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We fulfill our life long dream of being the Terminator and happily make a fool of ourselves in the process. 
While the original Yoostar was a somewhat niche PC only title, developer Blitz game studios are aiming for a wider audience with Kinect and Move support for the sequel Yoostar2. While the idea of a karaoke movie game may seem a little strange, in practice it’s incredibly amusing, if sometimes embarrassing.
The game works like this; you are challenged to re-enact a famous scene from a classic Hollywood movie. There are over 60 movies to choose from, ranging from classics such as Casablanca, through to more modern films such as The Matrix and Terminator. Once you’ve picked a scene to act out, you’re given a chance to watch it in its entirety to learn the lines and movements. You can choose which actor from the scene you wish to be, with two people able to play as different characters. Once you’re ready, you’re asked to stand between dotted lines on the screen, after which the scene starts.
Instead of seeing the original actor in the frame, you are superimposed in his or her place. Your lines are shown at the top of the screen, along with a typical karaoke-style bouncing ball to guide you. After demonstrating your brilliant acting skills, the game applies a number of effects to match the recording of with that of the movie, which is then played back to you. The results are often hilarious, with our attempt at the famous ’I’ll be back’ scene from The Terminator being particularly cringe-worthy.
Your performance is then given a score, based on how well you read out the lines, as well as your physical movements in the scene. You’re then awarded with a fame score, and the opportunity to share your video on sites such as Facebook and YouTube. It can also be uploaded to the Yoostar website, where other users can rate the video. Positive ratings on the website are linked back to the game, awarding you with a higher fame points. If you’re feeling particularly creative there’s even a freestyle mode, where you can unleash your acting skills on a variety of unscripted scenes.
While we were a little skeptical at first, the technology behind the game renders scenes surprisingly well. Your footage is integrated naturally, with little evidence of an obvious cutout effect. The results are often very funny, particularly if you or your friends are graced with less than perfect acting skills. Though there are just over 60 scenes in the retail release, more will be added at a later date via DLC in special packs and individual downloads.
Yoostar2 is due out later this year on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, look out for a full review soon.
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We fulfill our lifelong dream of being the Terminator and happily make a fool of ourselves in the process.
While the original Yoostar was a somewhat niche PC-only title, developer Blitz is aiming for a wider audience with Kinect and Move support for the sequel Yoostar 2. While the idea of a karaoke movie game may seem a little strange, in practice it’s incredibly amusing, if sometimes embarrassing.
The game works like this: You are challenged to reenact a famous scene from a classic Hollywood movie. There are more than 60 movies to choose from, ranging from classics such as Casablanca to more modern films such as The Matrix and The Terminator. Once you’ve picked a scene to act out, you’re given a chance to watch it in its entirety to learn the lines and movements. You can choose which actor from the scene you wish to be, with two people able to play as different characters. Once you’re ready, you’re asked to stand between dotted lines on the screen, after which the scene starts.
Instead of seeing the original actor in the frame, you are superimposed in his or her place. Your lines are shown at the top of the screen, along with a typical karaoke-style bouncing ball to guide you. After you demonstrate your brilliant acting skills, the game applies a number of effects to match the recording with the movie, which is then played back to you. The results are often hilarious, with our attempt at the famous "I’ll be back" scene from The Terminator being particularly cringe-worthy.
Your performance is then given a score based on how well you read out the lines as well as your physical movements in the scene. You’re then awarded a fame score and are given the opportunity to share your video on sites such as Facebook and YouTube. It can also be uploaded to the Yoostar Web site, where other users can rate the video. Positive ratings on the Web site are linked back to the game, awarding you with higher fame points. If you’re feeling particularly creative, there’s even a freestyle mode, where you can unleash your acting skills on a variety of unscripted scenes.
While we were a little skeptical at first, the technology behind the game renders scenes surprisingly well. Your footage is integrated naturally, with little evidence of an obvious cutout effect. The results are often very funny, particularly if you or your friends are graced with less-than-perfect acting skills. Though there are just over 60 scenes in the retail release, more will be added at a later date via DLC in special packs and individual downloads.
Yoostar 2 is due out later this year on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Look out for a full review soon.
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The development team behind TimeShift shows off its new physics-focused third-person shooter. 
Even though it was announced just about a year ago, we got our first extended look at Saber Interactive’s latest game, Inversion--a third person shooter where the main focus is on gravity and how it behaves and ultimately can affect gameplay. And since this force of nature is such an integral part of Inversion’s gameplay experience, Saber had to make sure they had the physics engine to back it up. As such, they partnered with Havok--makers of fine physics middleware--to create a new physics environment called Havok Destruction that has already been used in some games as a means to accurately portray structural degradation. Needless to say, there were certainly some impressive moments generated as a result in the early build we saw.
Our demo began with a team of soldiers returning to a city that’s been invaded by an unknown force while simultaneously being affected by some weird gravitational anomalies where down becomes up and left becomes right. This particular team of soldiers is trying to find out what’s going in this urban location that’s seemingly been torn apart by war, but their leader has an ulterior motive--to find his missing daughter. These guys are armed to the teeth with some pretty brutal looking weapons and can take cover behind objects during firefights (not unlike those found in Epic’s Gears of War series). In fact, you can even perform blind fire and access other weapons in a very similar way as well. But where Inversion differentiates itself from Gears is in the aforementioned focus on gravity.
Since these soldiers are equipped with gravity devices on their backs, they can take a little bit of juice from these units and use them to pick up and manipulate individual objects in the environment. See a barrel a few feet away that you’d like to throw an enemy? Just pick it up, aim, and toss it. If there’s any direct comparison we would make between this gameplay feature and something found in another game, it’d be the telekinesis plasmid from the Bioshock series that let you pick up objects and toss them at your enemies. But again, Inversion differentiates itself by also letting you pick up enemies from behind cover by using your gravitational powers. This causes them to float into the air for a few short seconds where you can pump some rounds into them. Naturally, this seems to be quite useful when firefights get more intense, but there’s another useful gravitational skill that helps you get out of a jam, though. It’s called the gravity shockwave, which seems to instantly kill enemies in the immediate of range of a blast caused by your fist upon slamming it into the ground.
The catch for the shockwave and other gravitational powers is that you can’t really use them at will. Depending on the skill you use and potentially the object involved, the energy in the gravity unit on your back drains appropriately--the more powerful the attack, the more energy it drains and the longer it takes to charge back up. It seems like a logical compromise that will prevent players from simply using gravity skills throughout the entire game and defeat enemies in easier fashion. Interestingly, there are also other gravity skills that haven’t been shown to us yet, but they will be revealed at a later date, but it’s worth mentioning that it seems that your enemies will have access to the same skills, including ones that let them levitate you off the ground from behind cover. .
As the demo progressed, we were told just how the AI tends to behave when all of these objects and gravitational abilities are constantly changing the immediate landscape. In essence, the AI will behave in a smart way, recognizing when its no longer behind cover, either because you picked up an object or simply destroyed it with weapons fire. And that’s something we saw a lot of in the latter parts of the demo. In fact, at one point, you can take control of a mini-gun and start firing at enemies or at the structural points of a nearby building, bringing it down on top of your foes. It was impressive to see how the building realistically started to come down based on which support joints were destroyed with the gun, and it made us eager to see just how destructible some of the other environments in Inversion will be.
Other memorable moments from our Inversion demo included a massive building collapsing in the background that not only caused a gravitational wave to come tearing through the city, but also caused gravitational anomalies where you could now walk on the sides of buildings while fighting enemies. The way grenades work when this is going on is interesting, as they’ll glide out in normal fashion and then fly towards the wall where the gravitational pull is affecting enemies. And that sums up our demo of Inversion--a lot of interesting things on display and we’ll have more on them i as well as its various multiplayer modes (the game was designed with co-op in mind) in the coming months before Inversion’s 2011 release.
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