. The 3DS library has a handful of games that support a second analog stick, so it remains to be seen how much support this addition will receive.

An inner set of shoulder buttons labeled ZL and ZR can be found across the back of the device when playing games. The new buttons mirror the same placement of the first classic controller for Wii. Presently, they don’t do much. In Smash Bros. they mirror the same setting as the L and R button. At half the size of the outer buttons, it feels weird to fumble between the ZR and R, for example.

New Nintendo 3DS has interesting changes, indeed. The improved 3D makes me want to go back and try out a bunch of prior games on the new system. The C-stick feels surprisingly responsive, despite the fact that it doesn’t ever really move. Hopefully, as more software is released, we’ll finally be able to see what this iteration can really do.

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kotaku.com
pcgamer.com