Month: January 2012

GamerSushi Asks: Games You Played in 2011?

Man. We are straight up milking this 2011 thing, huh? You’d think that we had nothing better to talk about for 2012 with the way we’re going back to that well. Don’t worry, we realize that we can only get a little bit more mileage out of last year, and probably only another week or two at that. That being said, the following question is one that I legitimately want to ask you guys, because I like hearing what you say about games.

The title for this post is extremely self explanatory. I want to see a list of all the games you played in 2011. This will be cool for two reasons: 1) It gives us an idea of what kinds of stories to target/write and 2) you guys are pretty cool yourselves.

What follows is a list of games that I played in 2011: Continue reading GamerSushi Asks: Games You Played in 2011?

RAAM’s Shadow is Gears of War DLC You May Want to Skip

gears of war 3 raams shadow review

RAAM’s Shadow, the second piece of DLC for Gears of War 3, dropped on December 13 featuring a single-player/co-op campaign set just after Emergence Day. Starring Zeta Squad, composed of Lieutenant Kim from Gears 1 and Tai Kaliso from Gears 2 with two newcomers, RAAM’s Shadow offers a three-ish hour adventure with the opportunity to play as the titular Locust general, complete with Kryll shield and giant machete. Purchasers of the Season Pass may have gotten it as part of the deal, but what about those of us who didn’t go for the package offering?

It’s been a while since the DLC has dropped, so you’ll have to forgive me for that, but the experience I’ve had with it has made me realize that I wasn’t really missing much. Since the DLC is set years before Gears of War 1, you play on a Sera that has yet to be destroyed by the Hammer of Dawn and seeing a city in this world complete and intact is something unique, but the outdoor environments feel very sterile and “fake”, for lack of a better word. Gears of War has always nailed the “Destroyed Beauty” motif, so simply cleaning up all the rubble in the decor doesn’t make the world believable, it does the exact opposite. There are a few cool areas to fight through, like the bank vault which has stacks of money that catch fire and the school that really does look like a deserted evacuation center, but that’s about the extent of it. Continue reading RAAM’s Shadow is Gears of War DLC You May Want to Skip

Revelations: When Story Suffers at the Hands of Sequel-itis

Assassin's Creed: Revelations

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, or worse, terribly cliche – I want to take a moment and gripe about sequel-itis in video games. No, I’m not against sequels. And yes, I understand that in a time where AAA games cost big bucks to develop, publishers want to go with surefire hits instead of taking chances on new IPs. All of that’s fine. But what I can’t forgive is when this sequel-itis starts affecting stories negatively.

Take Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, for instance. I’m sure all of you will think I hate this game after posting a couple of negative critiques about it, but it’s more that Revelations’ negatives shine so outrageously because the game itself plays so well – and in some ways is a perfection of the Assassin’s Creed formula. I’m going to have to be as spoiler careful as possible here, but AC: Brotherhood ended with a bit of a cliffhanger. OK, that’s an understatement – it ended on a double scoop of cliffhanger with a major sprinkle of WTF. Part of the lure of Revelations is that it was supposed to give you some of the answers about both Desmond and Ezio that were left hanging at the end of Brotherhood.

The problem is, Revelations ends in much the same way. The cliffhanger isn’t so bad compared to Brotherhood, but the “answers” they finally give you only lead to a dizzying array of questions. No explanation is given for some of the really bizarre things you see in the climax of this game, after the entire narrative kept assuring you that the time for answers was coming soon. Continue reading Revelations: When Story Suffers at the Hands of Sequel-itis

Valve Keeps Wrecking Shop with Steam

Valve

Valve, you wily devils. Not only do you make critically acclaimed video games, you also happened to pioneer iTunes for video games on the PC. Over the holidays, you wow-ed everyone with some ridiculous giveaways, absurd gaming deals and hit the whole Steam community with a shot of adrenaline that gave college kids the world over something to do during the Winter break.

But it doesn’t stop there. Valve recently reported its 2011 end-of-year statistics, and they’re staggering. Here’s a brief rundown of some of the highlights:

  • Steam offers over 1800 games to 40 million account holders
  • Year-over-year sales have doubled from 2010 to 2011, marking 100 percent growth for the 7th straight year
  • 14.5 million copies of Steam registered in 2011, a 67 percent increase over 2010
  • Steam doubled the amount of content it served in 2011 – over 780 Petabytes

Firstly, I didn’t even know a Petabyte was a thing. It just sounds made up. Literally, my brain can not fathom the numbers that go into that, even though I looked it up. This might just be because I’m a stupid person, though. The other shocking statistic is the fact that Steam’s sales have doubled each year for the last 7 years. I knew that they had a corner on the market, but it’s nuts to me that keeps soaring upward. And when you think about it, there’s really no other place for those sales numbers to go, considering that more content keeps coming out and there are so few legitimate competitors.

So what do you guys think of these Steam statistics? Come sing Steam’s praises if you wish.

CVG

The GamerSushi Show, Ep 36: PAX South

This post was actually written by Eddy, posted by Nick. Just to clear up any confusion.

Wow. Uh, hi dudes. I know it hasn’t been a long time since we’ve chatted, but it’s certainly been a long time since we’ve chatted in this format – you know, the format where I’m bringing you a brand new podcast. So that’s pretty cool, right? Especially considering the fact that this isn’t a normal podcast, but a special video podcast!

Yes, this is the long-rumored video podcast from GamerSushi Weekend, AKA PAX South, where the GamerSushi dudes convened for a weekend of hanging out, video gaming, drinking and yes, podcasting. I know it’s pretty ridiculous that it’s just now coming out almost six months later, but sometimes life happens and bearded dudes have to go to California to work. And yeah, that gets in the way every now and then. Continue reading The GamerSushi Show, Ep 36: PAX South

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Skyward Sword and the Problem with Pacing

skyward sword pacing

Having worked my way through most of 2011’s big ticket titles over the Winter break, I’ve finally made my way to Skyward Sword and have been playing it for a few hours. While I do appreciate the art style and the Wii Motion Plus controls work better than I thought they would, the game has some serious pacing issues, specifically in the first few hours.

Skyward Sword starts much like any other Zelda game with the protagonist (Link traditionally, but “Butts” in my game) awakening from a deep slumber filled with dreams of a distant threat. From there you have to do the whole rigmarole of learning how to Z-target, autojump and all those other Zelda actions that are so familiar to us from the past thirteen years of this formula. I get that all these concepts might be new for people who didn’t grow up with the Ocarina style of Zelda games, but for us veterans this kind of stuff can be boring.

The same thing happened to me at the start of Modern Warfare 2 where the game teaches you how to use the basic controls and even runs you through a near carbon copy of the freighter mock-up from Call of Duty 4. Given just how many people bought CoD 4, I would have assumed that people know how to use the controls, but I guess some developers feel the need to be safe rather than sorry.

Getting people used to the way a game functions is essential, but Zelda handles it so, so slowly that it verges on tedious. Once you get past those segments and finally get your Loftwing everything opens up, but getting there is a chore. Additionally, whoever thought that giving Link a stamina bar was a good idea should be fired.

I do enjoy Skyward Sword, don’t get me wrong, but I really would have appreciated a “Yes, I’ve played Zelda” option somewhere along the way so I could just get into the game. This might just be me, but I think they way the tutorial was done was pretty shoddy. What do you guys think? Did Skyward Sword drag a little bit in the beginning? What other games have done this for you?

The Art of Video Game Photography

Mario Galaxies

If you’re ever looking for some ammunition in the (admittedly tired) ongoing discussion about whether or not games can be counted as art, I’d suggest you load your gun with a number of bullets from Dead End Thrills. What is Dead End Thrills? Basically, it’s a site devoted almost completely to the idea of video game photography – applying real-world photography techniques to showcase the artistic nature of video games. It’s not just as simple as that, though.

Applying the principles of real world photography to the virtual worlds of games is just part of the solution. Hacking and tweaking games to remove player model, HUD and restrictions on the camera are others. The toughest, though, is rendering games from throughout the 3D era, from Deus Ex to Crysis 2, at truly uncompromising quality. There is a massive difference between running a game with top-of-the-line antialiasing and quality settings, and running it with those same settings at resolutions far in excess today’s norms, using offline resampling to achieve perfect results. Only recently, and after extensive research, have such methods become possible.

Technical stuff aside, the dude makes some pretty sweet pictures, including great desktops from Skyrim, Portal 2, Alice: The Madness Returns, Modern Warfare 2 and even an iPod/iPad collection. I highly recommend checking out his work and upgrading your desktop collection.

A little game for the comments: link your favorites. Go!

Dead End Thrills

Revelations: Developers in Denial

Assassins Creed: Revelations

I should be over the annual Assassin’s Creed formula that Ubisoft has set into motion this generation. Sure, Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood both happened to be great games, but there’s no way that lightning can strike three times, right? That’s the gamble that we take by playing yearly re-hashes, and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is no different.

So far, I’m actually enjoying the game quite a bit. It’s kind of a rinse and repeat job, but the promise of learning Desmond’s fate and seeing the close of the Ezio storyline certainly has me hooked, and I like to see Ezio as a bit of a grim, grizzled old man, complete with salt-and-pepper beard and all. To Ubisoft’s credit, they’ve done what they could to mix the gameplay up, but unfortunately, some of these additions are where the game’s cracks are most evident. Continue reading Revelations: Developers in Denial

Top Xbox LIVE Activity for 2011 Shows Black Ops on Top

xbox live top activity 2011 black ops

I really like the fact that every year Xbox LIVE’s Major Nelson posts the top activity for the service so we can see which games got the most attention during the year. Call of Duty has held the top spot ever since 2007, but I don’t think the domination by that series has ever been this strong.

Activision’s much maligned but million selling series holds three of the top spots with Black Ops surprisingly taking first place over Modern Warfare 3 which falls in second. Halo: Reach is still holding strong in fourth place and is faring better than two of this year’s big multiplayer releases, Battlefield 3 and Gears of War 3, falling in the fifth and seventh spots, respectively. I’m kind of surprised that Gears of War is so low considering that this is the series that defined multiplayer on the Xbox this generation, but seeing Reach in fourth spot warms my heart, if only out of spite for all the complainers who said Reach would be dead in a year.

Some other surprises from the list would be that GTA IV is still charting as is Gears of War 2. I guess Xbox LIVE gamers know what they like, and that’s re-hashes of a game from 2007 and previous iterations of an improved product. Thoughts on 2011’s Xbox LIVE activity list? Surprised that Black Ops still holds first place? Anything that should be higher in your opinion? Go!

Source – Major Nelson

Today’s WTF: Skyrim Mod Turns Dragons into Macho Men

Of all the things to mod into Skyrim, I’m not sure that Randy Savage was at the top of the list, but here we are in 2012 and someone has found a way to put the Macho Man into the game. The video detailing the mod is three minutes of pure terror and hilarity.

Originally I thought the mod would just replace the voices of the dragons with soundbites of Randy Savage, but when I saw what had become of their appearance, well, that’s a whole other story. I just couldn’t stop laughing when the guards heard the cry of at the beginning of the video and started acting scared. Good stuff! Here’s the link if you want to try out the Skyrim Macho Man mod for yourself.

GamerSushi Votes 2011: Game of the Year

portal 2

We’re at the end of the road for the inaugural edition of GamerSushi Votes and I think it’s gone rather well. We’ve talked the highs and the lows, but now it’s time to put all of our chips on the table and declare once and for all what our favorite game of 2011 is.

There’s no cheating here by saying 2011 didn’t have a Game of the Year, no sir. Each individual vote shall be inscribed upon the great Tablet of GamerSushi with chisel and hammer by Anthony, borne up the Mountain of Souls by Eddy, passed through the Cauldron of the Blaze by myself, given to Jeff and his eagle mount to soar high into the clouds to the Sky Palace of the Beard for Nick’s final approval. Yeah. It’s that important.

Now that you know what fate rests upon your mortal souls, vote! What was your Game of the Year for 2011?

GamerSushi Votes 2011: Game of the Year

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Poll: Best or Worst Generation of Games?

Let’s face it: this generation has been one of a kind. Some of the best quality games we have ever seen. And some of the worst service and disasters we have ever seen. As consoles have become more complex, there is a lot more room for errors and I don’t think any opportunities for screw-ups have been missed. But…the games, man! They are so good! But are they enough to overcome the PSN Hack, the Red Ring of Death, the terrible DLC debacles, the DRM nightmares, constant patches due to broken games on release day and the countless other crap we suddenly have to deal with now?

I mean, Uncharted, Gears of War, Bioshock, Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Portal and the Arkham series, just to name a few, are all amazing new franchises that stand with some of the best all time. But is the high quality of the product enough to call this the best generation? Or is the terrible state of things for us consumers too much for these stellar games to overcome? Hit the poll and then hit the comments!

Is this the best or worst generation of video games?

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Player: A Short Story of Multiplayer Gaming

Halo Reach

When I was a kid, I remember sitting in the living room with a bowl of Frosted Flakes, watching cartoons with an eager hunger every Saturday morning. In addition to the classics such as the Super Mario Bros cartoon or Captain N, I was fascinated with the show Reboot, which takes place entirely in a virtual world. Since then, I think I’ve always had a desire for even more fiction that revolves around gaming, which is surprisingly seldom encountered even two decades later.

However, today I stumbled across a short story that a friend of mine wrote over at Prolific Novelista, so I figured I would share. Player is the tale of one man’s quest to beat an anonymous gamer online, and the way our competitive edge kicks in whenever we deal with strangers in multiplayer settings. It’s a piece that I think all of us can identify with. I know that one of the most shocking things for me when I first entered the realm of online gaming was realizing that I was just a mediocre fish in a sea of badasses with itchy trigger fingers. The desire to beat an opponent at a game you pride yourself in is a strong one, and we’ve all encountered it at one time or another.

So yeah, I think you guys should read it. Definitely entertaining and familiar. I would also suggest you guys check out Ready Player One, a novel I keep hearing about that takes place inside of a video game. Thoughts, gents and ladies? Go!

Prolific Novelista

Final Fantasy VI: The Glitch of All Glitches

I’m a huge fan of Final Fantasy VI, it being my favorite game of all time and everything, but apparently there is something I’ve never know about it: it can be broken in the most bizarre and fun ways possible. A user on the SomethingAwful forums (via 1UP) named Elephantgun posted the below video, which not only shows him having an airship in the opening minutes of the game, but also causing the game to go completely haywire when he uses Relm’s Sketch skill against an invisible enemy. See for yourself:

[youtube width=”500″ height=”310″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xocs6tHmOKM&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Pretty crazy, right? Are there any games out there that have similar glitches that you like to use? Have you ever discovered any yourself? Hit me!

Source: 1UP

GamerSushi Votes 2011: Biggest Disappoinment

While 2011 was a year of serious highs, there were more than a few lows, too. Even when you’re as plugged into the industry as we are, sometimes you just can’t avoid the stinkers.

Some of the entries on this poll are fairly obvious, but I’m going to try really hard to not insert my own bias into this list. True, I’ve learned fairly heavily on my own opinions for the previous polls, but when you start slagging popular titles, that’s when the mud gets flung. Without further ado, here we go!

GamerSushi Votes 2011: Biggest Disappointment

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Speed Runs and My Siglemic Obsession

Super Mario 64I’ve never been a guy that gets all that into competitive gaming. Sure, it’s fun to watch some skilled players go at it from time to time, but I’d rather just sit down and play the thing myself. Up until the recent bouts of watching pro StarCraft 2 players, I’ve never understood why someone could sit and watch someone else play a game for hours. I just assumed StarCraft 2 was different because of the level of the players.

All that changed over Christmas break, when I discovered Siglemic on Twitch TV. You see, Siglemic is a Super Mario 64 player. And not just any Super Mario 64 player – he’s the recent world record holder for a 120-star speed run. I watched in awe over most of the break to see him capture this record, and sat there for a number of failed attempts as he dodged, dove and ran impressively through the game’s many challenges in just under 2 hours.

I’m not sure if it’s just the joy of seeing Super Mario 64 in motion again that had me so enthralled, the skill of Siglemic, or both. But needless to say, I’m fascinated with watching people stream themselves playing through old games right now. I think part of the fun of this is just experiencing some nostalgia with thousands of people (Siglemic had up to 7000 people at a time watching him try to beat the record) all at the same time. Ever since then, I’ve been checking out people playing through Final Fantasy VII, IX, X and even Metal Gear Solid 2 and 4. And somehow it’s riveting.

Have you guys ever checked out streaming games on Twitch TV? What game would it take to get you hooked on speed runs? Go!

Watch a Man Dominate Metal Gear Solid 3’s AI

Seems that the GamerSushi staff is on something of a Metal Gear Solid kick lately, but what other video game series can inspire people to randomly bust into a musical number? (Inside joke, don’t worry.) While Anthony was adventuring through the depths of Shadow Moses, I found a video of a guy absolutely breaking Metal Gear Solid 3 and it’s pretty amusing (and maybe a little frightening).

That’s the end result of hours of hours of practice, ladies and gents. I’m impressed by this showing, and I’m always fascinated by the ways people can find to creatively bypass the “game” aspect of most titles and create something new. Do you guys have any examples of this?