I’ve been playing the new Final Fantasy Tactics A2 on the DS quite a bit lately. I’ve logged over 24 hours in the last week, that’s a lot for me on a video game. @hikikomori posted a heads up tonight that Square Enix has released their first iPod game, Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes [press release].
The premise is pretty cool, you use songs in your iPod’s music library to create stats for your units in the game. Then you play through it with the Tactics mechanics, each unit having unique range and attacks. My favorite dynamic to the game is that you can level up your units outside of the gameplay by listening to your music. Each playcount added for the songs used to create the units will contribute to leveling up their stats. It really adds a new element to playing your music on shuffle, knowing that when certain songs come up, you’re progressing in a game. Check out a video of game play below.
The idea of using your media library to generate the stats of units is not new, from what I know, Monster Rancher was doing it back in 1997. It IS a mechanic that I haven’t seen used in a while, and it lends itself perfectly to the iPod (or any digital media device) environment.
@hikikomori reports that it runs rather slow on the iPod 5G, but I hope that we’ll see a more robust port hit the App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch soon. This game is BEGGING for WiFi battling against friends. I’m also extremely excited to see Square Enix publishing games on Apple devices, I think it bodes well for the future of MobileOSX in the casual gaming market.
After I went through 3 Xboxes, back to back, due to the “Red Ring of Death” issue, this was just a little too poetic. One of Microsoft’s own Xbox 360’s was suffering from RRoD on the conference floor. The BBC News Tech Blog captured the video of the incident.
I got into the first round of public beta testing for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare’s multiplayer element on the Xbox 360. I’m horrible at it, but it is really awesome! I’m looking forward to the title’s full release.
Microsoft announced today that it is expanding its Xbox 360 warranty to three years for any customer who experiences the three flashing red lights error message that indicates hardware failure. All repairs will be made free of charge for three years from the time of purchase, including shipping expenses. Anybody who previously has paid for their consoles to be repaired related to three red light error message will be retroactively reimbursed. Other existing Xbox 360 warranties remain unchanged.
First the warranty was 3 months, then under pressure Microsoft expanded it to 1 year. Now three years… There’s obviously a serious problem. I have a replacement being shipped to me right now because of RedRing, so I’m ecstatic to hear that Microsoft is doing something about this. This quote from IGN is what especially interests me:
The company is making the move as a result of what the company views as “an unacceptable number of repairs to Xbox 360 consoles.” Microsoft claims that it has identified a number of factors that cause the three flashing red lights error message and has made improvements to the console.
I’m just hoping that the replacement that was sent to me has been equipped with these improvements!
I’ve been playing the new Final Fantasy Tactics A2 on the DS quite a bit lately. I’ve logged over 24 hours in the last week, that’s a lot for me on a video game. @hikikomori posted a heads up tonight that Square Enix has released their first iPod game, Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes [press release].