Category Archives: Games
Lara Croft and the Knight in Shining Armor
I’m a little behind the rest of the world but I finally finished the reboot of Tomb Raider this weekend. The delay in completing it wasn’t because it was a bad game. If I was to give it a rating, I would probably give it an 8.0 or an 8.5. There was just something about the game that meant I put it down after a few hours last year.
Playing it through over the last couple of weeks made me conscious of what I disliked about Tomb Raider. It wasn’t the gameplay or the plot but the portrayal of Lara Croft throughout the game that I found odd and off-putting.
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Uncharted Director and Writer Amy Hennig Leaves Naughty Dog
The driving force behind Naughty Dog’s smash hit Uncharted series has left the developer. It was announced yesterday that Uncharted franchise writer and creative director, Amy Hennig, has left Naughty Dog.
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Rocksteady Studios is Back with Batman: Arkham Knight
Just when you thought that WB Games Montreal’s buggy and derivative Batman: Arkham Origins destroyed the Batman: Arkham franchise, the developer you need, rather than the developer you deserve, returns.
It hasn’t been a secret that Rocksteady was still working on projects for WB Games. It turns out that their next game is another entry into the Arkham franchise with Batman: Arkham Knight.
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Critics Corner: South Park: The Stick of Truth
Break out the Ron Paul GIFs because IT’S HAPPENING! After delays that added up to 15 months, South Park: The Stick of Truth is finally out. The game, written and voiced by South Park creators/writers Trey Parker and Matt Stone, has gone through a little turmoil as Obsidian’s development of the game was hampered by THQ’s bankruptcy and the sale of the South Park licence to Ubisoft.
Usually delays mean trouble for a game in development but most of the critics love this game. If you’re a South Park fan, The Stick of Truth is what you’ve been looking for from a South Park game for years. It’s not just another generic licensed piece of garbage. Obsidian is a developer who is used to working with other people’s IP and thriving. Just ask anyone who’s played KOTOR 2 and Fallout: New Vegas. It shouldn’t be a surprise that it lived up to my personal hype as my most anticipated game of 2013 and 2014.
Anyway, enough of the history lesson and hype. Here’s what the critics think of South Park: The Stick of Truth.
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Instead of Rambo: The Video Game, You Should Play Rambo: Last Blood
I didn’t have to do a Critics Corner post for the recently released Rambo: The Video Game to tell you that it’s a terrible game. The critics universally panned it. The best score it got was a 50% from both Edge and Eurogamer. Sort of ironic because it’s hard to get the really high scores out of those two publications.
Fortunately, there’s a better Rambo game out there for you to play and you don’t even have to drop $40 for it. Naughty Dog game designer Peter Javidpour has his own browser-based Rambo game for you to play called Rambo: Last Blood. If you have five or ten minutes and want to play a Rambo game, you really should try it.
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Rockstar Games to be Award a BAFTA Fellowship
While Geoff Keighley likes to consider VGX (né the Spike TV Video Game Awards) the Oscars of the video game industry, they’re regarded as nearly the farthest thing from. The properly prestigious video game awards are the BAFTAs awarded by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, or their equivalent to the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences.
At this year’s BAFTA game awards, Rockstar Games will be given the highest honour of the BAFTAs by being awarded a BAFTA Fellowship.
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Irrational Games’ Job Fair Hosts 57 Studios for 75 Employees
It’s never good to hear about games developers closing up shop and people losing their jobs but it’s nice when a company goes above and beyond to ensure that everyone lands on their feet. While most companies are content to just cut jobs and say “S.O.L.,” Irrational Games just held its job fair to help out the 75 employees who are losing a job of the company’s closure and saw 57 studios show up to meet the outgoing developers.
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One of the Battlefield 4 Class-Action Lawsuits Has Been Dropped
Back in December, we brought you news of a pair of class-action lawsuits being brought against EA on behalf of investors as a result of the poor state of Battlefield 4 at release and the connection that the condition of the game affected the company’s share price.
This weekend, a little digging by GameSpot found that one of the two class-action lawsuits against EA over Battlefield 4 appears to have disappeared. That marks the first time in recent memory that EA has one something that isn’t the worst company in America award.
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The New Xbox Boss is a Man Who Wanted to Sell It Off
When Microsoft was looking for a new CEO late last year and earlier this year, the name Stephen Elop, former CEO of Nokia, was one of the name that kept popping up as a favourite. Bloomberg reported that part of Elop’s pitch for the job was that he would sell off parts of the business that weren’t part of the company’s core strategy, including the Xbox division.
So guess who was just named the new boss of Microsoft’s Devices Division, the division that Xbox falls under in the Microsoft corporate umbrella? On Wednesday, Stephen Elop was announced as the Devices and Studios Division’s third boss in seven months, replacing current head Julie Larson-Green.
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Titanfall is Poised to Completely Change the FPS Genre
When I was at Fan Expo last August, someone in line for the State of Gaming panel asked the group of us waiting where we thought the industry was headed. Increasing the quantity and quality of free-to-play games was a popular answer. More mobile games for core gamers was another answer. Motion controlled games on Kinect, Wii U and PS Eye finally becoming proper gaming was a less popular suggestion but it was made.
After some pondering, I realized that those answers weren’t wrong but I had a better one. While all those ideas might be right, I think Titanfall might be a harbinger for where the industry is headed. It has nothing to do with mechs or pretty graphics or third-party triple-A games going exclusive. It has everything to do with dropping the single-player campaign and launching a game with only multiplayer.
et geekera 