General gaming

General gaming

Army Corps of Hell Tries Way Too Hard, Which is Why It's Fun

Posted: 27 Jan 2012 03:00 PM PST

When I was in junior high school (centuries ago), I always found the metalhead clique at my school intimidating. Rangy boys with long, oily hair and a collective uniform consisting of boots, black-washed jeans, and black T-shirts imprinted with art from album covers by bands whose names bore gratuitous double consonants and lent themselves to harsh, angular logo designs, the metalheads always hung out together at the side of gym class, discussing their heroes' latest wailing guitar concoctions and glowering at the rest of the world. They sported the shifty desperation unique to 14-year-olds jonesing for a drag on a stolen cigarette.

It was all kind of alarming for us clean-cut students whose main ambition for gym class was to avoid notice by the jocks and dropouts while hanging out on the sidelines discussing the latest Zelda strategies with each other (dude, if you just keep going up when you get to that one spot in the mountains, there's a dungeon there!). In hindsight, though, I realize that the metalhead kids were harmless. They never picked on anyone; they never caused trouble outside of skipping class to hang out and listen to noisy music. They were as geeky as the video-game-fixated A-students; the only difference between us was that their obsessions were wrapped up in an affected antisocial style. Their music may have been about volume and screaming and satanic posturing, but it was just that: Posturing. Underneath it all, those guys just wanted to do their own thing, and they wore their ragged Dokken shirts with pride because they sincerely thought that airbrushed zombie warriors chained to naked, guitar-wielding sex slaves was, like, so awesome.

Vita's Launch Bundle Makes the 3G System Much More Attractive

Posted: 27 Jan 2012 02:08 PM PST

Vita launch bundle

PlayStation Vita's 3G model may not be for everyone, but thanks to a limited-time bundle Sony announced today it may have just become the best available option for those purchasing the system at launch.

Vita comes in two flavors: Wi-Fi-only and 3G. Priced at $250 and $300 respectively, there isn't much sense in paying an extra $50 for the 3G system unless you have some intention of also paying for 3G service at some point in time. The one exception to this before now was the First Edition bundle which includes the 3G system, some extra goodies, and most importantly, a week's head start for $350.

Street Fighter Movie Reenactment with Capcom's Yoshinori Ono

Posted: 27 Jan 2012 01:36 PM PST

Sometimes...we get bored. And, you know, fun-loving developers happen to be in our office. And, well...things happen.

When Capcom producer Yoshinori Ono stopped by to demo Street Fighter X Tekken last week, we handed him a piece of paper with lines from the Street Fighter movie on it, crossed our fingers, turned a camera on, and hoped for the best. You can see the result above.

Nintendo Gets More Serious About Online With the Nintendo Network

Posted: 27 Jan 2012 09:36 AM PST

Nintendo Network

The digital and online spaces are two areas where Nintendo hasn't been the most forward-thinking. But after a year where the company struggled to meet expectations, despite an uptick in 3DS sales in 2011's final months, it now seems more serious than ever about providing a more robust online experience.

President Satoru Iwata conducted a briefing for investors regarding its Q3 performance in Japan on Friday. For the third quarter in a row, the company was forced to lower its guidance to reflect lower-than-expected sales of Nintendo hardware and software. Noting the initial poor sales of 3DS after its launch, the ensuing price drop, and a lack of big games released in the first half of the fiscal year (April through September), Iwata said, "Our business performance will be the worst since we went into business in the video game industry." This was expected after Nintendo announced in October that it anticipated suffering its first annual loss in 30 years.

Retrospective: Final Fantasy IV Remains a Masterpiece After All These Years

Posted: 27 Jan 2012 07:19 AM PST

Feature

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Why Final Fantasy IV Remains a Masterpiece After All These Years

While time has dulled its innovations, the first 16-bit Final Fantasy made its mark in big ways.

By: Jeremy Parish January 27, 2012

Final Fantasy IV has become so ubiquitous, so overly repackaged, so frequently and redundantly remade, that it can be difficult for one to put the game in its proper perspective and remember exactly how big a deal it was 20 years ago. The fourth chapter in the Final Fantasy series was a significant departure from its predecessors -- not to mention the greater role-playing genre as it existed in 1991 -- and not simply because it leapt ahead to the powerful Super NES. FFIV wasn't as much as game of firsts as it's sometimes treated in glowing retrospectives, but that shouldn't be seen as a lack of innovation. Other games certainly paved the way for FFIV; Phantasy Star II blazed a 16-bit trail, while Dragon Quest IV broke new ground by recontextualizing the grand, sweeping quests common to RPGs into a character-driven linear odyssey. What made FFIV so engrossing is that it rounded up the best ideas put forth by its competition, reworked them into a new whole, and in doing so owned those concepts.

From the opening moments of the game -- literally, as a cart with no save files on it will boot immediately into the introductory cinematic -- FFIV has a story to tell, and it isn't shy about showing off a little as it presents that tale. Ominous music plays as a fleet of airships (not the single airships of previous Final Fantasy games, a whole flotilla of them!) advances in formation. The landscape speeds past below. The scene shifts to the player's avatar, Cecil Harvey, captain of the Red Wing air fleet, pride of the Kingdom of Baron. Right away, this sets the tale apart: Cecil isn't a young kid, a nameless nobody, or a feeble amateur. He's a leader, an elite soldier who's risen through the ranks as a Dark Knight to take command of an entire nation's military powerhouse. Neither is Cecil a blank slate; he's conflicted about his actions, torn between duty and morality.
Posted by Shri Krishna

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