General gaming

General gaming

Mad Men Vs. Metal Gear Solid 3

Posted: 23 Mar 2012 10:52 AM PDT

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Mad Men Vs. Metal Gear Solid 3

Two tales of the '60s demonstrate how games and television can create the same narrative impact.

By: Jeremy Parish March 23, 2012

Knowing the fifth season of Mad Men is set to debut this weekend, I finally decided to check out the series. Coworkers, friends, online strangers, and even my wife have been singing its praises for years, so I wanted to see what I'd been missing all this time. Turns out the answer is, "an extraordinarily written television show."

By a complete coincidence, my Mad Men marathon led right up to my revisiting Metal Gear Solid 3 through its 3DS remake, Snake Eater 3D. Our minds like to find patterns and similarities where none may exist, so naturally I was struck by the fact that both pieces are set in the same time period: The first half of the 1960s. One week I was watching Don Draper and associates react to the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination of John F. Kennedy; the next I was watching Naked Snake slink through a Russian jungle in response to military maneuvers precipitated by those same events.

Both Mad Men and Metal Gear Solid 3 stand as very different creations that offer wildly disparate takes on their settings, but they both share something in common: They represent some of the finest narrative work ever produced in their respective mediums. Because they're set against the backdrop of the '60s, the similarities and variances in their presentation offer a reference point of sorts for exploring the differing strengths and potential of film and games.

Epic Mickey 2 Promises to Build a Better Mouse

Posted: 23 Mar 2012 07:57 AM PDT

Sequel announcements rarely begin with apologies. Sure, the boasting of a bigger, bolder experience brings with it the implicit message that maybe the first game didn't live up to everyone's expectations, but for the most part, developers tend to emphasize the positive over the negative. So it came as a bit of a shock when game development legend and Junction Point VP Warren Spector began his Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two presentation with a mea culpa about the flaws of his 2010 pet project.

This Tuesday, Spector assured a crowd of skeptical journalists that the forthcoming sequel -- launching on the Wii, PS3, and XBox 360 -- will receive drastic overhauls in three main categories: camera, voice, and persistence -- the first being a major sticking point for many a gamer. Anyone who's played the original Epic Mickey (or even sampled one of its many reviews, including our own) can tell you that its camera required far too much babysitting, and often seemed to deliberately obscure platforms during some of the trickier sections. But Spector had good news about the most fatal of flaws from his initial Disney love-in.

Posted by Shri Krishna

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