June 15, 2010 by Nate
Some games are unforgettable. After forking over our birthday money at K-Mart, we bounce all the way home in the backseat of the station wagon, wrestle the plastic wrap away from the box, gingerly place the game in the system, and steady our feverishly shaking hands with an anaconda grip on the controller. We don't let go for hours. And when the credits roll, we tear up a little, knowing we'll always cherish that first time through.
And then there are games that are largely forgotten weeks after release. Niche appeal, scathing reviews, or even just lack of hype can doom a game to obscurity and the Target bargain bin. But even these games deserve a second look...sometimes. Every once in a while, a kernel of brilliance can be found within these steaming piles of mediocrity. The purpose of this feature is to sift out some of these conceptual gems and put them under the microscope.
Today we'll deal out the Poker Races from ExciteBots: Trick Racing, and see how easy it can be to add layers of strategy to a game by simply cramming another game into it.
Read moreJune 14, 2010 by Paul Eastwood
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is the final chapter of the Metal Gear saga (kind of). It seeks to wrap up the complicated plots from the previous three games, which up to this point seem to be fairly divergent. It also seeks to perfect the gameplay and presentation for which Kojima-san and his Metal Gear Solid games have become famous.
It is also the first game in the series on the PlayStation 3, and it uses this hardware to be one of the best looking games ever. The MGS series has always used the in-game graphics engine to render its cutscenes to prevent a jarring disconnect between graphic styles, and this is the first time it works perfectly. The in-game character models look good enough that you can't complain a bit. The facial animations and lip-syncing is increbible. The game is, in a word, stunning.
So we know the game looks good, we can tell that from screenshots and trailers Is it good? Is it fun? Is it worth buying? For those of you with short attention spans, the answer is yes. For everyone else, read on.
June 11, 2010 by Greg Noe
With E3 2010 set to kick off next week, we thought it was fine time at the First Hour to make some predictions! Most of these might be more wishful thinking than realistic expectations, but this is the only time of year where gamers are actually surprised, so we're going to make the most of it.
You'll find predictions from Greg, Grant, Steve, Paul E., Paul A, Ian, Nate, and Mike in Omaha below on topics ranging from Natal to Sega releasing another console and everything in between. Predictions are guaranteed to be totally inaccurate, but we had fun putting them together and imaging the possibilities.
We hope to sum up our thoughts about the conferences and games announced next week every few days, but we'll definitely have a recap when it's over determining who was the most accurate. The First Hour doesn't really do news that often, but we'll try not to interrupt our daily reviews and editorials that much. Either way, we've got a whole slew of content queued up.
Enjoy!
Read moreJune 10, 2010 by Greg Noe
If there's a series I lost track of over the years it's Mario RPG,which is really now made up of two series. After the original SuperMario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars on the SNES, Nintendo split uptheir new Square-spawned role-playing series between their consoles andportables. The curious Paper Mario started off on the Nintendo 64 andthe even curiouser Mario & Luigi kicked off with Superstar Saga onthe Game Boy Advance.
While I had loved the original Super MarioRPG, I had a bit more trouble getting into Paper Mario. I playedthrough most of the game, but after watching my cousin beat it fromstart to finish over a long weekend, I packed it away for good. Andfor whatever reason, I never played any games from the Mario &Luigi series... until now.
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's InsideStory was getting great reviews so I added it to my Christmas list on awhim. I received it, surprisingly, and added it to my portable gamingqueue, and after forcing myself to finally beat Zelda: Spirit Tracksand read through the long Miles Edgeworth game, I finally landed onBowser's Inside Story. Why the heck did I wait so long?
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June 09, 2010 by Nate
Quick Time Events. Ever since God of War and Resident Evil 4 exploded onto the scene with button-prompt sequences of gore and horror, the industry has shown its sheep-like nature and incorporated these Gotcha! moments into games without thinking about how they make an interactive experience better. Many gamers have adjusted to the fact that every cutscene now has an awful series of play buttons throughout, but I personally would like to cram all the QTEs in the world into a space shuttle full of cobras and launch them directly into the sun if it meant I'd never have to see another one again.
That said, it's not impossible to come across decent use of QTEs. Indeed, before Resident Evil 4 set the standard at the advent of 2005, the mechanic was most prominently-used by the Dreamcast's crown jewel, Shenmue. In fact, it was Yu Suzuki, that game's director, who coined the term "Quick Time Event." Suzuki put the gimmick to good use throughout Shenmue, allowing protagonist Ryo Hazuki to do everything from tossing drunkards around in bar brawls to saving little girls from incoming soccer balls. One of the reasons the game is so beloved today is that it allowed the player to engage in such a wide variety of scenarios, many of which were supported with smartly-designed QTEs.
Good QTEs didn't end with Shenmue, however, even though sometimes it seems that's the case. Like God of War, other Playstation heavyweights have managed to use QTEs to enhance a game experience. I think it's only fair that we look at a few of those, as well as some alternatives to these timed button-prompts for cinematic flair in games.
Read moreJune 08, 2010 by Greg Noe
A Mass Effect film has pretty much been rumored since gamers saw the first trailer of the game years ago, and as with most popular series, the inevitable moment of the movie being announced has finally arrived. Whether it actually happens or not is still way up in the air, and Hollywood's track record with game movies isn't much help either. For every Resident Evil movie (four of them now), there are 10 ready-for-the-big-screen games that can't even get their films off the ground. Halo had Peter Jackson backing it and that was canned. David Hayter, legendary voice actor of Solid Snake and successful screenwriter can't even get enough cash to make a Metal Gear Solid film. And yet the Hitman movie is made.
The names fronting the money and penning the script are impressive though, so this might just happen, and if it does, here's my candidate list of actors.
Read moreJune 07, 2010 by Greg Noe
I'll be the first to admit this review is rather ill-timed, heck, I'vealready published my full review of Super Mario Galaxy 1, and Nate'sfirst hour of Super Mario Galaxy 2 is already up! But I had thisstored up for the right moment, and unfortunately that right momentcame and went a few weeks ago, so the new right moment is now. Betterlate than never.
I loved Super Mario Galaxy, what an awesomegame. I didn't even have a chance to really play it until this year,but it still astounded me, the only game on the Wii that has. Ialready talked about why I love the game, but here's how I startedloving the game. My impressions of the game's first hour, at the timeit had a lot of work to do on me. I worshiped Super Mario 64 in myearly teens but could never get into Super Mario Sunshine. The gamesat on my shelf for months until I finally returned it to my friend. So here was another 3D Mario game that I didn't really care aboutplaying, but of course I was going to give it a shot when theopportunity arose.
So sorry this is late, but there is alwayssomeone out there who hasn't been exposed to Super Mario Galaxy, andhere is it's first hour review, just for you.
June 04, 2010 by Greg Noe
Way back in May of 1992 for my eighth birthday, my cousins presented me with a subscription Nintendo Power. I had never received anything as cool as my own magazine in the mail before, so when the June '92 issue arrived a few days later I was in heaven. It would be another two years until I bought my own Super Nintendo, but my NES and new Nintendo Power subscription were enough for me.
I kicked off my new Magazine Nostalgia section a few weeks back with my own appearance in Nintendo Power #85, but I have a ton more to discuss. I recently semi-organized all my video game magazines of which I have hundreds, spanning from Nintendo Power, EGM, Game Players, and more. I know I won't ever be able to discuss them all, but I'd like to pretend to try, so why not cover the first one I ever owned?
Do you have any interesting magazine stories? Let us know in the comments section!
Read moreJune 03, 2010 by Nate
Quick Time Events. So many games have used them to some extent in the last five years that just about every gamer has an opinion on them. Mine is that they are the worst gameplay gimmick to take the industry by storm in a long time, and I wouldn't mind seeing them all packed into a burlap sack filled with leeches and thrown into the depths of a volcano. They're tacky, they're unintuitive, and their attempts to engage players in cinematic animations backfire and break the sense of immersion one has with a game. And unfortunately for me, they're just about everywhere these days.
Two behemoths let loose in early 2005 can be thanked -- or blamed -- for the salvo of games that have featured QTEs in the last five years. The first, with a January 11 release date, was Resident Evil 4. The game was extremely well-received: it won many Game of the Year awards, offered a fresh take on the aging Resident Evil formula, and gave Gamecube owners a third-party exclusive worth bragging about. The other member of the gruesome twosome that brought us into the era of QTEs is known as God of War. Released just two months after Resident Evil 4, the game received just as many accolades and turned heads back to the PS2 as quickly as they'd been lost to the Gamecube's horror hit. Is it any wonder that the industry went in the direction it did when two such monumental successes as these both prominently featured a relatively unused gameplay gimmick?
Today we'll take a look at how the smart use of QTEs helped put these two games on the map, and watch a few examples of QTEs gone wrong. And trust me, there was a huge pool of resources for the latter.
Read moreJune 02, 2010 by Greg Noe
Sometimes, nostalgia has the habit of biting back. Hard. Ten years ago, Perfect Dark was released on the Nintendo 64, and along with The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, capped off a great system by pushing it way past its limits. I gobbled this game up when it was released by throwing parties in my parent's basement and putting off getting my driver's license for another month. GoldenEye 007 was a great first-person shooter, but we were ready for some Perfect Dark.
Ten years later, and Perfect Dark is ported to Xbox Live Arcade. I was a bit worried: how would a pre-Halo first-person shooter play against its modern day brethren? In my opinion, while GoldenEye was the console shooter breakout hit, Halo had set the standard for how they should actually play. Its control scheme is still used to this day, and imagining myself strafing with the C-buttons gives me the shivers.
For only $10 though, it was a hard bargain to pass up. Here was a game that I coughed up $59.99 + taxbefore I even had a job, I could easily hand over 800 Microsoft Points for a trip down memory lane. My friend Jim also bought the game, and we decided to take the journey together, playing through the single player campaign via online co-op (imagine doing that ten years ago on the Nintendo 64!). While we had both played the original, I was the more die-hard fan and had pored countless hours into my multiplayer character. We started up, with him playing as the lovely Joanna and me as the blonde no-named sister.
