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General gaming

Seven Mascots That Won't Make the PlayStation All-Stars Cut

Posted: 27 Apr 2012 12:21 AM PDT

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Seven Mascots That Won't Make the PlayStation All-Stars Cut

Though the full roster hasn't been revealed, these guys are bound to be benchwarmers.

By: Bob Mackey April 27, 2012

Sly Cooper. Parappa. Fat Princess. Kratos. Sweet Tooth. That guy from Killzone. These treasured characters comprise the starting lineup of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, Sony's answer to Super Smash Bros. 13 years after the fact. Of course, building a team of recognizable PlayStation protagonists makes for a more selective process than Nintendo's own; because Sony entered the console marketplace just as it underwent the final stages of mascot cancer, the company doesn't have the luxury of relying on a cast brought into being during a time when hundreds of cartoony things ran from left to right, occasionally jumping. And some mascots that once stood for Sony have since been diluted by developer change-overs, multi-platform publishing, and a parade of forgettable installments -- can you honestly name the last Crash Bandicoot release? More importantly, would you want to?

Dishonored: An Assassination Sandbox That Doesn't Penalize Sociopaths

Posted: 26 Apr 2012 09:28 PM PDT

Remember the Halo Reach sniper rifle shot heard (and bounced) around the world? The one that ricocheted in such a crazy way that it actually went through the head of the very fellow who fired it in the first place? Bizarre as that situation may sound, it can serve as one of many crazy ways to assassinate someone in Dishonored. During the tail end of a recent hands-off demonstration, co-creative directors Harvey Smith and Raf Colantonio briefly went quiet as a Bethesda staffer playing showed off a particularly slick method of taking out multiple targets: Having the player character, Corvo, slow down time before laying down a spring razor trap and using his Blink ability to teleport a short distance away just in time to see the trap detonate when time resumes flowing at a normal rate. To get back to Reach's unintentional suicide, Smith explained, "Sometimes, when you activate Bend Time, you can actually see the bullet in the air; you can actually then Possess the guy who shot it and walk him around to the front. When time resumes, the bullet kills him and he has this very shocked expression on his face."

Smith has previously described Dishonored as an action-stealth title in terms of its overall genre, but he cites titles like Far Cry 2, Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Thief, and Deus Ex as examples of what he, Colantonio, and the rest of the developers at Arkane are going for with their new creation: An open-ended game driven more by systemic interaction than by scripted spectacle. In other words, they want to simply provide a suite of tools, and objective, and then let players go at it. Corvo has a number of tools -- including gear such guns, daggers, traps, grenades and weird steampunk treasure detecting devices as well as more supernatural abilities such as Bend Time, Possession, and Windblast -- and his task is simply to find his targets and neutralize them. This can be as simple as stabbing someone in the face; as odd as possessing fish and mice to navigate through the sewers below until you find said target before possessing him to make him jump out a window; or as elaborate and non-lethal as arranging to have his identity stolen in order to condemn him to work in the very same salt mine that he owns.

Madden 13 Improvements Call Into Question the Franchise's Current Model

Posted: 26 Apr 2012 03:44 PM PDT

Madden NFL 13

EA Tiburon yesterday began to reveal some of what will be different about Madden NFL 13's gameplay. The big focus of this year's title is the passing game, which makes sense both because the NFL is becoming more pass-centric and because my team (the Jets) is increasingly reliant on the rushing game. The changes sound good in theory, though as someone who still plays last year's game a few times every week, I can't help but take issue with the post-release support Madden 12 received.

A new Madden is released each and every year like clockwork. Call of Duty may be the target of gamers wanting to lash out at annual releases these days, but Madden was doing it more than a decade before Call of Duty 1 ever hit store shelves. Years ago it made more sense; while there have always been criticisms about too little changing from one game to the next, with no better way to get new rosters into the hands of players, a full retail release was the way to go. Nowadays that feels like an archaic method of delivering content to players, yet it continues to happen -- and the game suffers for it.

Phantasy Star Online 2 Impressions: Towards The Future

Posted: 26 Apr 2012 01:37 PM PDT

5th Cell Heads into Unconventional Territory with Hybrid

Posted: 26 Apr 2012 11:34 AM PDT

You know how some games come across as the victims of an overly glib elevator pitch? How you can reduce them to a description along the lines of, "It plays like Halo meets Animal Crossing," without doing it any injustice? 5th Cell's Hybrid isn't one of those. I suppose you could try to explain it to someone as "Risk meets Gears of War meets Valkyria Chronicles meets Quake," but not only does that not make any sense, it also would make you sound pretty unhinged, too.

Posted by Shri Krishna

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