General gaming |
- Three Pikmin-like Games of the Near Future
- Freedom Through Stealth
- The Last of Us Employs Phenomenal Restraint to Create Tension
- PlayStation Plus Prompts Me to Rethink My Xbox Live Subscription
| Three Pikmin-like Games of the Near Future Posted: 13 Jun 2012 05:10 PM PDT
Feature 1UP COVER STORY  1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JUNE 12 | IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR (SO FAR) Three Pikmin-like Games of the Near FutureCover Story: 2012: Year of the Horde.A fter Pikmin 3 opened Nintendo's conference, a curious (though unplanned) trend seemed to settle on E3 2012's show floor. You had to seek them out, but they existed: three Pikmin-inspired games, each doing very different things with Nintendo's formula. "But Bob," you may be heard to ask, "isn't Pikmin just an RTS?" Not just! While it's true that Pikmin didn't define this time-tested genre, the following games have more in common with Nintendo's adorable look at the raw amorality of nature than something like Starcraft. If you've ever wanted a horde of loyal troops willing to smash anything at the waggle of a finger, 2012 is your year.  |
| Posted: 13 Jun 2012 02:48 PM PDT
Feature 1UP COVER STORY  1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JUNE 12 | IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR (SO FAR) Freedom Through StealthCover Story: Once seen as a joyless burden, stealth-driven gameplay now offers gaming's most liberating design.T wo things caught my attention as the 1UP staff completed its Best of E3 2012 voting. First, the music genre put in an awfully good showing for a genre that's supposedly dead; nearly half our winners featured games with a musical theme. Secondly, the "Player Agency" category -- the games that seem to give their players the greatest degree of freedom to complete their appointed tasks -- hail almost entirely from the stealth action niche. There's a curious irony to this fact. Since the concept of stealth in games really took off, which happened around 1998 with the release of Metal Gear Solid, gamers have increasingly viewed the addition of stealth as a cumbersome, intrusive play mechanic. Even two of the defining pillars of stealth, Splinter Cell and Metal Gear itself, have more or less abandoned the concept of silent infiltration with the games on display at E3: Sam Fisher speed-squatted his way through the Splinter Cell: Blacklist demo, killing multiple simultaneous targets as he dashed through the glare of the desert sun, while Solid Snake has been removed completely from the picture in favor hyperkinetic ninja action in Metal Gear Rising. |
| The Last of Us Employs Phenomenal Restraint to Create Tension Posted: 13 Jun 2012 01:45 PM PDT 1UP COVER STORY 1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JUNE 12 | IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR (SO FAR) A wealth of questions still surround The Last of Us, Naughty Dog's highly anticipated PS3 exclusive. How scripted will the tense enemy encounters be? Is it possible to use nonviolence and sneak past a mob instead of dispatching them gruesomely? What caused the world to go to hell? Can The Last of Us' faux-Ellen Page and Beyond: Two Soul's real Ellen Page coexist in the same gaming universe? Well, it'll be quite a while until we have sufficient answers, but until then, it must be said that the game's remarkable visuals may very well be upstaged by its tense, atmospheric, and shockingly patient sound design. Naughty Dog gave the Uncharted series a bombastically epic score that fit the adventurous vibe perfectly. When Nathan Drake ascends a sand dune and drinks in an endless desert, an audible homage to Lawrence of Arabia is something that makes perfect sense. It's this prior tendency to deliver so much that left me pleasantly surprised by how restrained the studio has been with music in The Last of Us. Instead of assaulting the player with a barrage of tense strings meant to startle and create a sense of unease, they instead deliver a post-apocalyptic world that is nearly completely devoid of music altogether. When Joel and Elle enter the decrepit beauty of a once glorious hotel, there is no wondrous swell of music. Instead, the player is able to look upon this relic of a nearly forgotten past with silent melancholy. Even when the action kicks in and Joel is forced to viciously murder an oncoming attacker, the game abstains from queuing a cliché "fight for your life" tune. It's this silent score that allows the rest of the game's sound design to do the job of articulating the tension of Joel and Elle's daily life. |
| PlayStation Plus Prompts Me to Rethink My Xbox Live Subscription Posted: 13 Jun 2012 08:38 AM PDT I have been an Xbox Live subscriber for the better part of the last decade. I've always shrugged off the suggestion that the service should be made available for free; people are more than welcome to take that position, but I've always been personally fine with paying. I've found myself rethinking that position over the last week, and a lot of that is Sony's doing. Since starting out as a service intent on delivering nothing more than online gaming, Xbox Live has expanded to offer a lot more -- namely streaming video, streaming music, and video chat. As the number of extras has grown, the price of Xbox Live Gold has also increased from $50 per year to $60 per year. It's worth noting deals can be had throughout the year on one-year Live subscriptions for roughly $35, so it's not as if you're necessarily paying the price of a new game for Live. Still, $35 is nothing to scoff at, and it's a lot of money to pay when my needs can be taken care of elsewhere for free. |
| You are subscribed to email updates from 1UP RSS feed To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
