General gaming |
- Wizardry Online: The Secret Most Compelling, Crazy, Amazing Online RPG of E3 2012
- The Old Republic's Potential Free-to-Play Turn Should Signal the End of MMO Subscriptions
- One Piece: Pirate Warriors Takes the Fansub Approach
- Metal Gear Rising Revengeance Shows Off the Art of the Sword
- What the Hell is Asymmetric Gameplay?
| Wizardry Online: The Secret Most Compelling, Crazy, Amazing Online RPG of E3 2012 Posted: 15 Jun 2012 03:25 PM PDT 1UP COVER STORY 1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JUNE 12 | IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR (SO FAR) L ike many of the most interesting games of E3, Wizardry Online was buried in the back corner of its publisher's booth, dwarfed by a massive display promoting a sci-fi shooter. In the eyes of Sony Online Entertainment, it rated exactly one demo station, putting it even below the Running Man knockoff Bulletrun. But when the dust cleared and E3 packed up another year, it was Wizardry Online that stuck out most clearly in my mind. As the name implies, Wizardry Online is a free-to-play MMORPG, which admittedly feels like an odd fit for an RPG that has its roots firmly in single-player dungeon crawling. However, it works better than you might think. Wizardry Online weaves in all sorts of interesting multiplayer features into its design, with player-versus-player combat being one of the biggies. While I looked on, for example, the player character--a figure that was hooded and cloaked--ran into another dungeon crawler and engaged in a fight. After a few moments, the player stood victorious, but they had turned red. They were now a criminal, and they were free to access other dungeons that had previously been closed to them. |
| The Old Republic's Potential Free-to-Play Turn Should Signal the End of MMO Subscriptions Posted: 15 Jun 2012 03:03 PM PDT We all know MMOs, and most games in general, as Crytek demonstrates, are moving in the direction of free-to-play. MMOs are moving there especially quickly as publishers are finding that World of Warcraft's continued success has no correlation with the ability of other games to attract and maintain a sizable subscriber base. Star Wars: The Old Republic started out strongly and then pretty quickly saw a drop of 400,000 users (roughly 23 percent). And while we don't know for sure where it currently sits, one BioWare staffer has suggested TOR going free-to-play is something being explored. "The MMO market is very dynamic and we need to be dynamic as well," lead designer Emmanuel Lusinchi told GamesTM. "Unless people are happy with what they have, they are constantly demanding updates, new modes and situations. So we are looking at free-to-play but I can't tell you in much detail. We have to be flexible and adapt to what is going on." |
| One Piece: Pirate Warriors Takes the Fansub Approach Posted: 15 Jun 2012 02:44 PM PDT Even though my anime days are far behind me, I still have a soft spot for Eiichiro Oda's One Piece; it's absolutely bursting with the same off-the-wall creativity and madcap energy that Dragon Ball dropped once Goku grew up and traded in his wacky misadventures for prolonged grunting sessions. And, as expected for any ultra-popular anime series, none of its games have been all that good -- none of the ones localized for American release, anyway. Like Akira Toriyama's own shonen story of honor and face-punching, the battles of One Piece take place on a pretty colossal scale and feature combatants with superpowers so bizarre they'd put any X-Man to shame. So it's strange to see this particular series take so long to find an appropriate video game home: the overpopulated, button-mashy battlefields of Dynasty Warriors. |
| Metal Gear Rising Revengeance Shows Off the Art of the Sword Posted: 15 Jun 2012 01:27 PM PDT 1UP COVER STORY 1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JUNE 12 | IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR (SO FAR) L ooking at the early trailers of Metal Gear Solid Rising, it's obvious developer Platinum Games inherited certain gameplay elements of Kojima production's design. The E3 2010 trailer showed the half-cyborg protagonist Raiden slice through brick-lined pillars, eventually causing a small shelter to collapse onto a group of soldiers. After he performed a sweeping kick, everything on screen slowed down, which allowed Raiden an opportunity to hack away at a soldier's body in mid-air. The first gameplay teaser for Metal Gear Solid Rising lasted only two minutes and twenty-nine seconds, but nearly a year and a half would pass before anyone would see the game again. Late in 2011 we learned that Rising ran into problems during development, which prompted Kojima Productions to consider canceling the title before the deciding to outsource the project Platinum Games -- a studio that specializes in the action genre, with unique titles like Bayonetta, Viewtiful Joe, and Okami under their belt. Having played Metal Gear Rising Revengeance -- the game's new title which removed the word Solid -- at E3 last week, I can tell you that the high caliber action and off-the-wall hijinks of the original trailer have been amplified significantly. |
| What the Hell is Asymmetric Gameplay? Posted: 15 Jun 2012 09:49 AM PDT
Feature 1UP COVER STORY  1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JUNE 12 | IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR (SO FAR) What the Hell is Asymmetric Gameplay?Cover Story: Let's take a closer look at E3's most overused buzzword.I f you happened to be paying attention to E3 last week, one phrase trickled its way into your subconscious: "Asymmetric gameplay." Just about every major player trotted the term out this year to describe one or another of its games. It's one of those weird instances of industry-wide groupthink, when everyone hears a new term being thrown around and suddenly has to make use of it themselves. Like "sandbox" a few years back. Or "granular." So just what the hell is everyone talking about? What on earth is "asymmetric gameplay," besides being some kind of vague new hotness that everyone seems to think will zhush up their games? |
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