Have you noticed a decline in the quality of games recently released? Are you left wondering where all the good games have gone every time you step into the electronics section of your local store? Do you wonder WHY it seems like we’ve been getting the same mindless gun-fight, breast filled game, time after time?
Hint: It’s Your Fault.
Lewiston, Idaho circa 1987, I receive my first Nintendo Entertainment System. The box reads that it puts you in control of incredible fun! Boy they had no idea. The first game I played on it was Super Mario Bros. I was hooked day one, the moment I pressed that power button and heard that familiar theme I was a NERD.
Video games are generally complex in the amount of stuff that has to go into them. Its not just digital renderings, or bump mapping or sprites. But at the same time its not simply plot, or exposition or character development. Its a unique medium in the sense of how many elements have to be combined to produce a finished product. After a public release, these elements are usually explored ad nauseum. Most review outlets break down a game this way: story, gameplay, lasting appeal, sound design. This is the 12 and half foot pole we use to gauge critical success. But what’s missing?
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Have you ever read an article on a website or a thread on a forum about a console or a game for a console you don’t have? Have you then made a blanket statement slamming said game or console because, basically, you don’t have it? If you answered yes to these questions, then you, my friend, are an idiot.
Despite inFamous 2 being one of my highlights from E3, the redesign of Cole was definitely a lowlight. Sure the original character wasn’t exactly… original. But after spending dozens of hours churning out a true superhero a lot of gamers felt let down seeing the “new and improved” Cole MacGrath Sucker Punch was trotting around. The character had gone from gruff messenger to frat boy faster than you could grind a train rail.
So imagine my excitement today to read IGN saying that they were handed some super secret RE-redesign photos of Cole, and he’s looking a lot more like the previous game. No images are leaked for public consumption as of this point.
Now that we’ll only have to deal with an entirely new voice actor, inFamous 2 may start to feel like a sequel instead of a spin-off.
This week as promised Valve has released Alien Swarm for free, and it is pretty much the best thing to hit Steam since Left 4 Dead 2.
There. I said it.
Despite the fact that it is incredibly short out of the box, (just a single campaign that took around two and half hours on Hard) it is an incredibly fun four player co-op zombie survival alien blasting experience played from a top down perspective. It also happens to be incredibly pretty to look at (it’s built on the latest version of Source, even newer than Left 4 Dead 2′s version) and comes with the easiest map creator in the world. Expect to see literally hundreds of custom maps, campaigns and mods in the coming weeks following its release. I personally can’t wait to see Left 4 Dead campaigns work their way into this title – zombies and all. That would be so much fun I don’t even know where to begin. Not bad for a free title, eh?
So we have a completely free, professional quality downloadable title (that is shockingly similar to the $15 downloadable Alien Breed: Impact), which also comes with the entire source code and the latest version of Valve’s Source Development Kit.
Everybody with a PC should must download this on Steam (it is completely free), and experience Valve once again raising the bar in the gaming industry. I honestly can’t recommend this game enough. Did we also mention that it is free?
Alien Swarm on Steam
Limbo launched today on XBL from Playdead Games and I was thrilled to have a chance to sit down with it. Almost everyone I know has had at least one eye on this gem since it was shown off at E3 last month. It’s been compared (much to its credit) to Braid, the former darling of indie gamers everywhere. After several hours of play I feel fairly confident I’ve seen what this game has to offer, and anyone with a passing interest in visually stunning puzzle-platformers is doing themselves a grave disservice if they haven’t plunked down the 1200 MS Points yet.
It’s hard to go too in depth with this game without spoiling much of what makes it so affecting. You play as a nameless and more or less faceless boy who awakens in the woods on the wrong end of some very scary business. The game does an amazing job of building tension, a rare trait in a game where death happens often and with little to no repercussions. You genuinely don’t want to see your little character chopped in half by a bear trap or smashed by a piston, even if the game autosaves at almost every intersection. You rarely lose any progress due to death, but it’s something you develop a healthy fear of nonetheless.
The biggest concern voiced thus far with Limbo is its length and replay value. Most of the puzzles in the game are fairly simple once you uncover the trick, and so subsequent playthroughs seem unlikely. Couple that with reports of a scant four hours of gameplay and its price tag becomes questionable. But if you’re looking for a game with a unique charm that brings flashbacks of games like Braid and Out of this World, you’re not going to regret your time spent in Limbo.
Rating: 
(4.5/5)
I know I’m about a week late on this, but where were preorder bonuses like this back in ’91? Preorder Sonic Colors from Gamestop and you get the nerdiest and thus coolest preorder bonus of all time: a hat that mimics Sonic’s iconic spikes.
Wait, what’s this game about again?
However, before Dr. Eggman completes his evil plans, Sonic discovers his mysterious theme park in space. When he arrives, Sonic finds he is also able to use these alien powers and is ready to help!
So the game’s $49.99 to preorder and assuming you have to open it to get a voucher for the hat, you could probably turn around and sell it immediately for ~$30. It’s a reasonable price to pay for that hat assuming I’m not actually required to play that game.
The back and forth between games industry Nostradamus Michael Pachter and the developers of the Call of Duty series continued today, as the Pach-Man adjusted previous statements that Acitivision would need to start charging for online play in the mega-series.
“I don’t want to call out any of the blog posts or tweets or statements to IGN as untruthful,” he told GamesIndustry.biz today.
“Rather, I think that they probably are true: Activision won’t require people to play for multiplayer, but I think that they will find a way to offer a premium experience for a fee, whether that takes the form of subscription, pay-as-you-go, microtransactions for virtual goods, tournament fees or some combination.”
This is how you make an industry prediction, folks. You give enough options (some already in existence) so that sheer odds dictate your chance of being right approaches 1:1.
In other news, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict future COD games will feature fully customizable weaponry, multiplayer map editing, persistent environments, guns that shoot bullets or some combination.
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