General gaming

General gaming

Five Things That May Make Rage The Best Id Game Ever

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 07:00 AM PDT

Rage may already be the best Id game ever. After spending three hours exploring, I found that the things that separated this game from previous Id titles (aside from sunlight and a diversity of colors) were the little touches that add personality and a sense of artistry to the game. I've listed my five favorites below.

1) Jackass Vehicle Physics


Driving plays a big role in Rage. You'll be driving around from town from one enemy hideout to another -- just watch out for sudden stops. During my time with the game, I looked away for a brief second to compare my PC build with the Xbox 360 build beside it (they look damn near identical), and turned back just in time to see my ATV hit a rock. My character went flying off the vehicle and met an untimely demise on a canyon wall. It was a nice little touch that had me chuckling. I respawned seconds later right next to the ATV.

Meet Noah, the Eight-Year-Old Kid Who Ignited the EVO Crowds This Past Weekend

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 04:57 PM PDT


In the video above, you get to see an eight-year-old boy who plays fighting games. At first, it's like, "Oh, look at the cute little kid who plays games." And then, all of a sudden, he starts kicking ass, and you realize he knows exactly what he's doing.

His name is Noah, and he was one of the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 competitors at the EVO fighting game tournament this past weekend. The crowd loved him, and why not? He did quite well for someone competing against many of the world's best players, leading to plenty of cheers when he did well and boos when his opponents managed to get some offense in.

The first of the videos below shows Noah initially falling to Royal Flush. It's unfortunately interrupted by some advertisements, but you can then see the end of the next round, where he promptly wins while taking very little damage. He ends up taking the match thanks to the time limit running out, although that didn't stop him from getting fired up afterward. The last video shows another Noah victory and the subsequent crowd explosion.

Final Fantasy Tactics to Cost 16 Times as Much as Most App Store Games

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 03:55 PM PDT


After receiving Apple's approval, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions will be out on Thursday, as expected -- and it'll be priced rather highly as far as iPhone/iPod Touch games goes.

A post on Facebook (via MTV Multiplayer) reveals the game will be out on August 4 for $15.99 in the U.S. (1,800 yen in Japan, or 12.99 Euros in Europe).

That's quite the premium for a game on the App Store, where the large majority of games are sold for $0.99. As of this writing, the first ten games in the 'top paid' category are $0.99, and only two games in the top 50 cost $2.99 or more: Plants vs. Zombies ($2.99) and Call of Duty: Zombies ($4.99). It's not until you can get into the 150 range that you can even find apps close in price ($9.99), and neither of those -- MLB.com At Bat 11 (#151) and Pages (#158) -- are games.

Videogame Marathons to Blame in Young Man's Death

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 03:10 PM PDT

Halo Reach

Chris Staniforth, a 20-year-old from Sheffield, England, may have died as a result of his propensity for playing videogames for very long stretches of time.

Staniforth, who died in May according to the New York Daily News, was the victim of deep vein thrombosis (DVT). The Mayo Clinic website describes DVT as a condition where a blood clot forms in a deep vein, oftentimes in the legs, which can then break off and make its way into the lungs, causing a fatal pulmonary embolism. This doesn't always happen, and the clots can go away on their own. They're typically caused by sitting still for long stretches of time, like during long flights or drives. In the case of Staniforth, it may have been the long stretches he played videogames for that caused him to develop DVT.

"Chris lived for his Xbox. When he got into a game he could play it for hours and hours on end, sometimes 12 hours in a stretch," said his father, David Staniforth, in an interview with The Sun. "He got sucked in playing Halo online against people from all over the world."

Valve's Defense of the Ancients 2 to be Seen for the First Time Soon

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 02:21 PM PDT

Dota 2

The Valve-developed sequel to Defense of the Ancients will be seen for the very first time later this month at GamesCom in Cologne, Germany.

Valve today announced The International, a Dota 2 tournament where the 16 best Dota teams will compete for the first-ever Dota 2 championship, a.k.a. $1 million in prize money. It'll be a group-stage, double-elimination tournament that takes place from August 17 through August 21. The list of teams can be seen at the official Dota 2 website; there aren't any teams representing the United States. Five of the sixteen come from China.

"The International is the first public Dota 2 event and will give the tens of millions of gamers playing Dota around the world their first look at the new game," said Valve President Gabe Newell in today's press release. "I have had the good fortune to watch the competitors as they prepare for the tournament, and the level of play is extraordinary."

True Crime: Hong Kong is Back, But With a New Name

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 01:38 PM PDT

True Crime Hong Kong

Besides announcing that the Guitar Hero franchise was being shelved for now, Activision announced back in February that it was canceling open-world action game True Crime: Hong Kong. But in what seemed like an inevitable move for a game that had so many years poured into it, it has been picked up by another publisher -- Square Enix -- and will carry a different name.

The cancellation was surprising at the time; Hong Kong had been getting a new PR push just prior to the announcement. Activision claimed it was due to the game's quality -- or lack thereof. It said both the Hong Kong and Guitar Hero moves were due to "the desire to focus on the greatest opportunities that the company currently has to create the world's best interactive entertainment experiences." This was reiterated in a recent interview with CEO Bobby Kotick, who said the company's focus on fewer titles is about a "commitment to excellence."

He also described the goal with Hong Kong as being the creation of a less violent Grand Theft Auto game. "And we recognized that after giving it a good college try for three years we didn't have the skills at the company to do that type of game, so we canceled it," he explained. "And I think that it was a demonstration to the organization that focus is going to get rewarded, and that if you can't after a sustained period of time get to that level of excellence, then we're going to have to make a change."

Grandia Director Takeshi Miyaji Passes Away at 45

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 12:48 PM PDT

Grandia

Takeshi Miyaji, best known as one of the directors on the original Grandia, recently died at the age of 45.

This is according to a statement sent out by G-Mode, as reported on by Andriasang. He was a co-founder and the CEO of G-Mode, a mobile games developer in Japan. Early in his career, he was involved with games like Silpheed and Lunar: The Silver Star. Following that, he had worked at Game Arts along with his brother, Yoichi Miyaji, who continues to serve as the company's president CEO.

While there, Takeshi was one of the key players in the development of the first two games in the Grandia RPG series (first as a director, and then as a producer). The first was originally released for Sega Saturn, but only made it to the United States as a PlayStation 1 game in 1999. (It has since been re-released as a PS1 Classic on the PlayStation Network.) It was very well received by critics at the time and is still highly regarded today. In 1999, it was faced with big competition as Final Fantasy VIII, the sequel to one of the most popular RPGs of all time, FFVII, had been released earlier in the year.

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet Review

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 12:00 PM PDT

Do you like Metroid? If so, you'll probably like Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (ITSP.) Like 2009's Shadow Complex, ITSP is a Summer of Arcade title that borrows liberally from the Metroid formula. Unlike Shadow Complex or even the Castlevania series, ITSP iterates on a gameplay concept found only once in the Metroid series.

At one point in Super Metroid, Samus comes across three cute animals wall jumping. The key to progressing is realizing that Samus already has the ability to wall jump -- she just has to emulate the animals. Much of ITSP revolves around similar puzzles. While the game maintains a steady IV drip of new abilities, the way to move forward is rarely as simple as directly applying new powers to destroy roadblocks. Moving ahead becomes more a matter of creative application of abilities that I already have. While most Metroid style games have the players obtaining new equipment for very explicit purposes -- red missiles opening red doors for example -- ITSP's puzzles are just a bit more organic, and require a fair amount of lateral thinking.

Don't Worry: SSFIV Arcade Edition Ver. 2012 is Free

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 11:45 AM PDT

Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition Ver 2012

It'd be hard to blame cynical fighting fans for believing that Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition Ver. 2012 is the name of yet another updated version of Street Fighter IV that they'll be asked to buy. SFIV came out in North America in February 2009 and has already seen two updated versions; Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was released this past February and will already be outdated by the time November rolls around. Ver. 2012, teased at the EVO 2011 fighting game tournament over the weekend, is actually an update in development that will be released for free.

Yes, you won't be asked to pay a dime for this latest round of rebalancing, which is set to come out either this fall or winter, according to what Capcom's Seth Killian said on Twitter. Of course, at this point, we don't actually know the specifics on what changes it will implement, but knowing it won't cost any money -- unlike Super Street Fighter IV and the subsequent Arcade Edition releases -- is one of the more important details. We should know more in the next two months, as Famitsu reports that certain gamers in Japan will get a chance to try out the changes by summer's end.

The official Japanese Street Fighter website (via Andriasang) is home to the image above and says more information will be coming at a later time. Hopefully that's sometime soon, as avid fighting game fans will what to know what sort of adjustments they'll need to make to remain competitive once Ver. 2012 is out.

Words With Friends Can Soon Be Played on Facebook

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 11:00 AM PDT

Words With Friends Facebook

Zynga, the king of Facebook games, is bringing one of its most popular mobile games to the social network. Words With Friends, the multiplayer-only Scrabble-style word game is "coming soon" with all the features of the mobile version and more.

The announcement today notes this is the first mobile game Zynga has brought to Facebook. For those who already play on iOS or Android, you'll be able to move games back and forth between Facebook and whichever device you already play the game on, which should make it easier to complete games. You'll still be able to play up to 20 games at a time, so that should be enough to keep you occupied should you be worried that one Internet-based game of Scrabble will have too much downtime in between moves.

It's already possible to connect Words With Friends with Facebook as a means of getting a list of friends to play with. The new version will add support for some obligatory Facebook game features like notifications for when it's your turn and the ability to post messages on a friend's wall to brag (and, more importantly to Zynga, to advertise the game).

Posted by Shri Krishna

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