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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 check out the demo for Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, visit the Smithsonian's video-game exhibit, explain why now is the perfect time for new consoles, and more. No need to hide in a box to read on.

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Deciphering the Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes demo
By Jason Rose

At PAX Prime, Metal Gear maestro Hideo Kojima introduced the next entry in the long-running stealth-action series, and Jason's broken down all the details for you. Are you ready for more sneaking, shooting, and monologuing villains?

More than just a game
By Billy Guinigundo

Billy recently visited the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and he documented his trip through the Art of Video Games exhibit for our enjoyment. "What the exhibit does best is create an opportunity for the gaming community to come together," Billy writes.

Right now is the best time to launch a console
By Jourdan Cameron

Jourdan's not pointing this article just at the Nintendos and Sonys of the world; he says that the gaming market is primed for independent console makers, too. "A small niche audience could be the best way to make money in the industry as a hardware manufacturer for the next several years," Jourdan says. Do you agree?

Because Silver isn't good enough
By Avery Tingle

Avery's fed up with being left out. He can't afford to pony up for the full Xbox Live Gold membership, and that's preventing him from checking out lots of games -- the Resident Evil 6 demo, in this case. "Just tired of being treated like a second-class citizen because I can’t afford to be one of the cool kids," he says.

5 great JRPG battle themes you've (probably) never heard
By Nate Ewert-Krocker

Game music! You know I love me some game music. Nate's got a list of less obvious tunes that accompany the over-the-top fights of the Japanese role-playing genre. I'm a fan of Eternal Sonata, myself.

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Fun for newcomers and veterans alike, the Bitmob Writing Challenge asks our community to write about a specific topic every month. Now is the time, however, for you to get a grip on reality – virtual reality.

Immersion is vital to any video game, and controls are a big part of creating that state of zen.  Developers want their titles to feel as natural as possible so that players aren’t double checking the button configuration, cursing at the screen, and taking themselves out of the experience. This is easier said than done.

For one thing, the need to have intuitive controls and the desire to give players a ton of cool abilities are often at odds. StarCraft is a good example of this, as it has to appeal to both newcomers who have never touched a strategy game and hardcore players who have 200 ATM (actions per minute) and watch online streams of South Korea tournaments. Accessibility is important, but sometimes dumbing things down will make the game a less-enjoyable experience for both parties.

Meanwhile, making the movement and actions feel right can be challenging even in a simple game. Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 failed to resonate with fans because the Blue Blur felt so sluggish and awkward compared to the Genesis titles it tried to emulate. Yet videomaker egoraptor praises the first Castlevania’s unforgiving controls because they forced you to commit to decisions and use items. And, of course, we are experiencing a flood of next-gen titles that use touch-screen and motion recognition, and many are still experimenting on the best way to implement them.

Now, the power is in your hands to write about this important topic. Read on for the rules.

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Today, social game developer Zynga announced the global launch of the sixth installment in its With Friends series, Gems With Friends. The company is currently focusing on the release of its sequel to the Facebook friend annoyance platform Farmville, but future additions to the With Friends suite are inevitable.

Here are three games that Zynga may very well be bringing to your iPhone in the near future (OK, probably not), and how they will get your money.

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Shooting With Friends

The game: Maybe you've never played Bitmob editor Layton Shumway at Words With Friends, but if you had, you'd wish that you could follow up your sound whooping with some old-fashioned video game justice. So, enough of this puzzle shit. It's time to get down to business, and that means guns and plenty of them.

Shooting With Friends will allow players to invite their buddies and family members into the virtual arena to slap iron in a series of high-intensity shootouts.

The microtransactions: Your first gun and three bullets will be free. Everything after that will cost you.

This is actually a Flash game called GunBlood.

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Against our best intentions, video games that get left by the wayside often stay unplayed and are ultimately forgotten. Games are a temporal art form. They can only be fully enjoyed within a short period of time after their release. Once a title is no longer considered new, many players distance themselves from it and discard it into the annals of history. Albeit with a few exceptions, many offerings’ influence wane significantly over time.

Games differ from sculpture, painting, film, and music in this sense. Because the evolving technology powering them is more apparent, titles can quickly appear outdated. Simple mechanics like running and jumping can be easily rendered archaic through minor advances in design.

Gamers and critics lauded the early Tomb Raider entries for both their gameplay and graphical quality. Time colored these opinions, but this does not render them obsolete. Crystal Dynamics remade the original Tomb Raider with more-modern mechanics, releasing it as Tomb Raider: Anniversary in 2007. The company vastly improved basic movement through technology and highlighted the lack of precision and control in the original game. I feel both the original and remake, however, should be considered valid options to play. The releases represent certain periods in gaming and reflect the limitations technology imposed during their respective eras.

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Boss fights. We can’t seem to get rid of them. It seems like every game these days feels obligated to build up to several intricate, large-scale, and often difficult fights with significant enemies. Traditional boss fights are a remnant of the past and are no longer necessary (for the most part). Also, very few games successfully execute a good boss fight, making them a waste of valuable money and production time for most developers.

The new trend in gaming, with some exceptions, is omitting a traditional boss fight in favor of a challenging sequence that leads up to the final showdown with the “boss,” which is short and sweet. This approach also lends itself well to games that are trying to preserve some level of realism, as it eliminates problems like human bullet sponges.

The game that does this best is Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. The previous Uncharted games had lackluster boss fights (at best) but were both flawed in different ways.

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Metal Gear’s Solid Snake is getting old, and we all know it.

Not every game character has superhuman powers, infinite continues, or the ability to remain the same forever. Some age. Some have feelings. Some deal with conflict. Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima made Solid Snake gray for a reason. Not only is the stealth-game franchise a cinematic one, it also adapts to real-life situations we can relate to. Snake is vulnerable, much like us. We are born, and we all eventually die.

Snake’s mortality came into focus before his appearance in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. I wasn’t the only one upset when Raiden stole the spotlight and took over the protagonist role in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. A new, blond-haired, girl lookalike is replacing Solid Snake? Screw you.

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Our culture is obsessed with things returning from the dead. Why not the video arcade? About a month ago, Ars Technica published an article that sounded almost too good to be true, "The Surprising Stealth Rebirth of the American Arcade." I was somewhat skeptical; I have fond memories of time spent in arcades as a youth, but I was never privy to the true heyday of the video arcade in the '80s.

I wasn't willing to believe that arcades could make a comeback for only one reason: I wanted it to be true, and so of course, it was never going to happen.

Then one opened a mile from my house.

Last night, I took a couple of my friends to check out the Joystick Gamebar in Atlanta, and after a night of cocktails, quarters, and aching wrists, I've changed my tune.

To borrow a line from our friend Fox Mulder: I want to believe.

Joystick proved to me, in a few short hours, that establishments like this really have a shot at success. A handful of factors have convinced me that we're going to see more and more barcades pop up in the next couple of years.

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Life’s pretty dull for California in an election year. Our 55 electoral votes don’t get any bluer, so we’re spared the constant bombardment of political ads from both official and Super PAC sources. On the other hand, presidential hopefuls only ever show up here for $5,000-a-plate fundraisers. We miss out on all the hands-on politicking, and we never get a chance to voice an opinion directly to the candidates.

So you’ll just have to excuse a political junkie’s excitement about the election coverage streaming on Microsoft’s Xbox Live service.

I’ve heard the detractors who claim video games should be a “stress-free” and “escapist pass time [sic]” unsullied by the real world. Cry me a river. I’d bet serious money that a majority of PC gamers use their tricked-out gaming rigs to consume news, quite possibly some on the 2012 presidential campaign. Xbox Live’s NBC News app -- and specifically its Politics tab -- now brings that option to a console platform.

It’s about time. In fact, if anything, that option doesn’t go far enough.

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The first Cooking Mama is still a go-to travel game for me. In cramped airplanes or on noisy busses, meticulously slicing onions and peeling boiling-hot potatoes puts me in a very tranquil state. Pity the rest of Mama's adventures don't even begin to compare. 

What if Cooking Mama evolved into an amazing arcade experience, complete with weighted cooking utensils that simulate the feel of turning pieces of meat in a pan? Well, the Tokyo Institute of Technology has almost done that with its holographic cooking simulator. 

The original purpose for this simulator is to train potential chefs in basic cooking techniques without putting them on a stove. While I think you can't really be good at cooking until you cut and burn yourself a thousand times, this still looks absolutely amazing and I want a video game made with it. 

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While there are a lot of things to complain about in online gaming, like unreliable servers and online passes, right there on the top of everyone’s list are newbies (or noobs).

People don’t seem to mind sharing their games with the foul-mouthed, misogynist, and outright disturbing players they frequently find online. But if they’re brought down by a guy hiding in a corner in any shooting game … that’s a real problem.

“That’s cheap! That’s not the way I’m supposed to be defeated!” They were felled by a dishonorable play, a pagan tactic only employed by those unskilled enough to fight like real men do -- in other words, a “noob.”

I mean, there are people proudly quitting from online matches, while there are some assholes claiming that harassment is part of the gaming community. But being a noob, or being called a noob, seems to be the worst offense any player can bear.

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I can't believe I never thought of this. I mean, it's so obvious. Of course the Pokémon world would have a crime fighter named Zubatman! Oh well. At least I can enjoy the hilarious combination with you guys even if I couldn't invent it.

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Once again, we assemble the absolute best people in the world to deliver something we think other, not-so-good people are ready for!

Grant! Crecente! Pitts! McElroy! Plante! Another McElroy! Gies! Frushtick! Together, they are Polygon, the Super Friends of game-coverage sites...coming in 2012. But a mere placeholder web-page hasn’t stopped this all-star league of video-game journalists from releasing a trailer for Press Reset: The Story of Polygon, an upcoming reality-show webseries chronicling their dramatic struggle to be video-game journalists.

Naturally, the Internets judged them harshly, because that’s how the Internets roll. And since humans only need a 44-second teaser to judge anything, that’s how we roll, too! So what say you, panel of experts? Press Reset...pretentious or pioneering?

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“Cut the s**t. Who’s sleeping with who?”

- Isaac Clark, Dead Space 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Just so long as someone’s told to pack up their consoles and go because it’s Game Over every week, I’m cool. In fact, I’ll call it now…Justin and Griffin McElroy will form an alliance with Arthur Gies to back-stab Brian Crecente right before Chris Grant kneecaps them all.”

- Nathan Drake, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception

 

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