While you were busy stuffing your face with macaroni salad and BBQ, we at GamesBeat and Bitmob were busy writing about cloud graphics, gaming art, secret worlds, instrument-less Rock Bands, and of course, real-life zombies.
If you missed any of our Memorial Day weekend coverage, please take a look below!
Read more >>While I haven't caused any kitchen fires, I have pissed off quite a few people in Mortal Kombat.
Geoffrey probably wanted to kick me in the face for real this time. We were playing the original Mortal Kombat -- not the kiddie Super Nintendo version, mind you; no, he had the Sega Genesis version, also known as the excessive blood-splatter, rip-your-opponents-to-pieces version. It was awesome. It also taught me how to be the most annoying video game opponent ever.
The sad truth is that I suck at fighting games, always have, and probably always will. Mortal Kombat was my introduction to the genre, and I died. A lot. The only obvious solution that my 5th-grade brain could think of was to complain about my lack of knowledge, thereby convincing Geoffrey to teach me one special move: Scorpion's harpoon.
This was a mistake, because if there's one thing that I was able to master in Mortal Kombat, it was that harpoon move, and I used it over and over and over. My strategy was essentially this: Harpoon opponent, uppercut opponent, repeat. Fortunately, Geoffrey was new enough to the game that he had a hard time defending against this unassailable strategy. But as you might imagine, he quickly tired of my shenanigans.
Read more >>When I see what people have done with titles like Little Big Planet and Minecraft, I'm beyond amazed. I think we've entered an era where the player has become an extension of the developer, pushing game experiences to never-before-seen places with simple built-in tools.
User creativity is severely overlooked in many of today's titles.
Now don't get me wrong, I am well aware of the handful of releases that do provide gamers with tools to craft their own stories. Games like Little Big Planet and Trials Evolution maintain overall objectives while giving players staggering amounts of options, allowing them to play through and share interactive creations of their own.
Minecraft takes this a step further, allowing for almost complete control of an infinite landscape. As Minecraft started becoming more of a "game," its developers added elements like strongholds, villages, NPCs, and even an endgame while still keeping the title's focus on creativity.
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The Community Spotlight features some of the best unedited articles that didn't quite make the front page. This week, we examine the difference between challenge and difficulty, point out a flaw in the PlayStation Vita, rediscover gaming after leaving World of Warcraft, and more. Buckle up, kids.
Challenge vs. difficulty
By Nathaniel Dziomba
Think those two words mean roughly the same thing? Not so, says Nathaniel. He argues that any game can be difficult, but games with challenge reward the player for accomplishing diffcult tasks fairly. He points to Dark Souls as a prime example; I'm sure many of you would agree.
If I could change one thing about the PS Vita
By Errol Burke-Horner
Errol's got beef with one particular "feature" on Sony's latest high-tech handheld: the game slot. Apparently it ain't the easiest thing to get open. And Errol said he'd have bought his games digitally, but that requires a memory card that he couldn't afford. Sounds like Sony has a ways to go toward making the Vita user-friendly.
Rediscovering gaming in a post-WoW world
By Ty Swenson
Ty finally decided to leave World of Warcraft behind. But what do you play when you've only played one game in years? Answer: Everything you can. Ty found new joy in playing even mediocre titles. "Thanks, WoW," he says. "You made gaming fun again."
Commercials in my video games? No thanks
By Justin Davis
Justin's not happy with a rumored report of a Sony patent that would allow the insertion of commercials into gaming sessions. His biggest problem with the idea: the way it would break immersion. "I understand that games are getting more costly to develop," he writes. "I don't care. Find another way to do it."
NPD reports integrate Walmart: Too little, too late
By William Schink
Sales-data reporting group NPD has finally added Walmart to its monthly updates, but Williams says the reports have outlived their usefulness anyway. He writes: "When the use of the NPD reports is to try and determine the health of the industry, the fact that they ignore the increasingly large amount of indie-devloped titles is evidence of their inability to do just that."
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I'm scared, you guys.
Up until now, movies based on video games haven't bothered me. Resident Evil? Who cares. Silent Hill? Meh. Tomb Raider? Whatevs. Those are series I don't really have a huge emotional attachment to, so I didn't fret when their big-screen counterparts turned out to be awful.
But Shadow of the Colossus? That's a game too dear to my heart -- something I don't want inevitably ruined by the machine of Hollywood. No matter how much the director says he likes the game.
So, Hollywood executives, if I could just pull you away from your cocaine for one moment, I have a single suggestion for your film: Use Koh Otani's original soundtrack.
Read more >>Nothing says "immediate action" over handling dwindling resources better than expending more resources on shooting, blowing up, and knocking over other things expending resources. Humanity: Our bodies reached for the stars, but not our brains.
Video Blips:
• Fun fact: Pairing "The Ride of the Valkyries" with footage of heavy air combat is totally original. Thankfully, PlanetSide 2's impressively super-scaled shootouts compensates my bout of chronic sarcasm.
Continue after the break for crashing a party assassin-style in Hitman: Absolution's Sniper Challenge and defending more motherland in a content update for Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad.
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A dark edge of brutal cynicism is always healthy, but I'm sure most of us could use a refreshing dose of child-like innocence from time to time. We'd all have a little bit more fun, at least.
I only have two memories of my early childhood.
The first, and probably the most prevalent, is of playing t-ball with my dad as my coach. We were the first team to ever score a double play in the league (which they threw out as being “against the spirit of tee-ball”). The second memory, while certainly less amazing (and traumatizing), is of sitting at my grandmother’s house and playing video games with my oldest brother. He had received a Super Nintendo and Super Mario World for his birthday, and we sat there all day playing until our eyes hurt and he got tired enough that it was affecting his performance (the scientific studies of fatigue and its effect on motor skills obviously didn’t exist in the far-away time of the ‘90s).
That memory is one of the driving forces behind my love of video games. My dad had passed away a year or so before that and my ability to get close to anyone had been seriously hindered. Sitting there with my brother and helping him navigate the Mushroom Kingdom allowed me to bond with someone. It was a type of reverse aversion therapy; If I wanted to experience and help with the game, I’d have to talk and interact with another human being. After that, I inherited the NES (which had been collecting dust in my brother’s bedroom) and the trove of games that came with it. Playing those (and sneaking into my brother’s bedroom to play his SNES when he wasn’t around), allowed me to have a reason to talk to other kids my age. Oddly enough, video games gave me a social life and made me less of an outcast...weird, right?
Fast forward to a more recent weekend and I’m sitting down to finally dig into Fable Heroes. I’ve never been an enormous fan of the Fable series, but I've always enjoyed the hack-and-slash genre. Besides, I was given the game in exchange for this article (thanks, Bitmob!), so what’s the worst that could come of it?
Read more >>I know you're all busy hunting hoards of demons and monsters on your epic quest to rid the world of evil, but I suggest you take a breather and read some community reviews. You need to give that clicking finger a break.
Diablo III: It's diabolically good
By William Schink
You've probably heard from plenty of people how good Diablo III is, but William's voice is a bit unique because he didn't like Diablo II. Despite his lack of love for the second installment of Blizzard's action role-playing series, the third entry won him over. Read his review to find out why.
Review: Metro 2033
By Ryan Juel
I know you're all excited about those shiny new releases, but Ryan wants to tell you about 2010's underappreciated Metro 2033. I mean, you aren't going to find very many other shooters based off of Russian novels, so you should give his write-up a look.
Max Payne 3: The tale of the angry, pill-popping gringo
By Danny Mercado
Danny shovels a lot of praise upon Max Payne 3's altar, giving extra props to the shooter's multiplayer experience. I've been too busy to playing Diablo III to give this game a try yet despite all of the excellent things people like Danny have said about it. Right after I kill Diablo, I swear.
Read more >>I find myself oddly interested in westerns lately, but not of the traditional sort. Here's to hoping that someone adapts Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West to a video game.
Back in the swinging sixties, you couldn't walk 10 feet through the American mid-West without tripping over an Italian film crew working on a spaghetti western. Tales of stolen gold, corrupt lawmen, and ugly Mexicans by people like Sergio Leone were ridiculously popular and continued to be for a good twenty years before the films dipped out of fashion. There have been a few noteworthy westerns in recent years, The Proposition, 3:10 to Yuma, True Grit, and so on, but so few western games and fewer still good ones.
The previous generations aren't the most given to gaming; if you were one of the lucky people who saw A Fist Full of Dollars at the cinema on its release date, you're likely mystified by all these floating shapes on your grandson's magic tablet thing right now.
Though recent western films feel vaguely archaic, there's clearly still a market for them, so why are there so few video games set in this kind of plot landscape?
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A month ago, when publisher Activision announced 007 Legends, a first-person shooter incorporating six of secret agent James Bond's greatest missions (including Skyfall, the upcoming film), the potential seemed endless. People immediately started making up their wish lists and then sat back, fingers crossed, and waited for their dreams to come true.
Cut to this week, when Activision revealed the first of Bond's "greatest hits": Moonraker.
Granted, we can't really expect the makers of Legends to lead with the big guns. They do have to save something for the Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show in a couple weeks, after all. But still...Moonraker? Really?
In an unscientific poll I conducted among my feelings and emotions, Moonraker ranks somewhere between "accidentally sitting on my balls" and "watching puppies get run over." It's a cheesy, stupid film, a low point for the franchise in which the filmmakers tried too late to cash in on Star Wars and ended up with a ridiculous farce in which a maniac tries to eradicate the entire human race with space lasers and replace them with people who look like they were kicked out of the auditions for Blue Lagoon for being too stupid.
Basically, I'm not a fan.
I'm sure the other movies in the game will be better than Moonraker (they'd have to be; science says so), but I have a crazy section of my brain that heard that announcement and wondered what would happen if Eurocom (the developer of Legends) allowed Moonraker to set the pace for the rest of their selections. What I ended up with might be the most terrible licensed game ever made, which is saying something in a world in which Charlie's Angels exists.
Let's see how bad the last four choices can get.
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Once again, we peer into the future and...hey, are those lottery numbers?
Two weeks from today, game-industry trade show Electronic Entertainment Expo will wind down, and the survivors will limp off into the night like escaped slaves from a Krispy Kreme factory. But here in the pre-awesome glow of not-yet-E3, we can all still feel our feet and dreamily swoon (read: ceaselessly bitch that BioShock Infinite won't be at the show) over the endless possibilities. And since last year's E3 predictions nailed every last detail, let's spoil those possibilities. Because we care.
What say you, panel of experts? What's on tap for the biggest week in gaming?
- Mario, Super Mario Galaxy
- Raiden, Metal Gear Rising: Revengence
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My usernames, tags, and handles are always pretty simple and easy to remember. But those who obsess over their monikers should check out these helpful tips.
We’ve all seen them -- xXx1337SN!P3RxXx, ysosrsface, SilentAssassin69, and other horrible usernames. It seems like they’re everywhere nowadays (kind of like the cursing 12-year-olds in Call of Duty multiplayer), and we can't do a whole lot about that.
We can, however, try to prevent future cases by informing people how to choose a username, and that's why I put this list together.
1) DON’T randomly mash keys because you can’t think of anything
I know this one is easy to do, but you’re going to look pretty ridiculous with a name like skdjvfs7672.
2) DO pick something unique
The best usernames are always unique -- something no one else would think of. Avoid clichés and check around the Internet before you pick. Chances are, if it’s taken, then it’s not as clever as you think.
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