video games

Chris Knight's avatar

Thank the Lord this isn’t a Super Mario Brothers game.  Or a Fallout title.

So here’s the conceit: if you die in Upsilon Circuit, you get perma-permadeath.  As in: you’ll never play the game again.  Not because you won’t want to play but because you literally can’t play.  Ever again.  You get one life, one chance to make it through.  And that’s it.  One shot at making it through to final screen.

And it won’t be easy.

From the article at Kotaku:

The fantasy RPG plops specially selected players onto a single server
and divides them into two teams of four. This means only eight players
will ever be playing Upsilon Circuit at any given moment, and their adventures will likely come to swift, brutal ends. Sounds terrifying, right? Every move you make can literally be your last.

On top of
that, the game will have a

...
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Chris Knight's avatar

You might have heard about the Internet Arcade that Internet Archive fired up a few months ago.  All of those arcade games that we (or at least some of us) used to feed quarters into?  Well, almost 700 of them – as in the originals, not home console ports – are available to play for free in your web browser!  Which is a great thing because these games are a considerable part of computer technology history and Internet Archive is preserving them for posterity.

Well anyhoo, last week I visited Internet Arcade for the first time.  And something occurred to me: that maybe I could see if Zaxxon was in the collection.

Bit of info: Zaxxon was a game that Sega came out with in the early Eighties, and it’s arguably the first video game to attempt a 3-D feel for the player.  As you fly your fighter ...

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Today shall be a day long remembered…

Courtesy of the amazing folks at GOG.com (the GOG stands for Good Old Games), what are by far two of the greatest computer/video games ever wrought by mortal hands have gone on sale today, ready to be enjoyed by a new generation or by those who have longed to reminisce about those heady days of the early Nineties.

Stick it to the Empire in
X-Wing…

And I would be saying that even if they weren’t Star Wars titles!

X-Wing was an astounding and revolutionary game in its own right and when it came out early in 1993 it took the industry by storm.  With a brilliant combination of 3D graphics, rich user interface, an immersive storyline and balanced yet incredibly challenging gameplay, X-Wing was the Star Wars experience that everyone wanted but few thought we would ever get.  This ...

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Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, iPad, iOS, Apple, BioWare, Aspyr MediaWhen I first heard about it this morning, it was only from a report and there had been no announced availability but my first reaction was already “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!!”

Guess who just spent ten bucks on the App Store?

BioWare’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, deemed by many to be the greatest Star Wars video/computer game ever and one of THE best games of all time period, has been ported to the iPad and is on sale now!  Ten years after it was first released, Aspyr Media has taken this much-beloved classic and put the whole experience in the palm of your hands, to enjoy wherever you happen to be.  It requires at least an iPad 2 to run and it needs iOS 6.  As well as some hefty space for the install (1.9 gigs free but I’m hearing at least 2.5 ...

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Here’s the Xbox One…

Xbox One, Microsoft, Xbox, video games, consoles,

There is no backward compatibility: you can’t play anything from your already-existing library of Xbox 360 games on it.  You can’t play your original Xbox games on it either.  Ditto for any games from Xbox Live Arcade.  It has no power button (it stays on all the time) and it needs an Internet connection to really function optimally.  It has a hard drive, but it’s non-removable.  To play your games you must install from the disc.  If there is no more room on the hard drive you’ll have to wipe some games off (then re-install if you want to play them again later on).  It won’t work at all without the Kinect sensor (something which unless you have ample enough space, could be a problem).  Once you play a new game it’s tied into that Xbox One unit and you can’t easily take it anywhere ...

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BioShock Infinite has been out for over a month. It’s a game I haven’t played an I’m not inclined to either. Why? Because in this blogger’s opinion it’s not a true BioShock game.

For me, the BioShock mythos will always be focused on Rapture: that city beneath the waves of the North Atlantic, not a brightly-lit metropolis floating Lord-knows-where in the sky. The first BioShock game was and remains the most intellectual and even enlightening video game I have ever enjoyed. It’s difficult even calling it a “video game”.  From what I’ve heard, BioShock Infinite‘s world of Columbia is a beauty to behold and has a degree of moral choice… but in the end it doesn’t leave as strong an impression as Rapture.

I’ll say it again: BioShock is high-brow literature of a whole new kind that hasn’t been seen before. And its sequel BioShock 2 did a pretty ...

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There goes whatever plans I might have had for that day…




GameInformer.com has news and details about Batman: Arkham Origins: the follow-up to Rocksteady’s Arkham Asylum and Arkham City.  However this is a prequel to those games, taking place “years before both of the previous Arkham titles when a young, unrefined Batman encounters many supervillains for the first time”.

Rocksteady won’t be developing this new game however.  They’ve handed the baton to  Warner Bros. Games Montreal, but have made all their tools and resources available so that the series’ look and feel remains consistent.  Given how Arkham Asylum garnered universal acclaim as one of the best video games of all time – and that Arkham City received even greater praise – WB Games Montreal has a high mark to hit, much less surpass.  But after seeing that trailer I’ve confidence they can pull it off.

Now if we ...

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Somebody educate me: how do people like Dianne Feinstein get elected to anything whatsoever? Feinstein shouldn’t be trusted with city sanitation manager, much less United States Senator.

Having failed in her bid to ban “assault weapons” (there is no such thing, incidentally) Demented Dianne has now decided that violent video games must be controlled and regulated by act of Congress.

From the article at VentureBeat…

Speaking to an audience of 500 people in her hometown of San Francisco, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said that game publishers need to make voluntary actions to avoid glorifying guns and violence following the Newtown elementary school massacre in December.

She noted that Congress would take action if the industry didn’t do something, according to the Associated Press.

“If Sandy Hook doesn’t [make game publishers change] … then maybe we have to proceed, but that is in the future,” said Feinstein.

She went

...
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LucasArts, Disney, closing down

LucasArts is no more.

Disney laid off the entire staff and shuttered the studio this morning.  There had been speculation that LucasArts might be liquidated after Disney acquired Lucasfilm and the other companies beneath its umbrella five months ago.  The video game studio had been flailing in recent years despite moderate successes like LEGO Star Wars.  On the other hand there were turkeys like Kinect Star Wars.  It had been hoped that games like the upcoming Star Wars: 1313 would have increased its fortunes.

But now it’s official: LucasArts has been closed down.  Disney has stated that future games will be licensed to other studios for development.  Some like Star Wars: 1313 may never get released at all.  The “LucasArts” name will continue to exist but the firm itself and its development staff has been disbanded.

I can see that as an appropriate measure.  The Star Wars: ...

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Rock Band, Rock Band 2, Rock Band 3, Harmonix, video games, music games, American Pie, Don McLean, Deep Purple, Highway StarToday is a bittersweet occasion in the annals of video game history: Harmonix is releasing the final downloadable content for its Rock Band series.

Since the first Rock Band came out in late 2007 the studio had promised new songs weekly for downloadable purchase and play.  It kept that promise for 281 consecutive weeks: far, far longer than most players probably expected.  Maybe even longer than it has been profitable.  Hard to find that kind of reliability in any modern industry, much less the video game one.

Fittingly, the last tune that players can get for Rock Band is Don McLean’s 1971 classic “American Pie”.  And were I the sort I’d be drinking whiskey and rye…

I only played Rock Band and Rock Band 2, and I have to agree with what Brett Makedonski has beautifully written on Destructoid: this series had an immense impact on ...

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