Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DX:HR) was the biggest AAA release two weeks ago, which has drawn rave reviews and sold well across the entire world. But if you've actually played the game, then you've seen something annoying that it and many other games share. It happens at the beginning of the game—every time you turn it on.
Every year at the big video game trade shows around the world, like E3 and gamescon, the big three console makers each do a hot-ticket exclusive press conference to let the media know what's coming for their system. Computer games have no such press conference. Who would give it if they did?
Yesterday's installment of a Gamer's Guide to Video Game Software featured Unity 3D; today we'll be covering one of the oldest consumer game making engines, RPG Maker.
Digital distribution games are already firmly established on the PC, and they've infiltrated every present and next-gen console to some degree. Whether you like to play DOS, AAA, PC or indie games, there's a way to purchase most of them without leaving the comfort and warmth of your couch or desk.
I am the sort of man whom game companies fall all over themselves to seduce. I'm sweaty, pale, awkward, and spend too much money on video games. There are many of us, especially among XBox 360 owners. We are the most stereotypically "gamer" group of console owners. The XBox 360 doesn't have motion control like the Wii or a blu-ray player like the Playstation 3. It just plays games really well. That's why hardcore gamers like me prefer it amongst all the consoles, and probably why Silver Dolla...
The NPD Group is a market research firm that issues the most trusted sales numbers for video games. They just released their second quarter 2011 report, and the trends it reveals confirm much of what we here have been speculating here at Indie Games Ichiban (and what we've been hoping for): downloadable games have risen, while full-box retail games have fallen—that is in the US, at least.
Minecraft may seem like a game for just hardcore gamers and computer nerds, but it's totally not. It can hook anyone and everyone, from casual gamers to online addicts to total newbies—it can even turn its users into serial killers. And now, Notch and his Mojang crew have made it possible for more people in the world to become Minecraft addicts who'll never leave their servers. A console version for the Xbox 360 will be available this winter, but for now you can all enjoy the cubed sandbox wo...
Most of the indie and vintage games discussed in Indie Games Ichiban are pretty cheap to purchase. They rarely top twenty bucks, which is one of the major advantages independent games have against their sixty-buck, major league counterparts. But if you think $60 for a game and $300 for a PS3 or Xbox 360 seems like a lot, then you haven't played Steel Battalion or seen the TurboExpress. They go above and beyond what normal gamers are willing to spend for questionably entertaining products. Her...
Most employed in the game industry have two-word job titles that start with “game”—game designer, game producer, game critic, game tester, etc. Usually, they’re one or the other, even though some can be both a game designer and a game tester or game critic and game tester. And rarely does one person get to call themselves a “game everything”. Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw is the exception.
Today concludes our Gamer's Guide to Video Game Software (see Part 1 & Part 2). In our final installment, we will shift away from engines toward video games that allow you to make your own games within them.
Gamers who haven't already gotten tickets to PAX Prime, there is sad news. Three-day passes for the event are officially sold out, three full months before it starts. That is a Coachella-like ticket sale speed for such a large event.
Apple remains shrouded in mystery while continuing to sweep up small companies ahead of a rumored augmented reality headset launch.
Back in the days of NES and 8-bit gaming, I used to be a huge Castlevania fan. And it looks like I wasn't the only one. However, unlike me, gamer Nick "Nario" Hagman just couldn't let go of his Simon Belmont fascination that easy. Nario recently spent over 100 hours in Minecraft over 37 consecutive days recreating the original Castlevania game—in its entirety!
Epic Games announced today that the free version of Unreal Engine 3, Unreal Development Kit or UDK, is now compatible with Mac OS X. Apple users will now have access to arguably the most powerful piece of free game development software available in almost exactly the same way as their PC counterparts, minus some small tweaks.
This infographic from SingleGrain aptly and succinctly describes the primary differences between Facebook and Google+. Which social network will reign supreme?
Dual nurses? Random transformer shirt guy? White collar fighter? Fatso macho man? Super Mario? Ah, you must be playing Dong Dong Never Die!
Some may say riding tandem is reserved for girly girls, seniors and little kids, but anybody would be hard pressed to call brotherly X-Gamer duo Colton and Caleb Moore sissies. At first thought, executing a two-men-clutching-each-other-on-a-snowmobile-backflip might be construed as somewhat odd, but the risk of two dudes potentially falling to their death is two times more thrilling than just one.
The results are in! Here is the list of contests Wizard101 was nominated for. Here are the ones it won (It's constantly being updated!):
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!!!
Red Dead Redemption LA Times Article http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-reddead-20100425,0,3266497.story
Mortal Kombat is no stranger to envelope pushing. In 1993, Senator Lieberman called for a ban of game violence. Obviously, that didn't pan out. Rather the opposite.
Anyone who likes shooters is going to hate me for saying this: the best game of the 2000's for me was Psychonauts by Double Fine Studios. It came out in 2005 for the original Xbox, achieving critical acclaim, but never selling very well due to its sheer kookiness and poor marketing. Over the ensuing years it has become a cult classic, with downloadable re-releases on Xbox 360 (sadly no longer available). PC has allowed gamers who missed out on the original to bask in its ageless glory.
For more than a decade, Interplay was arguably the best video game publisher in America. Their list of games is a who's-who of the most creative and forward thinking games of the '90s, including everything fromOut of This World to Alone in the Dark to Earthworm Jim to Descent. They've been around since 1983, but have fallen on hard times since 1997, when they became a public company. They were acquired by a French publisher who then went bankrupt. They were forced to close their internal deve...
Japanese game shows are legendary for being more extreme (and absurd) than their American counterparts. Chris Farley immortalized the concept in a classic SNL sketch, and MXC and Ninja Warrior have both achieved great success dubbed and subtitled on American television. A big part of their appeal is how demanding they are compared to U.S. game shows. Only a few people have actually won Ninja Warrior in its 23 seasons on the air, and MXC is a constant comedy of failure and pain.
Different genres of social media have changed the world, but they are not omnipotent. In most cases this is a good thing, but not in the case of Operation Rainfall. It has been a purely well meaning social media movement that should have led to a great boon for the North American gamer public, but instead has served as a reminder of how stone aged Nintendo of America's (NOA) corporate thinking remains.
World of Warcraft has been on top of the world for seven years. No other MMO has come close to challenging its dominance of the genre, and it has generated billions of dollars for Blizzard. They have spent a lot of money adding more and more content, to the extent where the full game with all the expansion packs takes up 65 GB of hard drive space. It is a beautiful game; well balanced, and a milestone in the history of the medium.
Video games consoles have long wanted to be more than just consoles. Nintendo Japan called the NES the Famicom because they wanted to make it the sole family computer. Obviously that didn't work out, and most efforts to make consoles into all-in-one entertainment systems have had similar fates. Sony has done the best job with the Playstation consoles, probably because they have experience with other types of electronics that most video game companies do not.
In 2008, Audiosurf came out on Steam, creating the psychedelic music game genre. If you haven't played it in the intervening three years, you're missing out on one of the coolest things in video games. The player selects any MP3 on their computer, then the game builds a unique level based on that song, which the player must then navigate whilst playing a block-matching, Tetris-like puzzle game. It's an incredibly compelling audiovisual experience, one with immense replay value and surprisingl...
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.
Mass Effect 2 may have been around for a whole year... but not on the PlayStation 3. And last Tuesday, January 18th, PS3 gamers finally got their hands on a copy of the critically acclaimed RPG. Actually, this is the first time any Mass Effect game has been available on the PS3, making this a historical event for BioWare.
The Humble Indie Bundle has become like an unpredictable little gamer Christmas. It helps indie developers get their games exposure, helps gamers get cheap DRM-free games via the most user-friendly online purchasing process ever, and helps the world at large by raising money for Child's Play and EFF.
For more than a decade, free-to-play games with microtransactions (also called In-App Purchase or IAP) by which players can pay real money for in-game content have been the industry standard for online success in Asia. Mainstream American gamers have long resisted these "freemium" games, with World of Warcraft and other subscription based online games reigning supreme, and being seen as more AAA than their free-ish counterparts. Casual games developers have encountered no such problems, and m...
Many gamers see the film industry as the premier model that video games should follow, and it's no surprise. Movies are seen as the most legitimate and profitable of all artistic visual mediums, which is certainly qualities practitioners of any new medium would desire. Big budget games like Heavy Rain and L.A. Noire strive for the same level as film by aping its techniques, focusing on storytelling in a cinematic fashion, rather than creating compelling gameplay experiences.
Electronic Arts is the biggest game publisher in the world, and have been for years. And yet, their only successful internally developed games nowadays are the EA Sports mega-franchises like Madden. Most of their success has stemmed from their ability to buy other companies on their way up, squeeze the creativity out of them, and then sell them to someone else or just let them go. This week they made their largest acquisition ever when they purchased PopCap Games for $750 million upfront—as m...
One of the biggest advantages iOS has over Android as a mobile platform is how readily and fully it has embraced mobile gaming. There are over 200,000 games available in the Apple store, compared to approximately 100,000 in the Android Marketplace. As an Android-using gamer, this has always bothered me.
Today we pay homage to a phenomenon. One as diffuse and amusing as the internet itself, and as pointless as dog Halloween costumes. I'm speaking, of course, of giant games.
Crysis was an amazing game. And Crysis Warhead was great, too. If you haven't played them, you sure missed a great ride on the action train. But don't worry, you can get your feet wet with the newest edition to Crytek's Crysis series—Crysis 2—available from Electronic Arts. A demo of the multiplayer mode became available earlier this month for the Xbox 360 on Xbox Live, and now the multiplayer taster is slated for March 1st on PCs (sorry PS3 gamers). The PC demo will feature two new maps call...
Since the release of Microsoft's Kinect, there's been no shortage of useful and fun hacks. In the past, we've seen the Kinect modded for things like x-ray vision, World of WarCraft gameplay, air guitar and 3D video. And now there's even a use for all of you MineCraft gamers!
Introduction In the competitive world of today's video game scene, PC gamers are known to squeeze out the best possible visuals in their games. Every few months a new video card rolls out, and RAM is ever increasing; constant upgrading is the norm of staying ahead the curve. One of the most important things a PC gamer looks at is how many FPS (frames per second) he gets. It defines his gaming experience.
No longer do you need special glasses to experience 3D. At least, that's what Nintendo claims when it comes to their upcoming Nintendo 3DS, which uses a process called autostereoscopy.
