Category: GamerSushi News

Game Budgets Versus Industry Innovation

Halo Anniversary

I won’t presume to speak for the gamer population at large, but one of my recent concerns about the trajectory of the video game industry would have to do with the lack of innovation. I try to keep my griping about “shooter fatigue” to a minimum around these parts, simply because at the end of the day, I still like playing shooters, even if I would like something to come along from time to time to mix up the monotony.

But what exactly is the cause behind the predominant trend of shooter saturation over the last few years? Have gamers changed? Have developers changed? Is the idea of a shooter the most immersive form of game design? Hardly, says Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch. He believes that out of control budgets for AAA titles are what’s causing the innovation funk. Here’s what the studio head behind Halo: Anniversary had to say on the matter in a recent interview:

Publishers will spend so much money to make a game. It becomes so bloated that you can’t innovate, because if you’re spending $15 million on something, you want to make sure that it’s a safe bet so you can’t take those risks.

Ultimately you end up with the fourth or fifth sequel of a game, which really is a tried and true formula without much innovation… I think there are so many things fundamentally wrong with the way the games industry is run that need to change.

I really think the solution is coming up with ways to give people smaller, more varied experiences for less money. A perfect example is LA Noire. Here’s a game that people like to play for the first couple of hours, then it got repetitive and by the second or third hour they were done with it. So why not give them a two or three hour experience for 10 pounds instead of giving them a £50 game? Why not give them a smaller, bite size experience?

While the studio’s track record doesn’t necessarily help them (Halo: Anniversary isn’t exactly breaking the mold anymore than their previous title Battle Los Angeles), it’s nice to note that some game studio heads are thinking this way. As much as I’m excited about the many sequels that are coming out this year, I can’t help but think that I’d love to see something new.

What do you guys think about the idea of game budgets getting out of hand? Do you think something needs to shift in the gaming industry? Go!

Source – CVG

Saint’s Row: The Third Attacks BF3 and MW3

It’s the battle of the three-quels.

Everyone knows about the recent and heated feud between the Call of Duty and Battlefield franchises, as kicked into high gear by EA. With both of these juggernauts bearing down on each other this Fall season, it’s looked something like Godzilla versus Mothra, the two beasts lumbering into our collective view and ready to do battle.

However, there’s another number three hitting this season, and it doesn’t want to be forgotten: Saint’s Row: The Third. The newest installment of the open world gangster playground from THQ is now on the scene, trolling on both Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 with this brand new trailer, which also happens to be packed full of win.

Every new bit of media I see about this game ensures that it’s going to be a day one pick up. What about you guys?

Halo: Anniversary Integrates Kinect and Achievements

halo anniversary kinect achievements

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary (Super Gaiden Subsistence) is coming out on November 15, updating the classic Xbox shooter with a shiny coat of new graphics and other bells and whistles. It may surprise you to learn that 343 Industries isn’t just content with bringing Combat Evolved into the modern era; they also found the time to put a few Kinect commands into the game.

It’s not as bad as you’re probably thinking, and the Kinect stuff actually seems pretty harmless. There’s three commands that have been introduced and they are:

  • Voice Commands: Lets you switch weapons, throw grenades and toggle the graphics overlay without lifting a finger.
  • Analyze Mode: Similar to the Metroid Prime series, you can point your reticle at various objects in the environment and the game will scan the thing in question and add it to your…
  • Library: This Library is not the one in the game, fortunately, it’s actually an index for all the things you scanned in Analyze Mode and you can leaf through it with gestures. They had to call it the Library, though?

So there’s the list folks and it’s not all that bad. The voice commands are incredibly redundant in my opinion, given that you’ve already got a controller in your hand (and they probably won’t be used in multi) but the Analyze Mode sounds pretty cool. I hope you can still do that one without a Kinect, I mean there’s a few extra buttons on the controller that Halo doesn’t use.

In addition to the reveal of the Kinect features, 343 also dropped the achievements for Halo Anniversary and the list actually looks pretty fun. I’m a big fan of the co-op achievements which use the “bro” puns like “Standard Operating Brocedure” and “Brovershield”. All of the achievements appear to be doable, so don’t be surprised if I end up nabbing all the cheevos on this list.

So, any thoughts on the Kinect commands or the achievements? Still excited for Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Super Gaiden Subsistence?

Source – IGN, Xbox 360 Achievements

Batman: Arkham City Reviews Arrive with a Pow

Arkham City

Bam! Pow! Zhom! Those are the sounds that Arkham City is making amongst the circle of reviewers as it enters the scene with one heck of a flourish. The sequel to Rocksteady’s Arkham Asylum certainly sounds promising, and many are praising it as the greatest superhero game ever made. Granted, that’s not saying a lot, but it’s still a lofty and impressive claim.

Overall, Arkham City is garnering loads of positive reviews on the high end of the spectrum. It seems like it improves on Arkham City in every way, and adds the open world play style in a way that doesn’t take away from what made the previous game so much fun. Here’s one of my favorite quotes, from the Wired review:

In fact, it avoids the curse of sequelitis by making a major change to the formula — instead of a Metroid-esque series of interconnected rooms, it’s an open-world city that you can fly across, going from point to point in a matter of seconds. You can play only the missions that are required to advance the storyline, but you’re also constantly tempted with a wide variety of side missions, collectibles and challenges scattered everywhere. It doesn’t feel anything like Metroid anymore, but it sure feels a lot like Crackdown.

So yeah. Call me excited. Here are some other reviews for you to peruse:

Ten Minutes of Syndicate Gameplay Breach the Internet

EA and StarBreeze’s (the guys behind The Darkness) revival of Syndicate, a sci-fi RTS from the early 90s, was just announced last month with a release date of February 2012. Since the game is seemingly on the fast track to the shelves, the two companies have been hitting hard with the pre-release info and have just put out a new ten-minute gameplay trailer for the title. It shows off the game’s shooting and something called “breaching” which is the act of using the chip in your character’s head to hack electronic systems and manipulate them. If this sounds like something you’re interested in, check out the trailer below:

Some people have been saying that Syndicate bears a close resemblance to the recent Deus Ex game, but other than some superficial stuff I don’t see it. Syndicate looks like it’s way more action-oriented than Deus Ex was, and it doesn’t appear that stealth will really be an option here. So, what did you guys think of the trailer?

Hyrule Total War’s Intro Cinematic Brings Zelda to the Battlefield

I’m kind of a sucker for awesome mods and sadly they’re kind of going out of vogue with the video game industry. While there is still the odd company that still has mod support in their games, these are few and far between. Even though active modders can’t really look forward to new releases and the possibilities there, they can go back to older games and create some really neat stuff. Take this video I found of a Total War conversion that puts Legend of Zelda skins on the various armies as an example. There’s a ton of attention to detail here, and it’s guaranteed to make you nerd out at least a little bit.

Pretty cool, right? I really hope that Nintendo lets this guy continue with the project because they’re notoriously harsh about the use of their IPs. What did you guys think of this mod? Pretty sweet? Would you try it out?

Mass Effect 3’s Galaxy at War Co-Op Missions

Mass Effect 3

Yikes. Yesterday, the Internet was absolutely exploding about the news that Mass Effect 3 has a multiplayer mode. Shocker of all shockers, the instant reaction to this was utter panic, as the Internet is an entirely sensible bunch and not prone to hyperbole.

As a result, Chris Priestly, Bioware’s Community Coordinator, stepped into the Bioware forums to deliver some clarification about just what the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer would look like. It turns out that the game will actually support 4 player co-op missions that are separate from the main campaign. This mode, called Galaxy at War, will put players in control of 4 squad mates (not including Shepard) who can be made up of a variety of powers and races.

The cool thing about Galaxy at War is that it sounds like the progress you make in these co-op missions will affect the single player, in the sense that you’re helping the overall war effort against the Reapers. Whereas in Mass Effect 2, you were grooming 12 people for a suicide mission, in Mass Effect 3, you’re getting the entire galaxy ready for an all-out war. The co-op missions can boost your overall Galactic Readiness level.

So, that’s just a few of the details for what actually sounds like a promising mode that doesn’t step on the toes of the Mass Effect universe. I think the big debate moving forward is going to be if this hurts single player in any way, or if this mode is even necessary for what’s already been a great experience. You can certainly read the rest of the FAQ for yourself here.

How do you guys feel about this? Are you freaking out? Excited? Upset? Ready to swear loyalty to Bioware forever? Go!

Source – Bioware Forums

Gaming Pop Quiz: Fall 2011 Edition

Somehow, these new editions of Pop Quiz keep sneaking up on us. It feels like it wasn’t so long ago that we were talking about the dog days of gaming summer, looking forward to the Fall like seagulls swarming around a family having a potato chip fight. I don’t really know what the deal is with that analogy, but I think it sort of works.

Anyway, it’s officially Fall now, and the releases are rolling in. We’ve had Gears of War 3, Dark Souls, the Battlefield 3 Beta and soon Arkham City, Skyrim, Uncharted 3 and then some. It’s an exciting time to be a gamer, and one that I’m sure will produce a number of thought provoking responses from you all, our lovely Sushi-ans. This pop quiz is full of questions about the games we’ve already seen, candy and peril. Tread carefully.

As always with our getting-to-know-you type games, feel free to answer with as much or as little as you like. Answer to the best of your ability. Go! Continue reading Gaming Pop Quiz: Fall 2011 Edition

Today’s WTF: Early Versions of Classic Games

Ocarina of Time

While it can be maddening to wait for word on an anticipated game release, it’s probably a good thing that more developers don’t tip their hands too early. Very often in creative processes, the seeds of an original idea morph into something that the creators don’t quite anticipate, both for good and ill.

It seems the same is true with gaming. You see, Cracked has put out a hilarious (and somewhat frightening) list of 6 Baffling Early Prototypes of Your Favorite Video Games. Although you’ve no doubt heard some of the highlights of this list (Super Mario Bros 2 and Halo come to mind), there are others that are downright shocking. Ocarina of Time as an FPS? The original Super Mario involved a gun-slinging plumber? This is the stuff that rocks world views, my friends. And perhaps even socks.

Personally, while I can tend to be an information hound, I have to say that I’m glad that sometimes we don’t know every little detail of development as it’s going down. Think of all the fan overreactions we’d hear about on a daily basis if we saw extremely early iterations of games that more than likely changed over the development cycle.

What do you guys think of this list? Are you glad that developers hold back on what they have to show until closer to release? Or do you wish that they would show us sooner?

Source – Cracked

The Top 100 Trailers of All Time

GameTrailers decided to, fittingly, rank the 100 best trailers of all time and they just announced their pick for number one. They give a quick countdown of all their choices and there are a few really great picks in there that are a little low for my choice. There’s a bias towards this generation of consoles and trailers, but that’s understandable given that video game trails only really got good last generation. Here’s the number one pick:



What do you guys think of GT’s choice? Do you agree? What would you have chosen?

What Are You Playing: Show Me Your Rage Edition

what are you playing

We might have to do a What Are You Playing every Tuesday from now until the end of the year because it’s about to go down, people. There’s maybe about a billion games coming every week for the next few months on this exact day, except for Skyrim, which hits on a Friday (also known as “Eff Your Weekend Plans, Here’s Skyrim” Day). Naturally, we’re curious about your gaming tastes as it helps us format the content for the site and it also lets us know that your care enough to respond. That said, let’s dig in.

Because I’m a crazy person, my purchase today will be Spider-Man: Edge of Time, Beenox’s sophomore attempt at this property. I enjoyed their last effort, Shattered Dimensions, so who knows, I might like this one too. Other than my guilty pleasure we have RAGE and Dark Souls, one of which I know Anthony is salivating ferociously over. I also picked up the Witcher 2 on Steam for 30 bucks and of course there’s the Battlefield 3 Beta and Gears of War 3 when I get a moment. Who ever said that gamers are lazy should really look at the 2011 release schedule. That’s a lot of gaming to get done with so little time!

So what’s on your docket? RAGE, Dark Souls, something else? Polishing off the backlog maybe?

GamerSushi Asks: Last LAN Experience?

Gears 3 Horde

If there’s something that I’ve really missed over the years in my life as a gamer, it would be the LAN experience. Whether it was with consoles or PCs, my friends and I would constantly get together for crazy nights of shooting, trash talking, Diablo-ing and Warcraft-ing. The spread of online gaming in the console realm has sort of put the LAN experience in the backseat, but it doesn’t make it any less fun.

I found this out firsthand this weekend as several of us got together the night before my brother’s wedding. To celebrate his last night of sweet, sweet freedom, we pulled several XBox 360s out with monitors and TVs and played Gear of War 3 until late in the evening. As fun as Horde mode can be online, it kicks up a notch when all of you are in the same room, freaking out at one another during the boss waves and screaming for your life. Good times.

The whole night was a great reminder of those times of old. Even though we play together constantly online, being in the same room was such an awesome experience, and one that I want to have again soon. In a lot of ways, the LAN extravaganza is so representative of what gaming can be in terms of community and creating stories together. There’s nothing quite like it.

So what about you guys? When’s the last time you had an awesome LAN experience? What games did you play? What games are on your wishlist for a fun LAN party? Go!

GamerSushi Asks: Gaming Control Fails?

gaming control fails

I’ve gotten to the point now in my gaming career where I automatically assume I know everything there is to know about a game and its interface. With the standardization of most control set-ups, I’m usually correct but there are certain times where something about a game will mystify me to no end and force me to crack open the manual.

The last time I can clearly remember this happening was with Deus Ex: Human Revolution where it took me a good six hours before I realized that holding down the “Y” button on my 360 controller would open up the quick inventory and allow me to swap items lickety-split. Before that I had been doing the complicated dance of pausing, opening the menu and exchanging things from there. I felt that the lack of an expedited way to manipulate your cache was a pretty glaring omission from an otherwise excellent game, so you can imagine how red my face was when a casual perusal of the instructions told me that I was doing things the hard way.

Another game that came under some moderate fire recently for not spelling things out clearly enough was Bastion where people apparently didn’t know that you could re-do the challenges without exiting and going all the way back to the titular stronghold and picking them again. This was fairly obvious to me but a few people I follow on Twitter (non-GamerSushi folks, just so no one thinks I’m calling them out) seemed to run into this problem constantly.

While no one likes to admit that they’re not the best at something (gamers especially), I was wondering if you guys had any embarrassing stories of this nature to share. Was it something like my Deus Ex mishap, or the Bastion one? Go!

Today’s WTF: Call of Mountain Dewty Double XP

CoDSome of you may have heard about the new Mountain Dew Call of Duty promotion giving away in-game Double XP time for buying their products. Stuffing your face with bags of Doritos and washing it down with a can of the green can give you up to 90-plus minuets of in-game double XP. Codes on the products can be entered to give you a rank-up edge in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3.

Now I don’t know how many of you feel about companies giving in-game goodies for pre-orders or buying the more expensive edition of a game, but this one really takes the cake. Check out the official rules at the link from the top to view the official rules and a table of the time-to-drink ratio.

While 15 minutes of double experience for drinking a 20 oz bottle of Mountain Dew isn’t going to skyrocket you to 15th Prestige, the concept of this promotion is still a giant facepalm to me. With companies like Best Buy and GameStop already doing absurd promotions this new concept seems to be pushing that idea too far. What do you guys think? Is Mountain Dew hitting on a goldmine? Or is this a joke of a promotion? Give me your thoughts!

Source – PC Gamer

GamerSushi Asks: Do We Need Better Graphics?

Epic Samaritan

At first glance, the easiest way to note the changes in gaming from the 80s to now would be in the quality of the visuals. We’ve moved from the jagged mazes of Pac-Man to the jaw-dropping realism of Battlefield 3. And while I’m not one to call myself a graphics dude, this certainly makes me happy in a variety of ways. I remember playing games on the PS1, seeing the cut scenes, and thinking that some day games will look like this. The crazy thing is, we blew that point out of the water as early as last generation in some cases.

But have we hit our graphical peak? And where else can gaming go? CEO of Epic Games Tim Sweeney has some ideas about that:

I really see two major milestones coming up for games in the very long-term future. Number one is achieving movie quality graphics and movie quality pixels on the screen, which mean no flicker in the visuals, no popping artifacts, no bulky character outlines on the screen at all. I see that actually occurring over the next ten years. I expect I’ll be actively programming at the time we’ve achieved full movie-quality graphics because that’s really just a matter of brute force computing power and clever algorithm. We know exactly how to do that.

He goes on to talk about the second major milestone being the human aspects of the game such as AI and other simulations. Perhaps I’m nitpicking a bit here, but it seems interesting that game makers are still so devoted to graphics. Granted, this is Epic we’re talking about, makers of one of the most gorgeous engines in gaming, but it still gives me pause. Continue reading GamerSushi Asks: Do We Need Better Graphics?

Sony’s Mysterious Trailer Will Leave You Guessing

Kevin Butler, freshly crowned king of the Long Live Play marketing campaign tweeted a link to a video that could only be described as “mysterious”. Also, “puzzling, intriguing and WTF” spring to mind, but as Levar Burton on Reading Rainbow used to say, “You don’t have to take my word for it.”

Just in case you want to though, the trailer shows references to all sorts of Sony franchises, such as Sweet Tooth’s truck from Twisted Metal, the Metal Gear MK II and even Ratchet and Clank. Something is brewing and I wanna know what it is!

See for yourself:

[youtube width=”500″ height=”310″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBuK3EcY6vk&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

What do you think this could be? I will have my eyes glued to the Internet on October 5th, that’s for certain, but if this is about Playstation Home, I’m going to be pissed. What say you?

Source: Twitter

Chart Your Gaming Progression

gaming evolution

I stumbled upon something neat the other day while browsing the Internet, and I thought it would make an interesting topic here on GamerSushi. We often talk about what our current favorite is, or which game got us into gaming, but it’s very rare that we step back and examine our gaming evolution from day one.

The basic format we’re going to be following is outlined in this picture, but if you don’t want to date yourself by giving your age, that’s OK. I’ll go first just to give everyone another example to go off of. Just because there’s kind of a big gap between the adolescent game and the current favorite game, I’m also going to add in an early adulthood game in order to make the time difference a little less severe.

Date of Birth: 1987
First Game: Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt
Childhood Defining Game: Super Mario World
Adolescent Defining Game: The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
Early Adulthood Defining Game: Gears of War
Current Favorite Game: Red Dead Redemption

So there we go, my gaming evolution charted from birth until now. So, how does this look for you guys? What was your first game ever? Your current favorite? Go!

BioWare Announces Launch Date and Pricing for The Old Republic

the old republic release date

The day that we’ve all been waiting for has finally come to pass: after much hemming and hawing and three pre-rendered trailers, BioWare has seen fit to announce the release date for their highly anticipated Star Wars MMO. The Old Republic (TOR) will be brought into being on December 20, 2011 in North America and the 22 in Europe. People who have pre-ordered the game will also be given early access, but there’s no specific time-table for that yet.

In addition to the launch day, BioWare also dropped The Old Republic’s pricing structure. Every copy of the game will come with a 30 day subscription built in, but anything past that will be subjected to the typical MMO monthly fee. The breakdown goes thusly:

  • 1 Month Subcription: $14.99 (£8.99/€12.99)
  • 3 Month Subscription: $13.99 per month (one-time charge of $41.97/£25.17/€35.97)
  • 6 Month Subscription: $12.99 per month (one-time charge of $77.94/£46.14/€65.94)

So there it is, folks, laid bare for all to see. I’m kind of surprised that TOR is going with a traditional pricing scheme when every other MMO (even World of Warcraft to an extent) is going free to play. Indeed, there’s one MMO I’m looking forward to possibly more that TOR and that’s Firefall which is going to be supported by microtransactions.

I’ll still give TOR a shot anyways, just because I’ve been waiting so long for it, but the subscription might be a deal breaker in the long run. What do you guys think about this news? Excited for TOR? What are your thoughts on the pricing structure?

Source – The Old Republic

2011: The Year of Strong Female Characters

gears of war cartoon

Typically in gaming, female characters are either total write-offs or just re-writes of male characters but with ridiculous armor that barely covers anything except their privates. I’d all but given up on seeing believable female characters in video games, but this year actually marks the first where I was more impressed by the fairer sex in a game then I was by their masculine counterparts (no homo).

The year started off with Dead Space 2 and its introduction of Ellie Langford, a pilot for the Concordance Extraction Corporation and a survivor of the Necromorph outbreak on Titan Station. While Isaac Clarke was fighting to regain his sanity, Ellie battled the zombified remains of her co-workers (and implied boyfriend) and helped Isaac destroy the Marker and escape the station, all while losing an eye. Ellie didn’t need your help, didn’t need to be saved (again, the eye thing was a minor set-back) and she contributed way more to the story than just jump prancing around in a skimpy outfit. The same goes for Second Lieutenant Mira in this year’s destined to be over-looked Space Marine: she held the Imperial Guard together after the deaths of her superiors and kept them fighting even after the Ultramarines came in to steal the thunder. Continue reading 2011: The Year of Strong Female Characters

Ni No Kuni Gameplay Video Paints a Pretty Picture

Ni No Kuni, the Level-5 RPG that’s being co-created with Studio Ghibli (the wonderful people behind classics like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away), is due for release in Japan later this year and in America early next year. While I’ve only seen a trailer and some art for the game, I was happy to learn that Level-5 brought it to TGS. And as expected, it’s gorgeous.

I know that sometimes we gamers throw around terms like “stunning” and “gorgeous” until they lose all meaning, but I really am impressed by the art and the style of Ni No Kuni. It looks to be one of the PS3’s best-looking games, and that’s certainly saying alot.

Looks like I’ll have one more game to add to the list for 2012. What are your thoughts?

EDIT: You might have to watch two ads to get it to play, but it works. Check it!

Source – GamingEverything