Mega Man is one of my favorite gaming series, but even I didn't know all of the obscure facts presented in Did You Know Gaming's newest, trivia-filled episode. I certainly didn't know that Capcom was originally going to call the game The Battle Rainbow Rock Man. Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?
Anyway, you can discover all of the interesting Blue Bomber trivia for yourself by watching the video after the break.
Read more >>Sometimes our favorite games just never seem to catch on with everyone else. We're often left thinking, "How can people not be playing this?!" Jesse has given the subject some thought and offers insight into just why some titles never reach the acclaim they deserve.
In the video games industry, like any other, few dominant factors always draw in the masses and dictate popular opinion. But for every hit, an unappreciated gem flies under our radars.
It’s a shame, really, because many of these games are true masterpieces. They do not deserve to go unnoticed. So how do these games fail to acheive such acclaim?
Read more >>Games let us escape from the doldrums of our everyday existences. But when those same titles inspire people to act positively in their real lives, that’s something even more powerful.
I had some pretty ambitious fantasies growing up. Building a fortress, flying a spaceship, and getting bit by a radioactive spider, to name a few. All the cartoons, video games, and movies I enjoyed probably fueled those thoughts. If my younger self played Halo 4, he’d daydream about becoming a Master Chief-like Spartan.
That kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore, naturally. I still prefer unrealistic games, but I, like many other gamers who’ve grown older, have accepted that I’ll never be in a position remotely resembling that of a video game hero, nor do I want to be in one. Nowadays, my dreams are more simple and realistic. I want to travel to a few countries, stay in school as long as I can, and make lots of money writing about games (hah!).
But Forza Horizon makes me conjure up fantasies. It’s probably because the title is fairly grounded in reality. No aliens, nukes, or evil villains, just some fast vehicles and gorgeous environments. Unlike other racers, Horizon doesn’t demand that you enter a race to cruise around. You don’t have to avoid police, crash into other vehicles, or even win head-to-head matchups. You don’t play as some badass street racer either. He’s just some quiet guy in jeans and a t-shirt. I pretty much cosplay him every day.
Read more >>Based on the reasons he gives here, I don't really blame Benjamin for taking a pass on this generation. I've played a ton of great games in the last few years, but I can only count a handful that have really shown me something completely new.
Why? Because of polish.
Is polish bad? No, not at all. It's helpful when a game actually works, so you can properly enjoy its content (you know, the reason you bought a game in the first place). But, over time, polish has slowly risen on to a pedestal over all other aspects of development. That means less attention has been given to areas like creating new ideas or taking things in clever directions. You can easily see this transformation from generation to generation.
However, it feels like we've gotten to an extreme. Eventually, I just sort of stopped bothering with most modern games, and looking from the outside in, the whole system cycle turned into a blur. Numbers would change on the end of franchise names, but the games would stay the same. Even some new IPs would borrow so many elements from other titles that they looked just like sequels with different coats of paint. Sure, many of these games were spotless, but it's like we're getting the same big hits year after year. The developers are spending too much time on polishing existing ideas, and not enough on creating new ones.
Trevor makes the argument that gaming -- as a medium -- needs to grow up. The industry gives us plenty of exploding heads and buckets of blood to satisfy our thirst for carnage, but we're missing nearly every "mature" theme that doesn't involve violence.
At this point in time, the gaming industry faces several truly juvenile problems that do not befit its status as one of the premier forms of entertainment in the world.
For example, rating systems have yet to be properly implemented, with many games being banned from certain countries when films and books with similar content are given a free pass.
Even in the United States, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has some problems with their designations. In my opinion, their ratings are not properly delineated to encompass all types and ranges of mature content.
"I tell you one thing -- working police in Liberty City ain’t like it is anywhere else. And it ain't like you see on TV -- I tell you that."
I’m in a squad car with Officer Mike Cabroni of the Liberty City Police Department. Cabroni has policed these streets for six years and is one of the few LCPD officers willing to publicly discuss the city’s enduring one-man crime wave.
No one in local law enforcement seems to know this mysterious criminal’s name. LCPD officially refer to him as "Perp 1." Possible street names identify him as "Nicky," "Neeko," and "Cahzin." Cabroni, in his thick Broker accent, calls him, simply, "The Guy."
"I mean, The Guy’s unbelievable. Four years of this shit -- shooting guys in the street, setting fire to people in cars, running them down. Who would want to do that? This is one sick guy we're talking about here."
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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
We're taking the next four days off to spend time with our families and stuff our faces with delicious food. Head over to GamesBeat for regular video game coverage throughout the holiday weekend.
What games will you play today while the turkey roasts?
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Conan O'Brien is known as many things. He's a comedian, a host, an actor, a musician, and more. But he is no gamer. Of course, that's what makes his reviews so hilarious.
The newest edition of Clueless Gamer sees the red-headed wonder tackle Hitman: Absolution, the fifth installment in developer IO Interactive's stealthy series. Although, as Conan humorously points out, it's hard for a guy to remain undetected when he has a bar code on the back of his shiny head. He's also a bit put off when someone suggests that he hide in the same dumpster he just dropped a body in. Ew.
You can watch the full review after the break.
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Reggie continues our ongoing conversation on Bitmob about Rob Florence's depature from Eurogamer following his accusations of a corrupt games press. Here, Reggie looks at the creeping influence of flashy console-focused magazines on journalism in the past.
I'm frustrated that the tradition of journalistic coverage on video games has now become a sort of joke told with Doritos in one hand and a cup of Mountain Dew in the other.
When I wanted to reply to community writer Nathaniel Dziomba's excellent article, "Games journalism never had any integrity" -- particularly on his point that he had led in with, what I imagined as a short snippet went beyond what I expected it to. His article and those brought together within community manager Layton Shumway's collection of Bitmob's thoughts on games journalism made me wonder: How did things get the way they are? And is there anything we can do about it?
Read more >>Raymond extended time in the Halo universe almost sounds like a real drug addiction. Luckily he's out now, but hopefully Halo 4 doesn't pull him back in.
Within seconds of seeing the trailer, I wanted Halo 4. Then the pesky, sensible part of my brain woke up
You won this time, brain! I won't buy Halo 4 (not yet, anyway). But I wondered why I craved the Xbox 360 sci-fi shooter so badly. That the trailer is brilliantly done is one reason. Another is that it made me think of the delightful days spent playing the great multiplayer modes of Halo 3 and Halo: Reach.
Cue flashback effects.
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Developer Telltale Games has just wrapped up its five-episode "season" of games based on the mega-popular series of graphic novels, The Walking Dead. The smart money says the team will keep the momentum going and get started on Season 2, but if it wants to keep us all in suspense for a little longer, I can think of a few other properties that could benefit from the sort of faithful and nuanced treatment we got for the zombie-apocalypse drama. I don't expect to see these titles actually come out, but this is the Internet, damn it, and it's made of dreams.
1.) The Thing
In 1982, John Carpenter released his classic film The Thing, a brutal, bleak movie about a shapeshifting alien intent on assimilating and imitating every creature on Earth. It came out against Steven Spielberg's E.T., a cuddly, optimistic film about a sad, friendly alien gardener just trying to get home. Guess which one made more money?
Still, I would argue that Carpenter's film is the better story, and it deftly handles complicated issues of trust, paranoia, and what it really means to be human in the presence of an insidious outside threat.
Telltale could easily apply the skills it honed making The Walking Dead and create an amazing, tense game in which players must make tough decisions to determine who among them is really who they claim to be before the tentacles, weird head-mouths, and spider legs start a-sprouting.
Developer Computer Artworks released a sort-of sequel to The Thing back in 2002, and while it was a perfectly decent third-person shooter, its attempts to capture the trust dynamics of the film fell flat. The Thing is not about guns, although it has plenty of those -- perhaps even more than an isolated Antarctic science station would seem to need. It's about deciding whether the person standing next to you is still who he was this morning, and what you're prepared to do if he's not. It's about the breakdown of polite society and shit getting really real without warning and people you've grown attached to dying very badly, very suddenly.
Does that remind you of anything else?
Read more >>I've always found Halo's pacing to be a little too lackadaisical. While Kermitt appreciates the series' more methodical gameplay, I look forward to checking out what 343 Industries did to mix up the "evolved combat."
I’ve been a Halo fan for a number of years, and I think Halo 4’s multiplayer is beautifully crafted. My experiences with Halo 3 and Halo: Reach in particular gave me a clear picture on how I believe the franchise's multiplayer should be designed.
With that said, I’ve found several multiplayer changes in Halo 4 that are bothersome.
Issue one centers on the sniper rifle. It is easily my favorite weapon in the series, and it requires an arguable amount of skill and luck to master (at least for one-shot kills). Developer 343 Industries drastically diminished its usefulness in this latest release.
Damage and accuracy remain the same, but weapon bloom, introduced in Reach, has returned. The feature is now more intense, proving to be a bigger annoyance than before. You fire a shot at an enemy, and your reticle blooms, and the hostile runs away.
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