Nintendo Announces Pokemon X and Y for 3DS October 2013

Well, Nintendo has officially erroded my will when it comes to the 3DS by announcing a new pair of Pokemon games, due out this October. Pokemon X and Y, as they are being called, will be a big change from the games of the past, moving the camera into a sort of third-person perspective as opposed to an isometric view. I always wondered how GameFreak was going to progress the franchise if they ever brought it to the 3DS, and this seems like a logical step. There’s even a trailer, which points to a European-styled setting (earlier Pokemon games were based on Japan while Black and White were inspired by New York City).

Expect me to be toting a 3DS by the end of the year, catching ’em all. I can’t decide between the new starters because unlike previous generations, there isn’t one single Pokemon that I don’t find incredibly stupid. I’ll probably roll with the Grass-type, as that one seems to be the least offensive to my tastes. Is anyone else chomping at the bit for a 3DS Pokemon title? Y or Y not? Will you X this off your list? Should I keep making these puns?

What’s Happening with the DayZ Standalone?

dayz-standalone

DayZ, one of the biggest breakout mod hits of 2012, was slated for release as a standalone version by the end of that year. Now that we’re in 2013 with no DayZ solo project in sight, Dean “Rocket” Hall has made a rather large post on the DayZ Devblog, detailing what’s happening with DayZ and some of the features that are being added.

One of the reasons that the DayZ standalone has been delayed is because Rocket and his team decided to increase the scope of the project a fair bit. According to the blog post, the game was supposed to be a polished version of the mod, packaged and sold as its own entity. The opportunity to completely redo the existing game was a little too tempting, however, so the developers decided to rework a whole host of systems, from the game engine to the UI and the scavenging.

The inventory has been rebuilt from the ground up, and will “fundamentally change” the DayZ experience, if the post is any indication. The new system allows for enhanced scavenging, or different items stats like if you shoot someone with night vision in the head, the night vision goggles will be damaged when you pick them up. This also applies to disease tracking, so you can leave cholera-infected items around for poor scroungers to find.

Another factor holding up development is that the designer of the original Chernarnus map, Ivan Buchta, is still imprisoned in Greece on espionage charges. This means that the DayZ team is having to get input from him via letters, stalling forward progress on their retooling of the landscape.

So it seems that Rocket allowed DayZ to blossom under his newfound development position, and Bohemia Interactive are letting him run with it. I’m all for a new UI and updated mechanics in DayZ, because the ARMA 2 interface is a little cumbersome, especially for a survival-type game.

What do you guys think about this new development? Excited for the prospect of “DayZ 2”, as it were?

Source – DayZ Developer Blog

GamerSushi Votes 2012: Best Single-Player

Now that we’ve talked about Best Multiplayer/Co-op let’s move on to the next segment of GamerSushi Votes. On the docket today is Best Single-Player, and it’s been a heck of a year for solitary experiences. A couple years back it looked like the single-player experience was on the way out and a good multiplayer portion was the ticket to success, but near the end of this generation we’ve swung back around to games having a really fleshed-out single-player campaign and tacked on multiplayer modes.

It was hard to narrow down the selection of single-player games to vote on, but I think I got a good sample. As usual, if there’s a game you think I missed, feel free to tell us in the comments. Now, vote!

Best Single Player of 2012

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Hundreds is the New Battery-Drainer for iOS

I just installed Letterpress on my phone (that game is a lot of fun, by the way) but I’ve already stumbled across another title that’s taking me away from everything else. This game is called Hundreds, and it’s on iOS, brought to us by the makers of Canabalt and Wurdle. The premise of the game is simple: in any given level, you have to use the available circles to reach the number one hundred by expanding them with your fingers. Seems simple right? Maybe not, as there are a few tricks thrown at you along the way. Check out this video of the game, which will hopefully give you some insight into why its so addicting.

Hundreds also has a great ambient soundtrack and the random messages and text errors remind me a lot of the Animus interface from the first Assassin’s Creed. My only gripe about Hundreds is that the iPhone might be too small to play it on, what with your fingers obscuring most of the screen. My advice is to try it on the iPad, which is what I’m doing. Has anyone else played Hundreds? Are you going to check it out?

GamerSushi Votes 2012: Best Multiplayer/Co-op

Hello, gaming friends, and welcome back to GamerSushi Votes, our now annual tradition of asking you, the community, what you felt were the stand-out titles of the year.

For the first day of voting, I thought we’d tuck into the best multiplayer of the year, which I’ve expanded to include co-op because I’ve spent more time playing with people rather than against them this year. Mass Effect 3 lead this charge, having a surprisingly strong and deep multiplayer mode that has been repeatidly expanded on and I’m still playing to this day. Add that to plethora of other games that encourage working with your friends, and you have a very strong year for co-op.

So, choose a selection from the list below, or let us know what your favorite multiplayer/co-op of 2012 was in the comments!

Best Multiplayer/Co-op of 2012

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My Metal Gear Solid 4 Experience: The Saga Ends

Cover mgs4

Well, that was certainly an experience.

In the last year, I have played all the numbered Metal Gear Solid games (MGS, MGS2, MGS3), ostensibly to see what the big deal was. After finishing Metal Gear Solid 4, my feelings on the game itself are largely ambivalent, but my feelings on the entire franchise are generally positive. (spoilers follow) Continue reading My Metal Gear Solid 4 Experience: The Saga Ends

GamerSushi Asks: Your Gaming Outlook in 2013?

Bioshock Infinite

Happy New Year, GamerSushians!

Pretty hard to believe that we’re in the year 2013, eh? I’ll avoid the typical jokes about flying cars and Kardashian-related apocalypses, and instead say that we’re glad you’re all here with us to keep talking about video games.

Since there’s not much in the arena of gaming news besides the stuff we’re all no doubt sinking our teeth into after the holidays (guess who beat XCOM today?), I wanted to ask a couple of questions about 2013, and the number of possibilities it holds for our beloved hobby. With games like Bioshock: Infinite, The Last of Us and the probably launch of new consoles, there’s a lot of potential for this new year.

So, here are your questions… Continue reading GamerSushi Asks: Your Gaming Outlook in 2013?

Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

black ops 2 review

While Call of Duty moved into the realm of fictional wars with the first Modern Warfare game, the series has never strayed beyond modern technology; indeed, even jumping into today’s battlegrounds was deemed a huge leap for the series. Now that almost every era of modern war has been mined for inspiration (I’m still waiting for Trench Warfare), Call of Duty’s off-year team Treyarch decided to make a bold move and place their Black Ops follow up in the year 2025.

The whole game doesn’t take place in 2025, however, as there are several levels that occur in the 1980s that set up the origin of Raul Menendez, the antagonist of this particular outing. Switching back and forth between the shiny combat of 2025 and the shady battles of the 1980s, can Black Ops 2’s unique narrative break it out of the Call of Duty rut? Continue reading Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

Changing the Game with Steam’s Big Picture

Steam Big Picture Mode

Hola, Sushians. If you can’t tell, we’ve been on a bit of a break due to the holidays and the fact that most gaming news has ground to a halt. On top of that, we’re actually busy playing tons of games for a change (XCOM, you have my heart), so that we can vote on our Top 10 Games of 2012 list and also because games are amazing.

On top of clearing out a backlog (which has been made impossible due to the Steam sale), one of my goals over the holiday season was to finally purchase an adapter of some sort so I could play certain PC games with a 360 controller. While I enjoy a keyboard and mouse for shooters and RTS style games, there are a number of gametypes I’d prefer to use my 360 controller for — to the point where I wasn’t purchasing some great deals on games because I didn’t want to play with a keyboard and mouse.

Well, I’ve finally hooked up the adapter and tried out Big Picture Mode, Steam’s new UI built for a controller and a TV, and wow, guys — I’m a total believer in a Steam box. Continue reading Changing the Game with Steam’s Big Picture

GamerSushi Asks: What Are You Playing this Christmas?

far cry 3

Merry Christmas Eve, GamerSushi friends, or any other holiday that you fine folks might be or have been celebrating. I’d insert a joke here about diversity, but I think we’re all a bit grown up for that by this point.

One of my favorite things about having some time off for Christmas every year is all the free time I suddenly get to catch up on games. In addition to the mouthwatering deals of the Steam Sale, I’ve also been playing a bit of Halo 4, and I’m dying to get my hands on Far Cry 3, Spec Ops: The Line and Sleeping Dogs. I’m sure there will be many other things added to that list in the next few days.

So what about you guys? What are you playing while on break? Hit us up with your comments! Go!

The Games of 2012 in Under Two Minutes

It’s been a heck of a year guys, starting off strong with Journey and Mass Effect 3 and finishing off with a wide array of excellent games from Borderlands 2 to Halo 4 to Far Cry 3. This year has been so great in fact, that a video montage by YouTube user Malcolm Klock is the best way to send it off. Set to “Leaving Earth” from Mass Effect 3, the video has clips from thirty-plus games from 2012. Give it a watch and enjoy.

There you go! What did you guys think of that? Did you favorite game show up? What games were sadly missing from this montage?

The Force is with Angry Birds Star Wars

angry birds star wars

Yes, I’m doing a post about Angry Birds, but it’s also about Star Wars so deal with it. In the latest addition to the never ending line-up of Angry Birds titles, Angry Birds Star Wars mixes the iOS classic with that galaxy far, far away, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s actually kind of fun.

The basic premise of Angry Birds Star Wars is that you play through some Star Wars themed levels like Tatooine and Hoth, flinging your birds at the Imperial pigs’ emplacements. The twist is that every bird has a Star Wars influenced power, from Obi-Wan’s Force push to Luke’s lightsaber swing. The levels are cleverly crafted to take full advantage of this fact, and swinging your saber to perfectly reflect a stream of blaster bolts back into the Stromtrooper-helmeted pigs and win the level is very satisfying.

There are also space levels where you need to account for the gravity wells projected around asteroids. The gravity effect is different for every bit of space junk, so sometimes you need to send your bird through a loop-de-loop course before you can take out any pigs.

Despite its Angry Birds wrapping (which I don’t mind, I just know people like to hate it because it’s popular), Angry Birds Star Wars is a fresh new take on the formula, and, in a sad twist of fate, the best Star Wars game to be released in 2012. Considering it was up against Kinect Star Wars, that wasn’t too much of a challenge, but if you’ve been temped to try this game out, go for it. Even if you’re burnt out on Angry Birds, it does enough new things to more than justify its price tag.

Has anyone else played Angry Birds Star Wars? What did you think?

What’s the Deal with The WarZ? Updated

So The WarZ, Hammerpoint Interactive’s zombie survival MMO hit Steam over the past few days, bringing with it a fresh new wave of controversy. While the Steam page for the game has been updated, it originally did not state that the game is still in alpha and was missing a lot of the advertised features such as more than one map and player classes.

It’s really hard to keep up with The WarZ’s current woes, but apparently the newest patch has added an instant respawn button that you need to pay for with real money, lest you want to wait four hours for the cooldown to be over. TotalBiscuit has a gameplay video about The WarZ which is 40 minutes long, if you can actually make it that far.

Frankly the game looks pretty bad, especially given the whole kerfuffle about the game being announced shortly after Day Z’s launch with the developers claiming The WarZ has been in development for five years.

Has anyone played The WarZ? How is it feeling to you so far?

Update: The WarZ is no longer availible for purchase on Steam, and Valve has started a thread for people to air their grievances about the game in light of the developers deleting posts on the game’s Steam forums.

Battlefield 3: Aftermath is the Expansion We’ve Been Waiting For

battlefield 3 aftermath review

Continuing my trend of reviewing the DLC for Battlefield 3, like Close Quarters and Armored Kill, I’m going to sit down here and rap with you for a bit about Aftermath, DICE’s newest contribution to the steadily growing stable of post-launch content for their combined-arms FPS.

Like the previous two pieces of DLC, Aftermath has a “theme” to go along with it, and in this case it’s picking up from the single-player story by giving us four new maps set in a post-earthquake Iran. This means rubble-strewn pathways, and in the case of Epicenter, aftershocks that will shake your camera around a little bit. It’s not too noticeable that it will affect your aim, but you do have to compensate for it a bit.

The new maps are more in the style of the vanilla BF3 maps, having several choke-points leading to wider areas for you to mess around in. Coming off of the Armored Kill maps, which sometimes felt a little too big, this is a welcome change of pace. The maps are more suited to infantry combat, as tanks are a rare sight even on 64-player Conquest. The new hotness is the customized vehicles, which are basically civilian vans and Humvees with a grenade launcher and a machine gun bolted on. They’re a ton of fun to rip around in, and in a nice change of pace from the armored jeeps of the main game you can actually kill the occupants with a few bullets or a grenade. Continue reading Battlefield 3: Aftermath is the Expansion We’ve Been Waiting For

How 7 Games Affected the Industry in 2012

journey

Every year, the video game industry is rocked by a handful of events. Or more specifically, a handful of games that become events in and of themselves. No, I don’t mean blockbuster game releases (although the Modern Warfare 3 drama was something to behold in 2011), but rather games that become a story themselves, the release of which affects the trends and discussions of the entire industry as a whole.

In a new feature, MCV takes a look at 7 Games that Shaped 2012, where study the games that most affected the marketplace. The focus of this list is pretty interesting: Borderlands 2 proving that retail is still a powerful force, Double Fine and Kickstarter changing the way a number of indie games (and a few AA titles) are produced and released, and the quality tipping point of small, downloadable games with titles like Journey and Walking Dead. Each of these things has played a huge role in 2012 in terms of shaping the industry, and I’m curious to see what it means in the future.

Although some of the stuff on the list doesn’t quite apply to those of us in the States — like Mass Effect 3 and the collapse of GAME — Mass Effect 3 is still just as notable this year because of how it affected the discussion of art and the consumer. It’s one of the more memorable times we’ve seen a creator change a product after its release in order to cater to what consumers wanted from it.

So, what do you guys think the biggest game stories of 2012 were? What other games affected the industry this year? Go!

Source – MCV UK

Mass Effect 3: Omega is a Non-Essential Side-Story

mass effect 3 omega review

As excellent as Mass Effect 2’s Lair of the Shadow Broker was, BioWare might have shot themselves in the foot when it comes to post-release DLC. While it would be unrealistic to expect that every piece of Mass Effect DLC would be up to the same standards, it kind of laid the implication that any quests given to the player outside of the main game would advance the story, or at least fill in some background information.

To BioWare’s credit, Mass Effect 3: Leviathan did dredge up a more fleshed-out history of the Reapers, but the newest effort for Mass Effect 3 DLC, Omega, doesn’t add anything new to the story, or change your perception of the established characters you’ll be interacting with.

Shepard is contacted by Aria T’Loak, the Pirate Queen of the space station Omega, to help her take her throne back from Cerberus, who threw her out before the main campaign of Mass Effect 3. Because of Aria’s dislike of your squadmates, you’re going in without any familiar faces from the Normandy. I’ve never bought into the character of Aria as much as BioWare seems to want me to, and being saddled with her for a couple hours just demonstrates how one dimensional she is. While the end of the Omega campaign has her softening a bit, for most of the time she grunts and threatens her way through dialogue sections, being so predictable that a new character, Nyreen the female turian, calls her on it. It doesn’t help that the voice actress behind Aria, Carrie-Anne Moss, sounds like she’s collecting a paycheck for most of her lines, only occasionally dipping into having any emotion besides bored anger. Continue reading Mass Effect 3: Omega is a Non-Essential Side-Story

Review: Halo 4

halo 4 review

When Halo: Reach launched, the future of the Halo games became rather uncertain. Sure, we knew that Microsoft had formed 343 Industries to shepherd the series now that Bungie was moving on from the games that made them famous, but there were still doubts as to whether 343i had the chops to take over. Their first video game effort didn’t come until 2011 with the re-release of Halo: Combat Evolved. While it was a nice update to this classic game, it was still just standing on the shoulders of giants.

Leading up to Halo 4 you could kind of sense the uncertainty surrounding it. An unproven studio with Microsoft’s most valuable franchise making a game that promised to uphold everything Halo stood for? 343i was in a tricky position, because if they played it too close to Bungie’s territory they’d be looked down on and if their Halo was wildly different, the backlash would have been immense. They needed to strike a balance between making a Halo game while at the same time moving it in an entirely new direction. Now that the game is finally out, have they become the Reclaimers to Bungie’s Forerunners? Continue reading Review: Halo 4

My Metal Gear Solid 3 Experience: The Best One Yet

MGS 3 Cover

In a series consisting primarily of odd choices, perhaps the oddest choice by Hideo Kojima was to take the Metal Gear Solid storyline back to the past, to the beginning of Big Boss’s journey. It’s always odd when a prequel has a number assigned to it that indicates it is actually a sequel, but Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater actually is worthy of the moniker. The story of Metal Gear Solid is invigorated and broadened in exciting new ways thanks to this bold decision. I had heard so much about MGS 3 being the best in the series and I was seriously surprised when it turned out to be one of the best games I have ever played. Continue reading My Metal Gear Solid 3 Experience: The Best One Yet

GamerSushi Asks: Biggest Recent Disappointment?

assassins creed 3

If you’ve listened to the most recent podcast, then you’ll know that Assassin’s Creed 3 left one of the worst tastes in my mouth in recent gaming history. Not only did the game fall short of previous titles — it was flat out bad, something I rarely even say about a game I played all the way through.

From the controls to the story to the overall bugginess of the title, Assassin’s Creed 3 was a failure on multiple levels, and I pretty much have no qualms about saying that. It was an active step back from the excellence of Brotherhood, and even the good-but-problematic Revelations. The one redeeming spot in the game’s 10 hours or so that I spent with it would have to be the naval battles, which were an absolute joy — even more so when you consider how frustrating everything around them happened to be.

But enough of my ranting about Assassin’s Creed 3. I think one of the reasons I was so thoroughly disgusted by the game, aside from it being kind of crappy, is because of the wasted potential. We were given a new setting, a new character, a chance for resolution with a number of story threads and an actual revolution (pardon the pun) in terms of setting, gameplay elements and the like. And it was all a mess. After Revelations came out last year, I was ready to be done with the AC franchise for awhile, but the promise of AC3 lured me back. I don’t know if I’ll make that mistake again, after seeing all the wasted potential that this game lived up to.

So what about you guys? What’s the biggest recent gaming disappointment you’ve experienced? What’s the biggest disappointment of 2012? What made the game disappointing? Go!

Street Fighter X Mega Man is Coming Because Why Not

Sometimes I’m really confused when it comes to Capcom. They seem like they’re struggling for relevance and have made some very confusing public relation moves in the last few months (not to mention the whole “on-disc DLC” debale) but they still manage to pull off the occasional moment of brilliance.

A prime example of this is Street Fighter X Mega Man, where the Blue Bomber will be taking on the cast of Street Fighter in a free PC download coming on December 18 (Mega Man’s 25 birthday) to Capcom Unity. Check out the trailer below!