Latest Gaming and MMORPG Updates |
- Spec Ops: The Line’s Literary Aspirations Complement Its War Crimes
- SD Gundam Online
- Former Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk Dev Neversoft Creating an FPS
- Mass Effect 3 Demo Shows the Absurdity of Xbox Live Gold
- A Guide to Tokyo’s Retro Gaming Bars
- [TPGS 2012] Planet Legend Online
| Spec Ops: The Line’s Literary Aspirations Complement Its War Crimes Posted: 06 Feb 2012 07:18 AM 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.
Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Posted: 06 Feb 2012 07:18 AM PST
Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Former Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk Dev Neversoft Creating an FPS Posted: 06 Feb 2012 01:27 AM PST Dark Souls Dev Attacks Early Players with Super High-Level MonsterRetailers began selling the game early in Japan, so say hello to this max-level enemy. 1 day ago 5727 Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Mass Effect 3 Demo Shows the Absurdity of Xbox Live Gold Posted: 05 Feb 2012 07:16 PM PST Downloading the upcoming February 14 Mass Effect 3 demo will upgrade the subscriptions of Xbox Live Silver members to Gold so that all players can sample the game’s multiplayer before its release on March 6. The temporary upgrade system that the demo takes advantage of indicates that Xbox Live as we know it is so outdated that it can’t cope with offering users a single demo. The current XBL Gold/Silver division needs to change. After five years of Microsoft’s biggest competitor offering multiplayer for free the console maker maintains what amounts to a $60 annual surcharge to play online. Online gaming is not new or novel — it gained popularity nearly 20 years ago. Even consoles began supporting the function in the Dreamcast era. Multiplayer gaming should come standard with any system in 2012. The problem doesn’t lie with the tiered system itself, but rather in keeping online multiplayer as a top-level feature. PlayStation Plus offers many extras like XBL Gold for a similar price, but allows everyone to play online with their friends regardless of their subscription status. Creating and maintaining the XBL infrastructure does cost Microsoft money, and Gold members help offset that, but when every other online console offers the same feature for free, that charge seems a bit much. Microsoft charging for XBL on the original Xbox came as a surprise when the system debuted in 2002, but the novelty of playing an online console game helped players overlook the fact that the PlayStation 2, Dreamcast, and GameCube offered the similar functionality (albeit with different games) with no subscription. That freshness helped fans swallow the tiered system after Microsoft unveiled it for the 360 in 2005, and the PlayStation Network’s dismal functionality after that system’s launch a year later made paying for superior service seem like a sound investment. However, in 2012 the PSN is strong and robust, Nintendo is planning to unveil their own network, and services like Steam and Origin give PC players a similar experience for free. With all this competition it’s time for Microsoft to modernize. As much as I’d like to see it, I don’t expect Microsoft to change in the near future — there’s simply no incentive. Consumers happily pay for the service every year, and I can’t imagine any company shutting off a lucrative revenue stream without reason. The company won’t change their policy until it becomes a drag on profits — something that won’t happen so long as AAA multiplayer titles keep attracting consumers to the system. With every game maker trying to shoehorn multiplayer into their game whenever possible (look no further than Mass Effect 3) the stream of attractive titles won’t dry up anytime soon. XBL’s absurd system directly leads to subscription gymnastics like the Mass Effect 3 demo — silver member get a gold membership for a limited time upon downloading a demo, which in turn allows them to play other games online. It’s overcomplicated, confusing to players, and anti-consumer, but Microsoft will probably get an extra Gold subscribers from the ordeal making it a win/win proposition — it’s not like giving away services for free (even if it shouldn’t cost a penny in the first place) will drive away customers. My only hope is that the next Xbox might change the situation. A console launching in a market packed with free-to-play multiplayer games might not attract the same base as the now entrenched 360, but I’m not terribly optimistic. Players are obviously willing to pay for it. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| A Guide to Tokyo’s Retro Gaming Bars Posted: 05 Feb 2012 01:26 PM PST One of the more interesting trends in recent years is the rash of retro game-themed bars that have cropped up around Tokyo. These hangouts have about as much in common with a Dave Buster’s as a motorcycle does to a German tank: Rather than being the brightly lit barcades that have tried and failed to make inroads in America, Japan’s game bars are simply modest watering holes that have begun decorating themselves with kitchsy Famicom-era knick-knacks and memorabilia and offering customers the opportunity to while their time away by dabbling in old (and occasionally new) games. It’s a pretty fun idea, and one that’s intrinsically Japanese in nature. More specifically, these bars are very much a natural evolution of Tokyo’s social politics. The idea of a bar where patrons can play video games makes perfect sense in a country where Nintendo’s 8-bit Famicom is a potent focus of nostalgia for a time when Japan’s economy was a booming powerhouse; rather than entertaining guests with karaoke or sports television, retro game bars instead let them kill time with fondly remembered classics both good and bad, from Super Mario Bros. to Spelunker. And in a city where social drinking is practically mandatory and last call is at 5 a.m. (because the trains shut down at midnight and don’t open again until dawn), people often find themselves killing an evening in a bar after missing the last train. What better way to kill time than by slugging it out with Ghosts ‘N Goblins’ diabolical red arremer or NInja Gaiden’s hateful birds until the sun comes up? For outsiders and tourists, however, these bars are less a social necessity and more a fascinating window into a sort of pop-culture parallel universe. They offer a glimpse into the childhoods of strangers; cluttered with tokens of pop culture that vaguely resemble what Americans or Europeans grew up with, retro game bars are a way to gain perspective on the games and cartoons that another nation grew up with. They prove that we’re not so different after all. Japanese kids in the ’80s and ’90s may have watched Urusei Yatsura while playing Tower of Druaga, but even as different as those works feel from the G.I. Joe cartoons and Doom clones American kids loved, the high esteem in which they’re held feels instantly familiar to anyone who still thinks back fondly on the pop culture touchstones of their own childhood. Plus, game bars also caters to the universal love of grabbing drinks with a friend and seeing who can get further in Super Mario Bros. 3. We’ve visited quite a few Tokyo gaming bars over the years — all for research, of course! — and have rounded up some of our favorites. There are plenty of others out there, and Tokyo doesn’t have an exclusive lock on them. However, these five spots are fairly accessible for anyone in the popular west/central Tokyo area, being clustered primarily around the Shinjuku area. Please refer to this feature as a handy guide for the best in game-themed drinking (note that it’s a lot faster and easier to reach most of these spots from Shinjuku San-chome station on the Ginza line rather than the sprawling, confusing Shinjuku station proper)… or else simply as a glimpse into an interesting little splinter of Tokyo culture. Of course, you shouldn’t use this article as the word of God; different people value different things in their watering holes. On top of that, there’s never a guarantee that these spots will be open! Shibuya bar Famicom City recently closed down (supposedly under legal pressure from Nintendo for misuse of the trademarked name “Famicom”). Game bars could prove to be a fleeting trend. So enjoy one today, or at least next time you’re in Tokyo. 8-Bit Cafe8-9 Q Bldg. (5th Floor), Shinjuku 3-chome, Shinjuku, Tokyo By far the best-known and easiest of the bars to reach — if you take the correct exit from Shinjuku San-chome station you will quite literally emerge from the underground on its doorstep — 8-Bit Cafe has become quite the nerd hangout. In fact, its success kind of works against it; despite being the largest of these bars by far, it’s always packed, and it often plays host to special events. We weren’t able to spend any time at 8-Bit Cafe at this year’s Tokyo Game Show visit, because the night we went to the bar it was hosting some sort of party; the waitresses demanded a 1000-yen cover charge (about $13), or 2000 yen for cover and a single drink (about $27). Needless to say, we passed. When it’s not being taken over by raucous music and a glut of nerds, though, 8-Bit Cafe is a lot of fun. It’s a surprisingly large space for a Japanese bar, with a fairly open layout in a city where such haunts generally consist of a short row of chairs sandwiched tightly between a bar and a wall. 8-Bit Cafe can seat about 30-35 comfortably, and it offers several game stations where visitors can grab their choice of console and games and have a go of it. The room is decorated with a growing number of trinkets and posters, ranging from old games encased in glass to Lum figurines and more. Naturally, 8-Bit Cafe has its share of classic game-themed cocktails. Our favorite is the Dr. Mario, which appears to be D Pepper and some sort of liquor (rum?). The drink itself is nothing special, but its presentation is great; the drink is served in a Pyrex beaker with a handful of sugar pills in a petri dish. Still, the immense popularity of 8-Bit Cafe means it lacks any sort of intimacy, and you may not be able to find a seat despite its respectable max capacity. On the other hand, folks like Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka have been known to perform there, and various other personages of the Japanese games industry sometimes hang out there, so it can be a good place to rub shoulders with giants. Our only photo of 8-Bit Cafe is the hand-drawn sign outside. D’oh! Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| [TPGS 2012] Planet Legend Online Posted: 05 Feb 2012 01:15 PM PST
Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Gameforumer.com: MMORPG Reviews | Gaming News | Gaming Community | Gaming Directory and more To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
