Friday, January 18, 2013
6 Video Games Every Libertarian Should Play
Until recently, popular storytelling was an essentially top-down art: Novelists told readers how characters thought and felt, playwrights determined what they said, and movie directors subjected captive viewers to their own individual visions. The story you saw was the story someone else imagined, and audience interaction was limited to throwing tomatoes at the stage, or scribbling in the margins of a book. Even popular sports were basically passive: Fans might follow along in great detail, but the plays and their outcomes were determined by the actions of an elite few on the field.
But for the last 40 years, video games have begun to change all that. Games were built around interactivity: Players got what they wanted, not what someone else gave them. And as the technological firepower that makes video games possible has grown cheaper and more abundant, those games have increasingly focused on complex choice architectures designed to let players make their own stories. Game designers still build the playing fields, and some are more constrictive than others. But the arc of game design has bent toward expanding player choice. You are at the center of the experience, and you make it your own. The star of the show isn’t some writer or actor or player on the screen. The star is you.
It’s probably too much to argue that video games offer players freedom from the iron grip of the author—after all, games still have designers, and the old stories weren’t exactly forced upon their readers. But the rise of video games as a popular art form is surely a sign of the way that the broad universalized stories of yesterday have fractured into an array of niche narratives, each designed to serve an individualized interest.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Sony Sold 525,000 PS3s Last Week
The week of Thanksgiving marks one of the most important retail milestones for sellers of things. We’ve got a ballpark figure for how many people brought the new Wii U. (Around 400,000.) And Microsoft bragged about all the Xbox 360 units they shifted into people homes, too. (750,000 for those guys.) So, what about Sony? They’re right in the middle.
The consumer electronics giant divulged that they sold more than half a million units of their home console, owed largely to the attractively priced bundles on offer.
As for the Vita, the gaming handheld sold 160,000 units. That’s a lot less than the 275,000 DS units Nintendo said that consumers bought last week. When another company’s least-shiny, most outdated portable outdoes your shiny new one, you might have a problem on your hands, Sony.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
New ‘Karateka’ Slated For 2012, iOS A Possible Platform
And some say the world is a cold, passionless place. Thanks to a hip angel investor, the visionary behind Prince of Persia, Jordan Mechner, is getting a shot at remaking and re-imagining Karateka for release across multiple downloadable platforms.
In a blog post, Mechner says that he’s been working on the new Karateka with a “small team” for over a year. It’s a passionate write-up for the most part, and the reason is plain: this was his first published game, and it’s a legendary one to boot. The side-scrolling action might have been simple, but the title caught fire and has been purchased and subsequently ported roughly sixteen billion times.
Firm details are impossible to find at this point, but we do know that this is a re-make that will blur the standard lines:
It’s closer than the 2003 Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was to the original, side-scrolling Prince of Persia. But it’s a more radical reinvention than, say, the 2007 XBLA Prince of Persia Classic. The new Karateka is much more than a port; it’s both a remake and a re-imagining of the original game for today’s consoles.
Full article: http://toucharcade.c … a-possible-platform/
Friday, October 28, 2011
10 best scary video games of all time
By Dave Herndon & Dave Scanlan
Ghosts, ghouls and goblins alike will be coming to your door Monday night trick or treating, earlier this week we published lists of films to enjoy between visitors, but if movies aren’t your thing, here are the top 10 horrifying video games, many of which can still be played on modern gaming consoles.
10. Dead Rising 2 (Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC)— This is a zombie game, no this is THE zombie game, set in the fictional Fortune City, the game follows Chuck Greene as he fights off zombies while accomplishing goals around the city. Various weapons can be picked up, and even customized to as the play makes their way through the game. Up to 7,000 zombie characters can appear on screen at a time.
9. Resident Evil —(Playstation, Sega Saturn, PC, remade and revamped for GameCube and DS, the latter being known as Resident Evil: Deadly Silence) – As a member of S.T.A.R.S (Special Tactics And Rescue Service), it’s up to you to go to Raccoon City and fight your way through hordes of infected creatures to find your comrades.
8. The House of the Dead (arcade) —One of the best arcade shooter’s I have ever played, not so much scary as creepy, this is just as the title suggests set in a house filled with ‘dead’ things, or rather the inhuman experiments of one very mad scientist.
7. Ghostbusters (Nintendo Wii, Playstation 2 & 3, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, PSP, PC) —The movie franchise from my youth became a fantastic game a couple of years ago. The game play is fantastic, the story is wonderful and the voice cast is all the originals from the film, what more could one ask for when hunting down the ghosts and ghouls from the netherworld?
6. Uninvited (Atari, Commodore 64, NES, PC) — Your sibling’s left the car after its crashed in front of an old mansion, and you have to find them. A tricky game, not unlike a choose-your-own-adventure, in which strange and horrifying deaths are not uncommon. Keep your wits about you.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Classic Game Room: SHOCK TROOPERS Playstation 3 review
Shock Troopers review. Classic Game Room reviews SHOCK TROOPERS for the PS3 Neo-Geo Station, originally published by SNK for the MVS arcade machine in 1997. CGR Shock Troopers video review shows PS3 Shock Troopers gameplay in HD action. From Saurus and SNK comes this amazing top down run and gun style shooter with fantastic game play and controls. Fans of other arcade style top down run ‘n gun shooters like Commando, Jackal and Ikari Warriors will want to play Shock Troopers. Grab a friend, Shock Troopers is meant to be played 2-player as you waste mindless bad guys together with 8 playable characters in lone wolf or team battle mode. Shock Troopers is available on Neo-Geo MVS or in NeoGeo collections for PS2 or PSP, this version of Shock Troopers is the Playstation 3 port on Neo-Geo Station for PS3.
Monday, September 12, 2011
EA and Starbreeze Studios Announce Revival of Cult Classic Franchise Syndicate
Redwood City, CA – Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) and Starbreeze Studios today announced the reinvention of Syndicate, a storied franchise at EA. Created by an all-new development team from the awarding-winning studio that brought gamers The Chronicles of Riddick and The Darkness, Starbreeze Studios delivers a unique and brutal sci-fi first-person shooter experience set in a not too distant future, where business is war. Players take on the role of Miles Kilo, Eurocorp’s latest prototype agent, and embark on an epic action adventure full of corruption and revenge.
“Fans of the franchise will recognize many weapons and environments in the game, but in a whole new way. The game also provides a separate and deep 4-player co-op mode featuring missions from the original cult classic, which adds another layer of depth to the overall experience.”
“We are excited to finally reveal what we’ve been working on the past couple years,” says Mikael Nermark, CEO of Starbreeze Studios. “It’s been a great experience working with EA, and an amazing opportunity for us to use our expertise in the first person shooter and action genres to bring back, and reignite, the signature action/espionage gameplay of Syndicate.”
Set in 2069, Syndicate takes players into a dark, Machiavellian world run without government oversight with many syndicates vying for total dominance of their local market place. With no one to question their intentions or actions, three mega corporations – Eurocorp, Cayman Global, and Aspari – are at the forefront of this brutal war for control of the pivotal American market. In the world of Syndicate, everything is digitally connected, including the people. Players aren’t limited to the weapons in their hands. Through DART 6 bio-chip technology implanted in their head, players can slow down time and breach the digital world around them to take down their foes using a variety of upgradable hacking mechanics. Syndicate’s blend of fast-paced, futuristic, action shooter settings and story combined with innovative chip breach gameplay instantly immerses players in a unique digital world.
“Our goal with Syndicate is to provide a challenging action shooter for today’s gamers as well as fans of the original. I’m sure they will enjoy and recognize the legacy that made it such a classic,” says Jeff Gamon, EA Partners Executive Producer. “Fans of the franchise will recognize many weapons and environments in the game, but in a whole new way. The game also provides a separate and deep 4-player co-op mode featuring missions from the original cult classic, which adds another layer of depth to the overall experience.”
Syndicate will be available in early 2012 for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, Xbox 360® videogame and entertainment system and the PC. For more information on Syndicate, please visit www.syndicate.ea.com.