Just Cause 2 and Vertical Gameplay

One of the best demos I’ve ever played for a game was the one for Just Cause. While the game itself ended up being a bit repetitive, the demo showcased just enough to really make you want more. To me, the free-falling/parachuting mechanic was some of the most fun “flying” gameplay I had experienced since the wing cap in Mario 64. An open world game that allowed you to leap from car to car, or even jump up into helicopters, Just Cause made you a ridiculous action star, and had some promise, which is why I’m excited about the sequel.

The new edition to the franchise drops in 2010, and so far, it’s shaping up to be a hell of a ride. This vertical gameplay trailer really showcases some of the things you can do, and the thought of hook-shotting my way up skyscrapers and then leaping off of them gets my do want meter going. What do you guys think? Who here played the first game?

GamerSushi Taste Test: Tropico 3 Demo

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With the glut of shooters, brawlers, and generally anything being associated with action set for release this holiday season, it’s sometimes easy to let a game that doesn’t focus primarily on racking up a huge body count escape your notice. However, amidst all the big tent-pole titles, there’s usually a few that deserve at least some of your time, if only to cleanse the pallet from all the shootery-goodness.

Enter Tropico 3. Developed by Haemimont Games for the PC and X-Box 360, Tropico 3 is a building and management simulation that puts you in the boots of “El Presidente”, iron-fisted dictator of a small banana republic in the Caribbean. The time period is the 1950s and onward, so you have to play the US and the USSR carefully against each other, managing all your resources wisely if you don’t want to be invaded by one of the super-powers.

In the demo, you’re given a tutorial and two separate campaigns to play around in: one focusing on building a successful banana-fuelled dictatorship, and the other features a scenario where you’re deposed by your twin brother, taking your former government’s treasury and a few loyal supports onto a new, less hospitable island to start anew.

So, how does the demo stack up? Does this tropical city management sim have what it takes to stand against the deluge of holiday titles, or is it a few bananas short of a republic? Read on.
Continue reading GamerSushi Taste Test: Tropico 3 Demo

Oops: Your Pixels are Showing

sc-chaos-theoryAs nostalgic as it is to pick up an old game and go retro for a bit, often times it’s a bit risky. While we do love those old games and the kinds of flavors they bring to us, games have progressed so much in terms of gameplay, design and more obviously, graphics. That’s why you never know what you’re going to get when you pick up an old game. Will you find a title that has gotten better with age like a fine wine, or pick up a clunky mess that was only good because it was the first of its kind, and has since been passed by much better endeavors?

Just the other night I finally caved in and re-downloaded one of my favorite titles from last generation – Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. I’m not sure what made me do it, but it was probably the combo of playing a new sneaking game such as Batman: Arkham Asylum, as well as JJ buying it, so I knew I’d have a buddy to do some co-op with. Speaking of co-op, the two player missions in that game were mind-numbingly good for their time.

So how did they (and the rest of the game) stack up?
Continue reading Oops: Your Pixels are Showing

PAX 2009 Report

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My brother, Evan, lives in the Seattle area, so of course he attended PAX. Nick, Eddy and I might have gone, except we were busily working on a Smooth Few Films mystery project. Maybe next year? Anyways, enjoy his extremely detailed report on the con! He only had to fight off a bit of the flu to bring it our way.

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I think I understand what a journalist must feel like at times: There was so much going on that I just want the chance to tell people about it all, because you could go through the entire show for all three days and still not run out of things to see.
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Mass Effect 2 Demo From PAX

Man, this seems like it was the year to go to PAX in Seattle. If you didn’t know, the huge gaming convention happened last weekend. I went last year, but was unable to attend this year, and I had to avoid the news because it was just going to make me depressed, hungry and angry. Yes, all three of those.

One of the big games that I wish I could have seen in person was Mass Effect 2. Bioware was rocking a nice demo from the game, and you can watch it in all its glory. Who else is getting ridiculously anxious for this game, due early next year? Just me? Ok then.

L4D2 Boycotters Given the Star Treatment

valveAh, the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott. One of the sillier boycotts around. Even though the footage from the new game is continuing to look better and better, and news of DLC for the first game is still pumping out, yes, the boycott for the sequel continues. While the official Steam group is content on making noise, Valve so far has done very little in terms of an official response, until now.

Apparently, the video game developer flew out the leaders of the boycott to get some hands-on time with Left 4 Dead 2, and even to see some of the behind-the-scenes info regarding the new DLC. I have to say, that’s about as good of a response as a boycotting group can hope to get, so major props to go those guys.

The funniest thing to me about the whole deal is the comments and accusations from fellow boycotters, accusing the leaders of selling out by going to Valve. Isn’t this the kind of thing you want to see from the developer? Anywho, I know we’ve talked about it before, but what do you guys think of Valve flying out these dudes to check out Left 4 Dead 2?

Source- L4D2 Boycott Steam Group

Cross-Contaminated Media: Expanding Universes Outside Games

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Hello and welcome to Cross-Contaminated Media, a short series on video game franchises that have taken their fictional settings and expanded them into books, comics, and film. As the video game industry becomes even more wide-spread, we’re seeing a lot of companies try their hand at developing their intellectual properties by taking them off of a game disk and put them into forms of media that are less graphically intensive, but require more attention on the story and characters.

Of all the companies currently trying their hand at pursuing different avenues of story-telling, Halo is the one that stands out to most people as the current leader of this pack. When we popped Halo: Combat Evolved into our X-Boxes for the first time, we were vaguely aware that there was some history behind this game, at least according to the small preface in the manual. There was some planet named REACH that had been destroyed, Humanity was fighting a losing battle with a genocidal alien hegemony, and the character you were going to be controlling was the last of his kind, a genetically engineered super soldier.

But why had these events come to pass? The story of Halo was preceded by 25 years of brutal warfare and intrigue, and those of us who were engrossed by the game’s universe could only scratch at the surface of the story. Microsoft, perhaps being aware at the great selling power their new IP possessed, had had the foresight to employ Eric Nylund to write The Fall of Reach, which told of the beginnings of Master Chief’s career as a soldier and of the destruction of REACH. The Fall of Reach went on to be a New York Times Bestseller, and the stage was set for a variety of Halo licensed media to continue the story outside of the games.
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GamerSushi Asks: Where’s the Value?

batman1I’ve had one hell of a couple of weeks. I’ve been busy, tired, and working like crazy on a number of things. But in the middle of it all, I managed to get in a playthrough of Batman: Arkham Asylum, and boy was it worth it. As a few of you know, especially those that read Mitch’s review, the game is a blast, has an excellent story and some quality stealth gameplay. But something about it bothered me: its length.

While I think the game is maybe one of the best of this year, it is just simply too short for the money that people are expected to pay for it. To me, the game is totally worth $30-$40 simply because of its quality, but $60 is just asking too much for a game that only takes about 8 hours or so to beat. Sure, there is replay value in the challenges and Riddler puzzles, but does anyone else see this as an issue in terms of rising game costs?

To me, this is exactly why people tend to gravitate towards sequels and multiplayer games- the $60 price point is just too much for an impulse buy, or for a game that will only take one weekend to finish. So, what do you guys think about this issue? Go!

Sega Teases US With New 2D Sonic Title

If there’s one classic video game mascot that has his fans clamoring for a return to the days of old, its Sonic the Hedgehog. The speedy blue Erinaceidae has suffered more than his share of bad games over the past few years, and every time Sega has tried to change Sonic by adding new game-play mechanics and annoying side-kicks, the more it seems obvious that Sonic does what he does best in a simple side-scroller. Indeed, the most enjoyable parts of Sonic Unleashed were when you were controlling Sonic as he speeds through the day-time stages, whipping past beautiful vistas.

The new Sonic game, which is tentatively titled “Project Needlemouse”, is due for release in 2010, being built from the ground up in an all new HD 2D engine. No systems have been confirmed yet, but a PSN and an XBLA release is safe to assume. Check out the teaser, and get ready to have your hopes dashed once more.

Awesome Mod Brings Call of Duty to Star Wars

If there’s two things I love, it’s Star Wars and shooting people in the face. Thankfully, a nice group of modders calling themselves blackMonkeys shares my love of sci-fi warfare and are hard at work on a total conversion kit for Call of Duty 4 called “Galactic Warfare”, which takes the silky smooth game-play of CoD and fits it in with classic Star Wars imagery.

The trailer for the mod showcases Stormtroopers and Rebel fighters battling it out in Mos Eisely, and it looks like everything that I hoped Battlefront II would be. With the future of the Battlefront series in limbo, I’m looking forward to trying this out when the mod is complete. Check out the video:

Live Action Halo 3: ODST Short Premiers Tonight

Tonight at 10:30pm ET/PT, SPIKE TV is going to debut “We are ODST”, a live action short in the vein of “Landfall”, the Neill Blomkamp directed project from 2007.

This may be the first time that I can remember that I tuned in to specifically watch what is essentially a very elaborate commercial, but this is probably worth it. Who else is going to be watching this?

Edit: The full version is up for your enjoyment.

Microsoft Charging for New Left 4 Dead Content

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Poor Valve, they just can’t seem to catch a break. Hot on the heels of the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott debacle and the newly brewing Team Fortress 2 item-deletion snafu comes the news that the new Left 4 Dead campaign, Crash Course, is going to be free for PC users, but will cost 560 Microsoft Banana Bucks for 360 users.

Is Valve heading for another ill-deserved boycott? Maybe not, says Left 4 Dead writer Chet Faliszek. According to Chet, the decision to charge for the X-Box 360 mission lies solely with Microsoft. As Mr. Faliszek tells it, Steam is Valve’s distribution platform, so they can charge whatever they want, even give stuff away for free. Microsoft of course owns LIVE, so pricing for downloadable content there is a whole different ball game.
Continue reading Microsoft Charging for New Left 4 Dead Content

BioWare Weighs in on Video Game Piracy

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I think that we can all agree that piracy sucks. The worst aspect of this type of digital high seas shenanigans is that companies are forced to punish legitimate customers to make sure that their games are harder to pirate. Most recently, EA tried to regulate piracy by forcing all copies of their games to include SecuROM, possibly the most draconian form of copy-protection currently available (with the notable exception of the Sony BMG CD copyright scandal).

The most infamous of the SecuROM stories was that of EA’s Spore, Will Wright’s procedurally-generated creature creator simulator from last year. The digital lock-down on Spore enforced a three-install limit upon the game, much to the lament of the internet savvy. As a result of this heavy-handed maneuver, Spore ended up being the most pirated game of 2008 with over 1.7 million downloads.

So, what did the games industry take away from this horrendous back-fire?
Continue reading BioWare Weighs in on Video Game Piracy

Gaming Pop Quiz

We like to do a lot of gaming social activities around these parts. Random questions throughout the week to find out more about what’s going on with you guys, the occasional “Would You Rather”, etc. Well, there are a few simple questions that we’ve never asked to really find out what makes you gamers tick, going all the way back to the beginning and most simple of queries.
Continue reading Gaming Pop Quiz

Dead Space: Extraction Developer Diary Brings the Fear

One game that seems to be slipping under everyone’s radar this holiday season is Dead Space: Extraction, an on-rails prequel to last year’s surprise hit. Visceral Games is making every effort to ensure that their Wii based outing is set to match up with the chills and thrills that players felt when they explored the USG Ishimura as Isaac Clarke.

On-rail shooters definitely play to the Wii’s strengths, and the transfer from the 360 and PS3 doesn’t seem to have affected the awesome atmosphere of the derelict ship we all know and fear. Check it out:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abpTSLh8YqA[/youtube]

Modern Warfare 2 Continues to Look Hot

Infinity Ward has released another Modern Warfare 2 multi-player footage video, and I can’t believe how amazing this game looks. The user interface has been completely changed, and the new blood splatter effect that replaces the traditional pulsing red screen when you’re wounded is pretty slick. The guns also look a lot more detailed, and the player models have gotten a complete over-haul. With a good engine in place from CoD 4, it looks like Infinity Ward went a little wild, and we all get to reap the benefits.

Just like the last multiplayer video IW released, this preview is chock-a-block full of little hidden clues as to what you can expect when the game launches November 10th. Keep your eyes peeled after the video “ends” for a nice little surprise.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4PMRFkx07g[/youtube]

Here’s something I’m wondering, though. With Modern Warfare being released on three platforms (360, PC and PS3), will it outperform Halo 3:ODST on sales, or will the power of Halo continue to shine through?

Red vs Blue Meets ODST

I’m sure that many of you are at least somewhat familiar with Red vs Blue, the popular Halo machinima series from Rooster Teeth. Well, it seems the guys got a bit of time to do a ODST crossover with their series. Check out the first segment. As I’ve said before on this site, I’ve been mostly unimpressed with this game until very recently with the “firefight” footage, which is basically horde mode from Gears of War 2. It looks awesome.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voLCnyqW_E0[/youtube]