General gaming

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• TGS: Photo Gallery - Up Close and Personal With Japan's Exclusive Super Mario Converse All-Stars
• Get the First Assassin's Creed Free by Buying Revelations on PS3
• Xbox 360 Could Soon Serve as a Verizon and Comcast Cable Box
• DC Universe Online the Latest MMO to Drop Subscriptions
• 1UP's Best of Tokyo Game Show 2011
• Call of Duty Elite Beta Brings in PS3 Players
• Vita Might Feature Less Annoying Firmware Updates Than PS3 and PSP
• TGS: How Goichi Suda Splits His Time at Grasshopper
• Cataclysm 4.3: Can a Simple Patch Rekindle World of Warcraft?
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution Boss Fights Handled by External Developer

TGS: Photo Gallery - Up Close and Personal With Japan's Exclusive Super Mario Converse All-Stars Posted: 19 Sep 2011 05:57 PM PDT Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. I traveled to Japan for Tokyo Game Show and only bought a single old video game. That almost seems like a crime for someone who used to host the Retronauts podcast and once swam through the retro shops of Akihabara like a fish in water. No, this year I spent all my free money on clothing, because shopping for fashion in Japan is perhaps the one time being a man on the short side of average with a slight build actually works to my advantage. I can buy off the rack in Japan and a shirt doesn't hang off of me like drapery! It's a nice change of pace from the billowing tents they call a "size small" at The Gap.

Get the First Assassin's Creed Free by Buying Revelations on PS3 Posted: 19 Sep 2011 05:32 PM PDT The latest Assassin's Creed title on PlayStation 3 packs in a nice bonus: the series' first game. In some cases, "the series' first game" would refer to a 20-plus-year-old relic, but in this case we're talking about a game in Assassin's Creed that came out just four years ago. A new copy will still run you about $20, and while it might not be as hard to come by as another franchise's more elderly progenitor, it's an awfully nice bonus for free. The only catch is that it only comes with "day one" copies; in other words, only the first wave of Revelations for PS3 include it, so you'll want to act fast if you're looking to guarantee yourself a copy. With both Revelations and last year's Brotherhood, Ubisoft conducted a PlayStation 3-only multiplayer beta. This is just the latest example of offering an Assassin's Creed-related exclusive to Sony fans. It also gives any fanboys an excuse to shout about the benefits of the additional storage provided by Blu-ray discs, though we're confirming with Ubisoft that it is indeed on the disc and not a token to download the it. Odds are, though, that it is located on the disc.

Xbox 360 Could Soon Serve as a Verizon and Comcast Cable Box Posted: 19 Sep 2011 05:01 PM PDT Microsoft continued to talk about the Xbox 360's impending live TV functionality last week. One possibility we've heard is that the company will team up with cable and satellite companies to allow the system to essentially be used as a cable/set top box replacement. According to a new report, deals with Comcast and Verizon may soon be reached for just that. Both deals could be made within the next month, reports Digiday (via Kotaku), although it's also been told that the timing isn't quite so definitive. Regardless, it sounds as if this could be similar to what's already possible on an Xbox 360 for AT&T Uverse customers, though we don't really know any of the particulars of what the Comcast and Verizon deals would entail. It seems highly likely that Kinect would be involved, as well as support for Bing and voice search. Digiday suggested we could see deeper programming guides, Kinect support, and better targeted advertising, all of which fits in with the sort of features we've heard before. There's some doubt over whether this course of action -- being a substitute cable box with bonus features -- is even worth it, as some might view the prospect as pointless.

DC Universe Online the Latest MMO to Drop Subscriptions Posted: 19 Sep 2011 04:21 PM PDT More and more MMOs are eschewing subscriptions in favor of the increasingly popular free-to-play model. Sony Online Entertainment, which already operates free-to-play MMOs like Free Realms and Pirates of the Burning Sea, is doing it once again, this time with DC Universe Online. DCUO was launched just this past January on PlayStation 3 and PC with a standard subscription rate of $15 per month. Following an update, gamers will have the option of playing the game for free; doing so will entitle them to "all ongoing game updates," just no DLC packs. DLC can be purchased or players can opt for a higher membership level. The first is Premium Access. To qualify, you simply need to spend at least $5 on the in-game store or have a DCUO account from before the switch is made to F2P. This grants additional character, bank, inventory, and auction slots, more free Vault tickets, a higher in-game money limit, and more.

1UP's Best of Tokyo Game Show 2011 Posted: 19 Sep 2011 03:24 PM PDT Feature Share it: Tweet 1UP's Best of Tokyo Game Show 2011 We pick the best games of this year's TGS. By 1UP Staff Every fall, 1UP sends its finest folks to Japan for one of the year's most anticipated events: The Tokyo Game Show. Find out what games were notable, which ones were forgettable, and what titles may soon be haunting our nightmares by checking out our Best of TGS awards below. BEST VITA GAME Sound Shapes Sony had an impressively-large Vita lineup at TGS, with promising games like Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Gravity Daze, and Sumioni on hand, but we found ourselves liking the same game we gave our Best Vita Game of E3 award to: Sound Shapes. Jonathan Mak's part-musical platformer, part-music creation software is creative and easy to use, but most importantly, a lot of fun and the kind of game that is a perfect fit for Vita. RUNNERS-UP Uncharted: Golden Abyss Gravity Daze BEST 3DS GAME Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime 3D The 3DS had a decent showing on the TGS floor, although its appearance at Nintendo's pre-show press conference was far more exciting. We didn't really see anything 3DS-wise that broke the mold and instead gravitated toward polished examples of the familiar. Of the three long-running franchise updates we liked most -- Dragon Quest, Resident Evil, and Kingdom Hearts -- Dragon Quest feels the least played-out. Well, specifically, the Rocket Slime spin-off does. The 3DS sequel to 2006's Rocket Slime is very much more of the same with some superfluous 3D tacked on, but when it's "the same" as a whimsical, wonderful action RPG that appeared five years ago and left us wanting more, we'll let a little lack of imagination slide this once. RUNNERS-UP Resident Evil: Revelations Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance BEST XBOX 360 GAME Project Draco

Call of Duty Elite Beta Brings in PS3 Players Posted: 19 Sep 2011 01:59 PM PDT The Call of Duty series is generally affiliated with Xbox 360 these days thanks to Microsoft paying for its customers to have first access to the series' downloadable content. When it came to the beta for Call of Duty Elite, we didn't think your platform of choice would make any difference. But upon launching in July -- using Call of Duty: Black Ops in place of Modern Warfare 3 -- PC gamers were told they wouldn't get a chance to try Elite before release and that PS3 gamers would have to wait, as the beta would only be available on Xbox 360 at first. After a two-month wait, PS3 gamers can finally get their first hands-on taste of what Elite has in store. Activision has announced that the first wave of PS3 Elite beta invitations have gone out. Like the 360 beta, more people will be included as time goes on. Don't be discouraged if you didn't already get in as this initial wave of invites was referred to as "limited," so it doesn't sound like there are an abundance of PS3 gamers involved just yet. "There are two basic reasons for starting with Xbox 360," an official FAQ explained back in July. "First, in order to better manage the beta and reduce variables we are launching with one platform as we begin our testing. Second, due to the past outage of the PSN we have not had as much time to internally develop and test the online functionality of Call of Duty Elite with PSN. It is important that we have thoroughly QA tested functionality before releasing to a public beta phase."

Vita Might Feature Less Annoying Firmware Updates Than PS3 and PSP Posted: 19 Sep 2011 01:09 PM PDT It's always nice to get new features on your PlayStation 3 or PlayStation Portable. However, not everyone looks forward to getting them because they're only delivered through firmware updates that can take a long time to download and install -- updates that sometimes don't even deliver any new features. Sony Computer Entertainment's president of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, knows how frustrating this can be and says there's a chance that Vita owners won't have to deal with this particular problem. Asked by Game Informer if Vita users will be subjected to as many firmware updates as PS3 and PSP (or if they will at least be less intrusive), Yoshida said, "I agree, it's very annoying when you only have one hour in your busy life to play a game, and when you have to spend 30 minutes out of that one hour to update the hardware." The answer isn't necessarily to release updates less frequently; Microsoft updates the Xbox 360 only a few times a year at most, and it typically saves up a bunch of features to release in a larger update (as it is with the upcoming Twist Control dashboard update). What Sony may do is simply make it less of a hassle to update the system.

TGS: How Goichi Suda Splits His Time at Grasshopper Posted: 19 Sep 2011 12:26 PM PDT Grasshopper Manufacture is all over the place these days, with Shadows of the Damned about to release in Japan, Lollipop Chainsaw in development as the company's big retail game of the moment, a pair of downloadable titles (Black Knight Sword and Sine Mora) in development with Digital Reality, and a group of social games via a partnership with DeNA. But the company to date has been known for the wacky works of Goichi Suda, and that's a lot of games for one person to juggle. So when I sat down with Suda at this year's Tokyo Game Show, I was curious to find out how much direct impact he has on each game.

Cataclysm 4.3: Can a Simple Patch Rekindle World of Warcraft? Posted: 19 Sep 2011 12:12 PM PDT Greg Street, lead systems designer for World of Warcraft, can scarcely contain his excitement. When I called him to discuss the game's upcoming Patch 4.3 with him last week, I half expected to sit through 20 minutes of dodgy answers and vague generalizations. Instead, Street spoke with the intensity of a man who has withheld a secret for far too long, and I half worried that his superiors would wince at the details he poured out throughout the call. Even Shon Damron, a member of Blizzard's PR team who also sat in on the call, was barely able to get in a word. It was, all in all, an infectious passion, and one that left me feeling more excited about the game than I'd felt in years. "We're super excited about this patch," Street says. "I know we say that every time, but I think players are going to look back on this patch and say, 'Wow, that was something I've never seen before.'" Street began by recapping known news about the upcoming patch--such as the introduction of cosmetic armor, the implementation of wider bank storage options via "void storage," and the implementation of a new "raid finder -- and then announced that the patch would introduce a new pair of legendary daggers tentatively called "The Fangs of the Father." But the conversation truly hit its stride when he turned his attention to the new raid encounter and three five-man dungeons that lie at the heart of the patch.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Boss Fights Handled by External Developer Posted: 19 Sep 2011 12:04 PM PDT The boss fights in Deus Ex: Human Revolution have been the source of many of the complaints about the game, and as it turns out, there might be a very specific reason for why that is. The video above (from the extra content included in the game's Augmented Edition), pointed out by Game Informer, features GRIP Entertainment president and founder Dr. Paul A. Kruszewski talking about the work his company did on Human Revolution. Specifically, it worked on the boss fights, which perhaps explains why so many people feel they were out of place. "The guys at Eidos [Montreal] gave us the design, gave us the engine," he explained, "and we brought in our own behavior tree engine and we gave them back that experience."

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