Game genres and classifications

Recently I’ve been enjoying Gungrave Overdose, which you might remember as being reviewed as a solid little action game with a ridiculous 15 dollar retail price. With a solid combat system and great presentation, you could do a lot worse in the genre.

The question is, what genre am I talking about? The obvious answer is that this is an “action game”. But even though you shoot many enemies, this isn’t Gears of War or Rainbow Six. Gungrave is all about racking up multiple kills in a row with successive attacks, and using your limited arsenal to create combos. Playing it as a simple run-and-gun makes it a far more mindless experience than it actually is. So to be more specific, I would classify this as a “Devil May Cry”- like, something that most reviews agree with. But in my travels, I have even seen the game described in the same sentence as Tomb Raider.

What the hell? Tomb Raider is a platform-heavy adventure game. →  Tony Hawk’s Posting Ground

Lame Discussion: Console War – Part 1

Kudos on joining us for our second discussion. Well, actually you’re not joining us because it’s already over and you weren’t invited. But thanks for reading. The format may look a little confusing but shouldn’t be too hard to grasp for anyone who has ever held a conversation (which may not be all of you, I know gaming is a harsh mistress).

The contenders:
Dan – Really just wants to talk about the Wii.
Christian – Is slightly upset with Sony.
Golden Jew – May be secretly working for Sony.
Jay – Forces others complex arguments into black and white.
Pat – Will never make it through a whole discussion.
Stefan – Is planning to buy his first new console since the Dreamcast.
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Jay: In this coming generation of consoles, who will sell the most systems? Who will have their ass handed to them?

Jay welcomes the group.

Golden Jew: I’ve long predicted that this next generation would be viewed as a turning point for gaming. →  Get lame or get out.

Lame E3 pics 1

Click on a pic to make it really big.

Inside:

Welcome to E3, a terrorists wet dream.

More hoards of people.

The real inside:

They make it dark so you can’t see the faulty wiring in the ceiling.

Damn it, my wallet’s missing.

Tom Clancy must’ve creeped up behind me in the shadows and stolen it.

The downside of being a liberal is you feel guilty for not allowing everyone to voice their opinions. Thus, I bring you booth babes:

What’s that sword hiding?

Another obligatory booth babe pic.

An E3 for the proletariat

E3 is fast approaching. I won’t be going this year but two of our senior staff (a position I just made up) will be there. Due to chemical imbalances, I tend to tire of reading about E3 if I’m not going myself. Game sites are completely saturated with E3 info and I get bitter about not being there so I say screw it, I don’t want to know.

With this in mind, we have decided to make this E3 the E3 of the people. If you want to read about a specific game, company, talent, genre or anything else, let us know and we will cover it in as much depth as possible. You may not be able to go to E3, but we can go for you.

If we get no requests we’ll just cover what we want. And make sure to rub in how you didn’t get to go but we did. That’ll teach you.

Here is a random short list of the tons of games that will be there:
And yes, I’ve purposely listed games by the developer and not publisher whenever possible. →  Gotta get down on Friday.