Piranha Bytes quietly released the Xbox 360 portRisento European audiences in October of last year, and brought it across the Atlantic at the end of February.Risenis arguably overshadowed by Piranha Bytes’ other (and popular) dark fantasy fantasy role playing games, and it’s a long time coming. Unfortunately, whether or not it was worth the wait will depend on your ability to forgive and forget. Risen‘s not that good, crushed under the weight of its own scope....
I’m a bit of an addict when it comes to puzzle games and have a nasty habit of simply buying whatever titles within the genre crop up on the download services. So it was that I picked upYosumin Live!on XBLA with very little knowledge of what the game actually was. Seeing that it was created by Square-Enix really piqued my curiousity and led me to wonder what the popular developer would come up with in a puzzler....
Rockstar Games’ Vice President of creativity andGrand Theft Autowriter Dan Houser hasvery vocally attackedthe “casual gaming” craze currently gripping the games industry. He didn’t feel the need to be particularly eloquent about it, either. “F*** all this stuff about casual gaming,” ranted the man who co-wroteGTA IV. “I think people still want games that are groundbreaking. The Wii is doing something totally different, which is fantastic. We’re hopefully going to prove that there’s also a very big audience for people who want entertainment in another form, who think of games as being a narrative device that can challenge movies....
Chronicle Books is nowaccepting pre-ordersfor Rob Smith’sRogue Leaders: The Story of LucasArts. You may remember Smith from his job as editor-in-chief of thePlayStation: The Official Magazine.Rogue Leadersis a massive book that not only details the history of LucasArts’ videogames, but also includes “more than 300 pieces of concept art, character development sketches and storyboards.” It’s undoubtedly a unique book that should shed some light on the schizophrenic nature of LucasArts in regards to their videogames....
My local NPR station has been running one of their pledge drives today. Thankfully, they’re a little more considerate than in some markets that I’ve heard and try to limit the length of the drive to as brief a period as possible. This time, it was a single day. I wonder how effective that sort of thing is, what with people waiting until the very last minute in some cases to make a donation of some kind....
Yesterday Cliffy B teased the Internetby suggestingthat today was going to be both “Jazzy” and “Rabbity.” Fans of Epic’s earlier work of course jumped to the logical conclusion that aJazz Jackrabbitannouncement was imminent, be it a new game or a port of the classics. Looks like that may not be the case. This is your “rabbity” element to the day — a demo video for iPhone developers, telling them how they could make a twin-stick shooter starring Jazz....
AltitudeandGridrunner Revolution. If you don’t already have them, now is unquestionably the time to remedy that. Steam is doing another one of thoseludicrously cheap sales for kickass games. This time around, no fewer than seven indie games (Altitude, Bob Came in Pieces,Bullet Candy,Galcon Fusion, Gridrunner Revolution, Space Giraffe,andSuper Laser Racer)are on sale fortwo dollars each, or ten bucks for the entire package. I’d generally recommend getting the entire pack for a measly tenner, but if you somehow find yourself in a position where you absolutelymustkeep at least six dollars in your wallet (perhaps a member of your family has been taken hostage, or something), I’d suggestAltitudeandGridrunner Revolution....
As a college student, few things were more depressing than clearing out of the dorms at the end of the year. I can vividly remember tearing a year’s worth of memories off the four walls I’d come to call home, saying goodbye to dear friends, and leaving a sad, empty husk behind for next year’s residents. But what if your dorm roomalreadylooks like a cheerless, barren, shell? Well then, the Danish gaming gearsmiths over atSteelSerieswant to give you the hook up....
If you’ve been paying attention these last few months, you’re familiar with theglacier-slow newsdripabout what Steven Spielberg’s upcoming game projects would be. Today — perhaps a little ahead of schedule, given the story’s July 16th print date —Newsweek‘s N’Gai Croal finally dropped some specifics on Spielberg’s projects. Not much, but hey, beats what we had last week (which is to say, y’know, nothing). The previously-mentioned project exclusive to the Wii is an action-puzzle simulator, code-named PQRS, which Croal describes as a game that “neatly blends the creativity of the building-blocks game Jenga with the charm of a Saturday-morning cartoon”....
A curious listing from BradyGames on GameStop has sparked some discussion — it’s for a “BorderlandsGOTY Official Strategy Guide.” In this era of never-ending add-ons, it’s become commonplace for Game of the Year versions to more or less just be the core game plus whatever extra content has come out so far. In the case ofBorderlands, that would be “The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned,” “Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot,” and “The Secret Armory of General Knoxx....
I’ve always had mixed emotions about the “take some popular superheroes and make them sexy ladies” school of character design. It’s simultaneously a cheap gimmick, and a inarguably effective technique to take characters that young men want tobe, and turn them into characters young men want to bewith. I’d be lying if it didn’t work on me in the past. I definitely had a thing for She-Hulk and Devil Man Lady at one point in my life....
What would the fastest car in the world look like? I don’t know yet, but I know it will have the Red Bull logo on it. A collaboration between Polyphony Digital, Red Bull and Adrian Newey attempts to answer this question…virtually. They are working on the Project X1 Prototype race car, which aims to throw out every race regulation to make what would simply be the fastest car physics would allow....
To anybody familiar with Singapore law, it should come as no surprise thatThe Darknesshas now beenbannedfrom the country’s shelves. For ‘excessive violence,’ the thought police of Singapore have issued a big ‘DO NOT WANT’ to 2K’s comic book adaptation where you can eat hearts and command slithering blackness. I’m sure the developers are weeping bitterly over losing such a vibrant and open market as Singapore’s, where games flow like candy … haha, sorry, I almost threw up with the sheer force of sarcasm there....
