Latest Gaming and MMORPG Updates |
- Royal Quest
- Syndicate Review: Starbreeze’s Latest Excels at Co-Op But Falters in Single-player
- Portal 2′s Tardy DLC Comes Out on Tuesday
- Rejuvenated 3DS Could Provide a Home For Mid-Tier Games
- NCsoft
- Missing Mascots: Gaming Personalities that Slipped Off the Radar
| Posted: 21 Feb 2012 08:38 AM PST
Below is a list of the game’s features as listed on the game website if you are too lazy to visit (I know, I have such days as well). There are some PvP footage floating around from early test phases, in Russian though as both the developer and publisher are from the Land of Vodka. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Syndicate Review: Starbreeze’s Latest Excels at Co-Op But Falters in Single-player Posted: 21 Feb 2012 02:37 AM PST “Some say I’ve been lazy,” admits the King of All Cosmos in the opening sequence of Touch My Katamari. “Phoning it in.” This is meant to be hilarious — that crazy King, always so pompous, yet vain enough to be stung by criticism! — but the wittiness of the whole thing is badly undermined by the fact that Touch My Katamari is lazy. Namco is, in fact, phoning it in. Of course, the best parody is that which rings of the truth. In that sense, sure, this game is pretty parodic. Damningly so, I’d say. The problem is that I don’t think it was meant to be self-satire; certainly it’s not an exercise in self-reflection. All this talk of apathy and flabbiness are meant to be loving, tongue-in-cheek pokes at the character, not a frank assessment of the software itself. So, it’s either a joke that reflects a jarring lack of self-awareness by the developers, or else it’s a snide middle finger to the player: Yeah, this game is warmed-over, recycled content, but we’re gonna fix that! By… making you do the exact same things you did in the last five Katamari games. Thanks for the 30 bones, suckers.
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| Portal 2′s Tardy DLC Comes Out on Tuesday Posted: 21 Feb 2012 01:29 AM PST Though it took longer than expected, the first downloadable content pack for Portal 2 will soon be here on all three of the game’s platforms. Portal 2: Peer Review, as it’s been officially titled, was announced shortly after the game’s release in April. It was scheduled for a summer release, and when it began to look like Valve wouldn’t meet that date, it reassured fans it would be out by mid-September. That date, too, came and went, but we now have an actual, hard date, and one that’s far too close for it to slip once again. Peer Review will be released on Tuesday, October 4 on Steam, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. Or rather, its global rollout will begin then, so depending upon where in the world you live, there may be a bit of an additional wait. The DLC is free on all three platforms and includes content for fans of both the solo and co-op campaigns. The story of P-Body and Atlas — the two co-op robots — continues in Peer Review “as you puzzle your way through a mysterious new co-op test track and once again match wits with GLaDOS.” A new Challenge mode is introduced for both single-player and co-op, and accompanying leaderboards will let you compare your scores with other players. Coinciding with the announcement, the last of three soundtrack volumes has been released as a free download today. You can grab all 64 songs comprising the three volumes (and a number of ringtones for iPhone and Android devices) here. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Rejuvenated 3DS Could Provide a Home For Mid-Tier Games Posted: 20 Feb 2012 02:35 PM PST In what can only be described as a remarkable turnaround, the 3DS has gone from struggling badly enough that it necessitated a steep price drop to breaking a record by reaching 5 million units sold in Japan faster than any other platform. It took 52 weeks to reach that milestone, compared with 56 weeks for the original DS and 58 weeks for the Game Boy Advance before it. It wasn’t all that long ago that much of the talk about 3DS centered about how it was a doomed platform, one destined for failure because it was designed for a market that no longer exists in the size it once did. There were legitimate concerns to be voiced, as platforms like the iPhone and iPad have arguably taken a bite out of the handheld gaming market, but pronouncements of the platform’s death before it could even reach the holiday shopping season or see the release of its first big games (Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7, and Monster Hunter 3G) were clearly premature. Reaching 5 million units sold in Japan is no guarantee the system will continue to sell this well moving forward; it is, however, an encouraging sign for Nintendo, Sony, and third-party developers to see there is demand for portable gaming systems provided the price is right and desirable software is available. Additionally, Japanese publication Nikkei (as translated by Andriasang) is reporting Seaman is to be revived for release on 3DS. As random as that may sound to you, a release of the Dreamcast classic was hinted at in 2010 when designer Yoot Saito tweeted about his interest in seeing a 3DS version released. The game saw players interacting with a virtual pet — a fish with a human head being the most common form — through the use of a microphone. The Seaman would need to be fed and spoken to on a regular basis, and if it wasn’t attended to daily it could die. Suffice it to say, it was a weird, unique game that doesn’t exactly hold the potential to sell as well as Mario or Call of Duty. Seaman could fall in the category of what you might call mid-range or mid-tier games, a rapidly disappearing market losing ground to massive, AAA games (like the aforementioned Call of Duty) and smaller, indie titles (VVVVVV, for example). It was around this time last year when Epic’s Cliff Bleszinski suggested “the middle class game is dead,” comparing games to the film industry where it’s the blockbusters and indie films that do well in theaters, not the stuff in between. While they are certainly in decline, I don’t think the market for mid-tier games is dead. In fact, as long as 3DS sales don’t begin to peter out (in addition to the 5 million sold in Japan, 3DS sales are over 4 million in the U.S.) Nintendo’s latest handheld seems to present the perfect opportunity for these titles to succeed. Nintendo seems to realize this, as Nikkei reports the company is looking to revive other publisher’s games on 3DS, with Seaman being just one example. Pricing is one key element when it comes to selling mid-tier games. Publishers typically can’t sell them for $10, and pricing them at $60 against the Skyrims or Modern Warfare 3s is a death sentence. Yet discounting such a game to, say, $40 on consoles can bring with it a negative connotation that the game simply isn’t any good. This isn’t always the case (Deadly Premonition was good, cheap, and sold quite well, whereas MX vs. ATV Alive was mediocre and sold accordingly), although in the portable market it’s less of a problem: a new 3DS game being priced at $20 or $30 is less likely to make people question its quality than a $40 Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 game. There is also a much different expectation when it comes to the visual quality of a 3DS game. Graphics are not everything, but there is a certain level of expectation about how good a retail game will look on an HD console. An ugly 360/PS3 game that wouldn’t look out of place on the PS2 generation of hardware is off-putting. 3DS, on the other hand, is capable of powering good-looking games — just look at Resident Evil: Revelations — but overall the bar is not as high as on consoles or even Vita. That makes it easier to create a game on a more limited budget, as is often the case when developing mid-range titles. Many publishers may decide to follow the lead of companies like Activision and continue to focus on higher-margin games at the expense of the mid-tier stuff. But with 3DS thriving right now and console development sure to become even more expensive as the next generation of hardware approaches, the opportunity is there to embrace the middle space in a way it has not been in recent years. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Posted: 20 Feb 2012 02:35 PM PST
Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Missing Mascots: Gaming Personalities that Slipped Off the Radar Posted: 20 Feb 2012 01:26 PM PST Once upon a time, they were important. They were more than just video-game characters scrambling to be the next Pac-Man or Mario. They were the symbols of game companies, seen in logos and commercials and as many cameo appearances as possible. Then they dropped out of the spotlight, thrown aside by a game industry that just didn’t have a place for a bald cave-child or a cross-eyed pink dinosaur. They’re the fallen mascots of game generations past. Some were too bland to survive. Some hit a streak of lousy games. Some were just hitched to the wrong company. But all of them were mascots in the true sense. They served as the public faces of developers and publishers, and that makes the difference between a Bonk and a Battletoad. Here’s a chronicle of the once-proud mascots worth remembering today.  As icons of the game industry go, Alex Kidd was just too darned nice. The same can be said for the Sega Master System, which only shrugged while Nintendo’s NES conquered the game industry and the youth of the world in the 1980s. Alex Kidd was there through it all, a vaguely apelike action hero who punched things with his expandable fists. In testament to Sega’s wishy-washy approach to the Master System, Alex was the console’s mascot just because no one could think of a better one. Not that Alex Kidd was lacking in material. His first game, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, mixed the stylings of a side-scroller with motorbike racing, helicopter flights, and rock-paper-scissors mini-games. Yet it was nothing that kids couldn’t get on the NES, and the same went for Alex’s subsequent games: The Lost Stars, BMX Trial, High-Tech World, and Shinobi World. Even the arrival of the Sega Genesis didn’t give him an edge. The 16-bit Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle was still a banal side-scroller, and Alex was still a big-eared boy who never stood up to Mario and Nintendo. Alex Kidd in Shinobi World originally featured a big-nosed, mustachioed boss named “Mari-Oh,” but this was changed for the final game. Alex wasn’t very good at confrontations. Sega needed a more aggressive mascot to accompany the Genesis and its more combative advertising, and they found it in Sonic the Hedgehog. Alex Kidd was swiftly relegated to the world of cameos, showing up as a vending-machine prize in Shenmue and, in a heartbreaking turn, a depressed store clerk in the parody RPG Segagaga. Last Known Whereabouts:  The TurboGrafx-16 was marked by false starts, especially in its search for a mascot. NEC’s console launched in North America with Keith Courage in Alpha Zones, which was Hudson’s Mashin Eiyuden Wataru game renamed and packed with a superhero comic. This made no impression on TurboGrafx owners, and the system’s real hero soon emerged from Bonk’s Adventure, a side-scroller about a cave-child who bashes enemies with his giant hairless noggin. It was Bonk who appeared in TurboGrafx ads and fliers. It was Bonk who stood against Sonic and Mario. And it was Bonk who should’ve been bundled with every TurboGrafx from the get-go. Bonk’s three main side-scrollers are solid stuff, with bright, simple graphics that recall The Flintstones as much as they do children’s anime. Unfortunately, Bonk himself lacked a gimmick. It was amusing to watch him beat back foes with his head or gnaw his way up a cliff, but nothing he did really influenced gameplay (and advertising) quite as effectively as Sonic’s speed. Still, he beat Keith Courage by miles. Bonk was remodeled in 1992 for Air Zonk, a shooter that starred a futuristic cyborg version of the caveman hero. It arrived just in time to make Zonk the mascot for NEC’s TurboDuo, despite the briefly disastrous introduction of a comic-book spokesman called Johnny Turbo. Fortunately, the Bonk of the Future won out as the TurboDuo’s poster boy until the system’s demise. As with most things on the TurboGrafx, Bonk knew greater success in Japan. Under the name PC Genjin (a play on the TurboGrafx’s Japanese incarnation, the PC Engine), Bonk saw a mini-game collection and many ports of his original game released there. He didn’t quite make it into the next generation of consoles, however, as a Nintendo 64 version of Bonk was scuttled and turned into Bomberman 64. Last Known Whereabouts:  Asmik’s contributions to video games are minor. Though they published dozens of titles for various Nintendo systems, their best finds were curious mediocrities like Xardion and Wurm: Journey to the Center of the Earth. During the height of Nintendo’s early-1990s popularity, however, Asmik was an up-and-coming publisher with ambition, an American branch, and a pink dinosaur for a mascot. At first, Asmik didn’t have a name for the creature. He was “Asmik-Kun” in Japan, but that didn’t have the proper ring for North America. After a small contest, Asmik dubbed him “Boomer” (though Nintendo Power originally misidentified him as “Bronty”) and rolled out his first game: Boomer’s Adventure in Asmik World. It was a simple maze-walker for the Game Boy, and it failed to land Boomer any merchandising deals or Saturday morning TV contracts. In fact, this was Boomer’s only game released in North America. He endured as Asmik’s mascot, however, and the company’s NES and Game Boy releases show him on the packaging and title screens. By the time Asmik moved on to the Super NES, Boomer was gone. Boomer’s Japanese species lasted a little longer, appearing in a second Game Boy puzzle-action game as well as a Famicom side-scroller titled Asmik-Kun Land. A low-effort entry, Asmik-Kun Land is notable mostly for Boomer’s oddly animated tail attack, which makes him look like he’s farting on enemies. Last Known Whereabouts:  Captain Commando’s origins are curious. He was created not for a video game but for the packaging of Capcom’s early NES releases, dubbed the Captain Commando Challenge Series. Extrapolating his name from Capcom’s (which itself came from “Capsule Computer” arcade units), the Captain appeared on game boxes and in manuals, clad in the height of disco-superhero finery. Capcom’s American branch even fiddled with Section Z’s backstory to make Captain Commando the main character, though the in-game sprite was never edited to include his medallions and amazing Technicolor space-coat. Perhaps he wasn’t out of place on packaging that also turned Mega Man into an glowing, hunched abomination. Capcom updated Captain Commando’s look for the next round of NES games, and so titles like Mega Man 2 and Strider bore a square-jawed, astronaut-pilot hero worthy of a B-movie Star Wars rip-off. The Captain Commando Challenge Series continued with this new icon and his unnamed blue space-monkey sidekick, though this new look lasted no longer than the first. The Captain was redesigned again in 1991, when Capcom granted him his own game. A brawler much in the style of Final Fight, Captain Commando fashioned its title character into an anime superhero with his own crimefighting cadre, consisting of a Mummy Commando, a Ninja Commando, and a Baby Commando who pilots an adult-sized robot. While built with the same solid foundation as Capcom’s other beat-’em-ups of the day, Captain Commando is a rather routine journey with a violent detail or two (Mummy Commando’s attack dissolve enemies, and a promotional comic shows the game’s villains graphically murdering civilians). But this was the version of Captain Commando that would stick, and he looked much the same when he showed up in Marvel vs. Capcom and its sequel. He was no longer Capcom’s mascot, however. That role belongs to Mega Man–or at least it did until Capcom canceled his last two titles. Last Known Whereabouts: Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
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