General gaming

General gaming

VIDEO: Snakes on the Brain

Posted: 05 Jul 2012 06:12 PM PDT

1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JULY 2 | E3 2012

VIDEO: Snakes on the Brain

Cover Story: Watch as a 1UP editor struggles to rid himself of Snake's mental grip.

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fter putting together a week's worth of content dedicated to Metal Gear's 25th anniversary, who could blame the 1UP staff for having a little too much Snake on the brain these days? But in the planning stages of our Metal Gear salute, 1UP editor Jose Otero got little carried away with our cover story and started seeing things. Watch as he tries to shake off the condition and make a comeback from the brink of madness.


Blizzard's Commendable Admission Highlights Diablo III's Flawed End-Game

Posted: 05 Jul 2012 02:03 PM PDT

Diablo III

Diablo II is a game that many players continued to play for years after its release, long after the point at which the vast majority of games lose their audience. Even leading up to the release of Diablo III in May, there were still those playing the game (and its expansion) after more than a decade. As a result, it seemed fair to expect Diablo III would be developed accordingly, giving players enough to do to keep them busy for a very long time. As it turns out, that is not really the case. Or, at least in the minds of many, the end-game experience in the long-awaited sequel is not anything to write home about. Surprisingly enough, Blizzard agrees.

"We recognize that the item hunt is just not enough for a long-term sustainable end-game," wrote Blizzard community manager Micah "Bashiok" Whiple on the game's forums in response to a post requesting information on possible improvements to the end-game. "There are still tons of people playing every day and week, and playing a lot, but eventually they're going to run out of stuff to do (if they haven't already). Killing enemies and finding items is a lot of fun, and we think we have a lot of the systems surrounding that right, or at least on the right path with a few corrections and tweaks. But honestly Diablo III is not World of Warcraft. We aren't going to be able to pump out tons of new systems and content every couple months. There needs to be something else that keeps people engaged, and we know it's not there right now."

Metal Gear: The Reigning King of Pop Culture References

Posted: 05 Jul 2012 01:19 PM PDT

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1UP COVER STORY

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1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JULY 2 | METAL GEAR TURNS 25

Metal Gear: The Reigning King of Pop Culture References

Cover Story: A brief look at the series' stew of homages.

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o say that the Metal Gear series is chock full of references, nods, in-jokes, homages, and even some straight up ripoffs would be a criminal act of understatement. It'd be more accurate to say it contains so much of that sort of thing that it's almost entirely composed of it, like it wasn't written so much as someone left William S. Burroughs alone in a video store with a pair of scissors. I thought I'd do a rundown of some of the more notable and weird examples on account of some of you may not have caught everything. I'm sure I'm missing a few, myself, but if this were a definitive list you'd essentially just be playing Metal Gear.

Hey, I know that guy!

Rescue Mission: How Peace Walker Salvaged Metal Gear Solid's Reputation

Posted: 05 Jul 2012 11:25 AM PDT

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1UP COVER STORY

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1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JULY 2 | METAL GEAR TURNS 25

Rescue Mission: How Peace Walker Salvaged Metal Gear's Reputation

Cover Story: The portable entry after MGS4 did a lot to rescue Metal Gear from itself.

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fter the roller coaster ending of Guns of the Patriots, you couldn't blame the most ardent Metal Gear fan for feeling emotionally drained. MGS4 had a grand mission to accomplish: the narrative needed to tie up all the loose ends of the series and put Solid Snake's story to rest. The creators at Kojima Productions accepted this challenging task and delivered a finale that beat players over the head with a barrage of curtain calls. As great as it was to see so much closure for the core cast of Metal Gear Solid, this approach left players in an unfamiliar state where they were happy to say goodbye to Solid Snake and crew. But a bigger question lingered after the close of MGS4: Where could the next game in the series possibly go?

The inevitably sequel came in an unexpected form: the next Metal Gear title would be a portable game for Sony's PSP called Peace Walker, with a story set ten years after the events of Snake Eater. Despite the limitations of existing on a portable platform, Peace Walker survived its transition and did a lot to salvage the Metal Gear series' reputation after the drab events of MGS4. A key factor of this transition lied in how developer Kojima Productions effectively married together the best of Eastern and Western game design. The studio blended these philosophies together into a light-hearted portable sequel whose gameplay and narrative never took itself too seriously.

Posted by Shri Krishna

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