Month: April 2011

Gabe Newell’s Most Inspirational Games

Gabe Newell

When it comes to games, everyone’s got that list of a handful of titles that has influenced the way they view themselves as gamers, and to some extent individuals. I know that sounds a bit heavy, but I know that I have movies and music albums that have really affected me, and it’s just the same with games.

Have you ever wondered how your favorite developers feel are their most influential games? In a new feature titled Game Changers, CVG asks Valve founder Gabe Newell what his 3 favorite games of all time are. His answers? Star Trek on a Burroughs Mainframe, Doom and Super Mario 64, which convinced him that games are art (he still considers the controls to be unrivaled).

I’m glad that Gabe Newell and I are in total agreement about Super Mario 64, which still stands as probably the greatest platformer I’ve ever played. Other influential games for me as a gamer would happen to be KOTOR, Final Fantasy VII and Counter-Strike.

So what about you guys? What games have influenced you the most? What movies? Books? No holds barred!

Source – CVG

Halo: Reach’s Defiant Map Pack: DLC Worth Paying For

halo reach defiant map pack review

One of the biggest criticisms leveraged against Halo: Reach was the astonishingly low quality of the multiplayer maps included in the retail version. The original offerings were either spaces taken from the campaign or Forge World creations and remakes of older maps. Even the Noble Map Pack, released by Bungie on November 30, didn’t measure up to the maps of the previous Halo games, though they were better than the base offerings.

Interestingly, Halo: Reach’s second map pack, the Defiant Map Pack, was crafted by Certain Affinity, who made the Blastacular Map Pack for Halo 2. The Defiant Map Pack includes two new multiplayer spaces and a Firefight arena, but what makes this particular DLC worth your hard earned space bucks?
Continue reading Halo: Reach’s Defiant Map Pack: DLC Worth Paying For

Poll: Most Anticipated April Release

Now that publishers have finally decided to wise up and allow great video games to come out year round, we find ourselves with too many games and not enough time or money. So, we have to be more selective. And now that the month of April is upon us, that means more blockbuster games are on the way. Thankfully, this month is lighter than most, but the ones that are coming out are pretty gigantic.

Personally, Portal 2 is already pre-ordered and I expect to play that quite a bit with all my GamerSushi buds. I will probably pass on the other ones this month, as I am still working on my backlog.

What about you?

What April Release Are You Most Excited About?

View Results

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Behind the Scenes of Video Game Journalism

Video games writer

A dream that I’ve had for most of my life has been to get paid to either 1) write for a video game company or 2) write about video games. It combines two of the great loves of my life, which should be obvious from the career choices and their similarities. As such, I always find it fascinating to see behind the curtain a little bit for either career.

In this case, the peek happens to be the life of a video games journalist. Over at Kill Screen, writer Joseph Bernstein recently put up a piece titled Intern Affairs: Behind Closed Doors, which happens to be a series about the time he spent as an intern at GamesRadar. This particular entry covers the world of previews and handshakes between developers and journalists, and it’s actually kind of fascinating to see how the sausage is made, so to speak.

Bernstein basically shows the way previews are handled in some cases, and the gang mentality that occurs because of that as developers try to win you over. In the end, Bernstein even posts the preview he wrote as the result of this encounter, which happened to be for the game MX vs. ATV: Untamed for the Wii. I don’t think it necessarily exposes anything shady or surprising, I just find it interesting.

So what do you guys think after reading this? Does it jade you a little to what goes on behind the scenes at some video game sites? Go!

Source – Kill Screen, Image Source – PlatformNation

Top Six: Video Game Characters We Wish Would Talk

Since the advent of the full voiced protagonist, I’ve come to expect that my in-game avatar always has something witty to say in any given situation. Despite the fact that characters like Grayson Hunt and Duke Nukem want to make me tear my hair out, there are a few protagonists in gaming that have successfully made the transition to having a personality, like Dead Space’s Isaac Clarke.

This got me thinking about a few other notoriously silent gaming icons, and which ones could stand to have a voice. Read on to see which six characters deserve a line of dialog here and there. Continue reading Top Six: Video Game Characters We Wish Would Talk

Team Meat Bemoans Super Meat Boy’s Xbox LIVE Release

super meat boy

Another April Fool’s has come and gone, and it is now safe to use the Internet for “tru facts”, as it were. As such, I present to you the first official post-April Fool’s story, a little tale about two-man indie developer Team Meat and their battles with Microsoft in bringing Super Meat Boy to Xbox LIVE Arcade.

In a recent issue of Game Developer Magazine (transcribed by Kotaku), one half of Team Meat, Edmund McMillen, waxes about the trials and tribulations faced by himself and his partner Tommy Refenes.

Aside from a few complaints that have really nothing to do with Microsoft (such as financial hardship brought on by emergency surgery), the duo experienced some difficulties getting the game ready for the Game Feast promotion on XBLA. They describe being in a forced crunch necessitated by the short release window brought on by the promotion which was clashing with their desire to add more features to the game. Fixing bugs at the same time as adding new things to the game meant that hours of hard work were rendered invalid by having more errors crop up on top of the ones they already fixed.
Continue reading Team Meat Bemoans Super Meat Boy’s Xbox LIVE Release

April Fools: Grand Theft Auto V Takes Place in Space

GTA5

Well, for weeks now, speculation has been running rampant about Grand Theft Auto V: when it’s going to be announced, who’s going to be in it and what parodies we can expect. However, one of the biggest questions still remaining about the next iteration of Rockstar’s landmark series is where it’s going to take place. It seems that Rockstar has finally silenced the masses with a press release that went out yesterday. The next GTA is going to take place in space.

Yeah, you read that right. Here’s what Rockstar’s VP of Product Development Jeronimo Barrera had to say about the new game’s astounding direction:

We just felt that we’ve “been there, done that” in regards to various other settings in previous Grand Theft Auto games and other Rockstar properties. I mean, we’ve done the 80’s, the 90’s, the Old West, the 1950’s in the upcoming L.A. Noire and even a modern-day post 9/11 America in GTA IV. Space is, quite literally, the Final Frontier in terms of where Rockstar’s games could go. It should be new and exciting for fans of our current games, just like it is for us.

The press release was shy on details, but here are a couple of things that have come to light about the way Grand Theft Auto (or should that be Shuttle, now) is going to play.

  • Multiple cities on various planets
  • Hijack button will dock you with a spaceship, mid-flight
  • Weapons will be futuristic, although some “antique” shops will have good old-fashioned rocket launchers
  • The main character is Max Rifle, intergalactic pirate extraordinaire
  • Earth will be playable, specifically a nuclear radiation infected Vice City

So, that’s quite the bomb to start the weekend with. What do you think of Rockstar’s bold new direction for the series?

Source – Rockstar Press Release

April Fools: Sony Drops Lawsuit, Hires Geohot

Geohot

In a stunning reversal, Sony Computer Entertainment of America has decided to drop their lawsuit against George “Geohot” Hotz and hire the hacker to head up a new division of cyber security focusing exclusively on the Playstation 3 and Sony’s upcoming handheld platform, codenamed NGP.

A Sony spokesman was quoted as saying:

He just had so many good ideas, we felt that he would be a better asset to us and the gaming community as an employee rather than a defendant.

Hotz, the infamous hacker who was the first to jailbreak the iPhone, expressed a desire to return the Linux operating system to the PS3 via firmware update by the end of April and upload a PS2 emulator before the end of the year. Sony also promised to compensate Hotz for his legal expenses, which seems decent of them.

Well, frankly, I am pretty shocked and more than a little upset. It seems that the online hacker community, which has been clamoring for Sony to just shut up and hire Hotz, has finally gotten their wish. I think this sets a dangerous precedent, where bad and perhaps illegal behavior is rewarded. Although PS2 emulation rocks my socks.

Am I being too harsh? Did Sony do the right thing here? GO!

Source: Wired