PAX Prime 2012 was full of good games both big and small. We covered the big ones, now here are our favorite indie titles that we saw in Seattle...
Sequels are sure to be the focus of this year's E3, and we couldn't be more excited. But what about the neglected games and franchises that deserve another entry? Unlikely though they may be, if these sequels were miraculously announced this week, we'd thank our lucky stars...
E3 2009 was a monster. A huge, massive, face-eating beerdemon that erased the agonizing memory of 2008’s meager, emaciated E3 from our minds with a flood of great-looking games, earth-shattering announcements, and a few quizzical oddities we never want to speak of again. After this, we mean, because some things are so good, bad, or just bewildering that you just have to tell people about them.
In all honesty, some games would be better off left on the whiteboard at the design meeting. Whether they're too ambitious, too expensive or simply too good to be true, we're frequently led to imagine great things only to have our expectations dashed when the game finally arrives. How could these games be so good on paper yet underwhelm so spectacularly? Let's take a look...
Thanks a bunch, Christopher Nolan. Ever since Batman Begins took the universally-reviled cinematic bastardization of a cool character and redrew it in the drab colors and long shadows of The Dark Knight Returns, the “gritty reboot” has been back in fashion. In Hollywood-speak, the term's a nice way of saying “we've screwed this up, can we have a do-over?” Of course, games being a forward-looking sort of medium, players have been wise to this trick for years now – and we're still suckers for it.
Whether it's a deeper-'n-darker sequel or restarting from scratch, rejigging your series with a darker palette and more distorted guitars is a great way to draw attention to what might otherwise be just more sequel-abuse. But how well does it work? From a player's perspective, a gray coat of paint is hardly going to turn gameplay upside down... but from a “cataloguing the tricks they'll pull to sell a new installment” standpoint, dark reboots are just gravy...
E3 2009 was a monster. A huge, massive, face-eating beerdemon that erased the agonizing memory of 2008’s meager, emaciated E3 from our minds with a flood of great-looking games, earth-shattering announcements, and a few quizzical oddities we never want to speak of again. After this, we mean, because some things are so good, bad, or just bewildering that you just have to tell people about them.
Even two console generations ago we stopped batting our eyelids if games contained other, smaller games within them. It didn’t even seem odd if whole games were made up of dozens of little ones. Nowadays we use minigame mechanisms to open doors, enact fancy stealth kills, slaughter bosses or open chests. Minigames are everywhere, be it shoving boulders in Conan, coercing peasants in Oblivion or doing anything at all in Thrillville or
The team discuss the merits of DJ Hero as an educational tool, what everyday activity would make a good game and read out your confessions
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