General gaming

General gaming


Help Us Record the Ultimate Resident Evil Podcast and Win a Prize

Posted: 01 Oct 2012 05:21 PM PDT

We're recording a special Resident Evil episode of Games, Dammit! and we'd like you to be a part of it. Send us a link to your 90-second SoundCloud clip. In it, explain why you love RE or tell us a story about your favorite moment in the series. One lucky winner will receive an Astro Gaming A40 Audio System courtesy of Capcom.

Sony Continues to Expand Its Strong Digital Sales Push

Posted: 01 Oct 2012 04:09 PM PDT

PSN October 2012 deal

After last year's PlayStation Network breach, some questioned whether Sony could regain the confidence of PSN users. Surely anyone in their right mind wouldn't dare to buy anything from PSN or trust it with their personal information, some said. Yet here we are, not even two years later, and PSN sales are higher than ever before. Not only that, but Sony is doing the best job of any platform holder to encourage users to spend money on their online service.

Sony Computer Entertainment America's Jack Buser recently shared some impressive facts about PSN sales with Joystiq. In the quarter spanning April through June, PSN saw more content sold than during any other quarter since the service's launch. On a similarly positive note for Sony, "membership sales in PS Plus almost doubled" during E3 week in June.

Resident Evil WTFiction!? v2.0

Posted: 01 Oct 2012 03:30 PM PDT

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1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF OCTOBER 1 | A DARK DESCENT INTO RESIDENT EVIL

Resident Evil WTFiction!? v2.0

Cover Story: Catch up on all the characters, plots, and virus code names with our handy reference guide.

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ny 16-year-old asked to sum up his or her life story from birth to present would undoubtedly have a lot to say. While not an actual human, the Resident Evil series has existed for an equal amount of time, producing a universe filled with characters, secrets, conspiracies, and "revelaitons" that only the most dedicated can keep track of. Going into RE6, here's a dose of what keeps the central plot of RE together.





Before Resident Evil, There Was Sweet Home

Posted: 01 Oct 2012 03:03 PM PDT

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Before Resident Evil, There Was Sweet Home

Cover Story: Capcom's Famicom horror classic paved the road to Raccoon City.

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f you were to map the genome of the Resident Evil series, the most obvious starting place would be George Romero's seminal horror film Night of the Living Dead. The cinematic masterpiece created the language that nearly all zombie fiction after it adhered to. But as you continue to delve into the RE series looking for the roots of its horror, many forget that there was a Famicom title that deserves as much recognition as Romero's movie. In 1989, Capcom released Sweet Home, and though it never made its way out of Japan, a fan translation exists on the internet that makes playing through the title a breeze. In doing so, you quickly realize that its influence on Resident Evil's concept, setting, and mechanics is absolutely staggering.

Anyone who boots up Sweet Home will immediately see why it's viewed as Capcom's precursor to Resident Evil. Both games begin with a group of characters wandering through a dense forest and stumbling upon a massive, ancient mansion. While the S.T.A.R.S. of RE1 are government agents, the five adventurers in Sweet Home are treasure hunters on the search for valuable loot that supposedly resides in the decrepit mansion. But in typical horror fashion, both titles take a quick turn for the worse as the evil spirits and creatures that haunt the respective mansions set out to make quick work of the intruders.

Interview: The Resident Evil 6 Masterminds on Zombies, Remakes and the Nature of Horror

Posted: 01 Oct 2012 12:30 PM PDT

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Interview: The Resident Evil 6 Masterminds on Zombies, Remakes and the Nature of Horror

Cover Story: We talk to the dev team at Capcom to learn more about trajectory of the series.

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uring TGS 2012, we had an opportunity to sit down with the Resident Evil 6 team and pick their collective brain on all matters of survival horror. In our interview, executive producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi, director Eiichiro Sasaki, and producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi answered our questions about the early days of the series and the team's approach to freshening up zombies for their recent reappearance in RE6.

1UP: The zombie genre has become really big in the past few years, but when Resident Evil first debuted, you didn't see a lot of that in video games. Can you talk about, if you know, some of the original inspirations behind the Resident Evil concept and the direction that the game took?

Cover Story: A Dark Descent into Resident Evil

Posted: 01 Oct 2012 08:01 AM PDT

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A Dark Descent into Resident Evil

Get ready for a weeklong look at the most important name in survival horror.

Step into the dark, musty corners of a setting in Resident Evil and you won't quite know what to expect. Is that constant moaning a zombie patiently waiting to bite into your flesh, or is it a much more horrible creation hell bent on your destruction? As you creep closer to the door that stands between you and the unknown monster, the true fear sets in after a quick count of your ammo. The low number means you'll have to run past it, but what if what's waiting behind the door can run even faster than you?

The great games of the Resident Evil series know exactly how to scare you. They find ways to defy expectations and create an unpredictable type of fear you won't ever see coming.

Resident Evil 6 Review: A Case of Identity Crisis

Posted: 01 Oct 2012 08:00 AM PDT

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Resident Evil 6 Review: A Case of Identity Crisis

Cover Story: Capcom's latest iteration on survival horror shows off the fundamental problem with inclusion.

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he Resident Evil series has played an instrumental role in establishing, popularizing, and evolving the concept of survival horror, but a quick glance at the 1996 original can make it hard to remember exactly why. After witnessing its laughable live-action opening and campy dialogue, it's difficult to think anyone would think jump scares could play a significant role in the original Resident Evil -- but, to be fair, they actually didn't. As often as folks credit the hallway scene where the zombie dogs smashed through the window as a sure sign of RE's creep factor, the real fear it created didn't always trace back to a rotting zombie or giant spider but rather to the situation itself. As a member of the Raccoon City Police S.T.A.R.S. unit, the player had to use a finite (and often dwindling) set of resources to stay alive in order to explore every room of a monster-filled mansion. Don't get me wrong, atmosphere had plenty to do with the fear created by the original Resident Evil (especially in the excellent 2002 remake), but the real terror came from the idea that irresponsibly wasting the little ammo you had could lead to being ill-equipped for an even bigger fight later on.

When the concept of survival in the survival-horror genre quickly became predictable, Resident Evil 4 came along and completely changed the stakes. Instead of slow-paced battles with brain-dead zombies, awkward controls, and fixed camera perspectives, the developers at Capcom found intelligent ways to correct RE's problems and significantly ratchet up the game's speed and intensity. A player could aim and shoot with increased precision, but they had to stop and dig into the ground to do so. And nothing spelled fear quite like performing a 180 degree quick-turn to face an angry, heavily armed mob of oncoming villagers. RE4 sold the impression that no corner provided safe haven from the nightmarish creatures found in its world, and even if ammo became a plentiful resource, a player caught with their guard down would end up eviscerated by the pitchfork-wielding locals within seconds.

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