Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 6.2.06

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E3 awards
Wii wins best in show award. So this justifies Nintendo’s actions. When they eventually get trampled in the free market they can at least say, “Oh well, other industry people thought it could work, too.”

Spore won best PC game and best original game. Gears of War picked up a few awards, and the DS Zelda won best handheld. I’m happy to see Bioware’s Mass Effect won something, too, as I am in love with that company. I’m totally having their babies.

Analyst specultes on MS handheld
The Marketeer already broke the news that Microsoft was entering the handheld market.

Peter Moore has started a list of every backwards compatible Xbox game.

Backwards compatibility not a priority for MS
How convenient. →  God of War: Readnarok

Review – BloodRayne 2

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A lot of reviewers would start this off by saying BloodRayne 2 “sucked” and then make some lame joke about this being a vampire game and there being a lot of “sucking” going on anyway. Well I think that sucks … and this game blows. If you’re not familiar with titular character you need only watch Uwe Boll’s opus “BloodRayne” to gain absolutely no insight whatsoever into this franchise and probably confuse the hell out of yourself in the process. Now that movie sucked!

Putting aside the cinematic abortion that will forever mar the face of this spotless product line, BloodRayne 2 is one of the most boring games I’ve played in a long, long time. Poor voice acting, horrible dialogue, tedious battles made even worse by a frustrating combat system… this puppy runs the gamut. →  Gotta get down on Friday.

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A.I. woes

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I’m currently reading a book on game design. The chapter on AI speaks only of the good that will come with advancing computer intelligence, yet not a word of caution or hesitation is included. I quickly outlined a number of worries I have over advanced AI and decided to bring them to our resident computer science major, Christian. Keep in mind I’m not “against” better AI, I just think it may lead to issues designers will have to deal with. I also find game design discussion to be infinitely enjoyable.

What follows are the initial worries I had and then Christian’s cool headed reponses.

This guy probably wishes he were smart enough to stop, drop and roll.

Jay: In an old interview, Warren Spector spoke of making the AI for Deus Ex 2. →  Tokyo Xtreme Reader: Drift 2

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Review – Indigo Prophecy

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Bonjour. I made this game and am better than you, non?

About halfway through Indigo Prophecy I began outlining this review. Had I finished the review but not the game you’d be reading something very different. This is a game with massive potential that completely implodes. But still, for trying something innovative and nearly succeeding, Quantic Dream deserves much respect and anyone interested in innovation and experimentation should try it out.

Indigo Prophecy was made by the French developer Quantic Dream, who were behind the poorly received Dreamcast title Omnikron (I hate it just because David Bowie is in it). This is not a modest company; or rather this company is not run by a modest man. My first experience with Indigo Prophecy was on a demo disc from a magazine. →  Call me game-shmael.

The next generation of handhelds

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Handheld video games are important to us because they offer profit with minimal development costs. If a console title costs 10 million dollars but two years to make, the seemingly large profits come at a very high cost. Handheld games take a fraction of the development time, a fraction of the development cost and can still sell millions of copies.

The new generation of consoles is currently delighting gamers across the globe, but where are the new handhelds? Through my business contacts, I have been lucky enough to uncover the next generation of handhelds. So read this over and then put your marketing team to work.
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Sony PSP2 — Sony has finally stopped pretending the PSP is for new titles and delivered what consumers really want — a portable PS1. →  Xenoblade Articles X

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 5.26.06

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Tose’s game Shrek: Reekin’ Havoc has been accused of lacking soul. How could a company that works as guns for hire and doesn’t like getting credit possibly make a game they don’t feel passionate about?

Development team that doesn’t take credit for their work
Tose say they are “development ninjas.” They have worked on over a thousand games and never take any credit for their work. The few games they have admitted to making seem to be average at best, so it may not be a big loss.

It does raise interesting ethical questions, though. While it may be legal, most people think it’s absurd to buy life stories from someone then write about them like thy happened to you (ala Seinfeld: see Kramer and Peterman). →  [do not click]

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Another gamer is claimed by World of Warcraft

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So. World of Warcraft. A game I’ve been putting off playing since inception.

Nice graphics…for 1997! Ahahahahaha!

Diablo has always been one of my favorite games but I always found it a little limited. Added to that, I was one of those people who pre-ordered Ultima Online in the special collectors edition that came with the cool little cloth map and three months of subscription. I almost made it through the first month and a friends prodding left me spending three hours a day fletching arrows for a bit of the second. By the third month I was busy trying to unclog the toilet that I’d flushed that damn cloth map in.

Not that a lot of people didn’t love UO, it just wasn’t the game that I expected. →  For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a gamer against their game.

Review – Neopets Petpet Adventure: The Wand of Wishing

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It’s like Animal Crossing, only for even younger players.

Cute, cuddly, and lovable are just a few words I would use to describe the ever-popular amongst kids Neopets, but the PSP game, Petpet Adventure: The Wand of Wishing, is anything but. Don’t let the title fool you into thinking that this is simply for spoiled eight year-old little girls lucky enough to own PSPs.

It has a cute story line, but it’s in no way original – Neopia, the land of Neopets, is in grave danger when the Wand of Wishing disappears into a hidden portal. Now the Neopets are racing against time to retrieve the Wand of Wishing before the powerful villains do so that they can undo the evils the villains have visited upon the world. →  Contains 10% more consonants than comparable articles.

What is a hardcore gamer?

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Holy crap the Serious Games Summit looks like fun!

So E3 has come and gone. I missed out on most of the news and hoopla, in favor of catching up after the dust settled. I did, however, read more than a few articles that popped up in the month prior to E3, specifically those that dealt with the marketing aspect of the games industry. I’ve seen articles discussing mobile games, non-roleplaying MMO’s, and a mysterious new thing called “Serious games.”

Most of this meant very little to me in the long run, but one debate that has been brought up as of late has piqued my interest: “Who is a hardcore gamer, how do and why should we cater to them?” →  Let’s get read-y.

Review – Eternal Darkness

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These guys are pretty athletic considering they have no skin.

Eternal Darkness can join Psychonauts and a few others on the list of the Best Games from this generation that no one played. While it is difficult to understand how titles of such high quality continue to be shunned by the public, it is not difficult to see why the few die hards who played Eternal Darkness enjoyed it so immensely.

You start the game as a Roman officer named Pious and at the end of the first level you choose your fate. There are three paths, and the choice you make influences both the storyline and the gameplay. In Eternal Darkness you have three gauges to monitor (health, magick, and sanity — more on this later) rather than the standard two. →  Read Dead Redemption