| Review: Fishing Resort Tries Hard to Make Fishing Un-Boring Posted: 26 Apr 2012 07:10 AM PDT Fishing games are one of the bigger portions in the routine school lunch that is the Wii library. Realistic ones, unrealistic ones, some with controller shells to add to your pile of Wii accessories… and at the tail end of the system’s life, they keep coming. XSeed’s Fishing Resort, developed by Prope (Let’s Tap) tries to spice things up by letting you do some things that aren’t just fishing, and they do add a cute Japanese touch to an otherwise bland genre, but it still has trouble standing out. The point of Fishing Resort is to let you do whatever you want — as long as it’s related to fishing. Your customized character arrives at the Hotel Fishing Resort and, after a control tutorial, can either keep fishing, take a run down the shore, or go back to the hotel and sign up for special events. Don’t expect a Skyrim level of freedom, though — you’re bounded by all sorts of paths and walls, and you still need to keep fishing and be good at it. The game opens up bit by bit, and in a couple of in-game days, you can freely check out of the hotel and visit the neighboring resort, and many more all across the island are unlocked as you build your collection of catches. Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/reviews?cId=3186321 |
| Survarium (RU) Posted: 26 Apr 2012 04:31 AM PDT 
It is my very first time posting about a Russian (RU) online game, and it is special because I personally played S.T.A.L.K.E.R and this small blog apparently has many visitors from Russia as well. Ok, Survarium is not technically a Russian game since it is being developed in Ukraine, but Russian is still the main language there. If you have not played S.T.A.L.K.E.R, it is a single-player, post-apocalyptic FPS where players shoot down mutated stuff in a huge zone filled with radioactive gas.
Survarium is Vostok’s first title, a Free to Play MMOFPS with the similar post-apocalyptic design found in S.T.A.L.K.E.R games. And yes, it will apparently be an open world (Yes!) online shooter, not a room-based one. There is no news of an English server as of now, but seeing the official debut developer diary is subbed in English, one can only hope  Special thanks to SkySkyss for sending this information. Find similar article at: http://www.mmoculture.com/2012/04/survarium-ru-from-creators-of-stalker.html |
| S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Is Cancelled Posted: 26 Apr 2012 04:30 AM PDT S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, the long anticipated sequel to the PC classic, has been cancelled, according to the official Twitter feed. "Money was the issue," goes the official Twitter feed of developer GSC Game World, "We were not able to secure the rights to continue development of the Stalker series." "The reason we cannot continue with the development of Stalker 2," GSC continues on its Facebook page, "is we and our new investors we unable to come to an agreement with the IP rights [sic] onwer." All is not lost however: "The entire team that was working on Stalker is now working on a new project called Survarium. We are so grateful for the support over the years and despite our best efforts we have to move on from Stalker which is as hard for us as it is for you. However, we feel that our new studio and project will be something unique and fill the void left by Stalker as well as add a lot more!" Fans of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. will be pleased to hear that Survarium will be in the same apocalyptic fantasy vein. "The game focuses on a mass-scale ecological catastrophe on Earth, the reasons behind vaguely known. Impassable woods advance onto cities from every side, maddened animals and birds attack industrial complexes, military structures, warehouses and power plants. "Towns are cut off from each other, there are no water supplies, no electricity, gas, communication is lost. Countries collapse, anarchy spreads throughout the world. Now force dictates who to survive. In the meantime, new species of greenery and animals purposely destroy human civilization. Strange plants and mushrooms grow through concrete and steel. Scientists all over the world haplessly try to cope with the anomaly sprawling across the Earth with terrifying speed." Survarium will use Vostok's proprietary engine and is slated to arrive on PC in time for Christmas 2013. Check out the Vostok developer diary below for more details: 
Find similar article at: http://www.totalpcgaming.com/latest-pc-news/s-t-a-l-k-e-r-2-is-cancelled/ |
| Crysis 3 Probably Won’t Let You Toss Turtles At Bad Guys Posted: 25 Apr 2012 10:30 PM PDT Besides looking beautiful, the original Crysis stood out for including an absolutely
lovely and bizarre gameplay feature involving the local fauna at the
fictional Lingshan Islands: You could use them as weapons.
As part of the sandbox-driven design of the early parts of Crysis’
campaign, the player could pick up and throw practically anything –
crates, corpses, and even wildlife — and chuck them with lethal
force. A thrifty player could, theoretically, sneak around and sling
crabs instead of bullets. As visually impressive as Crysis 3 looks so far, with its swampy
streets of Chinatown and verdant takeovers of skyscrapers, it’s the
presence of ambient wildlife that brings this little feature to mind.
During a hands-off demo, director of creative development Rasmus
Hojengaard points out that frogs now hop about in New York’s newest
plumbing development, but the player doesn’t do anything besides look
at them. When I had a brief chance to ask about whether Prophet (a
recurring character throughout the franchise, and now the protagonist
due to events in both the ending of Crysis 2 and whatever has happened in the 20-plus years between Crysis 2′s 2023 time frame and Crysis 3′s setting of 2047 New York) can use frogs with lethal force, Hojengaard became a bit more evasive. He answered, “We want to give the sensation of a
living and breathing environment, but we don’t want to arbitrarily
have you pick up a turtle and throw it at someone as a gameplay
mechanic, unless we can execute it more elegantly.” Later on, he
added, “We don’t want stuff like being able to throw frogs just for
the heck of it, as that’s too much development time,” and that causes me
some concern. I’m hoping he changes his mind. Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/previews?cId=3187027 |
| Five Things Thief IV Needs to Get Right Posted: 25 Apr 2012 10:30 PM PDT Besides looking beautiful, the original Crysis stood out for including an absolutely
lovely and bizarre gameplay feature involving the local fauna at the
fictional Lingshan Islands: You could use them as weapons.
As part of the sandbox-driven design of the early parts of Crysis’
campaign, the player could pick up and throw practically anything –
crates, corpses, and even wildlife — and chuck them with lethal
force. A thrifty player could, theoretically, sneak around and sling
crabs instead of bullets. As visually impressive as Crysis 3 looks so far, with its swampy
streets of Chinatown and verdant takeovers of skyscrapers, it’s the
presence of ambient wildlife that brings this little feature to mind.
During a hands-off demo, director of creative development Rasmus
Hojengaard points out that frogs now hop about in New York’s newest
plumbing development, but the player doesn’t do anything besides look
at them. When I had a brief chance to ask about whether Prophet (a
recurring character throughout the franchise, and now the protagonist
due to events in both the ending of Crysis 2 and whatever has happened in the 20-plus years between Crysis 2′s 2023 time frame and Crysis 3′s setting of 2047 New York) can use frogs with lethal force, Hojengaard became a bit more evasive. He answered, “We want to give the sensation of a
living and breathing environment, but we don’t want to arbitrarily
have you pick up a turtle and throw it at someone as a gameplay
mechanic, unless we can execute it more elegantly.” Later on, he
added, “We don’t want stuff like being able to throw frogs just for
the heck of it, as that’s too much development time,” and that causes me
some concern. I’m hoping he changes his mind. Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/previews?cId=3187033 |
| The Age of Peripheral-Based Games is Fading Posted: 25 Apr 2012 10:30 PM PDT  Majesco has announced a new basketball game for Xbox 360 today that doesn’t have to worry about competing with the latest NBA 2K game, and not because it uses Kinect. NBA Baller Beats is a sort of hybrid rhythm/basketball training game that has you bouncing a real-life basketball in front of your television set. It sounds very gimmicky, and in this day and age there may not be much of a place for that sort of thing anymore. Such a premise automatically limits the potential market for a game. Kinect games require more than just the hardware itself: Players also need a clear playing area for them to dance, jump, mime, and whatever other actions are required by the game in question. That can be problematic for some people, as not everyone has a wide-open living room like those seen in trailers for Kinect games; I had to delay getting one myself until I moved because there was not enough room in my apartment. Baller Beats, while novel, doesn’t have an especially big market to sell to. The demographic for this game is basketball fans who own an Xbox 360, have room for Kinect, and own a Kinect sensor. And just as importantly, we can’t forget the need for players to live somewhere that they can freely dribble a basketball on the floor. That rules out anyone living in an apartment on any floor but the first, and even on the first floor the sound of a basketball being dribbled for extended lengths of time might still be an indirect way of soliciting death threats from unhappy neighbors. USA Today suggested Baller Beats “could be a game-changer.” However, I can’t imagine it being anything more than a videogame that changes your real-life basketball game for the better. Baller Beats may be unique for its incorporation of a real-life sports item, though it’s hardly the only game to make use of physical items beyond the controllers we’re used to holding in our hands. There has been a wave of super-popular peripheral-based games in the last half-decade, though you can go back much further for examples of games using accessories: the NES Zapper and Duck Hunt (among other games), Donkey Konga and its drums, the Dreamcast fishing rod for Sega Marine Fishing, dance pads for Dance Dance Revolution, etc. Many of us have become so accustomed to them since the launch of Guitar Hero in 2005 that they’re no longer thought of in such terms, but guitars and other plastic instruments for music games also fall into this category. Another recent example is the Tony Hawk series with Ride and Shred, each of which used a skateboard peripheral meant to more closely simulate the real-life act of skateboarding. Guitar Hero and Rock Band were a major craze for a period of time; venture into GameStop or the videogame department of Walmart or Best Buy and you were sure to see boxes filled with plastic instruments stacked feet high. Over time, as these boxes grew in size to accommodate drums, microphones, and keyboards in addition to guitars, these piles came to represent not the popularity of such games, but the fact that they were no longer selling in the large quantities they once did. Nowadays, where do these franchises stand? Guitar Hero, along with spinoffs DJ Hero and Band Hero, was shelved by Activision early last year. There have been no indications of when we will next see a game brandishing the Hero name. Rock Band, meanwhile, has cooled it on the annual releases, with 2011 being the first year since the series’ inception in 2007 that a new game was not made available. As with Guitar Hero, players tired of the gimmick, and those who have not left the entire fad behind are happy to continue fueling their habit with downloadable content, not annual disc-based releases accompanied by a wave of new-and-improved peripherals.
Realizing there is still money to be made from the genre, if not from the plastic instrument business, Harmonix, unlike Activision, has not relegated Rock Band to the back burner entirely. Instead, its rhythm game roots are being embraced with Rock Band Blitz, a downloadable game played with a standard controller. It is by no means meant to simulate the experience of playing music; players swap between as many as five tracks, each representing a different instrument, and each with only two note paths. Tony Hawk had far less success when it turned to peripherals to liven the series. While Guitar Hero and Rock Band achieved massive success for a period of years, Ride and Shred were both mediocre games with sales to match — Shred, for example, sold only 3,000 units in its debut month. Activision was insistent Tony Hawk remained relevant to gamers, and while I’m not so sure he does, there undoubtedly remains a lot of enthusiasm (or nostalgia) for the earlier games in the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series. That’s clear based on the response to the announcement of the newest Tony Hawk game. Like Harmonix taking Rock Band back to its Frequency and Amplitude roots, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD is a downloadable skateboarding game with content pulled from the first two THPS games (with the potential for content from later games to be added via DLC). Most importantly, it ditches that skateboard controller in favor of going back to its roots for a more standard experience using a 360 controller or DualShock. These are not the only examples of sequels to games with peripheral or interface gimmicks that opted for a simpler setup. A recent one that springs to mind involves Steel Battalion, a game which infamously launched for $200 and featured an enormous controller. The upcoming Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor ditches that setup in favor of a Kinect/standard controller combo. And it was in 2009 that Nintendo last released a Wii Fit game to take advantage of the Wii Balance Board, although it’s hardly alone in not supporting the board lately — take a look at the games which use it and you’ll notice a distinct lack of anything released since 2010. To some extent that’s because the number of Wii releases over the past 16 months has been very low, but another part of it is developers realizing they’re better off using the Wii remote/nunchuk and little else. Particularly when you take a look at the paths taken by Tony Hawk and the music/rhythm game genre, the lesson is that players are not hell-bent on having 1:1 simulations of real-life activities in their videogames, nor are they keen on forking out extra cash for pricey peripherals they’ve experienced before. While those things may fly for a period of time in some cases, going back to basics would appear to be the way to sustain a series long-term. Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/news/age-peripheral-based-games-fading |
| Taiwanese developer X-Legend to be stock listed Posted: 25 Apr 2012 07:10 PM PDT 
It has been an extremely good 2011 for Taiwanese online games developer X-Legend so far, with various of its titles hitting the overseas market and receving rave reviews. To top the glorious year off, the company will be listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange sometime next month. In case you are wondering what games X-Legend developed, some of the include Grand Fantasia (link) and the current hit in the English market, Eden Eternal (link).
Another of its latest game, Glory Destiny Online, will be going overseas soon as publishers are in talks for it. Glory Destiny Online is perhaps the most polished and cutest MMORPG I have played all these years, combining looks and easy gameplay together with minimal fuss. You can read my preview here (link). Find similar article at: http://www.mmoculture.com/2011/11/taiwanese-developer-x-legend-to-be.html |
| Can Final Fantasy XIV’s Next Update Resuscitate the Struggling MMO? Posted: 25 Apr 2012 04:30 PM PDT Besides looking beautiful, the original Crysis stood out for including an absolutely
lovely and bizarre gameplay feature involving the local fauna at the
fictional Lingshan Islands: You could use them as weapons.
As part of the sandbox-driven design of the early parts of Crysis’
campaign, the player could pick up and throw practically anything –
crates, corpses, and even wildlife — and chuck them with lethal
force. A thrifty player could, theoretically, sneak around and sling
crabs instead of bullets. As visually impressive as Crysis 3 looks so far, with its swampy
streets of Chinatown and verdant takeovers of skyscrapers, it’s the
presence of ambient wildlife that brings this little feature to mind.
During a hands-off demo, director of creative development Rasmus
Hojengaard points out that frogs now hop about in New York’s newest
plumbing development, but the player doesn’t do anything besides look
at them. When I had a brief chance to ask about whether Prophet (a
recurring character throughout the franchise, and now the protagonist
due to events in both the ending of Crysis 2 and whatever has happened in the 20-plus years between Crysis 2′s 2023 time frame and Crysis 3′s setting of 2047 New York) can use frogs with lethal force, Hojengaard became a bit more evasive. He answered, “We want to give the sensation of a
living and breathing environment, but we don’t want to arbitrarily
have you pick up a turtle and throw it at someone as a gameplay
mechanic, unless we can execute it more elegantly.” Later on, he
added, “We don’t want stuff like being able to throw frogs just for
the heck of it, as that’s too much development time,” and that causes me
some concern. I’m hoping he changes his mind. Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/previews?cId=3187034 |
| The Worst Video Game Glitches Posted: 25 Apr 2012 04:30 PM PDT Aye. It’s a rushed mess. Posted: 43 minutes ago by DenGreatshot My favorite is the “reset to level 1″ glitch, which I had the misfortune of running into very deep into the game. Thankfully, my experience with another buggy Bioware game (the infamous Stealth Karth glitch in KOTOR) taught me the value of multiple save files and I was able to restore without losing a whole lot. Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/features/worst-video-game-glitches |
| Guild Wars 2 Breaks from MMO Standards Posted: 25 Apr 2012 04:29 PM PDT Besides looking beautiful, the original Crysis stood out for including an absolutely
lovely and bizarre gameplay feature involving the local fauna at the
fictional Lingshan Islands: You could use them as weapons.
As part of the sandbox-driven design of the early parts of Crysis’
campaign, the player could pick up and throw practically anything –
crates, corpses, and even wildlife — and chuck them with lethal
force. A thrifty player could, theoretically, sneak around and sling
crabs instead of bullets. As visually impressive as Crysis 3 looks so far, with its swampy
streets of Chinatown and verdant takeovers of skyscrapers, it’s the
presence of ambient wildlife that brings this little feature to mind.
During a hands-off demo, director of creative development Rasmus
Hojengaard points out that frogs now hop about in New York’s newest
plumbing development, but the player doesn’t do anything besides look
at them. When I had a brief chance to ask about whether Prophet (a
recurring character throughout the franchise, and now the protagonist
due to events in both the ending of Crysis 2 and whatever has happened in the 20-plus years between Crysis 2′s 2023 time frame and Crysis 3′s setting of 2047 New York) can use frogs with lethal force, Hojengaard became a bit more evasive. He answered, “We want to give the sensation of a
living and breathing environment, but we don’t want to arbitrarily
have you pick up a turtle and throw it at someone as a gameplay
mechanic, unless we can execute it more elegantly.” Later on, he
added, “We don’t want stuff like being able to throw frogs just for
the heck of it, as that’s too much development time,” and that causes me
some concern. I’m hoping he changes his mind. Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/previews?cId=3187030 |
![[Exclusive] AION (EU) Executive Product Director Interview](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sQc8tshvBb2JU-8qq9Pzf4JBXppYFOuhEdYDeqDi4Omtq6Hzcg1aL8QiRvHah9_e9k4NADB4ENPL21aDwVr0wbg2PdlGaHxltpc9KczJdPdXgv44_UBRAXNzxcfKMm=s0-d)
As far as quantum computing breakthroughs go, this latest one by a team of researchers from the U.S., Australia and South Africa is truly special. According to the researchers, a tiny crystal comprising only 300 atoms developed by them has paved the way for a "huge leap" in computing. A leap so vast, these researchers claim, that it would take a supercomputer larger than the known universe to do the kind of calculations possible with their "quantum simulator," a special type of quantum computer. Hit the jump for more.
Another day, another new graphics driver. But rather than being yet another beta release, the AMD Catalyst 12.4 driver is fully WHQL certified and brings a bevy of useful new features to the virtual table, including Radeon HD 7000 series support for Windows XP, openSuse 12.1 and the 
Eight out of ten geeks agree*: once you've taken an SSD's blazing fast speeds for a whirl, it's hard to go back to standard HDDs. (The last two geeks horde ripped HD video files like they're going out of style.) The problem is, the comparatively sky-high price point of SSDs have kept most folks away from their oh-so-sweet performance. New reports indicate that may change in the coming months, however, as the big movers and shakers in the SSD industry lower prices to try and squeeze out the little guys.
If you're a Ubuntu Linux user, there's a new entry on your to-do list for today: downloading Ubuntu 12.04 (aka "Precise Pangolin"), the just-dropped long-term support release for the operating system. That means it gets five full years of bug fixes and updates, and it brings a host of improvements and fresh features to the OS -- including upgrades to its divisive Unity interface.
Leisure Suit Larry is returning to the Land of the Lounze Lizards, and it's all because of the generosity of thousands of nostalgic old school adventure gamers who pledged the necessary half a million dollars to make it happen. With six days to spare, Al Lowe, creator of the original Larry games and not the last two abominations that sullied the franchise, is promising more content if pledges top $750,000.
Having to lug around bulky accessories and peripherals with your Ultrabook or tablet PC kind of negates the whole idea behind thin and light form factors. At the same time, some people find an external optical disc drive (ODD) to be an essential companion, and if you're one of those people, you may want to slap Samsung with a high-five for announcing its new SE-218BB external DVD writer.
When is an Ultrabook not really an Ultrabook? Whenever Intel says so, that's when. For consumers, the answer might not be so cut and dry, and as notebook makers look to deliver thin and light notebooks at lower price points, you'll have to ask yourself how much you really care about buying a notebook with an official Ultrabook designation versus buying one that's nearly identical but lacks Intel's full blessing.
Samsung today officially introduced what it claims is the world's first quad-core application processor built on the High-k Metal Gate (HKMG) low-power process technology. It's called the Exynos 4 Quad, a 32nm 1.4GHz quad-core processor based on the ARM Cortex A9 architecture. With twice as many cores as its predecessor, the 45nm Exynos 4 Dual, Samsung claims the Exynos 4 Quad doubles the processing potential with a 20 percent lower power footprint.
