Much Like Brink, More Games Need a Free Weekend

steam brink free weekend

This past weekend Steam offered Brink, Splash-Damage’s less than well received free-running FPS, as a free download for a limited time. I was turned off by the game’s reception at launch and the various issues I had heard about since then, but at the low, low price of nothing, I was intrigued enough to download it and give it a go.

Instead of being just a simple demo, the full game was up for grabs for the limited time offer and I got to try out a whole host of Brink’s gameplay. I was definitely intrigued by what I played; the game’s free-running aspects were great fun to use once I got used to it and the shooting felt tight and responsive. I played through most of the Security side of the campaign with a friend and we had a great time. This is the co-op shooter that I’ve been missing this year and I never would have played it if Steam hadn’t done this free trial.

While Brink has more than its share of problems (I was dropped from servers constantly until I restarted my PC, which magically fixed that issue), I realized that basing my assumptions off Metacritic ratings isn’t necessarily doing me any favors. For most of the games I’m curious but doubtful about I’ll go off a friend’s recommendation, but I don’t know anyone who even so much as gave Brink a sideways glance.

If it weren’t for some extenuating circumstances, Splash Damage definitely would have made a sale with this free weekend. Brink was a lot more fun then I realized and it kind of made feel stupid for disregarding it in the first place.

Did anyone else try out the free weekend and what are your thoughts on Brink? Did it convince you to pick up a copy? Should more games try this method to boost sales a couple months down the line?

Getting Ready for the XBox 10th Anniversary

XBox

Come November, Xbots everywhere will be celebrating the original console’s 10th anniversary. The Xbox was the console that nobody thought would work, as Microsoft was stomping into territory completely dominated by Nintendo and Sony, and to some extent, Sega. Who would have thought that 10 years from now, they’d be neck-and-neck with the big dogs of the video game world?

To prepare for this event, VG247 has actually done a pretty cool retrospective on the system’s origins, titled The XBox Story. It’s a four-part series that looks at the conceptualization, greenlighting, marketing and launch. They really did their homework, and the whole thing is fascinating. Really interesting in particular is the way they first devised it as an answer for PC gaming.

I confess that I was one of those people that doubted the XBox’s staying power when it first came out. I was eventually swayed by Knights of the Old Republic, and later Halo. While this generation still doesn’t give me much of a favorite at the moment in terms of consoles, I’m overall impressed with the 360 and the job Microsoft has done. We’ll see what it does in the future.

So what do you guys think of the 10th anniversary of the XBox? What are some of your favorite games on either console? What do you think of the retrospectives?

Source – VG247: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

A Live-Action Team Fortress 2 Short for Some Friday Fun

It is Friday today, faithful readers and I hope you are having fun, fun, fun, fun and looking forward to the weekend. As I have no career per say right now (except for my first year of college starting in September), I’ve kind of lost my appreciation for the end of the work week, but I still recognize the need to unwind. Now that I’ve completed my roundabout intro, I’d like to present you with the newest short from Corridor Digital, a couple of YouTube videomens similar to Freddy Wong. Their newest video offers up a neat interpretation of a game we all know and love, Team Fortress 2. It’s just a ridiculous as you’d expect it to be, but that’s half of the fun.

These are the same guys that made Minecraft: The Last Minecart in case you were wondering. What did you guys think of their latest video-game themed outing?

GamerSushi Asks: What Are You Playing?

FF Tactics

Greetings, gamers.

As I said in the podcast post, you should notice that there is more going on around here than there has been in the last few weeks. We were taking a break because of the post-E3 news drought, and because we just wanted to chill a bit. It’s funny, because for some reason, I took a break from gaming in general, save for the daily StarCraft 2 ladder match.

So, now that the gaming season is kicking back into high gear, I’ve been trying my hand at a few games lately. For one, I picked up Bastion, and have played just a bit of that lately. I’m really enjoying the presentation, and it helps that the gameplay is solid, too. On top of that, I’ve been knocking out some Civilization V, which I’m enjoying as well.

But for me, though, the crown jewel of my gaming life the last two days has been Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions on iPhone. For those unaware, this is the PSP remastered version of Final Fantasy Tactics, one of my favorite games of all time. The idea that it’s in my pocket whenever I want to play it is kind of incredible, and already I’m sucked right back into it. Seriously, if you have never played this and have an iPhone, get it.

So what about you guys? What are you playing? Go!

Bungie’s Anniversary ViDoc Features 20 Years of Gaming History

Bungie’s twentieth anniversary may have come and gone (and with it their stewardship of the Halo series) but they have one last present to give to their fans. Pulling footage and interviews from their long history of crafting awesome stuff, Bungie’s newest ViDoc deatils the company’s past in depth, including some frank revelations concerning Halo 2 and its notorious ending.

There’s also a bit about Bungie’s relationship with their passionate community and a few celebrity interviews besides (yes, Anthony, Nathan Fillion is in there). This beast clocks in at just about an hour, so get comfy and prepare to relive your memories of Halo, Myth, Marathon and Oni.

Now that Halo is out of Bungie’s control and they’re onto bigger and better things, do you think that their new project will garner as much acclaim as Halo? What could their new project be? There are some tantalizing hints at the end…

GamerSushi Asks: Call of Duty and Videogame Vampires?

Game Vampires

While reading Game Informer issue 220, I ran across a section called “Feedback.” In here they list responses from readers and one in particular caught my eye. The response was entitled “Call of Duty: Time Vampire.” What follows is the entry and Game Informer’s response.

“This letter is coming from a previously avid Call of Duty online player. Recently, I’ve begun to actually think about what I’m wasting all these hours of my life on. I decided to pop back in my copy of CoD: WaW, and after getting shot up quite a bit, I quit in frustration. Then I moved back into my comfort zone with my usual gaming selection: Black Ops. I played for a little while and suffered more than my share of frustrating deaths. Then I rage quit and walked outside, thinking about what I had just endured. I asked myself, “Aren’t video games supposed to be fun? Why am I wasting hours upon hours of my life on such a meaningless and even disturbing experience? Why does my kill/death ratio even matter?” I then stepped back and realized that Call of Duty is just a massive waste of time. I went into the barracks option and looked at the amount of time played. It read 10 days, 18 hours, and 34 minuets. Call of Duty, you were like a leech, sucking away at me and my time. I’m glad to be rid of you.”

Matt Bernsdorf
via email

Then GI responded with this:

“So we’re guessing you don’t plan on subscribing to Activision’s new monthly Call of Duty: Elite service?”

So the article hit me in a way that may surprise some people. I felt like this letter was totally worthless, as was the response from GI. I talked about it with my girlfriend and she agreed that the article seemed pointless. Games within themselves are just that, ways to waste time. They are for entertainment, like a movie or a book. They are for you to spend your free time and have fun, two things that the author seems to be re-thinking.

I have spent 8 days 2 hours and 31 minuets playing Black Ops alone. I have had horrible games and been frustrated, but I never consider it an absolute waste of time. I play with my friends and I have fun. To me it seems the author of the letter is not having fun, which leads him to believe that said games are a waste of his time. What I find interesting is that this can be taken to more than just the Call of Duty series and FPS games. I guess MMOs and RPGs are all wastes of time, too. What’s the point? Why should I go for the best weapon or armor? Why should I level up?

I find that it defeats the whole purpose of gaming all together. Perhaps he has grown out of videogames, but I feel he is just being a bad sport. So what do you guys think? Is Call of Duty a total waste of time? Are videogames in general worthless vampires that suck away at us? Give me your thoughts!

Source – GameInformer

The GamerSushi Show, Ep 32: The Prodigal Podcast

And… we’re back.

We’ve taken a bit of time away from the podcast (and if you’ve noticed, the site in general) to recharge our batteries a bit before heading into the fall. The thing about video game news is that like anything else, it works in seasons of dry spells and deluges, and the month of July is a drought of anything worth talking about on the whole. This is mostly due to E3, since the games industry seems to save all its mojo for one special week, and then deals with the announcements for another couple of weeks after. And then the dread silence.

So, we decided that for the podcast, August through E3 will now be a “season” of the show. Which technically makes this season 2, I guess. Welcome! We’ve got a game of over/under for the first few games of the fall, some talk about Bastion, as well as some silliness about the Nintendo 3DS price drop.

Anyway, you’ll see more posts in general around these parts, including the continuation of the weekly podcast. I for one am ready for the Fall of epic gaming to be upon us. Here are the topics for this week’s prodigal podcast: Continue reading The GamerSushi Show, Ep 32: The Prodigal Podcast

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

Borderlands 2 is Announced, What do You Want in the Sequel?

borderlands 2 confirmed

After being confirmed by just about every gaming site in existence (thanks to Eurogamer’s diligent journalism) Gearbox Software and 2K Games acknowledged that Borderlands, the gun-porn heavy FPS RPG, is getting a sequel in early 2012.

There was a bit of a kerfuffle over this reveal earlier today with Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford saying that the premature confirmations were more down to “shoddy journalism” than anything else (it couldn’t be that the sites messed up your careful marketing plan, could it?). Inside baseball aside, I’m kind of excited that this game is getting a sequel and I can’t wait to see what’s going to be changed.

Borderlands 2 will take place on Pandora, which is kind of a bummer in my eyes because of how boring looking the planet was in the original, but there’s nothing saying that the majority of the planet was represented by the last game. The game will also feature brand new characters and a bajillion more crazy weapons.

There’s not much else being revealed right now until the Game Informer story hits, so I’m going to open the floor to you guys. What do you want from Borderlands 2? What do you think the new classes will be like? What would you change about the loot system, the level progression and the story? Go!

Source – Borderlands 2

Your DS Has An Aliens: Infestation

If there’s one game that was heavily influenced by the Aliens franchise, it’s Halo. But if there are two games that were influenced, one of them would be Metroid. And somehow, we’ve come all this way in video game history without anyone trying to merge the two…until now.

Way Forward has been working on a Metroidvania-style Aliens game called Aliens: Infestation which will be released on October 11 and judging from the gameplay footage seen at Comic-Con, it looks pretty awesome. Take a look:

[youtube width=”500″ height=”331″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_GnVE10SYE&playnext=1&list=PL24D880CACFB6D62F[/youtube]

Pretty cool, eh? One of the neatest things I’ve read about this is that you have a squad of 19 different marines and if one dies, he’s gone forever. But if one is captured and you save them before they are infected with a chestburster, you get them back. A neat twist on 1-ups, I think.

Does this interest anyone at all? The DS is pretty barren these days, so I am glad to have anything at all coming out that looks this good. GO!

Ars Technica Details how Developers are Messing Up PC Ports

ars technica how to ruin pc ports

Being an occasional PC Gamer, one thing I’ve noticed recently is that PC ports have a few reoccuring mistakes that developers and publishers are continually making. Sometimes they’re simple things, but most of the time they’re huge errors like not allowing users to customize their controls or burying the graphics options deep within the game’s files.

Ars Technica did a little write up detailing how to ruin PC ports in five easy steps and they included all the major faux pas that are far too common for my liking. I’m not too upset about the controls and graphic things (I usually just play on the default settings, anyways) but the log-ins withing log-ins is getting fairly annoying. Grand Theft Auto IV was annoying in this respect as was Crysis 2.

The old PC Gaming bane DRM is also included in this list, with the writer of the article tearing up a quote from the recent Blizzard event detailing Diablo 3’s DRM. Another point of contention is the fact that PC Ports are often released way after the console versions, meaning that any site that deigns to review them will use the original scores and won’t take any usability errors made in the port into account.

While the tone of the article may come off as snarky, it does make more than a few good points and exposes a lot of the hardships that your average PC gamer has to deal with. I know we have a lot of PC gamers on this site, so what did you guys think about this feature? Did it hit pretty close to home?

Source – Ars Technica

Diablo 3 Brings in an Auction House that Uses Real Money, Requires Constant Internet Connection

diablo 3 auction house internet connection

One thing that’s guaranteed to make headlines is a video game developer making a few design choices on the PC that get people up in arms. After continually raising eyebrows back during the lead-up to StarCraft 2, Blizzard invited a few games journalists down to Irvine, California to sample some of Diablo 3. While I’m certain they came away with the excellent taste of RPG/brawler in their mouths, a couple bits of news might have left a sour taste.

Diablo 3 will feature an in-game auction house where players can exchange real money for items or receive cash for selling theirs. As a kick-back for running the service, Blizzard will take a little off the top (like Valve and the community TF2 items), but the seller will still see some payouts in the end. In addition to Blizzard taking their cuts, an un-announced third party will be handling the transaction and taking their piece of the pie as well.

Blizzard sees this as an extension of the trading system in Diablo 2 where the best items would get filtered around by the players on Battle.net. While the auction system will be closely regulated by Blizzard and there are several safeguards in place to prevent abuse, this seems like quite the gamble to be taking with Diablo 3.

Speaking of gambles, Blizzard also announced at the same event that Diablo 3 will require a constant Internet connection, even if you want to play all by your lonesome. The constant connection will be used to authenticate your character with Blizz’s servers and prevent piracy, auction house fraud and other sorts of nastiness. Another part of the reasoning was that Blizzard thought that people wouldn’t appreciate maxing out a character in single-player and starting over from scratch if they wanted to try Battle.net.

That’s quite the pair of head-scratchers right there, if you don’t mind me saying so. Blizzard is always trying to push the envelope in these terms, so this might not be the weirdest things we hear pre-release. What do you guys think about this news? Does this affect your perception of Diablo 3? Oh, and there will also never, ever be mods. So there’s that.

Source – PC Gamer and PC Gamer

GamerSushi Asks: Franchises that Tanked?

Sonic the Hedgehog

Is there no greater pain than watching a franchise fall from grace and into the gutters where only the video game slime lives? I’d submit that for a series’ greatest fans, there probably isn’t.

On the subject of great franchises that have sadly lost their way, GamePro has put together a list of The Greatest Franchise Nosedives in the industry. It’s a funny yet sad look on the titans of old that, for one reason or another, tumbled down to earth after seeing great success. While there are a few on there that are givens (Sonic, anyone?), there are also some that I hadn’t considered in a while simply because of how irrelevant they’ve become in recent years.

In terms of other franchises that I’d like to see find their way back to prominence, I would have to say that I think Starfox is due for a comeback sometime in the near future. And while I don’t think Final Fantasy is in the hole as of yet (XIII was a good time, if flawed), I do want to see them find the same sweet spot they used to last decade.

What do you guys think? What franchises have really tanked in your opinion, and which do you hope can make a comeback? Go!

Source – GamePro

From Dust is a God Game with a Twist

from dust

The second offering in 2011’s Summer of Arcade came out this past week, and like Bastion before it, the materials I saw before release intrigued me enough to pick it up. I am speaking, of course, of From Dust, the environment-manipulation game from UbiSoft.

In From Dust, you control the Breath, a deity of sorts that has the ability to manipulate the landscape. You can pick up anything from water to lava with the left trigger and drop it with the right. At first you’ll just be using earth to make bridges over water, but later in the game things get more complex as you’ll be sculpting the land to re-direct lava flows or using wind to part the seas.

No god would be complete without people to worship it and From Dust supplies you with devotees in the form of the Men. These little guys are your responsibility as they seek out to populate the land and rediscover connections to their ancient heritage. For the most part the Men do what they will, you only command them what to do when you want to recover an artifact, found a new village or move on to the next area.

From Dust is a little different from other games of this type because it puts you under a lot of pressure in the later stages, forcing you to move fast against the overly-aggressive nature of the world. Erosion happens very quickly and lava can overwhelm your poor Men if you’re not careful. You’re not omnipotent here, the Breath has a very defined set of powers and it’s up to you to work within those limitations as best as you can. The only problem I’m experiencing with From Dust so far is the controls; they’re a bit too loose for my taste, requiring a lot of compromise on your part as you’re not able to fine tune your movements with the analogue sticks.

Other than that, though, From Dust is a very interesting game and carves out its own niche in the Summer of Arcade. God games are something we don’t see a lot of on the consoles (or even on PC anymore), so if you’ve been missing those types of games, I recommend checking this out.

Has anyone else grabbed From Dust? Are you waiting for the PC/PS3 releases? What are your thoughts?

Robot Tells the Sad Truth About Working in the Games Industry

So, you want to work in the games industry? There are a few things you should know first.

I came across a humorous video today in a thread where people were discussing the now somewhat viral video made by a girl who wants to get a job at Valve. What hers and many other pleas from gaming industry hopefuls often miss is the kind of work that goes on in that world. It seems like the best piece of advice is to learn to make games on your own, and work at it until one of them can get noticed.

Anyway, I thought the video was full of a few megaton truth bombs, as cynical as it is. It’s a bit old, too, so forgive me if you’ve seen it already. Thoughts?

GamerSushi Asks: Origin Versus Steam?

Origin

In recent weeks, we’ve seen a bit of drama when it comes to the digital delivery of some of EA’s games. This has mainly occurred on Steam, where Crysis 2 was removed from Valve’s platform, and just this morning, Dragon Age 2. While there are a number of reasons for this, overall it stems from EA pushing their new content delivery system, Origin, as a competitor to Valve’s monopoly.

Here are some thoughts from EA CEO John Riccitiello about the future of Origin, given in a recent conference call with video game press.

“We’ve had a lot of inbound inquiry about getting on. I think forward-looking publishers really want their content on any and every platform possible. One more sale is better than not… We hope to be HBO meets Netflix for gaming. But we’re also very keen to have our content distributed to anywhere and everywhere gamers are.”

So while that does sound like they want to keep their future releases on platforms like Steam, it also sounds like they are setting up a rival system all the same. I’d bet that a big portion of their hopes hinge on The Old Republic and Battlefield 3.

As someone that hopes to play Battlefield 3 in the coming months, the idea of yet another content platform on my PC is kind of irksome at the moment, but I’m willing to see how it plays out. What are your thoughts? Is this like trying to take on iTunes in the music industry? What do you think of EA’s goals here?

Source – Gamasutra

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?

Civilization 5 Makes Me Miss Other Genres

civilization 5

Over the past weekend, Steam had a sale where Civilization 5 was on offer for seventeen dollars. At that price, you would have to have a very good reason not to pick that up. I tried Civilization 4 on my laptop a while ago, but I never really got into it. After hearing all sorts of great things about the game from when it released last year, I decided to tuck in and seen what it had to show.

I played a few games over the weekend and I have to say that Civ 5 is quite addicting. Once I got a hang of the mechanics and how everything gelled together, I was really digging the nation building aspects and avoiding combat whenever I could. The Barbarians can’t be avoided, but other Civilizations will parley with you peacefully if you’re not too aggressive (small City-States, on the other had, will hate you unanimously if you go around conquering them willy-nilly).

The first game I played like this was Rise of Nations, a real-time game (Civ is played in turns, if you didn’t know) that was as much about building a strong country as it was building a strong army. Civilization is a little bit more focused on the cultural aspects, but it made me miss the hours I spent playing RoN all the same.

Since so much of what I’m playing these days are shooters, Civilization 5 and Bastion were a great one-two punch combo of different genre hotness. It’s nice to play a game where the main objective isn’t “kill all the dudes” and it kind of makes me wish I had bought it earlier.

Did anyone else grab Civilization 5 during the sale? Have you been playing it since release? What do you think of it?

Does Halo: Anniversary Pack a Next Gen Punch?

As many of you know, Halo: Anniversary releases this November, right in time for the 10th anniversary of Halo: CE, a game that changed the landscape of FPS gaming on consoles. All we’ve seen of the game thus far has been shown to us in a slew of E3 trailers, but no more. The dudes at 343 have been kind enough to put together a walkthrough of The Silent Cartographer, one of the original game’s more famous levels, in the brand new engine.

So what do you guys think? Do you think the graphics go far enough to make this a contender with some of the other big titles of today? How excited are you that they used much of the original game’s code? Who will be buying this? Go!

Bastion is a Callback to the Games of Your Youth

bastion video game

Bastion was released this past Wednesday, ushering the in the annual Summer of Arcade on Xbox LIVE. Made by Supergiant Games (and published by Warner Brothers Games), Bastion is an isometric RPG-style beat-em-up that is supposed to invoke the feeling that games gave us back when we were kids. The folks at Supergiant have said this repeatedly since the game was announced and I’d say that they really nailed it.

Taking on the role of “The Kid”, you set out to restore the Bastion, a safe-haven where the residents of Cealondia agree to meet during a catastrophe (called “The Calamity” in this case). Along the way your adventures are narrated by one of the other characters and it’s this persistent monologue that really makes the game shine. The presentation of this game is fantastic, from the dynamic narration to the visuals and the music (oh man, that music). Supergiant has made a classic here, if only in the new steps it takes in storytelling.

The game isn’t exactly perfect, though; the combat is a little too simplistic and repetitive, even if you can apply new attributes and boosts to your variety of weapons. Aside from that minor blemish, Bastion is really, really good and has already given me another music-in-gaming moment that might just top Read Dead Redemption (please be careful clicking that link if you don’t want to be spoiled!).

Is anyone else playing Bastion right now? What are your thoughts?

The Star Wars: The Old Republic Pre-Order Debacle

star wars the old republic pre-order

Some exciting news out of Comic-Con today regarding the Old Republic, but maybe not the kind that people were expecting. It’s not the release date as many people might have hoped, but rather the news that you can pre-order Star Wars: The Old Republic in one of three flavors (regular, Digital Deluxe and Collector’s
Edition).

Pre-ordering is all well and good and as natural to the video game industry as wetness is to the ocean, but letting people pre-order without a release date is a little strange. Beyond that, the Collector’s Edition was very limited (it was sold out by the time I looked at the page this morning) and apparently the Digital Deluxe version is in limited supply as well. You can still pre-order the DD SKU, but after dropping your cash-monies on it you’ll be informed that you are “likely” to receive the thing you paid for.

I’m going to try and not editorialize this too much, but there’s something wrong if you can’t guarantee people something they paid money for, especially if it is digital. What many people suspect EA and BioWare are attempting to do is limit the amount of people logging in on day one in order to transition smoothly from development to MMO-sentience, but they way they’re going about it is all wrong. Opening pre-orders before a solid release date and telling people that they might get what they paid for smacks of under-preparedness among other things.

EA will no doubt bequeath people their Digital Deluxe editions, but whether or not you’ll be in the first run remains to be seen. I get that the Collector’s Edition is supposed to be rare (given the number of Halo 3 boxes I still see in stores makes me scoff at that notion), but putting a limit on a digital item will no doubt raise eyebrows.

What do you guys think of EA’s move? Is it a little too much taking money before putting out a release date?