General gaming

General gaming

Call of Duty's Lackluster March Isn't Indicative of Much

Posted: 17 Apr 2012 03:09 PM PDT

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3

Generally speaking, the videogame industry sees the sale of games come primarily at launch before quickly tapering out. Nintendo games and Call of Duty games are some of the few exceptions to this. Whereas even many big titles will disappear from the NPD sales charts within a few months of launch, the latest Call of Duty traditionally has a long stay at the top before sticking around in the top ten long after when the majority of games would have fallen off. Modern Warfare 3 has yet to drop out of the top ten but it is doing more poorly than Black Ops was at the same point last year, leading some to wonder if the Call of Duty bubble is ready to burst. The series' haters may want to delay celebrating just yet, however, as it's hardly as if Activision is on the verge of being forced to shelve the series like it did Guitar Hero last year.

The "shortened tail" of Modern Warfare 3 first had attention called to it last week by PiperJaffray analyst Michael Olson. Gamasutra reported Olson was expecting MW3 to sell in March half of what Black Ops did during the same period last year. He was not of the belief this decline was specifically related to Call of Duty, though. "We believe big name titles are no longer able to sustain 'fat tails.'" he said. "This 'thinning tail' phenomenon is driven by 1) casual gamers leaving the market, 2) a steeper pre-sale and up-front curve, and 3) cannibalization from the pre-owned market."

Our Dragon Ball Z Kinect Wish List

Posted: 17 Apr 2012 02:06 PM PDT

Dragon Ball Z for Kinect features plenty of super-powered fights -- enough for an overload of Internet jokes involving power levels over 9,000, at least -- but what else can you do in game with your Kinect besides punches, kicks, and Kamehamehas? What about competitive multiplayer or additional co-op modes?

Presently, Namco is reluctant to give specifics about the game regarding anything outside of its predictable campaign and score attack modes. So, we at 1UP went ahead and brainstormed some ideas for them. Why? Because deep down inside some of us still care about DBZ. And if you have your own brilliant idea you'd like to see in DBZ Kinect, tell us about it in the comments below.

Fusion Dance

Ni No Kuni and the Power of Charming RPG Worlds

Posted: 17 Apr 2012 01:57 PM PDT

It feels like I've been waiting forever for Ni no Kuni: The Wrath of the White Witch. Developer Level-5's RPG collaboration with renowned animation group Studio Ghibli has stolen my heart since 2009. While the seemingly endless wait has felt excruciating at times, playing a recent demo (in English at last) at Namco Global Gamers Day reminded me that its U.S. release is on its way... though not until 2013, according to representatives at the event. What does strike me (besides the painfully long wait) is the sense of adventure and charm that Ni no Kuni stirred within me as I played a timed, two-part demo for 10 minutes apiece.

Of course, a 20-minute session is hardly enough time to gauge any game's quality -- merely enough to give you a faint impression. Part of my excitement for Ni no Kuni is tied to the game's expressive visuals. The world is colorful, with enemies so cute it's hard to consider them lethal, but there's something about the way this setting presents itself that makes it feel alive despite obvious limitations. I'm not referring to limitations in a technical sense, but the fact that -- as in many RPGs -- there are only so many places you can visit. The world in Ni no Kuni has boundaries and doesn't reach the level of detail found in Skyrim -- a game where you can spend hours sifting through people's homes and personal lives -- but it still feels just as alive.

James Mielke Returns Home For a Fireside Chat

Posted: 17 Apr 2012 12:12 PM PDT

Remember that scene in Heat when Robert De Niro and Al Pacino sit across from each other at a restaurant and share the screen for the first time in their careers? Well, this isn't really anything like that, I just wanted to make sure that you guys have seen Heat .

James Mielke, former 1UP Editor-in-Chief and current producer at Q Entertainment, flew in from Japan and sat down for an intimate discussion with Sam Kennedy, also a former 1UP Editor-in-Chief, and Tina Palacios, not a former 1UP Editor-in-Chief but still well-liked amongst her peers. Aside from being an awesome throwback to 1UP's past, the interview shed light on Mielke's transition from games journalism to the development side of the industry. His role at Q Entertainment allowed him to share his love for all-things electronica on titles like Child of Eden and Lumines: Electric Symphony.

Star Command Demonstrates How Quickly Kickstarter Funding Can Disappear

Posted: 17 Apr 2012 11:14 AM PDT

Star Commander

Kickstarter is all the craze these days, though Double Fine's adventure game was hardly the first game to turn to it for funding. Star Command, an iOS game described as a cross between Game Dev Story and science fiction, was seeking $20,000 last September. It easily surpassed that mark, ultimately bringing in $36,967 for developer Warballoon. Since that's nearly double what was being asked for, one might expect money to be no issue. As a new update posted on the Kickstarter reveals, however, that money can disappear in a hurry.

The update provides a look at how that money has been spent since the Kickstarter came to a close on October 6. Immediately about $5,000 of it was gone; $2,000 didn't come through because of problems with funds being transferred, while $3,000 or so went to Kickstarter itself and Amazon, whose Amazon Payments system is used to pledge money to projects. That means the nearly $37,000 you might expect to be spent on game development is now $32,000, and after prize fulfillment that figure drops down to $22,000.

The 2D Platformer Renaissance

Posted: 17 Apr 2012 07:46 AM PDT

Feature

Header

The 2D Platformer Renaissance

Fez leads the resurgence of a genre once proclaimed dead.

By: Jeremy Parish April 16, 2012

One of the most common refrains being espoused by people discussing Fez online is that the "fake retro 8-bit" style of games is growing long in the tooth. That strikes me as a limiting and narrow-minded perspective; Fez's aesthetic is a deliberate stylistic choice that required a fair amount of artistry -- the game excellently depicts things like frogs with remarkable minimalism! -- and it serves a functional purpose as well by helping enable the game's optical-illusion-based core mechanic. Sure, lots of games have mishandled the faux-8-bit look, but when it's used well (as it is in Fez), it becomes as a valid a visual style as the high-poly-count, four-rendering-pass "realism" of AAA shooters... which, incidentally, will look painfully dated five years from now. At least the pseudo-classic look front-loads its visual obsolescence.

Most importantly, Fez's throwback style helps communicate the relatively simple nature of the game mechanics, which makes it not only a viable look but an appropriate one, too. It serves as a sort of graphical shorthand to clue viewers into the fact that it's not a complicated, cumbersome-to-play contemporary game but rather one that hearkens back to a simpler age. And it's only one of many recent and upcoming games to look back to these simpler play mechanics. As anyone who spent a little time on the show floor at PAX East can attest, the 2D platformer is undergoing a revival of sorts. Liberated from the "handheld ghetto," where most self-proclaimed hardcore gamers will turn their nose up at any game regardless of its excellence, the side-scrolling run-and-jump game has set up camp in the indie game space of consoles and PCs. The genre never died; it simply needed a safe place to live, where gamers' obsession with visual bang for their gaming buck doesn't overshadow the quality of the software itself.

Posted by Shri Krishna

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