Articles

Weekly News We care About Wrap Up – 4.21.06

by

It’s not vandalism if it’s illegible.

Getting Up game mediocre enough to inspire Hollywood movie
This makes perfect sense to me. The game wasn’t very good and was style over substance. Why wouldn’t they make a movie out of it and say… seven sequels to the game? When has quality ever been something consumers cared about?


Guitar Hero 2 is coming
Awesome to the max. More songs than the first one and more importantly, new modes. Bass guitar I could take or leave, but two player mode with one doing rhythm and the other doing lead sounds like a lot of fun. Now I wish I’d invested in that cherry red second guitar. It’s a tad keyboard heavy, but I really hope Rainbow in the Dark is in this game. →  Four out of five dentists recommend reading more.

Bad Design 3

by

It’s been a while since the last entry in this series. Last time, and the time before that, I promised Gladius, Second Sight and Kingdom Hearts, so here they are in all their poorly designed glory.

Blah blah blah blah blah.

Gladius: Irrelevant Plot — We always hurt the ones we love, but I cannot ignore that the setup of this game made any plot unnecessary. I have a friend who believes plot in all strategy RPGs is unnecessary. I disagree, but not in Gladius’ case. There are two major problems with the game’s plot, neither of which is that it’s poorly written. Nearly all of the dialog is based in the history of the regions and of the arenas. Back story in a game can be very enriching, but not when there is hardly any active story. →  Sly 3: Honor Among Reads

A rant about fanboys

by
He shaves his head because he's mostly bald

Microsoft’s J Allard is paid to be a fanboy. For no extra cost, he is also a tool.

Fanboys remind me of the villain from the Serenity movie. He was sharp and eloquent but also utterly and completely blind. His faith was clearly proven wrong by the reality before his eyes, but rather than rethink his faith, he simply changed his perception of reality. Intelligent people who believe weird or extreme things are very dangerous because they’re able to make their faith sound rational. Thus, a fanboy is a force to be reckoned with. A forum of onlookers is often persuaded by a fanboy’s arguments, much like an intelligent design proponent can easily confuse and place doubt in the heads of smart, rational people. →  Devil May Read 2

Weekly News We care About Wrap Up – 4.14.06

by

Video game skills do not usually transfer to real life skills
Man in his 30s attempts to outrun cops in a car because he did it in GTA. Instead of putting age restrictions on games, there should be an IQ test. Is anyone else waiting for the guy who played too much Trauma Center to show up in the news?

photoshopped

Too good to be true?

Two Revolution games announced
Red Steel is coming to the Revolution, and check out the fake screen shots. Maybe they’re not polished, who knows. The game seems to be another attempt by Nintendo to convince gamers that they can appeal to an older crowd. The choice of a FPS is slightly odd, though. They tend to do terribly in Japan and if the Revolution is to stand a chance, my guess is that it’d have to repeat the DS’s and Allied Forces strategy of dominating the homeland. →  Assassin’s Read

Best Game Ever – Streets of Rage 2

by

Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega for the Genesis
Released: 1993

Stomp

Mr. X is significantly shorter when you fight him at the end of the game.

If I had a choice between playing a new Xbox360 game and playing an all time classic like Streets of Rage 2, I would of course pick the Xbox360, naturally. When I got bored with that though, I would bust out my emulator, sync up with my brother Rick and play the hell out of some SoR2.

Streets of Rage 2 was by far the best and greatest, nay the pinnacle of the brawler “beat em up” style game. Double Dragon, the Ninja Turtles games, Bad Dudes, Ikari Warriors? All the pond scum on the bottom of SoR2’s boots. →  We have the best words.

Market research is stupid

by

A few days ago I got a call from a friend looking for “hardcore gamers” who were willing to be part of a focus group. This friend has a friend who works for a research group, so through a friend of a friend, I ended up taking part in a video game focus group. The important part was I’d be getting paid.

Hmmm... I wonder

It would be wrong of me to tell you what company the commercials were for, so I’ll just give you a hint.

I was a little disappointed that the group was just to get feedback on some commercials; I’d hoped to get to influence the design of a game (“more explosions, bigger breasts, less reading!”). I’d penned a few crazy sounding comments with Pat before the meeting, but sadly didn’t get to recite them. →  The Last Readment

The videolamer Guide to In-Game Advertising

by

Video games are an exciting new medium, primarily because of the potential for huge profits. These profits won’t just fall into our laps, though. Video games are unlike other media, and as such we cannot rely on the same tired marketing tactics. An annoying tagline like “can you hear me now?” may work on TV, but that’s because TV viewers are morons. The gamer is slightly more clever and we must treat him as such. Because most marketing is aimed at stupid people, most ad agencies will not have the know how to target a gaming audience. This guide, specifically tailored to the advertising needs of the video game advert, will lead you step by step to your ultimate goal: Take money from the ignorant. →  Sounds amazing, I must read it now!

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

Weekly News We care About Wrap Up – 4.7.06

by

Bloated cash cow, I choose you!

Nintendo engineers talk about the process of designing the DSLite
I personally find this article to be fascinating. More interviews with hardware designer’s would be a welcome thing.

Nintendo has great year financially
Despite having a dead console, Nintendo made a lot of yen this past year, thanks to the “favorable” performance of the DS. Maybe one day they’ll stop living off of handhelds and Pokemon and be a real player in the console wars again.

First Amendment bitch slaps anti-game lobbyists
Said the judge, “Video games are a form of creative expression that are constitutionally protected under the First Amendment. They contain original artwork, graphics, music, story lines and characters similar to movies and television shows, both of which are considered protected free speech.” →  Sounds mildly entertaining, I guess.

Guilds and You

by

How do you know when you’re in a bad guild? Well, I am going to tell you a few things that you may want to consider before joining any guild and help you etch out in your mind if the one you are in currently is right for you. First a little background; I am not a big MMO player, nor do I play many FPS style games. When I do, I usually just go with random folks on random servers. I do, however, play World of Warcraft, and I assume that guilds on WoW are no different in theory than guilds on other MMO’s. And that is what we are dealing with here, MMO and RPG guilds as opposed to FPS game Clans/Guilds. →  Reading more, assemble!

World of Warcraft Endgame Analysis part V

by

Parts: I | II | III | IV | V

Endgame Analysis

Hardcore instance running is essentially the “endgame” of endgames. As a result, it is subject to a few annoying things. First off, whatever the “toughest” 40 man instance is starts out at a near impossible level to complete. This is because Blizzard doesn’t want you to be able to “beat the game,” so to speak.

Molten Core’s first pull, for example, initially required battling three very tough “trash” monsters that were harder than all of the other trash up to the first few bosses: thus effectively cockblocking the instance for most guilds. After a few months, this pull was broken into two pulls: and Blizzard announced this as a “bug.” →  Read Danger!