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Sandwiched in between the comparatively tame 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 kiosks sat EA Sports MMA at the company’s Season Opener event in San Francisco last night. The physical setup alone made it clear that EA Sports‘ first venture into mixed martial arts is a serious departure for the company that has traditionally stuck to core, slightly more mainstream sports. While I wasn’t allowed to play EA Sports MMA (now for the second time), developers were on-hand to give a guided demo and shine a bit more light on the finer points of the game, including the first details behind the control scheme.

The first thing that really impressed me after being disappointed by a lack of emotion and pageantry in THQ’s UFC title from last year was that EA Sports MMA is including authentic ring entrances for its list of fighters. They come complete with pyrotechnics, music and plenty of attitude depending on which fighter you’re using. Jimmy Lennon provides charisma to the stadium announcements and Big John McCarthy stands waiting in the ring as your fighter pumps up the crowd. I wish that the volume had been turned up on the TV at the crowded downtown San Francisco venue as seeing the fighters walk to the ring in front of a muted audience was a little strange.

As Cung Le and Nick Diaz (the two fighters used throughout the event) made their way into the ring the developers from Tiburon introduced me to two new mechanics. The first was Total Strike Control. As you might have guessed, EA Sports MMA is going to use a similar punching and kicking mechanic to what was seen in Fight Night, but with a left bumper modifier to execute kicks. In other words, to throw a right hook, you move the right stick to three o’clock, then up to twelve o’clock. Jabs are simple upward movements to the left or right and, as I said, the left bumper converts these movements into kicks. Randy Chase, executive producer on the title, emphasized that the movements could also be used for striking on the ground, but exact mechanics for the ground game would have to wait until a later date.

He did say that users would be able to fight in a hexagon cage, a circle cage and in traditional rings and would be able to do so using three different rule sets. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, southpaw fighters are most certainly a part of EA Sports MMA. You’ll notice other details like damage specific to different arms and legs and blood that transfers from your fighter to both the mat and your opponent’s clothes and skin.

The next mechanic to be revealed was called Feel The Fight and was as close to details on the ground game as EA Sports was willing to part with. It had to do with the counter system when struggling between different holds. Essentially Feel The Fight uses the rumble mechanic in your controller to tell you when it’s time to pull off a counter. It could rumble for a full second or a quarter of a second depending on your stamina and fatigue. This feature, likely more than any other, was tough to form an opinion on without actually having the controller in my hands. Here’s hoping I get to try it for myself sooner rather than later.

The fight ended with one player taking a shot to the face and falling to the mat. At that point, the attacker rabidly flicked up on the right stick as their character stood over the downed opponent, raining blows onto their head. The defender was forced to mash the B button (square on PS3) to try and cover their face and regenerate health in order to stand up. Big John was quick to put a stop to it, which also put an end to my time with the game.

The demo for EA Sports MMA was short and limited, and didn’t bother touching on anything beyond a few punches and kicks between Le and Diaz. No career mode, no multiplayer and no true ground game specifics were mentioned. EA is sticking to finer details for now. Like the fact that there are about 20 different fighting styles going into the game and the different ring types I mentioned before. We’ll have to wait and see what the career mode holds, though the one tidbit I was able to garner was that they’re focusing on the international nature of MMA. Leave your best guesses at what that means in the comments.

pix courtesy of blackjackskanz

Like the setting of the sun, when one Corey dies another must make a statement. On his WordPress blog:

I was awakened at 8:30 this morning by my brother and sister knocking on my bedroom door. They informed me of the loss of my brother Corey Haim. My eyes weren’t even open all the way when the tears started streaming down my face. I am so sorry for Corey, his mother Judy, his family, my family, all of our fans, and of course my son who I will have to find a way to explain this to when he gets home from school. This is a tragic loss of a wonderful,beautiful,tormented soul, who will always be my brother,family, and best friend. We must all take this as a lesson in how we treat the people we share this world with while they are still here to make a difference. Please respect our families as we struggle and grieve through this difficult time. I hope the art Corey has left behind will be remembered as the passion of that for which he truly lived. ~ Corey

Advance Review: This episode starts in a mysterious fashion, with an unfortunate fellow finding something that some really shady military folks want. Before the guy can be interrogated, Christopher Chance shows up and once again displays his prowess with languages, this time it’s a respectable bit of Spanish. The client, a mousey-looking dude with a British accent, is a Cambridge archeology professor who found something rather valuable deep in a South American forest.

Chance has to deal with a bunch of greedy military types, along with some guerillas, but the main antagonist is a fellow named Bertram, whose specialty is “Salvage and Reclamation.” Meanwhile, Winston and Guerrero have had their escape plan compromised which complicates matters quite a bit.

Chance hooks up with an old lady friend named Maria, which adds most of the subtext in this story. There’s a softer side of Chance we get to see as he tries to rekindle the flame with Maria. One could imagine that guys like Chance don’t get very many opportunities to settle down and be vulnerable with someone, and there are many tender moments for these two, in-between scenes of them getting shot at and running for their lives. It’s cute, but fairly implausible at times, and it’s a theme that has been done to death in Hollywood.

- FOX

As usual, the show flirts with some old cliches that border on cheesiness. There’s the hot exotic gal with a romantic past with the male lead, and a corrupt military leader, etc. It’s all right of the old adventure book bag of tricks. Most of the time, this series can dabble in old tropes and add enough fresh ideas to make it work, but things don’t work out so well here.

This episode has plenty of action, but the story is a bit lacking. It’s too linear, the jokes often feel kind of forced, and I think this episode finally did cross the line into the land of cliches. Worst of all, our bad guy of the week, Bertram, isn’t all that menacing or much of a challenge for Chance, though the door is open for him to make some appearances later in the series. The character is at least interesting enough to warrant some more development.

Despite the flaws, Winston and Guerrero continue to be a treat to watch. The interactions between the two characters give actors Chi McBride and Jackie Earle Haley a chance to show off their comedy skills, which they don’t too often get to do in their more serious roles. The series seems to have a good formula with Chance leading the story while his partners take us through a side-story to provide back-up and/or save Chance from certain doom.

As far as Human Target episodes go, this isn’t one of the best of the series. But it’s still fun, and it provides another link in the long chain of events that slowly reveal the histories of our main characteristics. Although this story is kind of a letdown overall, it’s still an entertaining hour of television and it’s worth a few laughs.

Fighting games have always been awkward—and a little sad—as portable experiences, like Rottweilers stuffed in sweaters. Touchscreen controls, you’d think, would be adding a bowtie. But Street Fighter IV iPhone is a poodle in a cardigan. It fits.

It’s a gorgeous port of Street Fighter IV, from flaming dragon punches—when you can pull them off—to ultra moves, which retain the quick cut scene close-up as a prelude to beating the unholy crap out of your opponent, to the booming, overly enthusiastic announcer that no Capcom fighting game is complete without. If you remember the days of Mortal Kombat on the Game Boy, it’s kind of awe-inspiring how richly they’ve translated the audio and visual experience, even if the framerates do get a little choppy on anything pre-3GS.

What’s missing? A bunch of characters, namely. You get just seven and a half: Ryu/Ken, Guile, Bison, Axel, Dhalsim, Chun Li and Blanka. Where’s Honda, or Zangief? Multiplayer is over Bluetooth only—no Wi-Fi, no online service to get your ass beat by Japanese dudes who can EX counter your every move, half a world away.

Oh yes, the controls. The make or break. You have a sparse selection of buttons, at first glance, just four onscreen, plus the virtual joystick: punch, kick, special attack (which can be used for fully automatic specials, or just be the button you tap after performing the full movement for EX specials), and saving, which is used for focus attacks and counters. What you didn’t know is that the ultra and super meters are buttons themselves, which you can tap to unleash ultimate destruction, if your meter’s filled. Truthfully, this layout is as good it could get. It works, and feels as natural as it possibly could, tapping on a piece of glass with no feedback as to whether you hit the right “button.” You won’t even notice all that much that you’re covering a bunch of the screen with your meatnuggets, honest.

What’s both shocking natural and at times utterly frustrating is the joystick. It’s awesome and smooth when you want to do nothing in particular. Like jumping, or moving back and forth. But when you NEED to nail that dragon punch, it will fail you more often than not. If it’s more complicated than a hadouken, you will not pull the maneuver off flawlessly ever single time. I guarantee you. (This, I suspect, is one reason Zangief, my main character, got ditched. I’d have a stroke trying to pile drive people.)

If you’re using a notebook right now, I want you to make a dragon punch motion on the trackpad with your thumb. See how weird that feels? Also, notice how you have no feedback as to whether you actually swiped correctly? There’s no precision. And nothing guiding you to be precise. So, if you’re a skilled player, who expects to nail your god combos flawlessly, you’ll be frustrated by the touchscreen controls, because it’s not going to come out every time you want it to. In fact, the better you are at Street Fighter, and the more skillfully you try to play this, the more this game will piss you off.

But! If you’re in their spamming fireball motions, jabbing at punch and kick trying to kick the shit out of somebody for fun, you will have a blast. It’s real Street Fighter, in your pocket, and it looks, sounds, feels and just plain is awesome. [iTunes]

Western game Red Dead Redemption has been delayed from April to May. Those looking to bide their time productively with cowboys, read on.

Developer Rockstar needs more time to polish the game, which *fingers crossed* means a better finished product. Still, that leaves us with some dead time this coming April.

Kotaku previously posted the first part (music!) of its Red Dead Redemption Survival Guide. This is the second part: cowboy movies. You know, Westerns. Dudes on horses. Dudes with guns. Dudes.

Like the list of yakuza films Kotaku posted, this is a personal list. Those were the favorite Japanese gangster films of Otaku USA Editor-in-Chief Patrick Macias. These are my favorite Westerns. Not yours, mine. Cool? They are not in any particular order.

Once Upon a Time in the West
A financial and critical flop when released in the U.S., Once Upon a Time in the West starred Hollywood star Henry Fonda (Henry Fonda!) in an epic revenge telling of Western gunslingers, the railroad and the West. And it’s got Woody Strode and Charles Bronson in it! Director Sergio Leone had planned on moving on from Westerns after his brilliant opus The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. This is the film that brought him back to the genre. Fun facts: the film’s story was conceived by Dante Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci, and Charles Bronson accepted the role of “Harmonica” after Clint Eastwood turned it down. Bronson had previously turned down the role of The Man With No Name in Fistful of Dollars. Watch the film’s opening.

Stagecoach
Starring a young John Wayne, Stagecoach isn’t only one of the greatest Westerners ever made, it was of the greatest films ever made. The pairing of John Wayne and John Ford continued throughout their professional careers, and Ford was one of very few directors (if not the only one!) who could treat Wayne like utter crap onset. The reason he got away with it? He made Wayne a superstar. The movie’s most memorable stunts inspired this sequence in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The Naked Spur
Director Anthony Mann let Jimmy Stewart do something few filmmakers ever did: let the actor be a badass. Mann and Stewart made a series of Westerns during the 1950s that includes Winchester ‘73 and Bend of the River. Bend of the River has been described as “Jimmy Stewart being Rambo”. The Mann Westerns were uncompromising, cynical and tough. The Naked Spur with Janet Leigh of Psycho fame and Ralph Meeker who was in Kiss Me Deadly is one of many of Mann’s masterworks.

Mann made a name for himself during the 1960s by directing a handful of sword and sandal films. He was the original director of Spartacus, but after a row with star Kirk Douglas, he was fired. Stanley Kubrick, whom Douglas thought he could control but ultimately couldn’t, ending up completing the film.

Red River
Howard Hawks, America’s greatest 20th century filmmaker, made a handful of Westerns with John Wayne. They didn’t have the bawdy humor that the John Ford Westerns did, but rather, Hawks’ trademark dry, talky wit. They are landmark films of the genre. Red River has what many consider to be John Wayne’s best performance because director Hawks didn’t let John Wayne simply be John Wayne. He got him to act.

Actor Walter Brennan, as usual, is superb. John Ireland, who gives one of the film’s most memorable speeches, was apparently high on marijuana during the entire shoot.

The Wild Bunch
When the Wild Bunch premiered in 1969, it incited cheers, and it incited booing. Director Sam Peckinpah was attempting to outdo the violence in Depression Era gangster yarn Bonnie and Clyde. He did. One patron got so ill that he threw up during the final gunfight. Another theater-goer said, “I never thought I’d see the day that William Holden called a woman a ‘bitch’.” Holden had been a big star in the studio system (he was Hollywood’s “Golden Boy!”, appearing in romantic comedies like the original Sabrina and war films like Stalag 17. Sam Peckinpah was a hard man and an alcoholic, who would end his career directing music videos. His use of slow-motion and different film speeds were revolutionary for its time. Violent and beautiful, The Wild Bunch would later inspire a generation of American, European and Hong Kong filmmakers. Check out the trailer.

It’s not that Brizzly’s perfect, or that it does justice to its source material (the unassailably pretty, wonderfully lean Birdfeed)—it’s that it comes close enough, and it’s free.

First, a quick lesson in the history of iPhone Twitter apps! Once, there was an app called Birdfeed. It was clever, fast, and visually distinctive. In fact, it was (up until just now) quite possibly one of the best Twitter apps available. It was also expensive, at $5. The developer, who was tired or something, sold the app to a little startup called Brizzly, which aggregates Twitter and Facebook feeds into a single interface (it’s actually kinda neat, as an online service.) And so here we are.

Brizzly’s rerelease (not an update; Birdfeed is no longer in the store) of Birdfeed changes the name, tweaks the UI, and slashes the price down to zero. The interface isn’t as dazzling as it was before, and Birdfeed’s trademark lack of a menu bar has given way to a standard row of icons. Brizzly actually adds a few new features, including a trending topics-esque News tab, for explaining what’s going on in your feeds, and the same lovely pull-down feed refreshing as the other best iPhone Twitter app, Tweetie.

Even its apparent shortfallings aren’t so bad: Yes, you have to sign up for a Brizzly account in order to use the app, but one you have, it’s completely transparent. It’s like Meebo in that sense. And no, the app doesn’t have push notifications of its own, like Echofon does, but premium Twitter apps have long offloaded that responsibility to dedicated push apps like Boxcar. (Which is great beyond Twitter, by the way.)

In short, if you need a Twitter app but don’t want to pay, Brizzly’s the one. [iTunes]

The OnLive streaming game service that takes console and PC games, renders them server-side, then streams it to your Mac or PC, will go live on June 17 in the US (lower 48).

A year after our first hands on, they’ve improved speeds to a point where it actually looks really good. Latency didn’t seem like it was a huge problem (on stage, in their demo), and in controlled quarters, they’ve said that focus group participants had no idea that they were playing a game streaming over the internet.

Some slightly new details. They’ve got two ways of rendering games. You can either natively on their own servers using their own SDK system—which requires game publishers to go and adapt existing games onto their platform (an easy task if it’s a Windows game, slightly more difficult for, say, PS3 games)—or they can render it natively on the console it was intended for, and stream that to your PC/Mac, which causes more latency than the “native” method.

OnLive will charge you $15 a month for just having the service, which includes playing demos and live-spectating people who are playing games (which is essentially in real time, letting you, combined with the chat function, basically play a game with a buddy across the country and give him real-time tips as he goes). If you want to play a game yourself, they’ll sell you both games and rentals, with a price TBD. The subscription service is preliminary, and they’ll have cheaper packages if you sign up for 3 or 6 months.

The upside for the platform, as OnLive puts it are the instant play (because games are rendered and already slotted up on the server), easy multiplayer, saving games in the cloud, always-updated games and instant downloading of add-ons, because there are no downloads (it’s all server-side).

A couple future-looking announcements they made were that they’re going to focus on Macs and PCs first, but have a Microconsole TV adapter in the future in order to get this onto your TV, plus maybe support specialty controllers and motion gestures depending on the demand for these games. They’ll also have 1080p, 60FPS streaming some time in 2011, depending on how many of their customers actually can support 1080p60.

One illustration of how this thing actually works is when the developers pulled out an iPhone and streamed Crysis—downrezzed, of course, to the iPhone’s native resolution—and played it quite smoothly. There’s no way the iPhone can get anywhere near running Crysis in full details, so this demo can drive home the point that all this processing is going on on the server side. They then spectated the same game, using another account, and that ran at full resolution smoothly as well.

Again, the ultimate test is getting this into our homes and hooking it up to our Comcasts, or DSLs, or U-Verses and our FIOSes and seeing whether or not it performs up to par, compared to a standard console experience. If it actually is as transparent as they say, it kinda paves the way for people to eschew consoles in order to get straight to the gaming. And the way OnLive is positioning themselves really is as an Xbox Live-esque service, which is kinda impressive if they can pull it off. [Onlive]

Sam Fisher will be a busy man next month. Just as Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction rolls across Xbox 360 and PC in April, the former Third Echelon agent is also infiltrating the iPhone. At the Game Developers Conference today, I sat down to ride shotgun through a handful of missions in the upcoming iPhone stealth action game.

Conviction on iPhone borrows a lot from the console edition. The plot is very similar, with Sam being pulled back into the world of Third Echelon and international intrigue. Michael Ironside voices Fisher in the iPhone game, as does the remainder of the cast. Conviction also mirrors several gameplay concepts from the console game, such as the use of mark and execute to tag enemies and then eliminate them with lightning fast shots before they can react. Fisher can also use a last known position technique to lure enemies into disadvantageous positions, which is something I employed in the windowless building mission to get an enemy to step into Fisher’s home turf: the shadows. As he investigated where I was recently spotted on the rooftop of a security checkpoint, it was easy to creep down and pull him into a hand-to-hand kill.

These hand-to-hand kills are critical in Conviction because that’s what awards you the ability to use mark and execute actions. There are multiple types of kills, from pulling an enemy over a ledge if you shimmy beneath them to drawing them into a human shield position, which protects you from incoming fire.

Please remove your belt and shoes before stepping through the scanner.

Though the version of Conviction I played was in that nebulous zone between alpha and beta, it was already featuring some nice touches, like the painting of objectives on walls. The controls are a little touchy right now, but moving Fisher around with the virtual stick was fine. Scrolling through gadgets such as frag grenades and camera grenades, though, needs some tightening. Too many times I wanted to use a camera to spy on an enemy outpost, only to roll a frag into their midst and reveal my position.

Conviction on the iPhone lacks multiplayer, so no co-op missions or deathmatches. But with 10 missions stretched from Malta to Iraq, there should be plenty of action to keep gamers busy. As Conviction draws nearer, look for additional details on IGN.