Print is dead. You hear it all over the place in regards to gaming magazines. EGM is no longer (thought it was wasting away and THANKS FOR MY REFUND ZIFF DAVIS YOU PARASITIC SCUM!) and it seems the biggest selling platform agnostic title is sponsored by Gamestop. So print is dead. Well EDGE is alive and kicking and apart from the fact the online entity just experienced a mass-exodus, it seems as though the rather expensive print version is going from strength to strength.
My wife buys lots of magazine each month. Her zine collection rivals my DVD collection and we both have had to make hard choices as to what we display and what we “consolidate” in order to make room for new zines and DVD’s. But Oprah magazine (which is filled with Wii ads each month) is going from strength to strength. Why do I mention that? Well Oprah is published by Hearst (owners of UGO and now 1up.com) and when they stopped Oprah at Home they gave my wife credit for the Oprah Magazine (WHY THE FUCK COULDN’T YOU AT LEAST DO THAT YOU FUCKS, ZIFF DAVIS. NOT OPRAH BBUT SOMETHING, ANYTHING, YOU LEECHING FUCKS!)
Anyhoo, Famitsu in Japan is still going well as are the slew of platform specific “Official” magazines. Even though the exclusive demoes are now available on PSN and XB Marketplace, these platform evangelist mags still do ok. Is it because everyone in America has a computer at home and the “kids” use the net to get this stuff of Kotaku and blogs (like this one)? Or is it something else?
Print still has its place. Yes, and for magazines like you and I read, its the toilet. The toilet is the best place to catch up with 2-month old news, previews of cinema releases just about to be released on DVD (yet I still buy Empire) and advertorials about how to look slick whilst holding a DSi. So you can download mags digitally from some websites, but I ain’t taking the laptop in the toilet. That’s just gross. You might as well lick the floor of a men’s room. Ewww.
Another use for Print is a place trip. Yes, because all though we have iPhones, PSP’s and laptops when we travel, we can’t use them for between 30-60 around take off and 30 minutes during the descent. So a mag is perfect here. And conveniently, places provide a place to dispose of your casually flicked through copy of PC Gamer once your done with it.
That’s really the thing though. With so many ways to distract us in the modern world, there are limited opportunities for picking up a zine and staring at the screenshots. Waiting rooms in surgeries and dentists rarely have anything to read for switched on types. A really old copy of Wired if you’re really lucky (or really unlucky, perhaps) is about the best you’ll hope for along with lots of celebrity mags and maybe a really old Time.
Will we shed a tear for the loss of gaming mags? Well if you haven’t already maybe you should think of drowning puppies to get the waterworks going because gaming zines have gone the way of the 3DO-3DO. The future is electronic, baby, and the magazines that are suffering most are those that, surprise surprise, cover Electronic hobbies such as gaming.
The people who buy the Wii and a copy of EA Sports Active, will read a magazine. They won’t however buy Nintendo Power, it’ll be Conde Naste Traveller.
The new Prince of Persia kinda crept on us like a stealth camouflaged Pedo bear. I was expecting a cel-shaded Assassin’s Creed and what we have Prince of Persia Sands of Time with an even more automated control scheme. Its like trying to type something with auto-fill on. Predictive text may be great on phones, but its not so great when you’re trying to pull off complex moves smoothly.
The new PoP apparently does away with death. Bullshit. All it does is put more checkpoints in and cover the fact with a cutscene. You will be watching that short non-skippable cutscene of Elika grabbing your hand many, many, many, many times. Why? Because this is a game that expects you to ignore your instinct whilst playing.
Its hard to describe. In order to pull of the move list, you need to unlearn. Need to double jump? Press A to jump then Y to have Elika use her mojo to give you an extra distance boost. Jump across a chasm and press A to jump up? No the game does it for you automagically. If you press A again, you’re jumping backwards to your temporary death.
I’m very conflicted about playing this game any further. I like it and it shits me to tears within the space of five minutes. Its a great game to play in 20 minute installments. The reason you can’t play it any longer than that is because you realise that you’re spending so much time on one jump sequence because the controls don’t quite do what you need them to. Prince of Persia is in fact the best argument for Mirror’s Edge using a first-person perspective.
PoP is the last 2008 game I have left to play and is the last of my gaming Xmas pressies I had to play. We have a long weekend coming up so it will be interesting to see how much time PoP actually gets. Right now its level pegging with Halo 3 time.
So Grifball. What the fuck is that? I played this as part of the Mythic Map pack last night and its basically a room where two teams are only armed with melee weapons such as the Gravity Hammer and the swords. It was fun apart from one of the few instances of lag I’ve noted in Halo 3. Like, it was really really bad lag. There’s a bomb in there as well but dying when enemies were nowhere near me made it a little confusing.
The other team modes are just plain fun. Its a pity the bigger team games are so objective based as I want to shoot more than I want to capture flags. The question remains, why is Halo 3 easier to play (its P2P just like most live games) online than CoD WaW, where there is a noticeable lag between you shooting and hitting an opponent.
I’m kinda waiting for something to hit me in the face. Hopefully Infamous will be that game as its the only game on my radar for the month of May. Maybe I’ll look at some more DLC stuff like Burnout Paradise Cops and Robbers pack. Part of me wants to replay some faves like Bioshock, Crackdown and even the campaign from Halo 3.
Have you ever asked someone about a game and their answer is something along the lines of “It was great but the last boss was a bitch of a last boss?” A similar question on a popular videogaming forums led me to consider games where the last bit coloured their overall enjoyment of the game. The more I thought about it, the more I realised there were multiple games where I liked it apart from the last encounter. Sometimes it made me hate the game an other times, it was juts one of those things where the worst bit happened to be the last bit. Here’s my list.
FAR CRY: INSTINCTS. This was the original Xbox version of Far Cry. Its not really a port, more of a re imagining of the PC version. I had both versions and found the Xbox game that much more fun to play, so much so that I tried to finish it. Then suddenly the last boss ramped up the difficulty on a game that wasn’t particularly easy to begin with. I tried for about an hour and a half to beat him and just when it looked as though I was finally going to beat him, he got stuck on some terrain and wasn’t responding to my shots. After wasting an hour or so trying to beat this prick I gave up. I mostly enjoyed the game, but I remembered that bastard with a hate-filled heart.
KILLZONE 2. I mostly liked this game. I won’t say loved but it was mostly very good, just not very innovative or varied. I enjoyed playing it even though it felt a little familiar. But then I got to the final encounter. I won’t describe it too much except its one of those instances where the game decides to pull the rug out from underneath you and be a puck-ass bitch. It ignores everything its taught you to date, then pads out the encounter with cheating AI and general bullshit. I find it hard to not have my overall experience coloured by this encounter and its the single biggest reason why I’d never play KZ2 again.
GEARS OF WAR: The encounter on the train was fairly brutal for me (and I played Gears 1 on Casual mode). It went on and on and the Krill kept killing me or the boss kept owning me faster than a Mexican jumping been who’s really gotta go. I managed to find the right weapon and beat the bastard but… blimey!
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL: One of Ubisoft’s alltime great games, this short and rather sweet Zelda cum sneaking game decides to have a difficulty spike that looks like Mt Everest after an injection of growth hormones. It wasn’t just hard, it was bitchingly hard. On Mohs scale its just above Corundum.
UNCHARTED: Still one of the best PS3 games, its also got an insanely hard final encounter. You will cuss, you will throw your controller around like a petulant child and you will swear bloody revenge on Naughty Dog.
GRAND THEFT AUTO III: As its the only GTA game I’ve even gotten to the end of, I can’t say whether subsequent games were any better but, Jesus, this one was a doozie.
METAL GEAR SOLID 2/ 4 (tie) For some odd reason, when I played through MGS2 originally, I don’t remember the last boss being particularly hard, but when I replayed it, I was sweating bullets trying to beat this. MGS4 is different. It makes you fighth a boss with a completely new combat system. And its hard. But that’s not thie bad bit. Then you have to watch OVER AN HOUR of cutscenes.
So the weekend provided a couple of entertaining hours playing Halo 3 multiplayer again. I have all the available maps for the game and thankfully Bungie’s playlists make it easy to play just the maps you’ve bought. So in the 18 months or so since I played Halo 3 on a regular basis, how do I think the multiplayer has held up in this post CoD world?.
Pretty good. Halo is one of the last old school games where there’s no really levelling up. I mean your skill progrsses through the rankings but there are no bonuses for doing so. Which means there are no penalties for only playing the game occasionally. Which is why Halo 3 is great for dipping in out of if you don’t have 2 years of spare time in order to unlock a gold AK47.
Ok, say for one thing- people are shy. I know I mute the headsets for a start but if you have a good game, no one really wants to partner up and so you have to go throigh the matchmaking again. Bungie’s matchmaking is a hell of a lot better than Epic’s though it seems a lot slower than Infinity Ward’s. At least Bungie want to say its because of my NAT so maybe I’ll tweak the settings on my router. Or maybe not. I still like the gameplay in CoD4 and CoD WaW but Bungie’s game seems more likley to partner me up to people in the same country- which is not something you could ever accuse WaW of doing during daylight hours. Its a pain when, in CoD WaW, you leap out a guy thinking you’ve gotten the drop on him but thanks to his lower ping he shot you last week.
A curious by product of having to go through matchmaking after every round is a propensity to play the same map three times in a row. I can say I love the Sandbox level, and am ambivalent towards the Assembly level. Bungie continue to support the game in a way that ridicule’s Activision and Infinity Ward’s decision to let CoD MW flounder with the same maps.
Halo 3 is a much simpler game relying on reflexes and coordination (two things I sorely lack) but at least you know you aren’t being hampered by an opponents perks. JUGGERN00bS! Of course If you get people who don’t think to get in the driver’s seat of a warthog so someone can get in the turret, you know that team is going to lose. Halo’s maps aren’t really big enough to support vehicle’s properly considering they don’t respawn very quickly compared to tanks in the Treyarch-developed CoD games.
I don’t think I’ll be playing H3 in a month, but I think I will be well prepped for ODST, the world’s biggest expansion pack when it is released later in the year.
UPDATE: Still playing and starting to get the hang of it a bit better. Loving it
Once apon a time, there was the pack in. You knew that if you bought a system, you’d have at least one game to play. Then, during the 32-bit era, the pack-in went the way of the dodo. And now its all about bundles (which is the exact same thing except its got a different name).
I have an intention to purchase a new 360 at some point during the year (something with a bigger HDD and HDMI) and there is almost no way to buy one without a game being bundled in, even if it is only Sega Superstar Tennis. The Wii, with Wii Sport revitalised the value-added trend and now if you want a PS3, you usually get some first party colossal sales disappointment which is usually at least a half decent game.
I decided to look at the pack in titles I’ve gotten with systems over the years. These are basically the games I picked up with the system whether I wanted them or not so not every system I’ve bought is listed.
Gameboy (1992). Pack-in: Tetris.
The grand-daddy of pack-ins, Tetris is more addictive than crack, more dangerous than smack and almost as good in the sack. One of the hallmarks of the modern packin is that its usually not a great selling titles that either the retailer or the publisher wants to get rid of their excess inventory. The game is still great and one of the few titles where the lack of colour on the original GB is not a major issue.
Super NES (1993) Pack-in: Super Mario World
If there is at all a way that you haven’t played this game, then there is something wrong with you. Its probably my all-time favourite Mario game. Its one of the great 2D platformers, unhampered by the NES’ technical limitations without really taxing the SNES either. It holds surprisingly well up a decade and a half later. And so it should since it was re-released on GBA and now available on Virtual Console.
DREAMCAST (2000) Pack-in: Trickstyle
I’m not sure if this hover-boarding game was a retailer special or not but it was bundled with my DC. I never played it when it came out but after I played Criterion’s PS2 hoverboarding following Airblade, I decided to revisit Trickstyle. It lasted about 10 minutes.
XBOX (2002) Pack-in: Halo: Combat Evolved
So I bought a bundle with Halo in it. I was getting Halo anyway and the bundled represented a decent deal (basically a 6 month sub to Xbox mag, a sturdy xbox carry bad, a tshirt, a hat and a drinks holder for the same RRP as the launch price with the game.
Wii (2006) Pack-in: Wii Sports
The only time I ever play this is when people who don’t play games are about the house. They usually have grey hair and think games are just “monkey business.”
PS3 (2007) Pack-in: F.E.A.R.
The horror. This is the biggest pile of shit ever defecated out of the anus of Vivendi. And that’s a pretty gaping asshole to start with which makes the fecal nature of this pile of shite even more , er, spectacular. Its easily the worst PS3 game in my library (one I couldn’t give away, and I have tried). I tried the demo on PC when it originally came out and was amused for 5 minutes and played the 360 demo and was less amused but every time I think I’ll play it for 5 minutes, it lasts in the PS3 for less time than it takes to play the Pacman CE Demo.
PC gamers get the pack-in to, usually with Video cards. Sometimes, gamers even install these (as they are, in some cases at least, the only legit games in their collections). Over the years I’ve amassed 4 copies of Counterstrike Condition Zero that I’ve never installed but never anything cool like a CoD or Battlefield game.
What do you guys like about free games that come with the system?
Here are some surefire tips for game developers for making sure your game is a surefire hit. Follow these tips and you will see your game gobble market share and reach the tops of the sales charts in no time. NOTE to developers: These are more guidelines than steadfast rules. You should follow these guidelines with caution and seek legal and medical advice. Your mileage may vary.
1. Stick ‘War’ in the title. Warcraft, World of Warcraft, CoD World at War, God of War, Gears of War. All these games were mega hits. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest the reason is because the word ‘war’ is in the title. There are no other redeeming features to these games apart from the use of that word in the title.
2. Put guns in the game. The main difference between Oblivion and Fallout 3 is the fact there are guns in Fallout 3. If you’re making a platform game, take the platforming out and put shooting in there instead. It worked for Ratchet and Clank.
3. Coop. Let’s face it. Army of Two was pretty ordinary without coop. Resistance 2 is pretty ordinary without coop. Killzone 2 is without coop altogether. Do I need to draw a venn diagram?
4. Swears. Every popular game has swearing in it. The more you swear, the more the fun the game is. Just think how good Pikmin would have been if there was a little more casual use of curse words. Katafuckingmari would have been the bomb. “We’re sorry but the princess is in another castle, bitch!”
5. Levelling up. All the best games have levelling up these days as a way of making people with addictive personalities play shitty parts of the game just to get achievements and perks. TF2 would have been completely buried by Left 4 Dead if not for the achievements so you can make formerly unplayable classes into merely boring to play classes.
6. Tits. Even if your game doesn’t feature any human characters, you need to add sex appeal to your game. People who have time to play games to get all achievements in a game also like swearing like a docker and lusting after porn stars. So why not get the porn stars to do publicity for your game so your target audience can zip up their semen stained pants and catch the bus down to the mall to pick up Saint’s Row 2
7.Quick Time Events. Everyone says they hate these but secretly they love QTE’s. Shenmue’s failure to sell is in no way linked to the abundance of QTE’s. Shenmue’s failure is linked to the fact the game is a monument how not to spend $70 million. QTE’s can add value to your game. Look at Ninja Blade, where QTE’s are listed on the box. That must mean its good.
8. Hype. Get your publisher to tout your game as a *****-killer. Halo-Killers, WoW-killers, etc. Take the king of the genre- ie the game you’ve cribbed most heavily from- and tell the world that your game is better. Just look at how that worked for Hellgate London, Resistance 2 and Warhammer Online.
9. Stick Wii in the title. Worked for Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii-fit, Mario Kart Wii. Super Mario Galaxy is one of the best games on Wii but has been outsold by shit. If they only called it Super Mario Wii.
10. Unique controller. Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Buzz, Singstar, Eye Toy all have a controller. Rock Revolution doesn’t. Never mind it was shit.
With these simple rules, developers will never have to actually make a good game, they can just apply some or all of the above rules and make a killing. Works for Ubisoft.
Roll up, Roll up to the one and only genuine DLCarnival. Yes I have gone mad and decided to fill in my current game playing drought by downloading more and more DLC for my favourite games and skipping the games I don’t want to play. A few weeks ago, it was the Call of Duty World at War map pack. Before that, it was Fallout 3’s Operation Anchorage. This week, its Halo 3 maps and Guitar Hero World Tour songs, two games I haven’t touched this year, but have been meaning to go back.
Why? Prince of Persia sits on the entertainment unit, its surface barely scratched (metaphorically). I just don’t fell like it right now. I know its good and I’ll probably have a go soon but I really just want to shoot my fellow man in the face (or more likley, be shot in the face by a whiny punk). So despite enjoying the maps for CoD WaW, I realise that I can’t compete with the levelled up dufus who in habit these games ever since CoD4 removed any casual fun from the series.
So Halo 3 got the downloads. There are new Gears of War 2 maps and Killzone 2 maps available now or coming soon, but those games just aren’t as much fun online as Halo 3 (with the headset switched off). There’s a rip off of The Guild with 30’something Halo 3 players that’s not really that good, but considering The Guild also isn’t really that good we’ll just suppose its accurate. I wouldn’t know as I don’t play games in clans, guilds or any other loose confederation of nerds where teamwork means teabagging. I just play to have fun. So i’ll play these maps for an hour or two and then move on.
Then on GHWT I will just buy a song, play it once and move on. I would like to play the James Bond Theme and the Queen songs (some of which i already have on Singstar). That’s it. I might even try to play a bit more of World Tour mode, but I’m not counting on anything.
Why play the DLC when there are so many new experiences coming out such as Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter IV and more? Because none of it speaks to me as a gamer. Nothing says, “play me.” Street Fighter might as well say “bite me,’ for all the appeal it has. In prepping for a podcast a few months pack, the three of us looked through the coming soon section of EB’s US website. We really couldn’t find much after Killzone 2 that appealed to any of us. Expect lots of demoes Focus Tested in the next few months. The one shining light on the new release beacon in the near term is Infamous. We’re all pretty jazzed for that. But maybe its because there’s no Crackdown 2 announced. The web believes its coming but my spare pants are still on Defcon 3.
Hardcore gamers feel the Wii and its success might mean the death of HD gaming. With the Wii’s lower development costs and higher user base (as of writing this, there are more Wiifit owners than PS3 owners in Japan), the system is starting to attract a lot more attention from publishers and developers, possibly at the cost of 360/PS3 focused titles. Core gamers fear the Wii the same way PC gamers feared the original Xbox would tempt the ranks of PC developers. Today, we answer some common questions from hardcore gamers.
Why are there so many crappy minigame compilations on the Wii?
Publishers, like hardcore gamers, had their attention focused squarely on the Xbox 360 and the PS3 rather than the Wii. With the PS2 being such a juggernaut last generation, publishers thought Sony was bound to pull a hat trick (rather than pull a hamstring) and concentrated on PS3 with Wii an afterthought. After the Gamecube, wouldn’t you have written off Nintendo? Minigame compilations and PS2 ports seemed to be the easiest way to release titles on the Wii.
When will we see hardcore games on the Wii?
Super Mario Galaxy was released in 2007 and was critically well received. It was outsold by critically reviled Mario and Sonic at the Olympics. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption was outsold by anything that you hate. No More Heroes, Zack and Wiki, Mad World and Boom Blox sold far less than Wii-Music. So the answer is, they won’t.
Is the Wii Gay?
No. The Wii is not gay. It just has more than just shooters, survival horror and racing games.
No seriously, is it gay?
No
Why do Wii games look blurry on my 1080p Bravia LCD HDTV?
This old chestnut. Your Wii looks blurry because every Sony HDTV features a Digital Signal Processing chip that can add defocus effect when it detects a Wii is connected. It automatically applies the filter so that Wii games look like a Vaseline commercial.
Dude?
Is that a question? Seriously. Is that a question?
Even though the Wii is super successful, why is Nintendo re-releasing GameCube games such as Pikmin, Metroid and Mario Tennis on Wii discs where the only update is so the titles can be controlled by a Wiimote nunchuck combo? Have they given up on making games?
That’s really two questions. The answer to the first is they are lazy and like money and this shit sells like a whore who gives away 25% off coupons in those free newspapers they give away in the supermarket. Er, I forgot the second question.
A new video series on controller1.com makes its debut. Each episode of “The Developer” features an interview with a games developer with a different job in each show. First up, a games designer with Studio Smugge’s Freddie Major in the hot seat.
