Namco Bandai's Editors Day was held in sunny but still chilly San Francisco on this sunny Spring afternoon. I partook of a few pieces of Hors D'oeuvre and found myself a drink and a seat before the presentation began. Todd Thorson, Director of Marketing, took the stage to tell us that their expectations for Soulcaliber IV in 2008 far exceeded their expectations for number of copies sold, as did their entrants into the more casual Wii gaming market: We Cheer, Wii Active Life ( played with game mat and Wiimote), as well as We Ski.

Their 2008 report complete, Todd moved on to announcements of their 2009 line up together with trailers of some of the games.

The Soulcaliber and Naruto Shippoden Legends franchises come to the hand-held format with SoulCaliber:Broken Destiny and Naruto Shippoden Legends: Akatsuki Rising for the PSP. Magna Carta II was announced for the Xbox360, an interesting collaboration with the Food Network for the Wii; and Tekken 6 for PS3, PSP & Xbox 360 was proudly featured.

The trailers shown of the games showed some great looking graphics. Namco Bandai has taken advantage of the new generation consoles' technologies and leveraged the graphics capabilities of the consoles to bring us some truly beautiful games. Tekken 6 project director Katsuhiro Harada, had flown in from Japan for this event and spoke to the crowd through an interpreter.

“In Tekken 6,” Harada-san told the audience, we have made the best use of a new graphics engine. There are new movements in game, and there is console specific content.”

Wii Cheer 2
Wii Cheer 2 seems to have improved tremendously over the first game in the avatar customization arena, with more than double the characters of the first, playable male characters and the ability to change hair, facial features and color. There is some voice acting, but mostly, they are the same squealing girls doing dance routines. Rhythm, timing and dance moves is the name of this game.

Food Network: Cook or Be Cooked
The goal of Food Network: Cook or Be Cooked is to teach gamers to cook. To make them more comfortable in a kitchen. To demystify cooking. A commendable goal, but I have my doubts as to whether it truly translates. The recipe demo'ed was a Pan Seared, Oven Roasted T-Bone Steak with mashed potatoes. We gathered the ingredients by clicking on the wrapped steak in the fridge, the salt and pepper, vegetable oil, fry pan and saute pan. We shook the Wiimote to sprinkle the sale and pepper on the steak. Then turned the gas stove on high to heat up the pan. When the indicator on the bar reached the middle, we poured on the oil to let it heat. Then we turned to the mashed potatoes and began to pare them, chop them up and put them in a pot to boil. We then seared the steak – both sides – in the pan, popped it into the preheated oven to finish cooking while the potatoes boiled.

The hardest recipe at this time is making Spinach Lasagne from scratch (well, not the pasta). All in all, the game is an interesting concept, a sort of middle ground between watching the show and actually doing some real cooking. You can’t be hurt in this game. I asked. You can’t scald yourself or burn yourself on a hot pan. So I wonder where the “Be Cooked” came in. It’s supposed to be an educational game, but as someone who enjoys cooking, I am reserving judgment on it’s effectiveness or fun as we were shown a very early version of the game.

Klonoa
Klonoa is 3-D platformer for the Wii. It looked awfully fun, featuring the usual running, jumping, double jumping and also picking up things and hurling them. This Wii version includes voice acting and that is available in English, French, Spanish as well as the original made-up language. 13 levels in all, a reverse mode and an un-lockable bonus level will provide many hours of fun. This version is also less challenging than the PS1 version which was, I am told, really hard!

Wii Active Life Extreme Challenge
The follow-up to the successful Active Life Outdoor Challenge is nex-stage Wii Active Life Extreme Challenge. This game is played with the game mat and the Wii-mote, or just the game mat alone. Featuring “extreme” sports, the motive behind the game it to get kids active while having fun playing the game. Games include Street Luge – where you actually sat on the skateboard (game mat), a skipping game which includes actions such as touching the ground, BMX bike tricks, kite-surfing - and the one I tried and enjoyed quite a bit, Skate board jumping tricks. The game can be played solo, cooperative or in challenge modes. As Outdoor Challenge shipped with a game mat, Extreme Challenge will ship in two versions, with or without mat.

Munchables
Munchables for the Wii will launch at the end of May, and the idea is to go around the worlds eating everything in sight. The game looks to be a cross between Pac Man and Katamari. Except in Munchables there is actually a storyline behind every world. As you go along, you pick up power-ups such as vacuum cleaner, and there are mini-bosses on each level that you have to defeat before you can move onto the final boss. It’s kitschy, it’s colorful, it’s funny. A couple of the bosses I saw was Broccoli – yes… a gigantic head of broccoli and the Great Grapy – a bunch of grapes that threw grape bombs at you. 8 world and 500 levels will keep you munching happily away for a while.

Katamari Forever
Katamari Forever for the PS3 is simply gorgeous. Making the most use of the native 1080p High Definition ability of the PS3 – Blu-Ray, don’t you know? The game features four different graphical looks or “filters” that will be unlocked as you play through the game. The King has lost his memory and you have to help him gain it back. In one of the levels shown, we started out in black and white and as we rolled along, we brought color back into the world. In another level – they called the Sprinkler level, that’s what you essentially did. Filling up the ball with water, you sprinkled the dry brown land and brought flora and fauna back to the land. The more water you sprinkled and the more verdant land you uncovered, the higher your level, and the more water you could hold. You eventually brought back water features including flowing streams and water falls. Still as addictive as ever, with even more twists to the humongous sticky ball of collection.

Invincible Tiger: Lengend of Han Tao
Invincible Tiger: Legend of Han Tao brings stereoscopic 3-D visuals to the console. You need a high-definition TV with DLP – the 3-D chipset in order to use the hardware that comes with it, the glasses with emitter, and the sensor that is mounted on the TV. The game is good old kung-fu “Haiyah!” action where you kick, punch and make fantastic leaps to defeat your enemies, in 3-D stereoscopic graphical wonder. The glasses over my own were a little heavy and as explained, it’s a kind of synchronized flicker, which is at a very basic level, the same way the NVidia 3-D glasses work as well. Maybe I’m more sensitive because of my prescription, but I could not use them long. It did look really great though.

Dead to Rights: Retribution
Nick Dixon of Volatile Games talked to me about Dead to Rights: Retribution as his colleague played it for me. A reimagining of the original game, reaching for a far more mature audience and bringing it to the Xbox360 breathes a fresh breath of life to the game which uses the original protagonist Jack and his German Sheppard sidekick, Shadow. Together, they clean up Grant City where the dregs of society seem to have congregated, and breath new life into the city.

As the story progresses, you slip from the skin of Jack into the skin of Shadow. A fascinating bit of gameplay actually, as you play as a dog. I was shown the start of the game where Jack finds himself unable to not take a hand in a hostage situation. This is also the tutorial as the game pauses and the tutorial showed you the different moves you could make.

“Our goal is to make the hand to hand and gunplay absolutely seamless,” said Nick. Even at this early juncture (the game ships Q4 of 2009), I must say they have succeeded. In one of the smoothest transitions I’ve ever seen, Jack fought one of the terrorists, drew his gun, pistol-whipped him, then shot him in the face with a gory splash of blood and body jerking in death spasms. Even as I winced, I had to admire the animation.

Definitely an “M” game this, in language, action and intensity of violence. Blood spray can be turned off, but that’s a mere drop in the bucket, and more for performance issues, I would assume, then anything else!

Wrap Up
That was quite a nice line up for 2009 by Namco Bandia, even if they did not show the announced titles like Magna Carta 2 which promises some great story telling, Naruto nor Soulcaliber. Of the games that were previewed, even if it’s not my cup of tea, I’ll have to give Dead to Rights: Retribution a “thumbs up” as a game to watch for.