Thursday, March 26, 2009

Words of the wise - Hideo Kojima

The man behind the Metal Gear Solid franchise speaks at GDC. This is why I love GDC, listening to the rockstars of the industry talk about game design!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Farewell Filefront!!! I will sorely miss you!



The game demo site File Front will be no more as of March 30th! I always used this site for anything file related that dealt with video games, and I will sorely miss you!

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

GDC kicks off and I'm already excited for the future!

Well, I'm not going to say I thought of this idea up before (I did) but I thought the idea of playing video games from a stream sort was crazy! Plus at the time, the internet connections weren't as powerful as they are today. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's something called "On Live". I think these videos do a better explaining it!




I'm really excited for developers because the ideas for this is endless. The whole spectating games aspect to this service is what has me going! Games like Counter-Strike have utilities such as HLTV for spectating but even with that, the amount of players viewing can only be about 2000 player. This is something that Video Game tournaments needed! On top of that, I'm really excited to see how developers interact with their communities. I see many "play against the developer" games about to spring up! I hope to also see many new innovative ideas come out since it looks like the developers get to choose their games price point. This will be a good thing with the economy it is at the moment.

With that said, here are some downsides to if this platform does take off. Did everyone forget how Nvidia and ATI are going to feel about this? Sure, the PC's that are running this service need to be beast machines but then the option to buy and upgrade personal computers becomes less attractive. Like, would you rather buy a lower pc and play Crysis on ON Live or upgrade the crap out of your home pc rig and play it from their. With money as an issue, I can see people going the On Live route (depending the pricing of the whole service + the game). Also, it's mentioned that you can max out all the settings on Crysis Warhead and play it from your computer. What happens when your game crashes on a computer half way around the world? I mean, if your computer crashes now, all you have to do is hit the restart and it reboots up. I'd like to hear how they're dealing with that problem. Also, they stated that colleges can use this service? Ha! College net isn't the greatest and I doubt it could handle the HD viewing that people are use to!

Here's to hoping for the best for this new platform! Here's to all the desk jobs that use this service and get nothing productive done!


EDIT:Here's a picture of what the platform will look like with the TV plug in and controller!

Monday, March 23, 2009

New Havok AI SDK demo

Found this to be a cool demo for the new Havok AI SDK. Food's done, gotta go!


EDIT: More!

Nazi Zombies are the shit!

They are awesome and this trailer justifies how the Zombie mode in Call of Duty 5 needs its own game. Note:This is from the new map pack that just came out!

Thursday, March 19, 2009

What's in the box!

What's in it?





EDITAccording to Gamespy the video isn't anything offical from Valve. It was made by fans of the series Half Life (The community behind Valve games is amazing!!!!). Which leads me to my next thought, where's Half Life Episode 3? Also, what are they packaging in it this time? Counter-Strike 2.0? Where is that new information Gabe Newell?

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

NICE KICKS!


I saw these puppies on Kotaku and they look so baddass! I doubt I'd be caught wearing them due to the whole purple laces (come on, where on the Playstation brand do you see that much purple?). Anyways, just wanted to drop something on the blog!

New South Park tonight! Hope it's better than the season opener!

EDIT: That South Park was a major let down! Well, it wasn't horrible but it wasn't the greatness I wanted. You know what was the greatness that I loved. This Resident Evil 5 Zombie clip from IGN!

Sunday, March 15, 2009

After weekend of Resident Evil 5...

As you might know, Resident Evil 5 came out Friday the 13th and we beat it Saturday night! (Yes, we played nonstop!). Here are some thoughts about it. The bad? It seems a lot more toned down. I mean the violent death animations that I loved in Resident Evil 4 are no where to be seen in Resident Evil 5! I even sometimes died in RE4, just to see the death animation. THEY WERE THAT GOOD! That plus there aren't a lot of impossible moments in the game that really pushed the coop portion! The single player felt way too easy (we played with another person!) and it's a shame! With all the upgrades you can get, it's a shame the game didn't ramp up the difficulty. This is clearly seen with some of the bosses! Now, for the good! It's a really fun experience that will definitely make you yell at your teammate! The combo system which basically means, you can hit a body part of a enemy than both Sheva and Chris can do a melee move, is outstanding. You'll definitely get a kick when you versus the first chainsaw enemy (shown below) and both characters kick him around like he was a cardboard box.

"Chainsaws and zombies go together like peanut butter and jelly!"

The other great part is that the game gives you a ending! The ending isn't the greatest but at least they tie up some loose ends! If your real into the story, the game gives you documents all around the levels which can satisfy the hardcore RE fanbase! The next thing that I loved about the game was playing mercenaries with a buddy! You do start off pretty weak but once you unlock new levels / characters, you can basically tank every enemy the game has to throw to you! That doesn't mean your invisible because the game makes sure there is always something behind you.


"Having a teammate with you will definitely help when dealing with enemies surrounding you!"


Final Thoughts:
PROS:The game is an outstanding experience that is meant to be played with a friend. The intel found will please the hardcore RE fanbase. Mercenaries mode stays fresh by having Co-op also in it! Nothing beats taking out 3 chain saw guys with a buddy!
CONS:Way to easy single player may turn off some Resident Evil 4 players. The bosses aren't too rememberable cept for the Wesker! Death animations feel weak compared to Resident Evil 4's death animations.

I feel bad by referring this game back to it's older predecessor RE4 but that's what the main bugs of the RE5 is(at least for me). It's an awesome game that will probally compete for game of the year!

Friday, March 13, 2009

Gaming trends

First thing I'd like to say is that the new Facebook look is quite obnoxious! The home page has so much coming at the user and it's a little overwhelming. The idea that you can now see everything that anyone says to a friend is a interesting feature. The new [>] arrow feature instead of saying "Mikee has wrote:" is another feature I don't understand. It is the first day of using the new look but these are all my first impressions.

Now for my main rant/debate that has been in my head. It's Friday the 13th today and you know what that means. Bad luck! and Resident Evil 5 comes out today! The main hook of the game is that it's a Resident Evil game with Co-op done right! In about 20 minutes or so, I'll be playing it so I'll post some impressions of it! But to my rant. When I use to game back on the Sega Gensis or even on Windows 95 era, it was all single player centered games. Granted, there were others but for the most part, it was all about the single player experience. Soon later, the multiplayer age rolled into effect. Games like Counter-Strike, Rainbow Six, Mech Warrior 4:Vengence (MSN gaming zone!) and many others came to play. Here we are in the later years of the good ol' 2000's and we're going into the co-op game trend. My question is this, what's next? What will be the biggest improvement on? Will it be the game to site networking? Games like Killzone 2, Halo 3, Gears of War 2 and Resistance 2 all lead back to a online account on a website. Where you can track kills, talk on forums and much more. Will this become more mainstream? Will the feature of split screen multiplayer ever come back? Just think of what you think of when you think of Multiplayer? Ask me when I was in middle school, and I would have been Counter-Strike or Nightfire splitscren on the PS2.


PS2's game cover for the game Nightfire

It's what I love about this type of industry. The idea that how rapidly the times have changed for gaming and what features we all know / love.

/end rant

EDIT: This video helps remind me of the split screen multiplayer of James Bond:Nightfire!

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Transformers 2 Trailer!



Watch this in the HD quality (hit play and then at the bottom right, there should be a icon named "HD". Hit it!) and be prepared to be awed! I am a big fan of the first one and big fan of Michael Bay's movies (Friday the 13th, YES!) and this just shouts out "BIGGER, BETTER, AND MORE EPIC"! I love the first one and the CG they had for it! Just viewing the trailer, I can tell the CG even looks smoother than before! I can't wait, you'll see me there opening night!

Friday, March 6, 2009

Left 4 Dead DLC!

Sometimes, you just stumble back to your old favorite sites and find something real juicy! That's what happened to me when I glanced over IGN.com. I saw a title hinting on explaining the Left 4 Dead DLC and was like (o_O)! After reading the whole thing (click here for the whole article) I basically became super happy! Along with making the 2 co-op maps competitive (they stated this before that we would do this so I wasn't to excited), they are adding a whole new mode called Survival. You basically just try and hold your ground or run around for ammo/medkits for as long as you can. There is a time counter that clocks in how long you've been on. Here's a quick glimpse of it:



The challenge? More than one of each special zombie type can come at you! So think like 2 tanks chasing you down! Sounds like a challenge? You betcha!

What I find interesting is how different the vibe you get from this zombie game. The whole screen shouts chaos and panic but in a sense of order (if this makes any sense). On top of all this, the Valve designers (according to IGN) have made it to the 10 minute mark! Definitly check out more coverage at IGN.com!

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Killzone 2 baby!

I picked up Killzone 2 recently and have been addicted to the multiplayer! Let's talk about things that were amazing. The mech suit in the single player is amazing. It reminds me of the days I use to play Mech Warrior 4 Vengeance! It's that satisfying! Killzone 2 is also not the first game to feature class base teams or the whole Warzone mode (you play through all 5 modes online in one game session) but it does it so well! The controls are well...you either love em or hate em. They feel as if the weapons, the movement of the character all have this "weight" that isn't as quick as other shooters (Call of Duty 4, I'm looking at you!). It really isn't that bad because the game isn't suppose to be one man army charging in. It plays as a tactical shooter without all the commanding of other players! Now, let's talk about the bad. The multiplayer unlock system is ridiculous! I won't say I'm the best player at this game but I am quite sure that new players may be turned off at the high learning curve to the online. Other than that, I think that the game is amazing! It really did live up to the footage shown at the E3 showing so long ago! Let's take a look at that!

Note: I know that you can't be able to judge from Youtube footage but it's what I'm comparing to!

E3 2005 Trailer:


First level gameplay 2009