Your Beta is Not a Demo

your bets is not a demoIn a trend that’s becoming far too common in the games industry, Betas are being used to promote a game rather than their proper form of stress-tests and bug finding. Three high profile games this year, Battlefield 3, Gears of War 3 and Uncharted 3 have all used Betas to lure people into pre-ordering the games or buying a different title.

While all of these games did make good use of their respective testing phases (Gears 3 had a lot of map layout changes, for example) the fact still stands that Betas are increasingly becoming a marketing tool, one that may harm the industry if overused. How can we fix this? Continue reading Your Beta is Not a Demo

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

Battlefield 3 Beta Impressions

battlefield 3 beta impressions

While the Battlefield 3 Beta does go public today, I’ve been playing it since the 27 thanks to my pre-order early access (and the fact that I bought the Limited Edition of Medal of Honor). I haven’t been hiding my anticipation for Battlefield 3 at all and I’ve been eagerly awaiting a chance to try the game out before release. Since I’ve already pre-ordered it, I’m kind of locked into the full retail version, but I wanted to give those of you still on the fence a little taste to help you decide whether or not to jump on this train.

The only map currently available in the Beta is Operation Metro in its Rush variant. Operation Metro is a very linear map that progresses from a park to a subway tunnel and then out onto a wide promenade. The other map, Caspian Border, is currently locked behind a password, but that’s the more traditional BF map with wide open areas and combined arms warfare. Metro is strictly an infantry combat map in this form, and it doesn’t exactly carry that Battlefield feel that people might be expecting. Continue reading Battlefield 3 Beta Impressions

GamerSushi Asks: The Nature of Multiplayer?

A couple of decades ago, if you had asked me what the term “multiplayer” meant, I probably wouldn’t have had an answer. The most “multi” I could get for my gaming dollar was adding my brother into a game of Streets of Rage or the Captain America and the Avengers game for Sega Genesis. In a time where gaming knew a lot of limits, the shared experienced capped out at two players max.

Things were different at the arcade, of course. There, two to four players could race against one another, or four mutants could tackle the coin-op challenges of the classic X-Men arcade cabinet. That was an experience that was fancy, almost futuristic in appearance compared to the tethered wired controllers that got thrown around in frustration over hat tricks in NHL 94. Continue reading GamerSushi Asks: The Nature of Multiplayer?

Would You Rather: Fall 2011 Edition

Well, it’s not quite fall, but nobody’s told that to the video games industry yet. Already, we’ve seen Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Resistance 3, Dead Island, Space Marine and soon, Gears of War 3. And that’s just for the month of September. Yes, the Fall of 2011 has been documented far too many times on our site, but seriously, can you blame us?

As such, we thought it was time to drop in with a brand new edition of Would You Rather. This time, we wanted to give you some tough decisions regarding the fall, and all its video game goodness. For the Would You Rather newbies out there, the game is easy: we ask and you dish out your response. Give as much or as little explanation as you want for your choices, but we all know that we like to see the reasoning behind the madness.

Don’t let your answers suck, though. Jeff just got a new pair of glasses that can spy people that give sucky answers and then annihilate them with crazy lasers. Seriously. I’m totally not making that up. OK go!

Continue reading Would You Rather: Fall 2011 Edition

Random Encounters

Dragon Age II

When playing video games, all manner of thoughts usually pop into my head. Some are far too graphic to share here and are off-topic besides, but I’ve decided to post my thoughts in a quick-thought format about a variety of topics. Sometimes things don’t warrant a full post by themselves, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still talk about them right? Continue reading Random Encounters

Gamers Gonna Hate

gamers gonna hateThe problem with having gaming as a hobby and actively persuing that interest means that I often come face to face with the fact that gamers love to complain and do it often and loudly. I know that the most vocal of gamers are a small constituent, but when you’re active in the places that these people frequent, it sort of seems like there’s a wall of complaining and moaning that hits you like an incessant tidal wave.

Complaining about people complaining is like pissing in the wind, but if there’s any safe place to do it, I feel that it’s here on GamerSushi. While we may disagree on a lot of issues, there isn’t any one topic where everyone is overwhelmingly negative or against a certain thing. Honestly, it’s like a breath of fresh air compared to some of the places that I lurk and I’m always thankful that we’ve managed to carve out an island of stability amidst the turbulent waters of the Internet. Continue reading Gamers Gonna Hate

Multiplayer Map Hall of Fame, Part Two

Last year, we did a feature highlighting some of our favorite multiplayer maps of all time, in which we singled out Halo’s Blood Gulch, Mario 64’s Block Fort and Left 4 Dead’s No Mercy, among others. All of you answered with some great suggestions, and I promised I would return with another edition (and beyond) honoring some of those mentioned.

So, here we are. Remember, these aren’t intended to be definitive lists, but rather, a way for us to reminisce on some great games and some great maps that we enjoyed in our time with them. If you have more suggestions for awesome maps that deserve to be in the Multiplayer Hall of Fame, by all means, post them in the comments and we can continue to induct new members. Continue reading Multiplayer Map Hall of Fame, Part Two

Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Fun or Shun?

Welcome to a new GamerSushi feature, gents. In Fun or Shun, we set our sights on an upcoming release that we are on the fence about, and make final declarations of our allegiance (or lack thereof) to the title. In the first edition of this endeavor, we thought we’d tackle Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the long anticipated follow-up to a legendary series.

Each of us have fallen off the fence about this title in recent weeks. See where we’ve landed below. Continue reading Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Fun or Shun?

GamerSushi Game Night: StarCraft 2

gamersushi game night starcraft 2

It’s been a long time coming, but the GamerSushi staff are finally ready for another game night. The last official one we had was in Halo 3, with a few random Halo: Reach sessions when that dropped. Now that Eddy has built his new PC, we’ve decided that the time is ripe to have another GamerSushi Game Night.

This time around we’re going with StarCraft 2, so you PC gamers will finally get a chance to trash us. Nick may put up a fight, but Eddy and I will basically roll over and die as soon as you start harassing our mineral lines (seriously though, don’t do that).

While we still need to nail down a specific date (it will be sooner rather than later, don’t worry), what we need you guys to do is put your Character ID below and give us an indication of what time works best for you. Obviously, with the time differences, it’s going to be hard to get it perfect, but we’ll give it our best shot. Much like Halo 3, we’ll probably do this a couple of times to ensure that you’ve had your fill of beating the crap out of us.

Sign up below so we can get an idea of how many people will be participating and we’ll go from there!

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