General gaming

General gaming

I Am Alive Wants to be Assassin's Creed Blended With The Road

Posted: 28 Oct 2011 06:54 PM PDT

"This is a survival horror game without any zombies or aliens or magic," says I Am Alive creative director Stanislas Mettra. I haven't been following the protracted development of I Am Alive, so I'm not sure whether this specific angle he describes has always been part of the game, or whether it has come up during development and then slowly took over. All I know previous to this hands-off demonstration is that it takes place after a disaster and that people thought that Assassin's Creed producer Jade Raymond worked on this game.

But when I see the unnamed dude walk around a desolate Haventown -- a fictional replacement for what was originally going to be Chicago -- I'm not really thinking "this is survival horror without monsters!" I'm thinking of the headline above -- for the first half, I notice how the guy clambers and jumps a bit like (take your pick) Altair or Ezio. He drops down overhangs; he clings to rivets along a bridge; he makes precarious jumps across chunks of broken steel. The main difference I notice is that he has a stamina meter -- which seems to be an indicator that while he somewhat moves and grasps likes the master assassins of Ubisoft's other franchise, he doesn't have the skill and training of those fellows. Just the simple act of climbing slowly saps this meter. If he does something daring -- such as jump up while climbing -- a hefty chunk of stamina instantly vanishes.

Corporate Schlock: Advertising Tie-Ins to Video Games

Posted: 28 Oct 2011 04:21 PM PDT

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Corporate Schlock: Advertising Tie-Ins to Video Games

Why just play a game when you can also be advertised at?

By: Seth Macy October 28, 2011

We see our hero, Nathan Drake, dangling precariously from the belly of an airborne cargo plane; one hand secures his life, while the other holds a refreshing drink from Subway, America's premier home for sandwich artistry. The scene quickly changes to Drake running from a deluge down a hallway, drink in hand, asking viewers if they share his taste for adventure. From there he tumbles from the open hatch of an airplane, grabbing onto a handful of cargo netting at the last second, using his free hand to catch his 16 ounce beverage before it plummets to the dry desert below.

The commercial is a tie-in between Subway and Sony -- publisher of Uncharted 3 -- and rather than use a celebrity spokesperson, the advertising agency instead opted to employ a fictional character who also happens to star in a blockbuster videogame. When this commercial first began airing, quite a few people could barely muster more than an emphatic "Huh?" It seemed an unusual fit, Subway and Nathan Drake, and many fans of the series felt that this corporate cross-over in some way cheapened what's arguably considered one of the PS3's most important titles. But it's nothing new -- oh, not by a long shot. Corporations have been using videogames as a way to advertise for years, often with embarrassing results.

Weekend Deals: Dead Space, Borderlands, and Amnesia

Posted: 28 Oct 2011 03:40 PM PDT

Amnesia The Dark Descent

With Halloween on Monday, it's time for a very extensive list of deals. Steam, in particular, has a huge offering of games on sale over the weekend, and while many of them are excellent deals (Ghostbusters for $2.49, Atom Zombie Smasher for $3.40, and Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition for $7.49 all fall into that category), not everything is at its cheapest from there.

It seems like everyone wants to discount the scary games people will be seeking this weekend, but they don't all do it equally. Dead Space and Dead Space 2 are different prices all over the place, although Steam's bundle of the two for $13.59 is the cheapest option if you're looking for both. The first game alone is cheaper on GamersGate. It's a similar situation with perhaps the scariest game on sale right now, Amnesia: The Dark Descent. GamersGate has it for $3.99 and Steam a penny more, while Impulse has it for $9.99.

Vita Missing Out on the Holidays Doesn't Worry Sony

Posted: 28 Oct 2011 02:19 PM PDT

PlayStation Vita

Since it became very apparent the 3DS wouldn't immediately turn into the hit Nintendo expected it to be, the company has been urging investors to allow the system to reach its first holiday shopping season before passing judgment on it. After all, that's the best time of the year to be selling gaming hardware. Sony, on the other hand, decided not to rush Vita out so it could benefit from the last quarter of 2011; for much of the world, the new handheld will be out in early 2012, a launch window Sony says it's fine with.

In an interview with All Things Digital, Sony hardware marketing director John Koller called pre-orders for Vita "substantial and" indicated the wait until 2012 is due to a desire to meet demand.

Team Fortress 2 Celebrates Halloween With Costumes and a Map

Posted: 28 Oct 2011 01:02 PM PDT

Team Fortress 2 Halloween 2011

For the third year running, Team Fortress 2 is running a Halloween event. However, this is the first time the event will take place since the game went free-to-play, meaning anyone who wants to fight an enormous eyeball named Monoculus is just a Steam download away.

The Third Annual Scream Fortress Very Scary Halloween Special, as it's called, brings with it a brand-new Halloween map designed just for the occasion. You'll have the chance to fight Monoculus and pick up a pair of new Achievements while also trying to earn access to "secret loot" and nine costume packs, each one specific to a single class. There's also a new comic to read.

Vice City and San Andreas Could Follow GTA III to iOS

Posted: 28 Oct 2011 12:16 PM PDT

Grand Theft Auto Vice City

Ask a group of people which is their favorite between Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, and San Andreas, and you'll likely see each game be chosen. Each one had its own very distinct story and setting, so even though they built upon what came before it (giving San Andreas the biggest game world and most variety in many ways), it's not as simple as saying the most recent of the bunch was the best. Of the three, it's Grand Theft Auto III being ported to newer iOS devices and a selection of Android phones to celebrate its tenth anniversary. There's no official word on whether its successors will make the transition in its wake, but it's apparently a possibility.

Speaking with Digital Trends, Rockstar suggested that bringing Vice City and San Andreas to mobile platforms would be a "technical challenge." Both games were increasingly complex -- especially San Andreas, which featured an enormous three-city environment to play in -- but they were running on the same technology that powered GTA III. Perhaps because of that, Rockstar did say the mobile ports were "very possible" despite the challenges that might be faced in porting them.

Iwata Talks New Genres for 3DS, Demos, eShop on Smartphones, Wii U, and More

Posted: 28 Oct 2011 10:54 AM PDT

3DS

This year isn't turning out to be a great one for Nintendo. After a weak launch for the 3DS that forced Nintendo to drop its price after only a few months on store shelves, Nintendo is now forecasting a loss for the year ending March 31, 2012 -- the first time this will have happened since the company started reporting its consolidated earnings reports 30 years ago.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata feels responsible for much of this (as evidenced by the salary cut he and other executives took over the summer), although he's not about to sit around and mope. He and Nintendo have a plan.

Just in Time for Halloween: The Most Ridiculous Disguises in Game History

Posted: 28 Oct 2011 09:54 AM PDT

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Worst disguises in video game history

Just in Time for Halloween: The Most Ridiculous Disguises in Game History

These sad attempts at costumed deception make Halloween into "LOL-o-ween."

By: Jeremy Parish October 28, 2011

Halloween is almost here. To mark the year's Disney-est holiday, we've decided to break from the time-honored tradition of churning out the exact same "scariest games ever" feature that everyone in the gaming press does every year (yes, including us). Apologies if you were looking forward to re-reading that lovable old chestnut with a new coat of paint for 2011; the good news is that you have plenty of old ones to pick from in our archives.

No, this year, we've decided to explore the other great tradition of Halloween: Costumes. Horror and spookiness are all well and good, but wearing costumes? That's the sort of Halloween standard everyone can get behind. Even, as it turns out, video game characters. Some game characters are better at disguising their true identities than others, though. As people whose Halloween costumes have always tended toward the cheap and unconvincing, we're sympathetic to those "others." That won't stop us from observing the time-honored Halloween tradition of being complete jerks, of course. Let's stroll through the video games neighborhood and have a laugh at the flimsiest, least convincing disguises we see, shall we?

StarCraft's Kerrigan Shows Up on The Office

Posted: 28 Oct 2011 09:09 AM PDT

The Office may have lost some (or much) of its luster in recent years, particularly with the absence of Steve Carell. That doesn't mean it is no longer capable of pulling off a somewhat-adequate Halloween episode where one of the stars dresses up as a major character from StarCraft, though.

Dwight Schrute, who is played by Rainn Wilson, hasn't shown much of an affinity for videogames outside of the time we learned how he obsessively plays Second Life. He's apparently also a fan of StarCraft, as last night's episode featured him dressing up as the Queen of Blades, Sarah Kerrigan. When Bert, the son of this season's new CEO, Robert California, suggests someone dressing up as a Zerg should be a Lurker and "not some girl," Dwight defends Kerrigan by retorting, "Kerrigan is the ruler of the Zerg Swarm!"

Posted by Shri Krishna

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