General gaming |
- Weekend Deals: Company of Heroes and Lots of Sega
- Indie Dev Defends Tax Incentives for Videogame Developers
- Diablo 3: How Does it Feel to Play With Friends
- Microsoft Allowing a Small Number of Mistakenly Banned 360s Back on Xbox Live
- Team ICO Working Hard to Make The Last Guardian's Level Design Unpredictable
- Gritty Xbox Shooters Caused Uncharted to Move Away From Having Tolkien Elements
- Blaze of Glory: The Final Games of the PSP and DS
- BioShock Maker Irrational Worked on an RTS for Consoles in 2002
- Conan Shows Us How Gears of War 3 isn't All That Violent
- Deus Ex: Human Revolution's "The Missing Link" DLC is Cyberpunk Meets Under Siege
| Weekend Deals: Company of Heroes and Lots of Sega Posted: 23 Sep 2011 03:58 PM PDT Steam is also offering all of the Company of Heroes games on the cheap. They're some of the best strategy games to come out in years, and to be able to get the CoH Complete Pack for $9.99 is a steal. Amazon continues to offer discounts on recently-released PC game downloads like Dead Island and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, more than one place has The Witcher 2 discounted to $29.99 (Amazon has it all the way down to $23.99), and Civilization V is $14.99 on Impulse. And if for some reason you still feel compelled to try out the disaster that is Duke Nukem Forever for yourself, it's only $9.99 on Impulse. |
| Indie Dev Defends Tax Incentives for Videogame Developers Posted: 23 Sep 2011 03:14 PM PDT Capy is an independent developer located in Toronto that created both Critter Crunch (above) and the iOS hit Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (below). Vella was among the company's co-founders, and his extensive response to the Maclean's piece explains how tax breaks helped Capy to go from a work-for-hire developer that contributed to third-party projects it had no real say in to creating original games that it controls. In his words, "Tax incentives helped us take Capy from another faltering licensed game maker and turn it into something that I believe has real value in both the game industry, and in the provinces' economy." Vella went so far as to have an economics expert break down the purpose of such incentives, which was provided in convenient bullet-point form. Essentially, providing a tax credit to a game developers leads to the firm expanding (i.e. hiring more skilled workers or creating its own content), which in turn leads to expanded output (or more employees) that the government can collect taxes on/from. That's in addition to the money that these new employees spend at local businesses, which can generate more money for the government. It's a simple way of looking at it, but it shows that the incentives aren't simply a way of handing out money without getting anything in return. |
| Diablo 3: How Does it Feel to Play With Friends Posted: 23 Sep 2011 02:15 PM PDT Diablo 3 is a game designed for multiplayer, and we didn't want to give you just one person's take on the game. 1UP editors Mike Nelson and Ryan Winterhalter played through the recently released beta, and we wanted to give you a sense of what it's like playing through the game with a friend. Ryan Winterhalter: What are your first impressions of the Diablo 3 beta? Overall, mine was positive with the exception of the one random disconnect we encountered. |
| Microsoft Allowing a Small Number of Mistakenly Banned 360s Back on Xbox Live Posted: 23 Sep 2011 02:10 PM PDT Stephen Toulouse, the head of Xbox Live's Policy and Enforcement team, has written a blog post today explaining that a number of suspensions were mistakenly made by this software that is sometimes used. It occurred between August 29 and September 9, and those who were impacted will find that their console has been unbanned. To make it up to those affected users, Microsoft will soon grant them a free three-month subscription to Xbox Live Gold and 1,600 Microsoft Points ($20). "Recently, it was brought to our attention that a number of customers had concerns about the validity of a recent ban of their individual consoles, which they feel had been triggered inaccurately," he wrote. "In this case, the bans were related specifically to modded consoles. I take these claims very seriously, and after an initial investigation we have confirmed that a handful of banned consoles did in-fact appear to not have been modified or tampered with. We're still conducting our review but the cause appears to be a software issue, not an error on the part of the enforcement team's normal actions. It's very specific and occurred between August 29 and September 9, affecting a very small percentage of users." |
| Team ICO Working Hard to Make The Last Guardian's Level Design Unpredictable Posted: 23 Sep 2011 12:55 PM PDT "As much as possible, the level design shouldn't seem too functional or rational," explained director Fumito Ueda. "It has to seem like a natural part of the atmosphere and the world, like it's been like that forever. "Obviously we need to do the level design, but we don't want our users to notice the intent of the designer... I think that's what we're spending most of our time on right now. I think being unpredictable, giving the game unpredictability, is key for The Last Guardian. Just by their presence alone, the AI characters tend to invite unpredictable situations. That was on purpose." |
| Gritty Xbox Shooters Caused Uncharted to Move Away From Having Tolkien Elements Posted: 23 Sep 2011 11:41 AM PDT This was revealed by former Naughty Dog environment modeler Don Poole, who spoke with Play (via NowGamer). "We were talking about a more 'realistic' game in terms of how it was modeled and rendered but the concepts were much more far out. One was a forest world where the antagonists lived underground," he explained. |
| Blaze of Glory: The Final Games of the PSP and DS Posted: 23 Sep 2011 10:53 AM PDT
Feature  Blaze of Glory: The Final Games of the PSP and DSDon't upgrade those portables just yet; these games have plenty to offer.By: Steve Watts September 23, 2011 New hardware launches bring with them a flood of new software, perfect for early adopters eager to show off their new kit. Unfortunately, this wave of titles usually overlaps with new releases from the previous generation, causing the latter to get lost in the mania typically caused by superior hardware. As the 3DS takes Nintendo's center stage and the Vita hogs Sony's portable attention, games for the original DS and PSP are still on the way -- albeit quietly. Since it'd be a shame for some of these games to slip through the intergenerational cracks, let's take a look at some of the late-comers that may run the risk of being left behind. |
| BioShock Maker Irrational Worked on an RTS for Consoles in 2002 Posted: 23 Sep 2011 10:45 AM PDT Now best known as the developer of BioShock and BioShock Infinite, Irrational once worked on System Shock 2, Freedom Force, and SWAT 4, among other games. In 2002, it was working on Dungeon Duel which, according to a new blog post, was meant to be an RTS that was being specifically designed for consoles and controllers -- the Xbox and PlayStation 2 in particular. Much of the information Irrational has unearthed on the game was put together in a document you can see for yourself here (PDF). It mentions combining RTS elements with those of a card trading game for a product that would fit the old cliche of being "truly easy to learn but challenging to master." It's specifically noted that it is not a card game, and that players simply choose cards that represent monsters and spells. Combat would follow the rock-paper-scissors model and take place in real time, and dungeons would be randomly generated so as to extend its lifespan. Its replayability would be further bolstered by a trading system compared with Magic and Pokemon; you'd be able to trade either by going online or by taking "your memory card over to your friend's house to trade for the cards you want." Oh, 2002. |
| Conan Shows Us How Gears of War 3 isn't All That Violent Posted: 23 Sep 2011 09:39 AM PDT The video above comes from last night's episode of Conan. Prior to Jonah Hill and John Noble showing up, Conan O'Brien talked a bit about the perception of Gears of War 3 being less violent than its predecessors and how that could turn off hardcore gamers. The ensuing clip didn't quite prove that, as it didn't take long before someone was annihilated with a sawed-off shotgun, but besides that it's every bit as silly as you'd expect. |
| Deus Ex: Human Revolution's "The Missing Link" DLC is Cyberpunk Meets Under Siege Posted: 23 Sep 2011 09:30 AM PDT Adam Jensen starts off naked inside a slow boat from (not "to") China in his first (I'm presuming) DLC mission for Deus Ex: Human Revolution. For context, this mission takes place during a period that, at the time, didn't really concern me when I reviewed the core game: protagonist Adam puts himself inside a stasis pod of sorts within a boat and arrives at his next destination (which reminded me of how Snake infiltrated Shadow Moses in the original Metal Gear Solid). Well, said journey actually took three days, and The Missing Link now fills in that conveniently placed time gap. So, of course he gets discovered, which leads to the beginning described earlier. The mercenary crew has taken away his gear, deactivated his Augmentations, and strapped him to an EMP chair. They have no idea of who he is -- only that he has over a billion dollars' worth of Augmentation work done on him, and that he took down a squad of soldiers by himself before getting captured. After exchanging some words with one of his interrogators -- dialogue choices include whether to threaten or redirect a question for example -- Adam's captors leave, the EMP chair mysteriously turns off, and you now have control. |
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