Latest Gaming and MMORPG Updates |
- Age of Wulin (CN)
- NYCC: Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva Brings the Games to Film with Style
- Sony’s Rumored Cloud Gaming Deal Intrigues
- Cover Gallery: Box Art from Another Reality
- What If Steve Jobs Had Never Returned to Apple?
- What If the Dreamcast Won?
- Who the Hell is Steven Spielberg?
- Blitz 1941 MMO Review
| Posted: 25 May 2012 04:01 AM PDT
Starting off, players from this clan will be using 1-handed daggers. Similar to Wudang using dual swords from the beginning, the choice of weapon is no doubt, weird. But what I had in mind was that the developers did not want players to immediately jump into the various famous single-sword skill sets. |
| NYCC: Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva Brings the Games to Film with Style Posted: 24 May 2012 04:01 PM PDT 1UP’s resident Batman expert, Thierry Nguyen, once told me that one of the most basic canonical facts in DC Comics’ style guide is that Batman always wins. Over in Japan, on the even more hardboiled side of things, you have Golgo-13, the emotionless sniper who never misses his shot. And now it seems Level-5 is making a serious bid to boost their own leading man, Hershel Layton, to those vaunted heights. With their new (or at least newly translated into English) film Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva, a new bit of fictive infallibility has come to light: Professor Layton always has the answer. Nintendo (who publishes the Layton games in the U.S.) and Viz (who will be publishing the DVD) presented a limited screening of Diva for a small but enthusiastic audience at New York Comic-Con tonight. The timing is no coincidence, of course; Nintendo’s goal was to promote Professor Layton and the Last Specter, which launches for DS this weekend. It’s not just an empty connection, though. Hardly an empty cash-in, Diva is closely tied to Specter, set before Professor Layton and the Curious Village and featuring characters (such as Layton’s surprisingly badass lady assistant Emmy) who debut in Specter. With Diva, Level-5 has taken on no small challenge: To transform a series of video game that blends talky narrative and brain-bending puzzles in equal measures into something that plays well on the screen. Their efforts didn’t yield a complete success, unfortunately, as in its 11th hour Diva takes an improbable turn into bold heroics that feel out-of-place for the series. You may buy the idea that Layton can MacGuyver himself up a flying machine on the spur of the moment (it’s a puzzle of components, you see!). You may even accept that, as a proper English gentleman, he’s versed in the fine art of fencing. But the climax of the film goes a bit too far in making both Layton and his preteen ward Luke into action heroes, and it doesn’t really jive with, well, anything else in this particular universe. Setting aside that one hard-to-swallow sequence — though not lightly, because it’s at the very heart of the narrative — Diva really does adapt the games into film with satisfactory effectiveness. First, the animation studio (Toho, I believe) did a great job of capturing the European-cartoon-by-way-of-anime style of the games’ cutscenes. The distinctive warmth that lends the Layton games an aura of classic French animation is reproduced well, blurring the line between Japanese and European design and becoming something quite unique in the process. The closest thing I’ve seen is, perhaps, the Hayao Miyazaki-directed chapters of Lupin III, particularly Castle of Cagliostro. The film’s writers practically cop to this inspiration with the character of Detective Grosky, a Scotland Yard inspector whose doggedness is matched only by his bad luck — exactly like Lupin‘s Inspector Zenigata. Heck, there’s even a baroque castle with a crazy clockwork twist tied to the legacy of a young woman. Calling back to an animated classic is hardly a bad thing, though. Besides, Layton isn’t Lupin, because he’s a genteel professor rather than a ruthless scoundrel, and it’s the hero that sets this film apart. There are two certainties in Layton’s life: Not only does he always have the answer, but no matter where he goes he always stumbles into puzzles, kind of like the way people were always dying whenever Angela Landsbury’s character on Murder, She Wrote was around. Even when someone else solves a puzzle, Layton always has a better solution or a more refined answer. The appeal of Diva is how effectively the game’s style — its overall style, not just its looks — has been translated into animation. The puzzle-solving element of the games is introduced in a deliberately conspicuous manner, almost like The Phantom of the Opera in its baroque, over-the-top (and quite literal) theatricality. More than that, though, the overall tale is a series of intricately nested plots, twists, and surprises. Although Layton’s constant murmurs of “But of course!” grow a bit hard to swallow as his deductions leap further and further into the fantastic, the story sells itself with confidence. And even despite the lapse into those jarringly uncharacteristic action tropes, the tale wraps up well, even managing in its final moments to be fairly touching (if a bit drawn-out). You rarely see a video game adapted as faithfully into cinematic form as Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva. Naturally, it helps that the movie was written and planned by key personnel on the games, and that the games themselves are among the few series to still include traditionally animated cutscenes. Nevertheless, while it’s not quite as essential as the games themselves, it’s a generally excellent distillation of the Layton spirit into animation. Unlike most movies based on games, fans will love it without having to delude themselves that it’s good. Because it is good. |
| Sony’s Rumored Cloud Gaming Deal Intrigues Posted: 24 May 2012 01:58 PM PDT At this year's E3 Nintendo will be talking Wii U, Microsoft may be focused on things of little interest to core gamers, and Sony will reportedly be talking cloud gaming. VG247 reports Sony will announce the details of a could gaming deal it has secured during its E3 press conference next month. There were no details made available, including whom the deal is with -- it's said to be either Gaikai or OnLive. That detail makes a significant difference. While they are both streaming game companies, there is a fundamental difference in how each operates. Gaikai mainly brings game trials/demos to browsers, making them playable directly on retailer websites, Facebook, and so on. OnLive allows gamers to sample titles, but it is mainly focused on selling them through apps on computers and other devices, like tablets, in addition to its OnLive Game System (designed to bring the service to TVs). OnLive games can be purchased and played in their entirety, which is the major distinction between them and the more try-before-you-buy nature of Gaikai. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Cover Gallery: Box Art from Another Reality Posted: 24 May 2012 01:28 PM PDT
Feature 1UP COVER STORY 1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF? Cover Gallery: Box Art from Another RealityCover Story: The games you'd be playing today, if only things had gone differently.Artist Rusty Shackles has teamed up with 1UP to bring you these slices of alternate realities: Box art for games from another world. What if things had worked out differently? These games don't exist... but like children everywhere with a catalog of games and no money, you can stare at this box art and imagine what it would be like to play them. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| What If Steve Jobs Had Never Returned to Apple? Posted: 24 May 2012 11:38 AM PDT
Feature 1UP COVER STORY  1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF? What If Steve Jobs Had Never Returned to Apple?Cover Story: Witness one possible reality in this alternate chronicle of the company that reinvented mobile gaming.S teve Jobs' White Whale, excerpted from the March 2014 issue of MOOF!: The Mac Enthusiast Memorial Quarterly Magazine. ©2014 . Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. When Steve Jobs passed away in March 2012, he left behind an impressive curriculum vitae of creative ventures and business decisions. His stake in Pixar rendered him both extraordinary rich and incredibly influential given his role in the company's acquisition by Disney, and NeXT's slow-burn success as an alternative operating system made him a hero to the open-source community. Yet a shadow hovers over Jobs' legacy: Apple Computer, the one that got away. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Posted: 24 May 2012 11:21 AM PDT
Feature 1UP COVER STORY  1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF? What If the Dreamcast Won?Cover Story: Jump into an alternate reality where Sega's hardware hopes didn't die with the last millennium.S ega's Dreamcast burned bright, but not for long. The company's last foray into video game hardware barely lasted two years, and tied the bow on a decade lousy with unsuccessful consoles. Unlike the Philips CD-I, 3D0, or Atari Jaguar, Sega deserved better, but a series of unfortunate circumstances helped sink their attempt to make up for past failures. While the Dreamcast had a significant head start during gaming's last gen, a certain combination of factors spelled doom for Sega's final console: the company's sketchy reputation with hardware, Sony's sheer inertia with its upcoming, DVD-compatible PlayStation 2, and piracy -- all these elements merged to form a Megazord of financial woes that beat Sega into utter submission. It's been well over a decade since the Dreamcast left us, and in that time, we've been able to cope, heal, and wonder what could have happened if things went down differently. Granted, a reality where the Dreamcast won could have only happened if a nuclear strike completely wiped Sony from the face of the Earth (along with a mass Pokemon extinction), but such a dark and twisted scenario falls well within the boundaries of conjecture. So, grab your nearest clock, wind it back roughly 12 years, and witness how the world of gaming would have (probably) differed if the Dreamcast achieved the success it truly deserved.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Who the Hell is Steven Spielberg? Posted: 24 May 2012 10:46 AM PDT
Feature 1UP COVER STORY  1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF? Who the Hell is Steven Spielberg?Cover Story: How games fare in a world without killer sharks, adventurous archaeologists, and D-Day invasions.T he name Steven Spielberg probably doesn't ring a bell to you, does it? Nope, didn't think so. What if I gave you a hint and told you that he was someone heavily associated with the film industry? Still nothing? Well, even the most intense cinephiles would fail to link the name with any bit of movie history, and to say that he is one of the most influential directors of all time would just be ludicrous. A quick IMDb search of his name yields zero results, solidifying the fact that this man has not made any notable contributions to the medium. And yet, why does his name cause a tickle in the back of my brain? What if there was a man whose work behind the camera was so strong that it revolutionized multiple genres of film, and in doing so, paved the way for countless video games that were inspired by these cinematic masterpieces? You'd assume that an artist this prolific would be a household name, and yet, when I say the words "Steven Spielberg," you look back at me a blank stare devoid of any recognition. Bear with me for a moment as I tell you about an amazing filmmaker who never existed, and the legacy that he was never able to leave on video games.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Posted: 24 May 2012 04:01 AM PDT Blitz 1941 is a 2D, historical, tank-strategy MMO set in 1941 during the German Invasion of the Soviet Union, where players take command of tanks and battle it out across several historical battlegrounds. Fight for one of the game's two factions – the Third German Empire or the Soviet Union. Blitz 1941 is published by the fairly small MMO publisher TwoWar, who also publishes the popular sea battle game Navy Field. Tank enthusiasts and Navy Field fans should find some substance in Blitz 1941, but few others will find themselves playing the game for more than a few days.
Publisher: TwoWar Website: http://www.twowar.com/games/blitz_index.asp Pros: +Unique gameplay and theme. +WASD Controls as well as point and click. +Historically accurate tanks and battlefields. Cons: -Controls very difficult to master. -Few maps. -Limited tank customization options. -Only one game mode.
Blitz 1941 is a 2D, strategic tank battle game that plays a lot like Navy Field. The game is set during World War 2, and the game's two factions are Germany and the Soviet Union. Players pick a side, assume control of tanks that actually existed during the era, and fight it out across the battlefields of Europe. Players have the ability to further customize and even upgrade to superior tanks with money earned from winning battles. Unlike Navy Field, which has numerous factions, many game modes, and a healthy player-base, Blitz 1941 only has only two factions, one game mode and a tiny community. Blitz 1941 should be applauded for being unique, but the game fails to impress in nearly every regard.
Blitz 1941 System RequirementsMinimum Requirements: Recommended Specification:
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