General gaming

General gaming

Dark Souls PC Gets Saddled With Games for Windows Live Support

Posted: 11 Apr 2012 03:46 PM PDT

Dark Souls

After a lot of hopeful wishing and petition-signing, Dark Souls has been officially confirmed for release on PC. That's all well and good; the game and its predecessor have an ardent fanbase, with many of them feeling Souls was the best game released last year. Seeing a niche product like this brought to a new platform is a very encouraging sign for the series, though unfortunately those who decide to play the Prepare to Die Edition on PC will be forced to use Games for Windows Live.

As pointed out by GameSpy, the box art Namco Bandai showed for the game at a Las Vegas event today carried the GfWL logo, a fact that has not sat well with many PC gamers who would prefer to avoid Microsoft's online setup whenever possible. (Microsoft ruffled some feathers when it tried charging PC gamers for the service like it does Xbox Live members, though it later realized the error of its ways.) Just as Namco Bandai was encouraged to bring Dark Souls to PC through a petition -- which was praised by those at the company for raising awareness for the issue -- it's now being urged to release the game sans Games for Windows Live support by fans signing a new petition.

Rare Breeds: Video Game Genres on the Verge of Extinction

Posted: 11 Apr 2012 03:34 PM PDT

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Rare Breeds: Video Game Genres on the Verge of Extinction

Four endangered species within the wilderness of the game industry.

By: Todd Ciolek April 11, 2012

The game industry has little room for failures. Like a vast and cruel wilderness, it's rarely merciful to the games that can't adapt to a changing environment. Yet it's rare that an entire breed of game goes completely extinct; as long as there's one small developer or semi-profitable fan following, a genre can survive. It'll just be on the endangered list -- that's where you'll find all of the following species, which were once healthy or prosperous in some way. But time and technology dulled their appeal, and faster, leaner, more appealing games took over.

Some genres have made comebacks in recent years. Between Telltale Games' catalog and Double Fine's newly funded project, the classic point-and-click adventure game isn't doing so badly. But other kinds of games aren't so lucky, as the current market finds these formerly proud creatures subsisting only through independent studios or cheap downloadable software. So let's take a look at them, their history, and the many small ways they endure today.

Fez Review: Defying Your Feeble Human Comprehension of Space and Time

Posted: 11 Apr 2012 01:14 PM PDT

The idea behind Cubism, the school of art pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, was to represent three-dimensional objects within two-dimensional spaces. Those strange-looking people Picasso painted had less to do with peyote hallucinations and more to do with the challenge of simultaneously presenting all sides of the human body upon a flat surface. I'm not entirely sure how the Cubists would have approached modern video games, but Fez just might fit the bill.

If Picasso were to design a collect-a-thon, it would probably look a lot like Fez. It's not that Fez depicts objects with the same strange, unearthly multi-dimensionality Picasso employed; if the game owes its look to any one inspiration, it would be Daisuke Amaya's Cave Story. Nevertheless, Fez embodies the spirit of the Cubist style by taking objects that exist in a three-dimensional virtual space and ignoring their internal relations in favor of the viewer's external perception. Here, dozens of 3D spaces built to incorporate volume and distance become compressed and flattened based on the angle from which they're viewed. Fez tackles a problem that's bothered game designers since the very beginning -- how to you create the illusion of depth on a flat surface? -- and leverages the fact that 3D games really are just an illusion. It's not quite Cubism, but it's certainly of a kindred spirit. And hey, everything in the game is built of cubes, so there's your kismet for the day.

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition Set to Make a Whole New Audience Cry

Posted: 11 Apr 2012 11:44 AM PDT

PC gamers who have spent the past six months preparing to die can now rest easy knowing that one of 2011's finest titles is coming their way. The Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition is set for release on August 25, and the extra content will focus on an episode called "Artorias of the Abyss," which will offer new areas, enemies and bosses for players to swear at when they get consistently slaughtered. In honor of this announcement, we've rounded up our resident Dark Souls masochists to share their hopes and fears for the PC port.

Bob Mackey, Associate Editor

Posted by Shri Krishna

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