|
Check out our Noby Noby Boy 1UP Spotlight hub page for a week of exclusive coverage. |
“What do you do?”
That’s the question I heard from four separate co-workers yesterday when they peeked into my office to see what I was playing. It’s a valid question. Noby Noby Boy has stages, characters, and objects to interact with, but it’s up to the player to decide how to have fun with them, resulting in something closer to a literal “sandbox” than the kind of game that word usually describes.
|
Check out our Games of 2009 hub page for exclusive previews every weekday in December. |
Yes, we know that Wolfenstein’s release date follows the id Software convention of “when it’s done,” but we’ll be surprised if it doesn’t manage to hit shelves by the holidays next year. It’s been a bit of a while since we’ve seen anything on Raven’s installment of the legendary franchise (remember, pretty much all first-person shooters trace their lineage to the goofy pseudo-3D FPS where you fight Mecha-Hitler at the end), so we sent some questions to Creative Director Eric Biessman over at Raven.
When it comes to multiplayer real-time strategy games, speed’s often paramount. Even Company of Heroes, a franchise that in my opinion lessens the importance of you ability to quickly click a mouse, still brings the pressure when it comes to time management. The biggest reason I feel pressured in RTS games is because everything is on a timer; when I’m not watching build queues for military units, I need to be monitoring timers for upgrades and checking back at my base to insure that builder units are constructing additional buildings as soon as possible.
Or, at least, I did.
Imagine a Halo without Master Chief and the Covenant. A Resident Evil without Leon Kennedy, a Redfield sibling, or Albert Wesker. A Metal Gear Solid without Snake or Ocelot.
That’s the reality of Suikoden: Tierkreis, the first handheld offering in Konami’s intricate role-playing series to hit North America. At first, Suikofans were excited at the thought of taking the series portable — until they were horrified to discover that it takes place in a different universe than the vibrant, established world featured in the previous nine franchise entries. The ultimate fates of Holy Harmonia, Georg Prime, and enigmatic rivals Yuber and Pesmerga?
Imagine a Halo without Master Chief and the Covenant. A Resident Evil without Leon Kennedy, a Redfield sibling, or Albert Wesker. A Metal Gear Solid without Snake or Ocelot.
That’s the reality of Suikoden: Tierkreis, the first handheld offering in Konami’s intricate role-playing series to hit North America. At first, Suikofans were excited at the thought of taking the series portable — until they were horrified to discover that it takes place in a different universe than the vibrant, established world featured in the previous nine franchise entries. The ultimate fates of Holy Harmonia, Georg Prime, and enigmatic rivals Yuber and Pesmerga?
|
Check out our Games of 2009 hub page for exclusive previews every weekday in December. |
BioWare has an amazing track record as role-playing masterminds, but their newest project, massively multiplayer online role-player Star Wars: The Old Republic, faces a huge challenge: making players feel at home in such a beloved universe while differentiating the game from the tough MMO competition. Although the speculative 2009 release date has not been confirmed, we recently talked with company founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk, principal lead writer Daniel Erickson, and studio creative director James Ohlen, to find out how they’ll tackle this dilemma.
My coworkers are annoyed, and rightfully so. For the past few days, I’ve been wandering the office halls, whistling and chirping out a rather alarming loop of the infectious LocoRoco theme song — in my estimation, it’s the most infectious gaming tune since Kirby’s “Green Greens” (which haunts my every waking moment). So while that silly song once again sets the tone in LocoRoco 2 — a saccharine, side-scrolling, roly-poly platformer — the real appeal comes in a host of new things to do and more variety in the colorful levels.
I wouldn’t say I’m the perfect type of person to play Flower. The stylized, Sixaxis-controlled PSN title is all about tranquility and floating freely within the breeze. The wide-open verdant spaces let you swoop from one end to the other, all the while you cause flowers to blossom by touching them with your ever-growing trail of petals. The more flowers you touch, the faster you fly. The game seems to have no real punitive aspects (you can’t “lose”), and you’re free to leave many of the peripheral flowers untouched. Clearly, this is one of those games that’s meant to be an “experience.”
But being the obsessive gamer I am, claiming each flower cluster becomes an irresistible compulsion.
Gaming geezers have been eulogizing the venerated adventure genre ever since Tim Schafer’s appropriately funereal Grim Fandango failed to set sales charts ablaze. Even though titles such as King’s Quest, Maniac Mansion, and Myst were tremendous PC blockbusters way back in the day, publishers have largely abandoned story-heavy, action-deprived fare during the last decade in favor of shooters, RPGs, and racing games. Dedicated fans can still uncover a trickle of lower-profile indie offerings on the PC side, but console gamers seeking “interactive fiction” experiences are usually left with bitter, nostalgia-souring dregs (Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, anyone?). But shockingly, an upcoming adventure game has emerged that even has the jaded console community taking notice: Quantic Dream’s PS3 exclusive, Heavy Rain.
Skate 2’s already humbled me. At a recent press event, I put in some online playtime with the sequel to EA’s wildly successful skateboarding simulation. The game’s default online mode allowed me, along with others at the event, to free roam/skate around, but I could also initiate challenges by sending an invite to other players. If they accepted, we’d then warp to another location to complete the assigned task.
This is where the humbling comes in. The first event that I tried involved manualing while traveling downhill at high speed through pipes and other obstacles without bailing or bumping into anything. After the 5 minute time limit expired, no one, including me, had pulled it off.
