With long time tournament player Mike Z. behind the wheel — making adjustments to the gameplay system at tournaments on the fly based on player feedback — it’s safe to say the game is in good hands. After spending just a few minutes with the game, I can instantly tell it’s been carefully crafted for the tournament level fighting game community.
The inevitable Collector’s Edition of Final Fantasy XIII-2 has been announced. Unlike many of the other CEs announced in recent months, this one won’t cost you a whole lot more than the standard game.
Of course, there’s a reason for that — it doesn’t include a great deal of stuff. If you’re not a fan of Final Fantasy music, you almost certainly won’t be interested as the main component of XIII-2’s CE is a soundtrack.
Rayman as a character reminds me of most platformer mascots from the ’90s, which I suppose is appropriate since Ubisoft introduced him in 1995. He’s full of personality and light on unique abilities: run, jump, punch, run-while-jumping, run-while-punching, etc. I’m oversimplifying, but to a degree you could put his abilities on another character and they’d still make sense — which is essentially what Ubisoft did, since Rayman Origins is a four-player 2D platformer where everyone plays someone who controls roughly like Rayman.
Origins’ brilliance is it keeps that simplicity on the surface, but ends up feeling incredibly varied thanks to its level design. As you play, it becomes increasingly obvious that the levels don’t waste your time by asking you to repeat actions. Sure, you jump on a lot of heads and punch a lot of guys, but the levels constantly provide new toys to play with, and then remodel them in multiple ways before you have time to lose interest.
Between the two of them, Jeremy Parish and Thierry Nguyen have invested more than 125 hours into The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim — enough to see the two main quest lines to completion, but still not enough to have explored all the game has to offer, by far. Still, their combined experiences (not to mention their wildly different play styles) give them a clear sense of Skyrim’s strengths and weakness.
Jeremy: Why do you play video games? And what do you expect from them? Do you seek challenge? Entertainment? Competition? Escapism? Relief for boredom? A compelling story? Bragging rights? Intellectual stimulation? Put all of these motives and interests into a matrix; few corners would be left untouched by Skyrim. It’s a vast game, as enormous in the physical real estate it occupies as it in the breadth of material it provides within those virtual boundaries. About all it doesn’t do is multiplayer.
Four reasons you might not want to cite the Assassin’s series in your next term paper.
By: Scott Sharkey November 9, 2011
Assassin’s Creed has a knack for weaving scientific and historical facts in and out of a fantastical tale of ancient conspiracies and hilarious ultra-violence. Meanwhile, for all the time we spend marveling at accurately presented old world architecture and associated historical factoids, we spend almost as much time twitching one eye at ludicrous oversights and inaccuracy. Sure, it’s a rollicking James Bond-esque tale where reality sometimes takes a back seat to spectacle and action. We’re prepared to accept stuff like ol’ Leo DaVinci’s prototype parachute actually accomplishing anything besides turning your assassin ass into piazza pizza, but sometimes the game goes beyond Hudson Hawk levels of crazy and takes our suspension of disbelief out behind the barn and shoots it in the back of the head with an unerringly accurate 16th century automatic handgun.
Unerringly Accurate 16th Century Automatic Handguns
Four reasons you might not want to cite the Assassin’s series in your next term paper.
By: Scott Sharkey November 9, 2011
Assassin’s Creed has a knack for weaving scientific and historical facts in and out of a fantastical tale of ancient conspiracies and hilarious ultra-violence. Meanwhile, for all the time we spend marveling at accurately presented old world architecture and associated historical factoids, we spend almost as much time twitching one eye at ludicrous oversights and inaccuracy. Sure, it’s a rollicking James Bond-esque tale where reality sometimes takes a back seat to spectacle and action. We’re prepared to accept stuff like ol’ Leo DaVinci’s prototype parachute actually accomplishing anything besides turning your assassin ass into piazza pizza, but sometimes the game goes beyond Hudson Hawk levels of crazy and takes our suspension of disbelief out behind the barn and shoots it in the back of the head with an unerringly accurate 16th century automatic handgun.
Unerringly Accurate 16th Century Automatic Handguns
A port of classic side-scrolling beat-em-up The Simpsons Arcade Game appears to be in the works at Backbone Entertainment.
Australia’s ratings board popped up with a listing for the beloved title yesterday that showed Backbone as its developer and Konami as its publisher. Konami was responsible for the game’s original release in 1991 so it’s no surprise to see it back for this project, which would presumably be coming to both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as a downloadable title. An iOS version was released in 2009 that looked rather nice but wasn’t nearly as much fun as the original.
Peter Moore wears his career on his sleeve…or, more exactly, his arms. Sources differ on whether the Halo 2 tattoo he famously brandished at the 2004 Electronic Entertainment Expo is still there or not, but regardless of its current status, it reflects the brash personality he’s brought to Sega, Microsoft and Electronic Arts during his time at each outfit. In August he was promoted to COO at EA, the position he used to have at Sega of America, making him once again one of the most powerful men in the game business.
He sat down with Japan’s Famitsu magazine for a long interview this week, and — despite the original Xbox’s Asian struggles during his time at Microsoft — Moore sounded remarkably upbeat about the Japanese market in general. “Japan is a very active market,” he said, “and I think it’s really got this spirit of always trying something new. The Japan game industry, in particular, is really unique in its passion and its cutting-edge technology — those two things, combined, I think lets it run with anyone else in the world. I remember during my time at Sega, when Tetsuya Mizuguchi created Sega Rally; watching people have lots of fun playing it on dial-up. I really had to respect the drive among Japanese creators to always pursue new things.”
Rather than playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 today (and struggling to register for Elite like many others), an 18-year-old man is spending time in jail after attempting to rob another man of the game at gunpoint.
Last night, a 27-year-old man (neither individual was identified by name) was followed home from a GameStop store following a midnight launch for Modern Warfare 3. After he parked, the suspect pulled his car up, blocking the victim in. After pulling out a gun and demanding the game be handed over, the victim reportedly shouted an expletive before the two began to wrestle for control of the gun.
What would be truly surprising to hear one of these days is that a new Call of Duty game won’t be coming out the following year. That won’t be the case this year as — to almost literally no one’s surprise — Activision is planning to have a new Call of Duty out in 2012.
While everyone’s attention is currently directed towards Modern Warfare 3 with it having launched today, development on the next entry in the series is no doubt well underway. Its existence was confirmed during an investors conference call today as CEO Bobby Kotick stated both it and two Blizzard games (one being Diablo III) will be out next year.
