Year: 2008

Big Tuesday Blog Post

by

Initially this post was going to be about one topic, but several other things have come up that warrant discussion. Let us begin!

– Yahoo! Music is closing its doors. You probably never used Yahoo music, but it was big enough to warrant some sponsorships with Pepsi in the past, and worked as both an iTunes style store and a Rhapsody style subscription service. Strangely enough, the remains of the service will be merged with Rhapsody.

Meanwhile the DRM keys used to play music purchased from Yahoo will be going away, forcing Yahoo to give refunds – though the details are flaky as hell for subscribers.

The lesson here? These same dangers are a threat to gaming. Digital downloads are getting more and more popular, and for good reason. →  I’m readin’ here!

Review – Resistance: Fall of Man

by

In Resistance: Fall of Man, scrappy human soldiers in the UK go up against a technologically superior (and seemingly alien) foe in an alternate, World War 2 era universe. To those uninitiated in gaming culture, this may sound like War of the Worlds updated by half a century.

If only it were that whimsical. As a PS3 launch game, you can’t fault developer Insomniac for making Resistance a comfortable and conservative experience, but at this point it is mostly good for building up interest in Resistance 2.

Almost everything in Resistance will be familiar to action game aficionados. While technically set in the early 1950’s, the outdoor environments are reminiscent of any World War 2 shooter. The enemy Chimera bear some resemblance to Gears of War’s Locusts, while their technology and architecture looks to have been contracted out to the Combine from Half Life 2. →  We have the best words.

E3 games you may have missed

by

We’ve all been beaten over the head with Gears of War 2, Resident Evil 5, Resistance 2, and the like for days now, but here are a few gems waiting just below the surface that really got my attention this past E3.

Dead Space
At first, Dead Space may look like a paint by numbers imitation of games like System Shock 2, but after taking a closer look, I’m really enjoying the direction this game is taking. Dead Space adopts a HUDless over the shoulder camera, and outfits its protagonist, the lone survivor on a derelict spacecraft now inhabited by malevolent creatures, with weapons improvised from the ship’s mining equipment.

The trailer brings to mind films like Event Horizon, which, while not being a particularly good example of film (OK, it sucked), certainly had its share of intense and disturbing imagery. →  Ring of Read

News We Care About Wrapup – 7.25.08

by

David Cage insults MMOs
Cage, the creator of Indigo Prophecy (or if you prefer, Fahrenheit) questions the emotional significance of grinding. His points look very similar to what some of us were saying during the long comment war after this videolamer article. He goes further than we did, though, and into territory I asked one writer to avoid despite his wanting to write on it:

“I think that’s fine for people when they need to build self esteem.”

Excellent fighting words. I agree with most of Cage’s positions but remain skeptical about his talent. Indigo Prophecy had about the best first few hours of any game I’ve played but is betrayed by Cage’s (or someone at Quantic Dreams) inability to write a good story. →  Your right post comes off?

Review – Turok

by

The first Turok: Dinosaur Hunter came out eleven years ago and grew into a franchise of four games. While the original was well received the sequels received increasingly more critical reviews and the series eventually died. Disney bought the rights, created Vancouver-based Propaganda Games to develop a new title, and basically wound up repeating the lackluster performance of the last go around.

Overall Turok is mired in sub-par design in almost every aspect of the game. It uses the ubiquitous Unreal Technology to run the game and the developers weren’t able to make it shine as nicely as other third party developers. The environments are dull, rather fake looking, and use a slim palette of colours. The character models and dinosaurs look pretty good but they are nothing new and therefore fail to impress. →  Show me the reading!

Dual Shocked

by

Way back when the Playstation was Sony’s way of saying “fuck you” to Nintendo, there was the original Playstation controller. The method behind it was simple; take what Nintendo made and make it bigger. The controller had the same layout as a Super Nintendo pad, with some added handles and two extra shoulder buttons. Not at all original, but entirely functional, Sony would begin a trend of copying and improving that they follow to this day.

Nintendo of course wouldn’t be beaten, and with the N64 they added not only an analog joystick, but the option for force feedback. Sony replied just as they did before; their new controller would have two sticks and two rumble motors, without the need for batteries. →  SaGa Frontier Readmastered

Review – Lost in Blue 3

by

Hey guys, there’s a island survival game with the word “lost” in it. It has flashbacks, a secret lab, mysterious blah blahs, and blah blah blah. Sound familiar? Surprisingly, Lost in Blue 3 is the first of the series that grossly appropriates themes from the um… “popular” TV series Lost, and it makes the game a whole lot more fun!!! Just kidding.
Dolphin sing along!

I remember the first time I played The Sims. There I was, in an apartment full of moldy food, girlfriendless, and soaking in a pool of my own urine, gleefully being much more tidy and put-together in the virtual world than I ever could be in the real one. I didn’t get it. Why was picking up virtual trash actual fun when I hated doing it in the supposedly more interesting 3 dimensional world? →  What is a post? A miserable little pile of secrets.

E3 08 – Sony Press Conference impressions

by

The major E3 press conferences played out the way I expected, except for Sony’s. Nintendo didn’t have much, and they didn’t really need much. Microsoft needed a fresh coat of paint and wanted a broader audience for the 360, and revealed attempts to accomplish these goals. Sony needed some big fucking guns, especially after the FF13 announcement. Instead, they gave us most of the same, and the few pleasant surprises simply weren’t enough in today’s gaming climate.

Killzone 2? Knew about it. Resistance 2? Looks great, but we knew about it. Resistance PSP and God of War 3? New, but not exactly shockers. Neither is a new Ratchet and Clank, even if it is a downloadable. Sony’s wares are all last year’s models, and apparently that will not fly. →  Drakenread 2

Riding the FAQ train

by

While they’re called “walkthroughs,” I’ve always been under the impression that very few gamers actually “walk through,” point by point, every single bit of advice and strategy that exists in these documents. Since I have a profound belief in the desire of humans to be lazy and cheat their way through life, I of course realize that there are some people who do just that; getting every magical item and NPC not through the joyous act of discovery, but the ponderous reading of, and then reacting to, an online how-to guide.

However, I never thought I’d see what I noticed today. A man, adorned in a marginally ridiculous dark suit & bright orange tee-shirt, reading (actually, more like studying) his printed-out f.a.q →  Readbot Chronicles

E3 08 – Nintendo Press Conference impressions

by

Nintendo’s E3 conference this year was a big let down for most people. Gamers are even calling it the worst E3 presentation ever and discussing how to best dispose of their Wiis. What could Nintendo have done to have drawn this kind of ire?

Having a mom lead off the presentation didn’t exactly start things off with a bang (insert clever mom sex joke here). She has some fancy position like administrative vice principle of managerial accounting executive advertising president of marketing but that she was a mom was important.

Yes, for the first time ever Nintendo announced their goal of branching out to new kinds of gamers at this year’s E3. And how. Olympic Snowboarding Gold Medalist Carrot Top presented the first fun-for-everyone Wii title. →  Now with fewer vowels.