Features
Posted January 25th 2012 by Frankie Aguilar.
I've never really been a huge fan of puzzle games. Don't get me wrong, I played the hell out of Tetris, and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't killed almost every single second waiting at doctors' offices destroying Bejeweled. Let's chock my distaste up to frustrating puzzle portions of third-person action games on the original PlayStation. A few years ago I picked up Valve's Orange Box, and I'll be honest, it was solely to get my hands on Team Fortress 2. But I was intrigued by Portal, mostly because I had no idea what it was. I could only assume it involved portals. This gem over the course of just a few hours completely changed my perception of puzzle games. Portal was a revelation, introducing a brand new gameplay mechanic that was at the same time familiar and mind blowing, and left fans clamoring for more. Kim Swift, one of the lead designers on the original Portal (not to mention the creative force behind both the weighted companion cube and GLaDOS) is now heading up a team at Washington-based Airtight Games, and is setting out to revolutionize the puzzle genre all over again with Quantum Conundrum.
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Tags: Airtight Games, Kim Swift, Portal, Sqaure Enix, Quantum Conundrum
Posted in: News, Gaming, Features
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Posted January 18th 2012 by Anthony DiPalma.
Years ago you could have said that Saints Row was just a slightly wackier version of the Grand Theft Auto series that has revolutionized open world gaming, and you wouldn't be far off the mark. As someone who has put in hundreds of hours playing every GTA game, I can see why, despite commercial success, many fans were turned off by GTA IV, the latest entry in the series. For the longest time GTA fans were looking to sate their appetite for an open world game that focused more on having fun than having a somewhat deep narrative. In fact, you could say that the student has become the master, as Saints Row: The Third shines brighter than GTA IV in just about every way. Over time, the GTA series has put on a suit and tie, but Saints Row is lighting a bag of dog shit on fire and leaving it on your front steps.
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Tags: Rockstar, IV, GTA, 3, Saints Row
Posted in: Gaming, Features
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Posted January 9th 2012 by Frankie Aguilar.
Once again, Frankie aims to ferry his fellow nerds across a river of crappy movies and onto sparkling shores of geeky entertainment.
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Tags: the amazing spider-man, the dark knight rises, brave, prometheus, the dictator, the avengers, the hunger games, the secret world of arrietty, the bourne legacy, frankenweenie, lincoln, zombies, movies, Comics, django unchained, world war z, the hobbit, 47 ronin, 15 flicks
Posted in: Features, Entertainment
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Posted January 6th 2012 by Jordan Mammo.
Last year we tried to highlight a few original projects to keep an eye on amidst 2011's sea of trilogies and franchises. Rockstar was throwing out the much-hyped, gritty L.A. Noire, Goichi Suda and Shinji Mikami were re-teaming for the first time since 2005, and Fumito Ueda was supposed to finally unleash his first project in six years.
Unfortunately, some of our predictions were flat-out misfires as certain games didn't even come out! Ueda left Sony to strike out on his own, and The Last Guardian was pushed into 2012. He's still working on the title in a freelance capacity, but no new information has been revealed, and no new date has been set. Meanwhile, thatgamecompany's Journey was also pushed into 2012, as well as the Studio Ghibli–inspired Ni No Kuni (for non-Japanese audiences, at least). Similarly, despite a passionate attempt by North American fans to get their hands on Xenoblade, they were denied by Nintendo the entire year before finally being thrown an April 2012 release.
Not every title is going to meet its originally scheduled date, especially in an industry moving as fast as this one, but plenty of others managed to push through. Now that everyone is taking stock of their most memorable experiences, we thought it time to take a look back and see how the games we were originally excited for turned out.
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Tags: superbrothers: sword & sworcery ep, groove coaster, catherine, child of eden, el shaddai, L.A. Noire, shadows of the damned, from dust, bulletstorm, ghost trick: phantom detective, new ips, bastion
Posted in: Gaming, Features
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Posted January 4th 2012 by Frankie Aguilar.
As a person who writes reviews, feeling a persistent need to make sure you know exactly how I feel about the movies I see, I'd be remiss if I didn't follow up my now annual 15 Flicks You Gotta See article with a bit of 20/20 hindsight scrutiny. I'd like to tell you that every movie on the 2011 list warranted not only the money you spent in the theater but subsequent DVD rentals as well. As it stands, you couldn't make it out of the month of March without that list falling on its face (thanks, Sucker Punch). I'll admit, I dropped the ball with that one, but can you really blame me? Not just there though, who would've guessed Fast Five would have been more than just another vapid body kit commercial or that Crazy Stupid Love would be more than just another chick flick? So think of this not only as a year in review, or even an open apology letter for steering any of you toward Sucker Punch, but maybe a second shot at what you should've watched in 2011.
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Tags: 15 flicks, Comics, Marvel, x-men, Captain America, Thor, green lantern, cowboys and aliens, sucker punch, harry potter, fast five, hugo, adventures of tintin, the girl with the dragon tattoo, movies
Posted in: Features, Entertainment
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Posted December 30th 2011 by J Edison Thomas.
As a bored nerd during a slow work week, I've been soaking up all the Paul Christoforo vs. the Internet kerfuffle, and loving every minute of it. I passed along hilarious meme GIFs, updated friends on steroid abuse allegations, and added THE WHOLE F*CKING BEEFALO to my daily lexicon. I really had a gay old time.
It's winding down now, and the last word on everything might well end up being this lame but not entirely indefensible "blame everyone equally" piece on Kotaku. But reading through this, and a few other articles on the "event," something strikes me: People may be unaware of exactly what Christoforo did wrong.
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Tags: paul christoforo, penny arcade, ocean marketing
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Posted December 27th 2011 by Anthony DiPalma.
2011 has been quite a ride. This year alone, we have solved murder mysteries in LA, completed new tests for Aperture Science, scaled the tallest buildings in Constantinople, hunted for dragons, and shot, stabbed, or chainsawed our troubles away. With 2011 being such an incredible year for videogames, we're forgetting that 2012 is right around the corner. In preparation for another year of hit after hit, Brandon and I sat down and took a look at four upcoming titles that we think everyone should look out for.
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Posted in: Gaming, Features, Entertainment
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Posted December 24th 2011 by Adam Grayson.
One of the 3DS' coolest new features added by the recent update is the ability to take 3D video. Now watching these videos in 3D on the 3DS is pretty neat, but don't you want to share your ridiculous 3D antics with the world? I know I do. What better way to do that than uploading your videos to YouTube? Yes, YouTube does in fact support 3D video. Unfortunately, it's surprisingly difficult and complicated to get your 3DS videos to display properly in 3D once uploaded to YouTube. It certainly isn't as simple as uploading the file to YouTube from the SD card. If you try, it will not work. Hopefully sometime in the future, it will be much easier to get our 3D cat videos onto YouTube. Until that time comes, we've got this handy-dandy tutorial for you!
Tags: Final Cut, Sony Vegas, stereo view, HTML5, nVidia 3D Vision, Nvidia, Youtube, Mac, Macintosh, Windows, tutorial, how to, 3D, camera, Video, 3ds, SC card, walkthrough, audio, export, render, encoding, encode, format, top to bottom, top/bottom, side by side, H.264, editor, step by step, walk through, Nintendo
Posted in: Tech, Gaming, Features, Entertainment
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Posted December 9th 2011 by Anthony DiPalma.
I hate stealth games. I really do. I love the concept of sneaking around and taking out my enemies one by one, and oddly enough, I use stealth in almost any game that doesn't really require it. In your typical shooting game, I'll use a sniper and casually pick off targets from a distance... Yet when it comes to the point where there is the inevitable portion of a game where stealth is a requirement to complete a mission, I'm pretty useless. Chapters in Assassin's Creed that end when you're spotted piss me off. I'm able to take down 300 soldiers otherwise, why can't I do it now? Even the outrageously stupid AI in the Tenchu series made me go into a vicious blood rage. Why then, do I absolutely love Metal Gear Solid, a series devoted solely to espionage, enough to buy the games twice? Because it's still the shit, that's why.
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Tags: Metal Gear, Sons of Liberty, Peace Walker, Snake Eater, Solid Snake, Erectile Dysfunction
Posted in: Reviews, Gaming, Entertainment
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Posted November 23rd 2011 by J Edison Thomas.
The local multiplayer videogame is a wheezing, dying beast. The global online gamesphere has freed players from the cramped, fractured splitscreen of yesteryear, and for entire genres, there is no going back. There have been resurgences, of course, centered around the Fresh New Thing of the day. The advent of the Wii had families flailing and laughing together for the first time with a videogame console, and the rhythm game craze reinvented the college party for a few years of the late twenty-aughts. But rhythm- and motion-based party games have consistently released to diminishing returns after their respective peaks. Eventually, the Fresh New Thing isn't so fresh, or new, and these spikes settle down. Try as they might, with each new Mario Party release it becomes less and less likely that Nintendo will be able to recapture the magic that they bottled nearly two generations ago. So games return to their shelves, and gamers return to single-player or online games until the next big thing brings them back together.
After industry giants beat the motion and rhythm genres into the ground like so many dead horses, it may be apropos that the latest Fresh New Thing was born from the indie gaming scene. This is, after all, where creativity is still the dominant currency, as opposed to, well, the actual currency that fuels the corporate videogame machine. A clever idea with straightforward controls and presentation is the best that indie developers can hope for, and that perfectly describes DoubleDutch Games' Speedrunner HD.
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Tags: Xbox 360, doubledutch games, multiplayer, xblig, xbox live indie games, Indie, speedrunner hd, Microsoft
Posted in: Gaming, Features
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