General gaming

General gaming

BioShock Infinite's 1999 Mode Tells Bad Players: "You're Playing The Game Wrong."

Posted: 24 Jan 2012 06:51 AM PST

In System Shock 2's beginning, you're cast as a new recruit in the Unified National Nominate. You're asked to walk down one of three hallways: one has you enlisting with the Marines, another puts you on the path of the Navy, and the last casts you as an operative within the OSA. Choosing these careers, and the decisions within said careers, ends up replacing the traditional character generation found in other RPGs. The Marine makes you a combat specialist; the Navy boosts your hacking and technical skills; and the OSA grants you psionic abilities to turn you into a super-spy. Besides making these specialized choices, you then spend the rest of the game refining your character, and with so few resources (due to its horror gameplay), you find yourself debating and agonizing over how you upgrade yourself.

That's the feeling that design director Bill Gardner and the rest of Irrational Games wants to impart with the recently announced 1999 Mode for BioShock Infinite. Gardner confirmed that "1999" is mostly a callback to System Shock 2's release year (a particular piece of nostalgia, since SS2 was Irrational's first title), rather than any sort of hint into where the story might take you -- a fair point to elaborate on, since one of the few gameplay demonstrations prominently featured a detour into an alternate 1983. Gardner notes, "[I] look back fondly at the times when I was playing, and absolutely being terrified at seeing what's around the next corner. Or finding the next OS upgrade machine, and then sitting there, pulling my hair out and sweating, literally, over what upgrade to take. That's missing in modern games."

Watch 1UP and IGN Cross Swords in Soulcalibur V

Posted: 23 Jan 2012 05:58 PM PST

Since both 1UP and IGN have shared an office for the past six months, we decided it time to test the competitive waters and kick off the first in a series of future versus-style video game matchups. The first game to chronicle our friendly 1UP/IGN rivalry is Soulcalibur V, the latest installment in the highly-revered Namco Bandai fighting game series.

Our editors competed in a best of five series on Friday to claim early bragging rights. Batting up for your friendly neighborhood Team 1UP: Jose Otero, Marty Sliva, James Hayes, Eric Sapp, and Ryan Winterhalter. Meanwhile, Team IGN consists of Mark Ryan Sallee, Destin Legaire, Steven Hopper, Jack DeVries, and Ryan Clements.

OP-ED: Sony's Spin on ModNation Racers Vita Lacking Online Multiplayer Comes Across Poorly

Posted: 23 Jan 2012 04:00 PM PST

ModNation Racers

ModNation Racers: Road Trip comes with a variety of online features, allowing you to compete and connect with friends and strangers in more ways than one. While many would presume the game includes online multiplayer, you can only go head-to-head against others through ad-hoc (local) multiplayer. This isn't a new revelation, as Sony confirmed earlier this month that the only methods for race against other players is to connect locally or by exchanging ghosts. What is new is the puzzling rationale being used to describe why this decision was made.

In a post on the PlayStation Blog today, SCE San Diego's director of product development, Erich Waas, outlined Road Trip's online features. Ghosts and localized leaderboards should provide a nice asynchronous experience for those seeking that kind of multiplayer. And of course, ModNation's biggest allure is the ability to create and share tracks, a feature that not only makes it into the Vita version intact, but brings with it backwards compatibility for the tracks created in the PS3 game.

Posted by Shri Krishna

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