This is Yuji Nakis first original game since Sonic The Hedgehog. I don't really know much about the storyline of the game so I wont go into that, I'll just let you know what I experienced from the time I had on it. When I started playing, it felt like I was playing Sonic again. The controls were very simple and intuitive to use - just like Sonic was all those years back. Controlling your character, Billy, is done via the left analougue stick with the L trigger snapping the camera behind you; pretty similar to Phantasy Star Online. Dotted around the island are small eggs that you can roll around All you have to do is walk into an egg and you automatically will begin to push and roll it around. If you pull away from the egg Billy will let go. When rolling the egg you can squash enemies in your path, which in turn leave behind fruits. By rolling your egg into the fruits and collecting them you can gradually make your egg grow in size until it's roughly double the height of Billy himself. At this stage your egg will begin to glow meaning it's reached its maximum size, and by letting go of the egg and pressing the R trigger Billy will shout at the egg. This will in turn begin to hatch, producing a small animal that will follow you around. These animals can be used to help you on your way, but I never really got to do much with mine, as I kept killing myself. It seems you can only have one animal at a time and they have specific abilities that can be utilised in different circumstances. My first animal was a seal, and again the similarities to Sonic was apparent. Some of the things you can do with your egg need to be mastered to use its full potential as a weapon. Firstly you can press the A button with the causing you and the egg to jump in the air simultaneously. While in the air you can do a couple of things with your egg. By pressing A a second time while in mid jump, you will do a kind of smash to the ground that bounces you back up again into the air, this can be used to jump up platforms with the egg. The second option is to press the B button while in mid jump which will throw the egg in front you hitting anything in front below you. The next move you can do while on the ground with your egg, you simply press the B button, which will kick your egg several meters in front of you hitting anything in its path, to finally backspin back to your hand. Finally the last move you can do is press the R trigger while rolling your eggs to get a short speed burst helping you to avoid enemies or get places quicker. The camera stick is used to manually rotate the camera around your character. I never played this too much, but from what I did manage to play, the camera seemed fine. It didnt appear to suffer any of Sonics awkward camera problems. During play, I noticed some nice effects, like imprints left in the snow from your snowball you have to roll around, to your egg actually cooking if heated up too much, leaving a nice cooked egg on the ground - very funny stuff indeed. Just think of the poor seal that was in that egg, only to find out he was indeed a chicken and was now cooked. The graphics are nice and clean, and it was very easy to see what you were doing and what was going on. The game is very colourfull and the main character himself is really likeable. You take the role of a little boy dressed in a roosters outfit - seeing him move around with the costume flapping around. When he hangs onto an egg, only to be spun around with it when it goes too fast, is comical stuff. There were only three levels available to play at the show, so its hard to say how good Billy The Hatcher will actually be, but I liked it a lot, and wanted to play more. The character is appealing, the game is visually sweet and the controls are intuitive and simple - could this rival Sonic? I dont honestly know, but the ingredients are there and the refreshing approach was very welcome, showing that Yuji Naki hasnt lost his touch when it comes to creating great games. Star Wars Rogue Leader III: Rebel Strike Developer: Lucas Arts Genre: Action Players: 1-2 Release: TBA This is the one game I was really looking forward to after seeing the media online showing the Endor and Hoth levels. I wanted to see if it was really as good as it looked and if the third player option would work well to create a much more complete Star Wars experience than its predecessor did. Just so there is no mis-understandings the game was running on the Dolphin Dev Kit and not through the Gamecube itself. So obviously there is still a lot of work to be done and the issues may be fixed in due course. You will probably be wondering if the game is as awesome as youve read. Well its really hard to tell to be honest. The game looks amazing at some points and good in others. There was nothing that blew my mind away. During levels like where you fly through Endor on the Speedbike, the backgrounds look excellent but there is almost a unreal feel to it. I said to my brother that the characters and some movements looked almost like they were stop motion captured, maybe they will add more animation at a later date to smooth it out, but I think it could be worked on in that area a bit. Apart from that the levels and vehicles all looked as good if not better than before. Its definetly up there with some of the best looking games, and I didnt really see any further problems. There were ittle bits missing on the X-Wing, but that was purely down to early code and nothing else. On the Endor level I noticed the stormtroopers running in little packs moving identically and perfectly copying each other, it would be nice just to have random characters moving independantly. In the third person view it was a similar story, your character had that funny movement to him, but it was bearable. One thing that did bug me was there was no button set to place the camera behind your character in third person view. This was extremely frustrating especially when you where running towards an AT-AT only to have someone off the screen behing you shooting you. When you turn around only your character turned so you couldnt see who was shooting at you, the only way to get round it was to run in a large circle to have the camera slowly pan around with you, which was awkward. The thing is if this isnt fixed then there will be a lot of unhappy people, as there was buttons on the controler that did nothing and could easily be used. Another small issue I had personally with the game, was just some actions you had to carry out. For instance when your on Hoth and you have to grapple onto the AT-ATs and then grenade inside them this is how the sequence went: 1. Run under an AT-AT untill icon showed telling to push camera stick 2. Push camera stick untill you reach the top 3. Press A to take out light saber 4. Press A again to cut a hole in the belly of the AT-AT 5. Press B to go into 1st person view to look around 6. Look at the hole you cut and press B again to throw grenade in To me that is an awefull lot of fiddling around to do what could have been done with half the fooling around. Why not just use A and B buttons, why add in the camera stick when your moving with the left analogue anyway. It wasnt a big deal, but when they had you doing all that and didnt have a button to put the camera behind you, it seemed a bit silly. I had a good play around with the X-Wing and it felt just like Rogue Sqaudron, there were more Tie Fighters flying around the planet, but I didnt really see loads on screen at once, because they were constantly switching direction. There were some nice touches, such as flying from quite high up in the sky right down to the ground and having AT-STs walking around, that when you went higher again disspeared from view, it made the setting feel a bit more realistic and authentic. I cant really say much more about the game due to it being early code and things still needing to be added and ironed out. From my experience it felt more satisfying than Rogue Leader did to me, but I have only played a tiny bit of Rebel Strike so I will have to wait to see if its is a better game for me. One thing that is definatly welcomed is the new play options. You can now play in two player Co-Operative mode where you pressumably help each other complete the various missions and watch each others hides. These additions themselves will offer massive replay value that the first outing unfortunatly lacked. The two player game splits the screen horizontally and there is no loss of qaulity from the original game, in fact it's improved upon which is impressive. Good stuff. Its got potential and is shaping up nicely, and I will be keeping an eye on this ones progress. On a whole as long as Nintendo can get these games out quick, then its going to be a great year. One of Nintendos problems, may be that they have left some of their best games far too late to make an impact. If they could have got things like Mario Kart Double Dash, Pac-Man, Zelda: Four Swords (GC) and others on the Gamecube earlier, then things may have been a whole lot better. Click here to read the first part of this feature
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