If you play games with any regularity, it's inevitable that you'll eventually come across a roughly-made, unbalanced, unpopular, or straight-up broken title that you grow attached to regardless of how low the score on Metacritic drops. Whatever the reason, I'm betting that every gamer out there has at least one of these awkward, ugly ducklings that they hold dear—and I've invited a group of guest writers to kiss and tell.
The decision to lock out used games would be a major gamble for Microsoft to make. While the decision would likely be cheered by the industry, the possibility of fewer consumers and doing irreparable harm to relationships with retail partners has serious implications.
It's easy to figure out why gamers lusted after this thing when developer Capcom released it back in late 2002: It's the mech equivalent of a racing game's steering wheel—on steroids—complete with the foot pedals and about a bazillion other useless doodads.
What a difference 10 years can make.
In November 2001, Microsoft was making its console gaming debut with a machine that sported a larger-than-life controller and on-board hard drive. I was interested, but kept my distance for a few years.
In honor of Brad's gaming brick wall blog post and the comments that followed, here is College Humor parody video. Would some of those classic games have been as revered without the legendarily tough stages? You be the judge.
Some years back I played Dead to Rights and found its plot so captivatingly, amazingly ludicrous that I wound up writing a fifty-odd page review of it. It was relatively well-received by people who worked on the game, and even wound up being mentioned in 2005's prequel, Dead to Rights II. Now, to celebrate the release of Dead to Rights: Retribution, I've decided to repost the review here, now with illustrations! Hopefully the occasional image and video will help make it a little more palatable—yes, I'm well aware that it's TL, and I won't be offended if you DR.
So I finally got around to playing half an hour of Halo 3: ODST last night, and while I'm not planning to write a review of it any time soon, I wanted to comment on the weird experience I had with the game.
I was playing a friend's game, so I just sort of dropped in medias res, and had no idea what was going on plot-wise, so I'm not going to bother commenting on that aspect. What I will say is that for the first fifteen minutes of my playtime I had a blast. So much fun that I couldn't remember why I'd hated Halo 3 as much as I did (by which I mean "not really that much at all").
Those of us that were looking for some real closure to Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit)—the ending didn't live up to expectations—will have to put our hope to rest. While publishers have approached David Cage, co-founder of Quantic Dream, about publishing a sequel—something I find really hard to believe—Cage himself has no interest in going back to that well.
Maybe it's for the best. That leaves him all the time in the world to focus on Heavy Rain. All accounts point to Heavy Rain as a worthy, spiritual successor.
"…there is a kegger down the hall. We can go as soon as I desecrate this corpse. I'm sorry Marge, where are my manners? Did you want to taunt my kill also? Press the "X" button." – Homer Simpson
If you're like me, on the one hand you're thrilled to see The Simpsons parodying videogames… outside of its own videogames (The Simpsons Hit & Run and The Simpsons Game). On the other hand, you sigh sadly with the realization that the masses are seeing one of the less savory sides of interactive play. Why couldn't the writers lampoon Shadow of the Colossus or Flower? Ah well, it was a pretty funny clip.
West Virginia was the first school system in the United States to incorporate a video game (Konami's Dance Dance Revolution) into its physical education curriculum. Now, West Virginia University, ResCare Home Care and the Special Olympics are conducting a study to see if the series has benefits for people with disabilities. According to the very small blurb I was able to find, "Participants will play the game three days a week, for eight weeks. If it is successful, the Special Olympics may consider making 'DDR' a competitive event during its annual games."
Recent Comments