Exclusive: "Kid" Icarus Wii Concept Artwork Revealed [Kombo]

We're already working on a title that is more than two years out, and because the filmmaker is a game fan who is really excited about how we want to expand on the story of the film, we've been given a lot of latitude. It's been really fun to dig deep into this universe.

Brash Entertainment Signs Multi-Game Development Deal With Factor 5

HOLLYWOOD, Calif., March 13 /PRNewswire/ — Brash Entertainment today announced a game development deal with California-based game development studio, Factor 5. Under the terms of the worldwide agreement, the partners will collaborate on an unnamed title releasing in 2010 to be announced around the E3 Expo in July.

In addition to creating the multi-million selling STAR WARS: ROGUE SQUADRON franchise, INDIANA JONES, CONTRA: THE ALIEN WARS, LAIR and the classic TURRICAN franchise, Factor 5 is well respected for driving the technology of games. Factor 5 was a technology partner in the development of Nintendo's Wii and GameCube consoles, provider of the MusyX sound tools, partner in the Sony PlayStation 3 Edge toolset group, and has pioneered many technological advancements in the areas of audio and visuals in video games in collaboration with Dolby Labs, THX, and AMD/ATI.

"We do our due diligence on potential partners; we want to understand their in-house tech, and get to know their team and its capabilities. Factor 5 has a solid track record in creating licensed games that, in combination with their technology expertise, makes them an ideal partner," said Mitch Davis. "But what really cemented the collaboration was their passion for the IP and the world in which the game will live. Because that's when you are going to get really good games — when the people who are making it are really enjoying the process."

"Typically, there are two issues developers have with making a licensed game. First, they tend to have shorter development cycles. Second, there are often very tight constraints on how you can portray the world of the
IP, its characters and story. The resulting lack of creative freedom can be very frustrating — especially when it's a world you are excited to explore," said Julian Eggebrecht, President and Co-founder of Factor 5. "But collaborating with Brash is much different, we're already working on a title that is more than two years out, and because the filmmaker is a game fan who is really excited about how we want to expand on the story of the film, we've been given a lot of latitude. It's been really fun to dig deep into this universe."

If we find a chance in the future that would bring Lair to the audience which didn't get any access, that would be fantastic. I can't say anything quite yet, but there might be something in the works there. We might have a chance yet to bring those back to the table and hopefully, if that should happen, they would give the game a second chance.

So what is it, if it's not all that? Could it be that 3D Turrican update Eggebrecht hinted at to Gamasutra last Spring? With all those Turrican ratings popping up on the ESRB lately, we wouldn't be surprised. In fact, delighted might a good word.

Official: Factor 5 Back on Wii [IGN]

While we've heard whispers that a new Factor 5 developed Turrican game may be in the works, it would seem that Julian Eggebrecht and crew are waiting for something to light a fire under them. What's it gonna take, guys?

ESRB Game Ratings [ESRB]

Factor 5 honcho Julian Eggebrecht must be exhausted from constantly "defending" his company's poorly received PLAYSTATION 3 title Lair and its hit-or-miss SIXAXIS controls. G4 caught up with the Dragon's Lair fanboy at Tokyo Game Show to get one more justification out of Mr. Eggebrecht whose game has been retitled Rise From Lair in Japan. I respect what Factor 5 was trying to do, but trying to target gamers who aren't hardcore with a PS3 game? Simply puzzling.

Hopefully more publishers will see the low cost and potentially huge benefit in offering their soundtracks on iTunes. Because while Kotaku can't speak for you, we'd love to hear the surprisingly haunting melodies of Pony Friends with the click of a button.

LAIR Score Now On iTunes! [via gamelife]

So hit the jump for our Frankenreview: the longest, most obnoxious review title you've ever heard. And find out why, aside from the questionable control scheme, most reviewers are hating on the game.

IGN
The dragon fights in this dragon game are no good...The takedowns — which have you fly up on a foe, jump onto the beast, kill the pilot and take out the dragon via some quick action events — are cool, but they seemed to be the minority. One of the more prevalent attacks had us flying side-by-side with a bad guy and shaking our controller left to right...The next battle method had our dragon and the opposing dragon face to face falling toward the ground...Sound cool? It wasn't, and that pretty much sums up Lair.

Yahoo Games
The reason to play Lair is the phenomenal graphics engine, which is able to display Lord of the Rings-size battles at 1080p resolution with a draw distance that goes on for ever. This is a stunningly lovely game to look at, especially when in the air...[but] some areas will chug down to a relatively slow frame rate, hampering the presentation. There are also issues like the invisible wall that bounds certain flight areas. Lair wants to present a massive world, and while it can do so visually, you won't be able to go just anywhere you like.

Variety
Unfortunately, the dragons in the game all look similar and blend into the mostly gray-and-brown backgrounds, making it hard to differentiate allies from enemies. The developers at Factor 5 tried to make up for that deficiency with optional "rage vision," which turns the world into black and white, with enemies highlighted in a red glow. But players have to keep a button pushed down to turn on "rage vision," making it an impractical option in the long run.

UGO
The Rogue Squadron games were something anyone could pick up and play and find immediate gratification with. The same can't be said for Lair. To be bold, I honestly believe Factor 5 has created the first detailed dragon flight simulation. Because of this fact, there is a learning curve that will prevent the easily turned off or fickle gamer from truly enjoying the sweet little gem Factor 5 has created.

Gamebrink
...the game tries to do most of the targeting for you. This would be fine if it worked but alas it doesn't. There are many times where you'll need to lock on to a certain target in a confined area only to have the computer lock on to something you're not facing screwing you over completely...After failing many of the missions an insane amount of times I headed to the bathroom for some relief only to realize that my latest bowel movement was more fun than the "game" I had been playing.
For so long we've questioned the integrity of Lair's motion controls. And many reviewers certainly had their "why no thumbstick" beefs. But I think Lair went wrong in their tedious targeting system, dull/confusing dragon to dragon battles and yeah, maybe a little bit, the imperfect advanced controls. But I still plan on picking up the game and giving it a go. Maybe it's because I still have hope that it's good. Maybe it's because I can't help but watch such an investment go up in flames.

When Sony announced their SIXAXIS motion controls, most of us considered it "me too" technology. When we first tried them in games like Motorstorm, we went back to analog sticks after about 30 seconds of ass-handing. But with Lair? Lair nails the motion control.

I literally picked up the controller, jumped on the dragon and flew around the rich environments with ease. And I'm not talking flight simulator, floating around without a sense of speed flying. I'm talking barreling under arch bridges, twisting around castles and skimming the water to take out boats.

In most PS3 motion-enabled games I've tried, there's a noticeable delay to turning. But Lair steering is really tight. Whether Factor 5 has made some necessary breakthrough in their SIXAXIS programming or dragons just lend themselves better to the peripheral's responsiveness, the controls work very well.

And instead of crashing into the occasional turret, your dragon will sharply cut around objects to save us from potentially tedious gameplay. The effect isn't some cheap way of making the game easier (well, maybe to some extent), but a logical extension of flying on a living being with self-preservation.

Lair is on a scale that has few equals. The demo battle is massive, with the real feeling that you are part of a huge war. And the graphics are mature in a way that reminds me of early Sega in some completely instinctual way.

But if Lair fails in one respect (within my admittedly quick impressions), it's the dragon to dragon battles. They take place too high in the air forcing players to lose any sense of speed and general perspective. I don't know that there was a quick fix here, other than maybe programming the AI with a propensity to draw air battles lower to the ground for more intensity.

Even with the initial wave of really bad press and criticisms from some of my colleagues, I'd consider Lair a sure buy after playing the demo. Amidst its imperfections, the project seems every bit as ambitious as Sony likes to claim.

Capps was first to respond, saying "We absolutely love the press. Everything they say we immediately put into our game." Joking, of course, but it's actually not that far from the truth.

With the press, Capps revealed that they'll actively solicit their feedback because "the press knows games and they know what's gonna sell" with proposed changes being incorporated as late as six weeks before ship date.

Touching on the hardcore Unreal Tournament userbase, Capps revealed that the team at Epic read forums "all the time", saying "We take [their complaints] seriously because we need to keep those guys happy because they're the ones who are going to sell it to another one and a half million users who aren't so hardcore."

Backer theorized that the games industry has evolved faster than its Hollywood counterpart because of this interaction with its users.

Lair developer Eggebrecht suggested that developers take those suggestions from hardcore users "with a grain of salt" citing Factor 5's inference that the hardcore "seem to somehow resent the idea that motion control is the next evolution, or one of the evolutions, where video games will go." With the hardcore gamer "bashing in our heads" over the use of the SIXAXIS motion detection as the primary control method for the game's dragon flight, it might seem like Eggebrecht ignored player feedback.

Not so. The team did make motion control concessions based on vocal, negative opinions from the PLAYSTATION 3 game's Tokyo Game Show demo. Ripping out the motion control for on-foot segments, Eggebrecht called the earlier control scheme "quite frankly, horrible in hindsight" and that listening to hardcore opinions can often be "a blessing and a curse."

And while some game developers may have a bitter taste left in their mouths by a scathing preview or review of a game, Eggebrecht said "The press isn't the enemy. If anybody thinks the press is the enemy, that's stupid. These guys are usually as passionate, if not more so, than you yourself are so work with them."

Eggebrecht revealed his independent studio's difficulties trying to secure a Sony requested Teen rating for its PLAYSTATION 3 dragon game Lair. With a heavy amount of blood and gore, the game was altered to conform to the ESRB's sometimes impolitic ratings criteria. Even though the player can burn scores of human infantry to death, showing blood spraying from dragon wounds resulted in a Mature rating.

Similarly, gory moments of airborne creatures exploding in chunks was met with disapproval, forcing more compromising "hugely problematic" changes to Lair.

And while some violence may be okay for M-rated software, sex in games is a definite no-no. Eggebrecht longed for a time when games can be taken seriously as an art form, not a "corruptive" medium like cinema, comic books and rock and roll music.

Games with intense graphic sex scenes—sometimes mixed with intense violence—were more than acceptable in movies like Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and Eyes Wide Shut, clips from which Eggebrecht played on stage to underscore his point. But in games, portrayals of sex are strictly verboten. Eggebrecht said this policy "tends to show that games are not being seen even by our own ratings boards as an art form."

I later spoke to Eggebrecht and GDC president Jamil Moledina about Sin City and 300 creator Frank Miller's distaste for ratings systems, self-imposed or otherwise. He wrote in the early 90s that ratings systems inherently create restrictions on an artistic medium sometimes before any production on the work has even begun. While Miller's main concern at the time was for his medium, the comic book, it was becoming clear that his stance on the matter was becoming increasingly, and worryingly, appropriate for the gaming industry.

The Factor 5 president ended his keynote with a call for developers to push the genre's boundaries or suffer the consequences. He asked for his peers to "show me something that proves on all levels that games are indeed an artform . Push the violence, but also push the sex, and push it in an artistic way where it's not really gratuitous, but where it gets the brain going."

SCEA producer Ryan Hamlyn wrote that the delay was due to"an extra step in QA testing to enhance the community features in the game." More specifically, "Natural challenges that arose while finalizing the offline game to include key online features - such as leaderboards and medal systems - have led to the difficult choice of pushing back the release date." Bummer!

Lair Update [PlayStation.Blog]

Every time I look at Factor 5's dragon game Lair, I want to touch it—stroke it's pretty textures, gaze into its gorgeous lighting effects, write love sonnets detailing my passion for its well-crafted dragon models. But whenever I seem to get my hands on a build of the game, I walk away disappointed, heartbroken. Is it that my expectations for Lair are so high? I'm starting to think some of my reluctance to enjoy actually playing the game is in part due to its camera system, which seems to drain Lair of its expected cinematic flair.

This latest clip is just one in a series of five new media spots on the game, featuring some new locations. Enough with that fucking bridge sequence already!

I'm still going into it with an open mind. I just hope the PLAYSTATION 3 exclusive isn't like some pretty girl that, once you start dating, reveals she's got a bit of foot fungus problem and demands that all your dates take place at the L. Ron Hubbard library. Michael McWhertor

Other speakers include:

• Jason Manley, Massive Black (USA)
• Christopher Schmitz, 10Tacle Studios (Germany)
• Jennifer MacLean, Comcast Interactive Media (USA)
• Dr. Michael Wimmer, The University of Vienna (Austria)
• Alexander Fernández, Streamline Studios (The Netherlands)
• Cindy Armstrong, Webzen (USA)
• Amir Taaki, Crystalspace (Finland)
• Jeff Strain, ArenaNet (USA)
• Vlad Ihora, Telia Sonora (Sweden)
• Barbara Lippe, Avaloop IT Solutions (The Netherlands)
• Pamela Kato The GamerX (USA)
• Uwe Nikl, Level 3 (United Kingdom)
• Matt Firor, Ultra Mega Games (USA)
• Konstantin Ewald, Osborne Clarke (Germany)

Eggebrecht has the honor of making the opening keynote speech at the conference. Don't choke, Julian! Kim Phu

Leipzig's Keynote Speakers Revealed [Advanced MN]

Factor 5 head honcho Julian Eggebrecht tells interviewer Brandon Sheffield of the company's plans to revisit the Commodore 64 and SNES classic, taking the concept into the third dimension.

We've been concepting quite a bit internally. That's another universe creation thing. I was looking at Metroid Prime's reinventing of a franchise that had been out there for quite awhile, and we're facing the same thing with Turrican.

Eggebrecht's comparisons to Metroid Prime personally get me excited for another Turrican game, but I'm sure there are many of you who might feel quite the opposite. Michael McWhertor

Eggebrecht: Factor 5 Working On Turrican Concepts [Gamasutra]

Factor 5 and Sony had a Lair event a couple weeks ago, showing off the latest build of their PLAYSTATION 3 exclusive. I may have done my share of poo-pooing of the flying dragon game in the past, but it really does look like it's coming together.

GameTrailers has exclusive footage of some of the new enemies and dragon abilities—you can launch decapitated monsters heads at the hapless human cannon fodder—but the environment will look very familiar. One more embedded clip after the jump.

Some of the on-foot portions seem like they'd wear out their welcome quickly, but those aerial battles... all kinds of awesome. Michael McWhertor

We hope we'll have some additional hands-on time with Lair at GDC, just a week away! Michael McWhertor

Los espectaculares entornos y enemigos de Lair para PS3 [UltimaGame via NeoGAF]

Last time I was presented with the opportunity to get my hands on Factor 5 and Sony's Lair, I had to rush it. Not out of disinterest, mind you, but pure time crunch. The Tokyo Game Show floor is thicker with meaty gamers than even E3 was during its busiest days. Later, during my time at the PlayStation Lounge at Sony HQ, I opted to hound Phil Harrison and Ken Kutaragi for caught-on-tape potential embarrassment instead of actual gaming.

What I had played, I'd liked. It had a few rough edges, but hope they'd be smoothed out.

So when given another chance at CES to try out the dragon-flying PS3 exclusive I jumped on it. Unfortunately, my latest impressions were underwhelming. From an artistic standpoint, the game looks fabulous. You are given huge areas within which to fly, with typically no HUD whatsoever obscuring the screen.

The game starts to lose its luster is in a number of places. The framerate is just not up to par. During the training missions and the initial fly through, it held up at an decent level. But during dragon-to-dragon battles and the scorching and clawing of thousands of troops while on foot, it sank to rates that I'd consider bordering on unplayable.

The game also appeared to be heavily aliased, with jagged edges most noticeable on dragon wings and when viewing the hordes of troops from above. This may have been due to the monitor set up, but these were Sony Bravias. Not exactly entry-level.

Now, the PlayStation 3 is being asked to render literally hundreds of armored knights, in addition to fire effects, as well as detailed architecture in a truly massive environment (the expanse is breathtaking), so some drops in frame rate are unexpected. But when those horned tank beasts were dropped by enemy dragons, I had difficulty staying in control. During dragon-to-dragon fisticuffs, the frame rate made the combat look silly, instead of as cool as two dragons biting and clawing eachother to death in midflight should be.

Speaking of controls, while the SIXAXIS-only control system works well, I occasionally had difficulty keeping my dragon on the ground. Taking off from certain ledges off the main bridge were also frustrating. Flying and mid-air combat were easy to pick up, with the motion control feeling very natural after only a few minutes. Still, can we please get an option to use the left analog stick, Sony? It's currently doing nothing.

The gameplay is varied, from flying, targetting enemy dragons, engaging them in combat, it's frantic and fun. The satisfaction from burning to death dozens of hapless pawns gives the dragon a real sense of power.

I suspected that the Lair demo may have been an older version of the game (possibly from TGS), but a Sony rep confirmed the game was a "refined" build and that it's still expected to ship in the spring. As someone who has had Lair on his must-buy list since the game's debut, I hope that the frame rate issues and graphical hitches are resolved. The game seems like fun, maybe a bit shallow, but still fascinating. While Lair is most likely not the type of game that can be fully absorbed in fifteen minute chunks, I'm hoping to spend even more time with the game in the future.

I just hope those graphical hitches get resolved. Keep your fingers crossed. Michael McWhertor

We just posted what we thought of Factor 5's dragon game Lair, but what do the actual developers think of their own title? Surprisingly, they really like it! Good job, Mr. Engelbrecht. Michael McWhertor