General gaming |
- Metal Gear Solid Fan Theories
- Selling Your Digital Games Becomes Slightly More Feasible With EU Court Decision
- Spec Ops: The Line Review: An Earnest Take on the Depravity of Man
- Spelunky Review: A Sublimely Pure Video Game Experience
| Posted: 03 Jul 2012 02:54 PM PDT
Feature 1UP COVER STORY  1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JULY 2 | METAL GEAR TURNS 25 Metal Gear Solid Fan TheoriesCover Story: How do you out-crazy Hideo Kojima?M etal Gear Solid has a reputation for presenting winding, complex plots, but even the most ardent and devoted fans have a hard time keeping track of its complicated canon. This is partly due to the way the series keeps introducing new games, and finding innovative ways to squeeze more plot in-between, during, or after existing plot threads. The result leaves us with a constantly changing landscape, where characters weave in and out of each others lives in unexpected ways, and a healthy dollop of sci-fi jargon to further complicate matters. Any fictional tapestry that large is bound to have a few holes and this is where the fans come in. Not content to wait for creator Hideo Kojima to ret-con, remake, or explain all of the little unexplained bits, the community has come up with some of their own creative ideas of what's really going on under the surface of the Metal Gear Solid series. Some theories have already been debunked by the newer games, but they honestly weren't that implausible considering the tone of the series. We've picked out a few of the most interesting and off-the-wall theories to illustrate just how much fervor fans bring to the dangling plot threads of the Metal Gear series. |
| Selling Your Digital Games Becomes Slightly More Feasible With EU Court Decision Posted: 03 Jul 2012 01:35 PM PDT Digital games are becoming increasingly prevalent, particularly on the PC where Steam has become the one and only place to purchase PC games for many. But what rights digital game owners have is a major source of complaints, as the way things currently stand, it is impossible to resell a downloaded game in the way you can a physical copy of a console or handheld game. A new European court ruling may lead to a dramatic change in that arrangement with a decidedly pro-consumer decision. There is presently a distinction between the ability to resell software that is distributed via download and software distributed on physical media. Software company Oracle recently sued UsedSoft, a German company which resells digital Oracle software licenses, to prevent it from continuing to do so. End User License Agreements (EULAs, or those enormous legal documents you're forced to agree to before installing software of any kind) typically seek to prohibit this sort of thing from happening, whether it be Oracle's software or the latest Call of Duty. Essentially, consumers don't own the software they are purchasing, but merely a license that limits what they can legally do with it. At least when it comes to physical copies of software, it has been established that "the first sale in the EU of a copy of a computer program by the copyright holder or with his consent exhausts the right of distribution of that copy in the EU." In other words, a physical copy of a piece of software can be legally resold. |
| Spec Ops: The Line Review: An Earnest Take on the Depravity of Man Posted: 03 Jul 2012 12:01 PM PDT On paper, it almost seems blasphemous to make an action game based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. The two works are seminal commentaries on how war doesn't create victors, but rather bastard children who are forced to live with the memories of conflict for the rest of their days. How could a tale with such gravity be told through a genre of game that forces you to gun down hundreds upon hundreds of faceless enemies? But sure enough, Yager Development and 2K Games saw potential in telling this story through a video game, and thus born Spec Ops: The Line. Despite its threateningly bad title, the game delivers an anti-war experience that goes beyond what the Metal Gear Solid series has done and truly treads new ground for our medium. While it's certainly not without its own share of problems, the game stands proudly alongside its inspirations as a fantastic commentary on the duality of man. After a catastrophic sandstorm cuts off Dubai from the rest of the world, your team is tasked with entering the ruined city and piecing together what exactly happened before the calamity. The moment-to-moment action of Spec Ops plays out similarly to other stop and pop titles of the past generation. You'll hide behind cover and pick off enemies one-by-one, relay some minor orders to your squad mates, and slowly press forward through the sandy ruins of a once-luxurious Dubai. While perfectly playable, there are some minor inconsistencies that will undoubtedly force you to retry a handful of scenarios due to forces outside of your control. For example, the hit detection can sometimes be just a bit off, resulting in what should have been a head-shot turning into a phantom miss. It's also strange that your teammates can be revived after being downed à la Gears of War, but your character is never afforded the opportunity to be revived in the midst of a firefight. Again, nothing that breaks the experience, but enough to frustrate you with a handful of unwarranted deaths. |
| Spelunky Review: A Sublimely Pure Video Game Experience Posted: 03 Jul 2012 11:26 AM PDT If you've been following the indie gaming scene over the past few years, you're probably aware of Spelunky; this freeware 2D action roguelike has been floating around the Internet since 2008 -- heck, I originally brought the game to 1UP's attention in a blog post written well over three years ago. Since then, I've played quite a bit of Spelunky in PC form, all while anticipating the XBLA version that perpetually seemed just over the horizon. And though I hung up my Spelunky-ing hat years ago, diving back into this charmingly aggravating platformer gave me brief flashes of two devious and brilliant games that kept me highly entertained in the four years since the game's original release: Demon's and Dark Souls. These From Software RPGs may play differently than Spelunky, but Yu's game demands the same amount of focus and planning from its players -- a rare feat, regardless of genre. |
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