Cooperative play has been forcibly removed from Prototype! How horrible! How could something so shocking, so utterly devastating happen right under our noses? Is there something we could have done? Is there anything we can still do? Is there any chance our destructive dreams will ever come true? Is there any reason to ever gets my hope up again, if the possibility of a devastating turnaround is waiting to crush my hopes?
Prototype was going to make Crackdown and Grand Theft Auto look like tiny dolls in a lifeless doll house. Being helmed by the guys who made Hulk: Ultimate Destruction is promise enough that their ensuing project would blow minds wide open, but have you seen what they have in store for Prototype? A huge, destructible cities with a bursting population of eager people just waiting to be possessed. It sounds like the perfect game!
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Popularity: 10% [?]
Microsoft is putting their giant, money-coated boot on the throats of arcade shooter fans around the world. They have decided to reject developer 5pb’s proposal to port a few classic Cave shooters - most notably DoDonPachi Dai Ou Jou Black Label X and Ketsui X - to the Xbox Live Arcade. Sure, hardcore fans of the genre are now eagerly constructing epitaphs of the men in charge at Microsoft, and5pb will have to explain to their collective family why they can only eat corned beef for the next year, but what does this mean for the average gamer?
Microsoft doesn’t seem like they have a plan with XBLA. The service is full of arcade and console ports from the last twenty years, a few welcome board game adaptations and the occasional original game tossed in for good measure. When laying the business smack down on 5pb, MS said they were trying to cut down on retro ports. Ok, if that’s your plan, I have no beef. But will this new strategy hold?
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Popularity: 10% [?]
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess has the distinct honor of being one of the greatest game ever created–so great, in fact, people are climbing over each other to toss rocks at it. Few games of this quality are hated so fiercely by this many people. Is the hate justified? Or are people just spewing their anger for no reason?
There is a very real reason why people are not shy about throwing insults TP’s way: it is not the revolution people were expecting. Though the game introduces many new gameplay scenarios and a wider world to explore than previous title in the franchise, it doesn’t try to leap away from its comfortable past.
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Popularity: 17% [?]
Sandy Duncan, the amusingly-named former CEO of Xbox Europe, isn’t exactly a popular fella these days. In fact, what he’s preaching is way, WAY, out of the mainstream. And what he’s got to say is going to downright kill you–he believes that console gaming will be completely dead before 2020 rears its head.
It’s not that we’re all going to up and decide that only one console should win, and thus completely destroy the concept; it’s rather that Duncan believes that one standard format will inevitably win out, and gamers, tired of buying a console for a handful of games, will flock to one centralized platform where digital distribution–on par with Xbox Live Arcade and similar services on Wii and PS3–will provide all the games we could ever want.
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Popularity: 10% [?]
So Keanu Reeves, His Dudeship, has just blown off the entire concept of coming back for Constantine 2. This falls, for me, under the category of “I’ll Believe It When I See It”, because I’m having a seriously rough time believing that this guy’s career is so tightly packed with major roles that he’d turn down a monster paycheck like Constantine 2 would generate.
That and, let’s be honest, he actually managed to play John Constantine fairly well. I’ll emphasize fairly as the differences between the comic book John Constantine and Keanu’s version are weird and enormous. But still…the job was solidly done. So why turn your nose up at a good thing?
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Popularity: 11% [?]
Forget just Constantine: In recent interviews, everyone’s favorite stone-faced action hero has made clear his decision to never, ever star in a sequel ever again.
From your mouth to God’s ears, Keanu.
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Popularity: 10% [?]
Now, Thai horror isn’t exactly something I hear a lot out of. Oh, sure, Japanese horror has been huge for years, and the Koreans can generally toss one together. The Chinese now officially despise it, and I’ve even caught a Malaysian film or two. Which is why I was so interested to hear about The Coffin, a Thai film about a strange ritual used to ward off bad luck.
In a move to cheat death, apparently the Thai have been known to lay in coffins for a little while. In The Coffin, a man and a woman try this ritual out, only to face a serious of inexplicable—and horrifying—incidents afterward. Oh, sure, some make the case that it’s about the beauty of life and death and suchlike but it sounds like it might manage to pack in some halfway decent scares, which has me interested. Of course, people may be slapping up the metaphysical metaphorical labels due to who’s got the director’s slot—the former director of Beautiful Boxer. Interestingly, there’s another film of the same name due to be released Halloween in the United States, which makes me wonder if there’ll be a lot of confusion between the two. But until then, there’s plenty of the regular variety to be had on Kwanzoo’s horror movie trivia.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Every single legendary and big-budget horror movie of the past fifty years has either been remade, or is going to be. If it had the slightest potential for monkeymaking brand recognition, the execs were on it like white on rice. But with Halloween, Friday the 13th, House of Wax, and Nightmare on Elm Street crossed off their lists, where will the studios turn next?
Why, B-movies, of course. This year will see a new version of 1980’s Prom Night, one of the films that helped crown Jamie Lee Curtis as Scream Queen. But the people want more - so they’ll get it.
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Popularity: 21% [?]
After hearing about this list of idiocy thanks to my good friends out at Destructoid (I’m really beginning to love Destructoid), I figured it would be entertaining for us all to mock GamesRadar mercilessly via their list of the thirteen worst gaming innovations of all time.
So let’s go check out what GamesRadar hates, and then wail on it like Trekkies at Lucasarts Ranch.
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Popularity: 11% [?]
It’s not often I find myself having reason to question the British Media, but after Daily Mail’s mind-boggling decision to put Anne Diamond in charge of reviewing video games, I have little choice. It may be a bit sexist or ageist or whatever-ist to say so, but maybe a fiftyish mother of four is NOT the best choice to be a video game reviewer. Let’s go ahead and use her own words to show just why she probably wasn’t a smart move.
First, let’s try her “review” of Scarface: The World is Yours. She says:
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Popularity: 10% [?]
