Are you familiar with Studio Ghibli? It's the dreamy Japanese animation studio responsible for anime classics Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Howl's Moving Castle. Regarded as highly inventive, serene, and spooky, Studio Ghibli puts out internationally renown films, loaded with magic, monsters and lovable creatures, such as Totoro (pictured to the right, and above).
No game is perfect. Well maybe except for Super Mario Brothers 3. In the last two posts I've been praising Tera but it's not without its shortcomings.
Is game play king? Or was it that graphics is king? or maybe the story? Arghhh... well, regardless from which school of thought you come from, Tera online has bet most of their chips on game play.
I love role-playing games. They tell great stories, require intense strategy, and make minimal demands of my tyrannosaurus-like hand-eye coordination. The idea of an RPG experience, at least on paper, is to allow users to play the role of a character. However, real people do not gain generic experience points for killing things, nor do they pause for each other during combat or have the ability to carry hundreds of potion bottles without slowing down. These can be fun gameplay mechanics, but ...
Yesterday, Electronic Arts had a nice sale on Steam for 40-60 percent off some of their Sims titles, which included The Sims 3 (along with its DLCs) and SimCity 4. I've never been a big Sims fan, especially with the slew of virtual people games in the last decade, so I didn't realize until now that Maxis had stopped making their SimCity games; They haven't released any city building Sim games since SimCity 4 eight years ago. There was SimCity Societies in 2007, but it was made by a different ...
I was raised in the glory days of Japanese RPG's (JRPG's) on the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest were the biggest game franchises, and real gamers could debate their merits endlessly. We remained engaged in the stories of the games, even though the soldiers, princesses and schoolchildren all had spiky day-glo hair. We waded through hours of randomly triggered menu-based battles instead of playing Doom or baseball. And we loved every minute of it.
Real-time strategy (RTS) was the most popular genre in PC games at one time. It put Blizzard on the map—one of the biggest game developers in the world. And it buried the once venerable turn-based strategy genre, the only survivor being the Civilization series. But like hair metal in the late ‘80s, RTS reached its saturation point. Many bands (games) were too similar and used ornamentation over innovation. Suddenly, the fans left. From ’95 to ’03, Command & Conquer releases were more like new...
Guiding internet users to useful content is one of the most lucrative businesses in the world. This process is called aggregation. Google and other search engines form the top of the food chain, aggregating all of the content on the web in response to queries. There are all sorts of other important aggregators though, and you probably use at least one every day: Fark and Reddit for web content, Rotten Tomatoes for movie reviews, and Metacritic for a variety of media, but most importantly, vid...
The classic Super Mario Bros is perhaps the most beloved video game on Earth. Almost daily, homages to Mario pop up on the web over and over and over again. Everybody loves the charming 2D world of Mario. But what would Mario look like in 3D… and moreover, what would Super Mario feel like as a First Person Shooter game?
Tune in! Below, an attendee of the Game Developers Conference 2011 captures footage of the new eye-popping visual effects in Epic Games' latest upgrade of their Unreal Engine 3, a "toolset used in blockbuster video games, 3D visualizations, digital films and more." If this is what the graphics looks like captured from an audience cell phone, well, one can only imagine what it would look like on your widescreen... The demo, titled "Samaritan", ran on a custom-built PC system in real-time compu...
Without Richard Channing Garfield the world would be a much grayer and less interesting place today, at least for all of us. He created Magic in college, playtested it throughout, accidentally found a publisher for it, and wound up the the most well-known and successful paper game designer in the world (sorry Guygax, make something new why don't ya?). He does not seek the limelight, has not had a snappy biography written about him (or his game, amazingly enough) and I thought we should pay a ...
Has anyone actually used the Kinect for fitness purposes? If so, which games are the best?
It's that time of year again! Time to vote for that special best game of the year! But this time, it's the best game of the decade! Let's all give a woot to WIZARD101!!!
Auto accept facebook requests and gift back to your friends! In this tutorial, I'll show you how you can auto accept Facebook requests and gift back to your friends. If you're like me and get hundreds of Facebook requests each day - this will be a life saver. You'll be able to focus on playing the Facebook games - and let GiftAuto handle the rest.
Definition Declare is a card game played by 3 or more people. If 4 people are playing the game, then one pack of 52 cards (without the jokers) is sufficient. For 4 to 8 people, two packs of cards are required, without jokers.
So what's all the fuss about World of Warcraft? I guess the first question would be 'is there a fuss?' and the simple answer is Yes there is, very much so.
These impressions are coming from a person completely new to the Final Fantasy Online world. Never played FF 11 or the FF 14 Beta. This game is not friendly to new people. The account creation is a Kafka like experience in things that don't make sense. For the game itself, the beginning tutorial is awful and does not really teach you the basics of combat. Here is a small breakdown of my opinions, with the good points first so that they don't get overshadowed by the negatives.
This week Farmville is revisiting some old themes for 24 hours each. Tuesday
A playful Super Nintendo-like version of Bayonetta by the developer of the game, Platinum Games. I would love to play this on a DS.
Funny video, sort of like the Jay Leno street questions segment. IGN asks regular people in San Francisco what they think a game is about based on the box art. They showed people different games and they gave really frank answers.
You can get Alien Swarm for free on Steam starting today. Alien Swarm is a 4 person co-op adventure with an updated Source engine and the ability to create custom levels. Think of this as a top view Left 4 Dead or Killing Floor, but with aliens. Too bad they are not zombie aliens, but it's a free game so we can't complain.
Very cool video by Eurogamer showing the game world's 24 hour period in seconds. If you've only seen screenshots of the game it's hard to grasp just how beautiful the game is in motion.
About a decade ago, Deus Ex came out to rave reviews. Except this guy Tom Chick hated it. And said so, in a pretty blunt manner.
Nutritionist, Chrissy Thums, discuss proper nutritional content snack choices on and off the field, in between games and post game.
And other notes on video game music...
From Pixel Prospector. Most of them are platformers/puzzle games. They explain why. Hey JD weren't you making a game? How's that coming along?
Not enough bible in your games? Damn right! Until we get Grand Theft Moses this is the next best thing. Think of this game as the Old Testament + Acid Trip + Jpop Male Idols. From the Producers of Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, and Okami. El Shaddai is a very unique looking game, very much looking forward to it.
Game play trailer for the game of the upcoming movie with Michael Sera. Both the game and the movie will be coming out this August.
Shows game play from the game. Obsidian, why is your animations and models so horrible in all your games?
A November release week in May It used to be that games marked to be blockbusters (expected to sell more than a million in their first month) would always be released during the holiday September to December season. November was always the month companies chose to release their best game. This release model worked fine until the last few years, when too many games were being released in November and companies started to see diminishing returns on their titles because of the release rush.
Kick Ass Game Review Part 1: Background & Voice Talent There are three parties involved in bringing you The Kick Ass Game:
Name your price for 5 indie games!http://www.wolfire.com/humble This event will run for a week and the money raised will go towards two charities. The Humble Indie bundle is a collection of five indie games where you can set your price! Want to buy the whole package (worth $80 retail) for $10, $5, $1, or even a penny? sure, go ahead, you can pay as much or as little as you want. Some have payed over a hundred for the bundle, but the average is around $7-$8 dollars.The games:
Kiss Ass Game First Impressions Review of the game next week. Here are some quick impressions of the game and the first level
What's the highest score you ever achieved in one SCRABBLE game? 500? 600? 700?
After you have your PlayStation 3, you should set up your PlayStation Network account so you can fully benefit from PS3 games. In this video walkthrough, tour everything game related for download onto your PS3. Discover exclusive titles, demos, themes and add-ons to enhance your gaming experience. The PlayStation Store is a simple, user-friendly interface that's easy to use. Download games on your PS3 from the PlayStation Store.
Arcade gaming just got about a million times cooler. VirtuSphere offers an interface that captures the players movements in 360 degrees, and then translates these movements into a video game. Rumors of the technology first emerged back in 2006, but the real life application has only recently just surfaced.
More than 1,200 students and staff from the University of Alberta set a Guinness World Record for the world's largest dodgeball game in early February. The group nearly tripled the former record of a 450-person game. Awesome aerial footage of the event below.
Frank Lampard and Kelly Smith show a fun way to improve your control using your head, shoulders, knees and toes. This is a mid level practice and drill for younger kids. Practice Lampard and Smith's keepy-up game.
In this video you will learn how to play burned ps1 (Playstation) games on a non-modded ps2 (Playstation 2). Play burned PS1 games on a PS2 without a modchip.
This pool shooting video demonstrates the proper stance for a power break, or shooting the cue ball at the triangle form at the beginning of a game. Your feet should be wide apart, body weight forward, make several practice shots, and a strong shot with straight follow through. By using proper technique, you will open any billiard game with a statement. Stand for a power break when shooting pool.
