General gaming |
- Can Americans Still Make SimCity?
- Pokemon Black and White Version 2 Headed Westward More Quickly Than Usual
- Mass Effect 2 Revisited
- The Philosophers' Take on Mass Effect 2
- OP-ED: In Trying to be Edgy, Did Mass Effect 2 Go Over the Edge?
- Dillon's Rolling Western Review: Giving Tower Defense The Nintendo Touch
- VIDEO: This Month in Misogyny
| Can Americans Still Make SimCity? Posted: 27 Feb 2012 01:29 PM PST EA may announce a new SimCity game at the Game Developers Conference next month according to rumors spurred by the publisher's announcement of a live-streamed event on March 6, where they promise a new Maxis game will be revealed. A related post on Facebook posed the question, "How can we change the world together? Find out when EA hosts the Game Changers event at GDC. What would you do if you had the power to change the world?" When paired with descriptions of the game lifted from Maxis job ads looking for, "a highly talented and experienced team on an upcoming triple-A simulation style game," the evidence seems to point to a SimCity announcement of some kind coming from the event next week. That same job ad also states that the developer is looking for someone with, "knowledge of the Xbox 360 and PS3 rendering architectures and APIs," suggesting that the title will appear on consoles. No American developer has ever produced a console or otherwise "simplified" SimCity game that was actually playable or enjoyable. |
| Pokemon Black and White Version 2 Headed Westward More Quickly Than Usual Posted: 27 Feb 2012 01:23 PM PST Following the surprising news that the latest handheld Pokémon RPGs will be a pair of DS titles known as Pokémon Black Version 2 and Pokémon White Version 2, Nintendo of America has already gone ahead and announced a loose release date for the two games: fall 2012. In Japan the pair will be available in June, more than a year and a half after Black and White originally debuted there. Those of us in the rest of the world didn't get our hands on B&W until last March, almost six months after it was made available to Japanese gamers. The handheld Pokémon RPGs have traditionally taken their time in making it to the U.S. -- Gold and Silver were out in November 1999 in Japan but didn't make it here until the following October, Diamond and Pearl had us waiting seven months, and Platinum was a six-month wait. |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2012 11:20 AM PST
Feature  Mass Effect 2 RevisitedBrace yourself for the finale of the Mass Effect trilogy with a week-long look back at the last Mass Effect.By: 1UP Staff February 27, 2012 Mass Effect 3 is easily the most hotly anticipated game so far this year. When it arrives next week, it will bring to a close a story that began two games and nearly five years ago. These days, it seems like every film and game franchise is conceived as a trilogy, but never with such ambition of continuity as demonstrated here. What makes Mass Effect 3 so intriguing is not that it promises to bring closure to the tale of Commander Shepard's battle against the extragalactic threat of the Reapers, but rather that is promises to being closure to the tale of your Commander Shepard. The Shepard you created back in 2007 is the one who will be finishing the fight (as it were). He (or she) looks different than anyone else's Shepard and has his or her own distinct back story. Maybe he's a ruthless Earth-born warrior; perhaps she's a space colonist traumatized by an alien attack that destroyed everyone she ever loved. Likewise, the choices you've made throughout your Shepard's career as an elite Spectre agent -- who to sacrifice, who to trust, how to relate to hostile alien species, and more -- will shape both the character you play in ME3 and the ultimate outcome of her (or his) story. |
| The Philosophers' Take on Mass Effect 2 Posted: 27 Feb 2012 11:19 AM PST
Feature  The Philosophers' Take on Mass Effect 2We reexamine the game from the perspective of history's great thinkers.By: Ryan Winterhalter February 27, 2012 Amongst the many elements that Mass Effect borrows from Star Trek is a penchant for exploring moral choices. Much of the games' fun comes from sharing those choices with friends, and explaining your reasoning. With all this amateur philosophizing going on, it begs the question: what would a professional choose? If we took history's great thinkers and placed a controller in their hands, would they reverse the Krogan Genophage or embrace the Illusive Man's agenda? Luckily, those same great thinkers left a record of their thoughts in their writings, and we can study those to help determine just how much of a Renegade someone like Socrates would have been. We took three important philosophers and thinkers spread across 2,500 years -- Socrates, Immanuel Kant, and Ayn Rand -- and matched them with six moral choices from Mass Effect 1 and 2: 1. Save or Kill the Rachni? |
| OP-ED: In Trying to be Edgy, Did Mass Effect 2 Go Over the Edge? Posted: 27 Feb 2012 11:17 AM PST Sequels are tricky business, especially in fantasy and science fiction. How do you follow up on something people loved without your work coming off as a trite rehash? How do you keep things fresh? How do you challenges heroes who have already overcome impossibly deadly odds? How do you expand a tale that's already found resolution? It's not easy. Few sequels are good, let alone great. |
| Dillon's Rolling Western Review: Giving Tower Defense The Nintendo Touch Posted: 27 Feb 2012 10:15 AM PST When I agreed to review Dillion's Rolling Western, I didn't know I was signing up for a tower defense game -- and had I been better informed, you probably wouldn't be reading this. Since its breakout success as an in-browser diversion, developers have tried to innovate within the narrow confines of tower defense, but, outside of the content-rich Plants vs. Zombies, I haven't been able to muster up the motivation to stick with any of these games for more than a handful of minutes. After reaching this point of my Rolling Western playthrough, a feeling of dread sank in as I pondered a prolonged future of repetitive and shallow mechanics. But soon, something amazing happened: as the game slowly revealed its many layers, I found myself actually enjoying tower defense -- and willingly. Dillon's might not completely change the rules, but it offers enough variety to give tower defense detractors something fun to do at every possible moment, and constant opportunities to make decisions that actually matter. |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2012 09:10 AM PST Video games have a history of turning off women worldwide, and for good reason: like television and movies, gaming tends to embrace certain regressive ideals -- though on a level unmatched by other forms of entertainment. Join Bob Mackey and Matt Leone as they discuss the three latest examples of this sad trend. |
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