Remember Pac Man? the original cool yellow dude around before Homer Simpson? Well, he is one of those gaming characters which will be remembered for the ages. He will be around in history museums with big cool boards teaching 8 year olds about his rise to fame and how he was the big thing at time of the release. Now we have had Master Chief as a big icon but the fact is most of the games coming out now don’t have memorable characters. Even the most hardened gamer will find it difficult to remember all the character names of the player characters in the current big releases like BioShock for example.
Perhaps this will be a sign of future things to come with big action becoming more important than character development. The thought to be left with is, when the future comes around and people look back at the big gaming icons from the ’00s which big characters will be seen to represent us now? Let’s hope it’s something as positive as Pac Man.
As a fun easy quiz, what are the player character names in these games? (no prize, answers after the continue click)
1) Stranglehold
2) Halo
3) Half Life
4) Call of Duty 4 (x2)
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Electronic Arts have been criticized heavily by almost everyone for being the Microsoft of the gaming industry.The fact is though that EA have been the torch carriers for a number of key gaming issues that have been left in the dust by the new, upcoming developers and publishers.
One example of this is the long running idea of full motion video (aka cutscenes) in games. If you take a look at any of the big games from the last few years published by companies other than EA chances are you won’t find any FMV sequences as it’s all gone the way of CGI’d efforts. While CGI can display more and depending on the way it’s produced is cheaper there is a lot to be said in favor of the old style Command & Conquer efforts made famous by the game series. If you take the last few years of Need for Speed, all but Pro Street included FMV and while not to be taken seriously the games probably made sales just based in the inclusion of real actors over CGI efforts and voice-overs.
Electronic Arts is not the bad guy or the corporate monster it’s made out to be, it’s just a company that has been catering the most users without taking risks for decades. Some would consider that a bad thing but on occasion it’s nice to know that when you pick up a racing game it’s not going to have any hidden surprises. FMV should continue being used long into the future and if EA decide not to use it in C&C or NFS in the future a long running example of quality will no longer exist. Image from Need for Speed: Most Wanted.
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One of the industry’s best upcoming FPS studios, Gearbox Software has been long rumoured to be working on a secret project that is “bigger” than anything they’ve ever tried. Since this is the team that made the entire Brothers in Arms series, the Halo PC port and many awesome expansions of Half-Life, this is something.
Rumour has it that they’re working on nothing but a Halo 4. Apparently the fight isn’t quite finished. Supposedly, the game is in development for a next-generation Xbox console. It should be noted that while we don’t have any announcements of a new console generation, we haven’t even heard talks about anything like that.
The rumour comes from the Official XBox Magazine, and there doesn’t seem to be any hard verification. Still, it doesn’t seem unbelievable or contradictory. Gearbox only has one product on their plate, Borderlands and Bungie announced that they’re done with the Halo franchise.
In any case, Microsoft milking out the Halo franchise definitely isn’t news, what will all that promotion during Halo 3’s launch. What is news is the weird, outlandish rumour. So is Microsoft working on a next-gen Xbox? How powerful is it? Is Gearbox actually working on a sequel to Halo 3? Will it come anytime before 2015? Questions galore.
We have no doubt that Microsoft has an answer to them all. ‘Microsoft does not respond to rumors’ or some such.
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