Despite having a range of different genres, the Xbox 360 cannot seem to stop itself being associated with shooters. It’s true that shooting games seem most at home on Microsoft’s red ring machine, but the platform is certainly attempting to provide a variety of gameplay experiences. One area in which it has sorely been lacking is JRPGs — scratch that — good JRPGs.

Enchanted Arms was a flop, Blue Dragon is widely regarded as disappointing and Eternal Sonata, though an excellent stopgap, was not without its glaring faults and left fans wanting something more. Well, something more has arrived and it’s come in the form of Mistwalker’s Lost Odyssey.

Penned by award winning novelist Kiyoshi Shigematsu, produced by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, developed by former Shadow Hearts team members and scored by the legendary Nobuo Uematsu, Lost Odyssey has enough name power to impress even the most apathetic gamer, but the question remains — is this the game that JRPG loving 360 owners have been waiting for?

You likely already know the answer, but hit the jump for our full Destructoid review.

For those of you wanting to download and check out some of the XNA community games, be aware that they are only available until tomorrow Sunday, Feb. 23 at midnight. After that you will have until March 9 at midnight to play the games before they expire. So get while the gettings good and download your XNA games now before it’s too late!

[Thanks, Epsicode]

From Microsoft’s Xbox PR Blog:
[QUOTE]
As a result of recent decisions made by Toshiba, Hollywood studios, and retailers, Microsoft plans to withdraw from HD DVD. Xbox will no longer manufacture new HD DVD players for the Xbox 360, but we will continue to provide standard product and warranty support for all Xbox 360 HD DVD Players in the market. As we stated earlier, we do not believe this decision will have any material impact on the Xbox 360 platform or our position in the marketplace. HD DVD is one of the several ways we offer a high definition experience to consumers and we will continue to give consumers the choice to enjoy digital distribution of high definition movies and TV shows directly to their living room, along with playback of the DVD movies they already own.
[/QUOTE]

I think that the Space Invaders icons have to be the most used video game symbols in clothing and accessories. We’ve seen hats, pants, shoes, shirts, man purses, jewelery and all other manner of accoutrement featuring the little pixelated aliens. And now, to complete the entire ensemble we have Space Invaders boxer briefs. These were snapped at Ted Baker in London as evidenced by the label in the box. Someone please make a note to get these for Crecente so he’ll finally have that last piece to his museum collection of decorative video game related underpants.

[via Wonderland]

Every now and then, it’s good to have a person come out and speak on behalf of a faceless corporation. Sure, they’re all just out for blood, glory, and those bills in your wallet — but seeing a real, live person talk about the company that he or she works for does two things: (1) it proves they’re not all just robots who churn out products, and (2) it humanizes the organization and shows that they legitimately care about you, the consumer. In fact, the current CEO of Electronic Arts, John Riccitiello, has ingratiated himself with our very own Jim Sterling by owning up to past transgressions.

Then, of course, you’ve got the Ken Kutaragis of the world — the people who are great for sound bytes. It seems that we may have found one of his disciples: Philip Holt, the General Manager of EA Tiburon (developer of every Madden game), was interviewed by Ars Technica before speaking at GDC this past week. The Q&A touched on such topics as the recent extension of EA’s exclusive NFL license, future projects for Tiburon, and the developer’s commitment to quality. But what caught my eye was a query about the perennial triumphs of EA Sports’ titles:

Ars: Looking at EA Sports’ other franchises where there is competition, it seems like the EA titles are still the fan favorites. What is that secret recipe, that magic formula, that makes EA games succeed even where there is that competition?

Holt: That’s a good question. It’s hard to answer because it’s the little bit of special sauce. Clearly, there’s a level of…

EA Sports has published a lot of great games, and people used to wonder how they kept doing it, year in and year out. Well, now we know — and my guess is that EA hoards the recipe to that secret sauce like Coca-Cola and Kentucky Fried Chicken do for their signature creations.

[via Ars Technica — thanks, Colette!]

President and CEO of Double Fusion, Jonathan Epstein put all the other GDC rock gods to shame this week at IBM’s Guitar Hero Competition. Epstein won the $1,500 grand prize with his face melting rendition of Eric Johnson’s White Cliffs of Dover. According tho the short press release, you can challenge Epstein to an epic battle of the bands by going to Double Fusion’s website. I went there myself and didn’t really see a place to sign up per se, but I suppose an email will do nicely. Just don’t count on wrestling that $1,500 from him. I think the title will be the best you can hope for.

So, uh — this Portal thing is kind of a big deal, I hear. I guess that explains the huge, huge goddamn crowd outside the Portal post-mortem at the final day of the Game Developers Conference, everyone giddy like kids on the first day of summer vacation.

Portal project lead Kim Swift and writer Erik Wolpaw were on hand to dig through the development of one of the year’s greatest games. It’s not unexpected that there was a lot of hero worship in the room, and high expectations as to new insights into the development of the title. Hit the jump for the run-down.

During Dave Jones’ GDC session, essentially a reveal of Realtime Worlds’ online game APB, he touted the game’s character customization tools. After generating a handful of characters you certainly wouldn’t want looking after your kids, he showed off APB’s ability to recreate real-life characters. Namely, Jones showed digital versions of developers Shigeru Miyamoto, Peter Molyneux, Warren Spector and Richard Garriott that were made in the character editor.

While the above pic may not be of the best quality, we got a few individuals snaps that are much better looking. They’re behind the jump, front page visitors, because I’m pretty sure that pic of a pants-less Miyamoto is not safe for work.

Seriously, man. Put some khakis on!

Kim Swift and Erik Wolpaw, two of the key developers on Portal, gave GDC attendees a behind the scenes look at The Orange Box hit, focusing on the process of integrating narrative and design. The two also showed early and, by their own admission, failed, version’s of the game’s final boss fight with GLaDOS, the talkative, ever present artificial intelligence. They highlighted three attempts at making a successful boss battle, driving home the fact that ample playtesting brought them to the incinerator battle they ultimately settled on.

Since Portal is essentially a first person puzzle game, the team initially thought it would simply end on what they thought was appropriate, a puzzle more complex than anything the player had seen before. That solution, they said, was a pain.

Their first proper boss fight attempt, when GLaDOS was just a translucent shimmery cube, was the “Giant Laser” battle. Players had to direct lasers back at GLaDOS to destroy it. It wasn’t fun and the lasers were just too difficult to aim.

Boss battle attempt number two, their “Mortal Kombat” stab, was full of intensity. Missing flying, turrets spawning, an out of place firefight than belied Portal’s slower paced, cerebral gameplay. It also sucked, according to Wolpaw.

Attempt number three was a chase sequence. But the pacing was horrible and there was no opportunity to communicate to the player.

Around this time, Wolpaw said the Half-Life 2 Episode Two guys excitedly said to the Portal team “Our final battle is gonna have 100 Striders, you’re going to get to drive a car and fight dozens of mini-Striders. It’s gonna be awesome! What are you guys gonna do?”

With a tiny team on Portal, they simply couldn’t match a boss battle that epic, and they ultimately created the time limited incinerator set piece as the final fight.

The Portal team’s limited resources also forced them to “trim the narrative fat” elsewhere. Swift talked about a proposed scene involving “The Rat Man” the fellow escaped test subject whose writing and sketches appear in the game’s later levels.

As far as Portal’s other co-star, the Weighted Companion Cube, it’s origins lie in addressing player frustration with finishing the “box marathon” level that features the lovable crate. Wolpaw said that he was inspired to give the Cube a little personality by what he’d been reading in de-classified government interrogation manuals. “They’re great,” he said, pointing to findings that people in isolation become emotionally attached to inanimate objects.

Wolpaw had advice for those trying to write a “funny” game—”God help you.” He related his previous experience with Psychonauts, on which he was one of the game’s writers. Upon name dropping the cult favorite, Wolpaw was met with a huge round of applause. “More people just clapped than bought the game,” he joked.

“Hearing macho tough guy dialogue is annoying enough, but hearing the same joke fifty times, a couple of which may actually be funny can be much worse,” Wolpaw said. He called the playtesting of Psychonauts “psychological torture”, his comedic script met with silence when being pumped out of 40 monitors in the QA section at Double Fine Productions.

When the two had wrapped up their session, taking questions from the audience, the discussion quickly moved to plans for Portal 2. Swift and Wolpaw mostly dodged the question, with the latter saying “I’m just trying to bask in the moment… without people bugging me about it.”