Hot on the heels of the news that Xbox 360 players have unlocked 2.5 billion achievements, Gamasutra has an interesting article up on these meta-rewards that have taken the gaming world by storm over the last few years.
They cover a broad range of topics, like how to design for a good mix of achievement difficulty and the differences in achievements between hardcore and casual games. Read more…
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The big video game news yesterday actually came from the Hollywood circuit. Apparently there’s a Shadow of the Colossus movie underway. The gaming blogs are all a-twitter because the writer attached to the project is Justin Marks, who wrote “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li.”
The nicest thing you can say about any given video game movie produced so far is that it’s “watchable.” The second-nicest thing you can say about any given video game movie is that it’s “so bad it’s good.” The Legend of Chun-Li was neither of these.
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Rumors are flying that the 3.1 patch for World of Warcraft is coming tonight. Here’s a roundup of the expected changes.
If you’re not one of the 12-odd million players, you can sit this post out. But come on, Vin Diesel is in. Are you saying you’re better than Vin Diesel?
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For years, you’ve enjoyed movies about my antics. At times, you’ve turned to your friends and bragged that you have a much better way of getting out of my traps. You think you’re worthy of life. You’re convinced that if this happened to you, you’d get the better of me.
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In Baldr Sky: Dive 1 - Lost Memory, players scoot a giant robot around an arena, moving in and out of melee range and attacking with a huge and customizable selection of weapons.
Baldr Sky’s polished gameplay wouldn’t be out of place in a Western game, but for one thing: The majority of the game is spent listening to spoken dialog and looking at static pictures of anime characters. It’s a blend of action and the visual novel genre that flourishes in Japan.
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Madworld is an odd one, all right.
It bears more than a passing resemblance to Itchy and Scratchy from The Simpsons: Animated hyperviolence as a satire of the crass media culture, but also a convenient excuse to show someone getting their heart cut with a chainsaw.
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I wish I’d gone to the Game Developer’s Conference last week. I didn’t even know they had an expo space open to the public until it was wrapping up. I could have brought back some quality anecdotes like these.
- Goichi Suda (Killer 7, No More Heroes) asks Emil Pagliarulo if Bethesda Softworks would set an installment of the postnuclear Fallout series in Japan. Pagliarulo replies, “Well, what can we destroy in Japan?” to which Suda can only say “Wow…” after an awkward silence.
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If you’re going to play Resident Evil 5 solo, I wouldn’t even bother.
With a friend, playing co-op, RE5 is a pretty good game. By yourself, it’s a chore.
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A game developer walks into a bar and orders a beer. The bartender pours him one and says “That’ll be nine dollars. Prices have tripled because of the recession.” The game developer puts three dollars down on the bar and says “It’s ok… I’m recession-proof.”
Jokes stolen from the Double Fine web game Host Master and the Conquest of Humor aside, there’s some news from retail outlet GameStop that reminds us that not everyone is hurting right now.
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When I read about the OnLive service being demoed at the GDC, I didn’t believe it.
In a nutshell, the game runs on their expensive hardware instead of your inexpensive laptop or set-top box. Your controller input goes to their machines over the Internet. Video of what’s happening gets streamed back to your tv or computer.
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