General gaming

General gaming

The Essential 100, No. 66: Command & Conquer: Red Alert

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 06:46 PM PDT

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1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF AUGUST 20 | THE ESSENTIAL 100, PART TWO

The Essential 100, No. 66: Command & Conquer: Red Alert

Cover Story: Westwood Studios' classic RTS pushed an entire genre forward with Cold War kitsch.

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ommand & Conquer's roots run deep in PC gaming. It didn't come into being as the first real-time strategy game, but it was one of the first to really matter, neatly mixing easy-to-grasp point-and-click gameplay, full-motion video, and a sly sense of humor to become the one of genre's true megahits. Its follow-up, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, largely followed in its footsteps, but with a key difference -- Westwood Studios was ready to have some fun.

I still vividly remember that first time I heard about Red Alert. I was in an amusement park arcade playing Street Fighter III as a friend of mine breathlessly described Red Alert to one of our companions.

The Essential 100, No, 67: Ms. Pac-Man

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 05:12 PM PDT

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1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF AUGUST 20 | THE ESSENTIAL 100, PART TWO

The Essential 100, No, 67: Ms. Pac-Man

Cover Story: Proof that love comes in many forms.

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here are only a handful of games that I'll truly never forget. That's not to say that countless experiences won't stick with me; on the contrary, I have no doubt that my favorite games will stick with me until the day I die. But when I talk about never truly forgetting, I mean that the muscles in my body will forever be programmed to shift into the rhythm of that game on a moment's notice. At no point will I ever find myself asking, "Wait, what button do I use to jump?" Personally, the ultimate game that meets these criteria is Ms. Pac-Man.

Obviously, much of this has to do with the deliciously simplistic interface developed by the original Pac-Man and perfected by his better half. Moving the joystick to control your onscreen avatar was, and still is, an intuitive action for any and all generations of gamers. As much as I cherish recent experiences like Grim Fandango, Resident Evil 4, and Dark Souls, the fact remains that each title requires a mental and physical refresher after you've been away from the game for an extended period of time. Not so with Ms. Pac-Man.

The Essential 100, No. 68: Parappa the Rapper

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 03:31 PM PDT

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1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF AUGUST 20 | THE ESSENTIAL 100, PART TWO

The Essential 100, No. 68: Parappa the Rapper

Cover Story: If you want to know why Sony ruled the 32-bit generation, the proof is in the puppy.

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ans of the original PlayStation during its most productive years loved the system not just for AAA games like Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo, and Soul Reaver, but for wilder, weirder experiences that couldn't be had elsewhere. Thanks to Sony's dirt-cheap media format, publishers could take risks on properties that would have bankrupted them in cartridge form, and we Americans benefited from this newfound freedom with a steady stream of creative, offbeat games. In this midst of all this, Parappa the Rapper stood as the ultimate test as to how much purely Japanese video game strangeness a foreign audience would tolerate; after all, the game starred a hip-hop slinging puppy who often suffered from the uncontrollable urge to poop (as do we all, to be fair). And Sony planned to publish this themselves?

Spot Art

The Essential 100, No. 69: Virtua Fighter

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 02:01 PM PDT

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1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF AUGUST 20 | THE ESSENTIAL 100, PART TWO

The Essential 100, No. 69: Virtua Fighter

Cover Story: Sega's three-dimensional fighting series took the genre into the unknown.

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hen you look back at the list of games released in 1993, it's hard not to get wrapped up in a little tearful nostalgia. Secret of Mana, Doom, and Mortal Kombat 2 all lived on different hardware, but each title left a dent in their respective genres. The same can be said of Virtua Fighter, the first fighting game ever to pit players in a 3D polygonal arena.

It's important to note that 3D doesn't carry the same meaning today that it did in 1993. For the wistful gamer of yesteryear, the term indicated a game which used rendering techniques to compose a three-dimensional space using geometric shapes and not flat 2D sprites. Up until 1993, sprite-based graphics dominated the video game business. The one exception was Sega's Virtua Racing, an arcade based on formula one racing game released in 1992. As a successful proof of concept, Virtua Racing would lay a foundation for subsequent 3D polygonal games, and sparked a creative renaissance period for Sega's arcade business.

The Essential 100, No. 70: Deus Ex

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 11:05 AM PDT

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1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF AUGUST 20 | THE ESSENTIAL 100, PART TWO

The Essential 100, No. 70: Deus Ex

Cover Story: A unprecedented journey into player agency and cyberpunk dystopia.

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oral dilemmas. Branching plot lines with multiple endings. Deep weapon and skill customization. With developers attempting to diversify and embolden gaming experiences, all of these things have become rather happenstance features for games of all genres. Modern titles like Borderlands, Crysis, Metal Gear Solid 4 and even open world titles like inFamous show how a number of genres, especially first person shooters, have ingested all these properties into their play experiences.

But such was not the case in June 2000 when the first Deus Ex released.

Injustice: Gods Amongst Us Aims to Deliver a Classy DC Fighter

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 09:44 AM PDT

Injustice: Gods Amongst Us is a pretty interesting title, and not just because it stars DC superheroes and villains -- often overlooked in the shadow of Marvel. The first thing I noticed about it is that the stages are definitely bigger than those of any other fighting game I've ever played. But NetherRealm Studios is not just working on size: the team is trying hard to make the arenas highly interactive, something that gives Injustice an unexpectedly unique vibe.

Each level can in fact be actively used to create spectacular custom combos, adding to the variety of the gameplay without taking anything from each fighter's traditional move-set and personal attacks, that seem in fact to rival the scope of the team's previous creation, last year's popular iteration of the Mortal Kombat series. The version of Injustice shown to the press at Gamescom didn't include the latest revealed character, Catwoman, but did a great job at explaining what you can do with two of the game's interactive backgrounds, the Batcave and Metropolis.

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In most fighting games, being cornered is a disadvantage, but Injustice helps even the least skilled players get out of sticky situations with some interactive elements hidden in the backgrounds in order to keep a constant stream of action on-screen. For instance, Nightwing can bounce on a cab parked on the edge of Metropolis to leap back to the center of the stage. Different characters will use the same item in different ways; for example, Superman slams the same cab on the heads of his enemies with his superhuman strength for an improvised extra attack.

Posted by Shri Krishna

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