It’s not really that alarming. Actually it’s not alarming at all. It’s just a bunch of pre-E3 news, and an opportunity to use the word “confluence.”
Portland, Oregon fiction writer, writing professor, and gamer, Tom Bissell, was interviewed in my local alternative weekly concurrent with the release of his book, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter. It’s a long, rambling interview that touches on, among other things, why Portal is so important, why most game reviews aren’t very good and how tedious it is actually writing for a game developer. Those who still love playing PlayStation games may use these ps1 …
How do you solve the problem of updating one of the most revered console franchises of all time and making it relevant for a whole new generation of consoles and gamers? Personally I’d suggest the best way would be to just not bother, avoiding desecrating the memory in the process, but Activision would clearly disagree. According to Eurogamer, Activision are all set to reveal GoldenEye at this years E3, which kicks off in Los Angeles …
Since the dizzying heights of my birthday post about a month ago I’ve changed my mind on the name of this musical interlude featurette. The phrase “I can feel the epicness flowing through my balls” did originally make me laugh, but now… now it’s just a questionable YouTube comment. I feel so dirty. Anyway, since I can’t think of a witty name I’m putting the onus on you funny bastards to come up with something …
I take back what I said about Steam being evil because it made me buy Alpha Protocol. How can you hate Valve? Those guys crack me up. Big outlets (read: not us) got an announcement today, regretfully informing them that the Portal 2 event at E3 was canceled. But as is always the case with Valve, there’s more to it than that.
Based on yesterday’s flurry of bad press for Obsidian’s new Spy-PG, I’d decided to contradict myself (when I said I would buy regardless of reviews on account of Chris Avellone’s penmanship) and hold off on Alpha Protocol. After all, I still haven’t finished Final Fantasy XIII or Mass Effect 2 or Metro 2033 or Splinter Cell Conviction or Tropico 3, Dobry just loaned me Bioshock 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2 and sooner or later I’ll …
GamesBrief ran a piece last week with the somewhat hysterical title “Five Reasons why Steam will Destroy the PC Games Industry.”
In a word: it’s a monopoly. Or it’s fast becoming one. And monopolies, historically, are dangerous, regardless of industry.
Lewis Denby has written an interesting piece for his column over at GameSetWatch about the way in which we engage with games and more specifically the nature of embodying player characters. The article came about after he attended and contributed to a discussion on video game narrative held by Kieron Gillen at GameCamp in London a few weeks ago. Lewis spoke of how he tried to explore ‘context as narrative’ in his two Half-Life 2 …
…And gave it a respectable 7/10, complaining about the game’s overall lack of polish and balance while complimenting its ability to keep you playing despite these issues. Obsidian Entertainment has never been great at polish; the company is much more about design and writing than technology, but they’re nowhere near as bad as Troika used to be. For some people, the fact that Chris Avellone (Baldur’s Gate, Fallout, Planescape Torment, KOTOR 2) is lead designer …
There’s a rumor – thanks 1UP – that a PS3-based, high-def collection of famed games Ico and Shadow of the Colossus will appear sometime in 2011, like the recent God of War HD collection. No official announcement has been made, but as 1UP points out, it would make fiscal sense for Team Ico to release an HD bundle of its games just before launching its still-mostly-under-wraps new title, The Last Guardian. Rant follows.
In what could quite easily be a direct follow up to our last Wow, I Was NOT Expecting That post, Sony have finally placed an official rubber stamp of confirmation on Killzone 3, to the surprise of just about nobody. Indeed, there are more than a handful of parallels to be drawn with this announcement and that of Gears of War 3. Like Microsoft, Sony were pretty much cornered into the announcements thanks to more …
If you aren’t aware, and as I haven’t seen much coverage on XCOM since Steerpikes last post on its development, alongside the revelation that 2K Marin were the developers leading the charge, I thought it would be nice to give those of you who don’t buy PC Gamer (before press coverage at E3 goes wild) the opportunity to feast your eyes on a couple of screen shots (7 in total) I managed to get my hands on. …
Well it’s that time again folks, where we take a look at the latest software chart. Those amongst you who have managed to keep up with my past chart posts will remember my love of Just Dance, and you will be pleased to know that the tragic game (which does not know when to die) has bounced back from its blip last week (phew!) and has managed to claw its way back into the top …
Potentially bad news for Remedy Entertainment, as its long-awaited horror title Alan Wake, an Xbox 360 exclusive, apparently moved only about 88,000 units in its first week of release.
Remember multiplayer games before the internet arrived? I couldn’t until recently. My brother was busying himself at the weekend, showing me a wonderful little tower defence game on the PlayStation 3 that goes by the name of Comet Crash…