General gaming

General gaming

Review: Shank 2 Feels More Like a Great Remake Rather Than a Great Sequel

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 06:00 AM PST

I was sold on the original Shank in about 30 seconds; from seeing the main character linking combos, moving like an acrobat, and grinning in his half-cute/half-sadistically violent yet incredibly clean art style. As long as the developers didn't mess anything big up, the game was going to be fun. And they didn't, and it was.

Having just finished Shank 2, going back to the original feels like playing a prototype of the same game -- it's a bit slower, a few of the buttons are mapped differently, and the art is less detailed, but it's essentially the same thing. To a certain degree, that's expected -- such a comparison would be true for many titles after their sequels release. But in Shank's case the similarities stand out because it feels like the developers took another chance to get things right instead of moving on to big new ideas -- in an attempt to make a better version of the same game. And they did, and it is.

Review: The Darkness II Crafts a Convincing World That Fits Alongside Its Violent Tone

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 05:00 AM PST

If one look at the Darkness II's lurid subject matter causes you to roll your eyes at all the extreme violence and gore on display, this review isn't going to change your outlook at all. For all the balling and wailing that happened on the Internet the day this sequel sans original developer Starbreeze was announced, I believe that new developer Digital Extremes has crafted an excellent adventure that furthers the grim adventures of Jackie Estacado, as he struggles to control an evil power lurking within him. And all of it is beautifully crafted in a graphic style that fits a comic creation brought to life.

The story takes place two years after the events of the first game, and presents a main character that has learned to suppress his dark gift. In the opening we learn that Jackie Estacado has locked away the evil entity known as The Darkness within himself, and runs the Franchetti Crime family as a young 23-year-old Don. Of course, everything quickly changes for the worse, and the developer uses a grim shootout at a restaurant early on as a opening tutorial -- providing context to go along with all the bravado, gore, and firearms.

Review: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is The Kanye West of RPGs

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 12:01 AM PST

I struggled initially to come up with a way to accurately state how liberally Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning lifts ideas from other games while still managing to feel like its own distinct title. I was ready to cite Igor Stravinsky (or Picasso, or T.S. Eliot, whoever you prefer to attribute this to) when he said, "Good artists borrow, great artists steal," or even serve up that trusty chestnut about how Steven Spielberg compressed every pulp adventure he loved into Raiders of the Lost Ark. It wasn't until I perused my music collection that I found a contemporary artist who gleefully takes the music of others while using that work as a solid foundation to add his own distinct style that results in something that can only be attributed to him: Kanye West.

If you abhor my taste in music (or simply Kanye in particular), feel free to substitute any sample-heavy artist, like early Danger Mouse or Endtroducing...-era DJ Shadow, instead. Either way, I use those analogues to express this basic point: Sure, Reckoning takes a lot from pretty much every other game you care to name, but it does such a good job of it that the mixing of borrowed elements and layering on of new ones coalesces into a damn fine action-RPG.

Sakura Samurai's Charming Style Can't Mask Its Unforgiving Nature

Posted: 06 Feb 2012 06:00 PM PST

Sakura Samurai: Art of the Sword captures the essence of what makes simple video game mechanics so enticing. Its big hook comes from rewarding players for perfectly-timed dodges, and while this type of required precision satisfies, it also points to one of the game's biggest flaws: its grueling and uneven difficulty.

I'm not one to complain about difficulty in games. Repetitively grinding through the harsh corners of Dark Souls doesn't bother me and, nearly a decade ago, I spent hours slicing my way through Shinobi -- a notoriously difficult game that pushed people's patience to its limits in 2002. But the thing about game difficultly is the rules have to feel fair. They need to convey that you're losing due to skill gaps and not improper balancing.

Forget Used Games, Some New Games Sales Don't Pay Their Creators

Posted: 06 Feb 2012 05:22 PM PST

Used game sales hurt the bottom line of all console game developers, as the entirety of each sale goes to the retailer and not the game's makers. It's a familiar line we've heard from several developers and publishers in the past five years. With used game sales taking heat from fans and game makers alike, digital distribution, like Steam or GOG.com, seems to offer the chance to get cheap games with a clear conscience, but that's not quite true. Even new games suffer from the same issue as used sales; none of the money actually goes to the people who made the game.

L.A. Noire

As brought to attention by Rock, Paper, Shotgun, last week, developer Simon Roth created a quick list of "games that no longer support their creators," and classic titles from defunct developers or publishers make up most of it -- Ion Storm and Deus Ex, Looking Glass and Thief, Black Isle and Fallout 2. Other titles still maintain their original publisher but not the developer -- EA collects on Syndicate and Populous, Peter Molyneux does not. You may read the titles of these games and think that the issue only affects older games, but do you think the former members of Team Bondi are seeing any money for copies of L.A. Noire sold today? If you don't purchase used games for ethical reasons, you might have to give up many new games as well.

Final Fantasy X For PS3 and Vita Not a Proper Remake

Posted: 06 Feb 2012 05:15 PM PST

Final Fantasy X

Those expecting a proper remake of Final Fantasy X for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita should start tempering their expectations. Although we still have very little in the way of details, it's been clarified that the project Square Enix has in the works is an HD remaster, not a remake.

Square Enix's Shinji Hashimoto made this clear at the recent Taipei Game Show, according to GNN (via Joystiq). The difference between "remake" and "remaster" may sound like semantics, but in fact there are entirely different expectations that come along with the two. Depending upon how you feel about FFX, the reality of this being a remaster may or may not be welcome news.

Microsoft Flight's Day One DLC Could be Asking Too Much

Posted: 06 Feb 2012 12:09 PM PST

Microsoft Flight

The final of three games Microsoft announced in 2010 as a demonstration of its support for PC gaming, Microsoft Flight, finally comes out later this month. Several pieces of downloadable content are releasing along with it, though they are priced in a way that could make it hard to interest those who are not hardcore fans.

Many gamers take issue with downloadable content being made available right at a game's launch. In the case of a free-to-play game like Flight, launching on February 29, it's a different situation as the game itself is being given away for free and Microsoft hopes it's good enough that gamers decide to spend money on new locales, planes, and so on.

Sumioni Preview: The First Game to Use Vita's Interface Options Smartly

Posted: 06 Feb 2012 09:00 AM PST

I didn't know an awful lot about Acquire's Sumioni for PlayStation Vita until I checked out an in-person demo a few days ago. I knew it was (1) based on sumi-e, the traditional Japanese art that makes use of a charcoal-like black ink, similar to Okami; and (2) it has something to do with an oni, a mythological Japanese demon. I got that much from the title. Beyond that... who knows?

What I saw in person turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Sumioni could loosely be described as a combination of Okami and Kirby's Canvas Curse, in that you're using an ink brush to interact with the world and drawing platforms for your heroes. But I don't think that really does justice to the game's mechanics and design. Unlike Canvas Curse, it doesn't take a hands-off approach to traditional controls; you'd be hard-pressed to play this game on iOS, because despite its touchscreen-driven mechanics, it relies heavily on old-fashioned control mechanics. Your oni hero (or, rather, anti-hero, since he's a lazy bum forced to undertake his journey by a goddess who got fed up with his bad habits) moves with the left stick and jumps and attacks with the face buttons. Just like games used to do.

Posted by Shri Krishna

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