Video Games – Page 319

Stagecoach Island = WTF

There’s no other way to describe a game created by a bank other than WTF?! Honestly, I don’t have anything to say on this subject. If you want advertising by a bank in your game go enjoy Stagecoach Island, a realistic MMO game where you play a character as if you’re living in the real world.

Yes you don’t live and enjoy the real world so go create another life in Stagecoach Island – unless you have already created a new life in Second Life. If that’s the case create a third life in Stagecoach Island – unless you have already created a new life in Naughty America: The Game. If that’s the case, StuffWeLike.com does not want you to visit this website again.

Stagecoach Island

WTF??????????

360 Family Timer and Downloadable Games

This December, Microsoft is set to release a new update for the Xbox 360 over Xbox Live.

One of the things included in this update will be a timer for the Xbox. With this timer, the person in charge of the Xbox will be able to set a certain number of hours that the Xbox can be used on a daily or weekly basis. Personally, I think this is a great idea as we may have finally found a way to limit all of those bad-mouthed kids that find their way on to Xbox Live while I’m playing Halo 3. Also, I may end up with some better grades.

Additionally, Xbox 360 owners will be able to fully download original Xbox games over Live in a similar fashion to the Virtual Console on both the Wii and the Playstation 3 for $15 each. Hopefully with this, they will release some of the previously Japanese-only games as they are doing with some of the other consoles. Some of the first games that will be available are Halo, Fable, Crimson Skies, and Burnout 3.

Crysis – Review

Click to see our Crysis DVD

If you haven’t heard of it from all the hype from the last few months, Crysis is a first person shooter published by EA. In Crysis you play a solider in a futuristic (Nano) suit who is sent to a remote island on a mission to find more than he expected.

The storyline in Crysis for the most part cannot be said as it would ruin the game, but it does go into a lot of detail and fleshes out the events surrounding you. Crysis is easy to control in terms of gameplay controls with the mouse and keyboard presenting no issues. For those of you who have seen all of the trailers over the months and played the demo you will find the game is exactly as advertised; a large number of gameplay areas all vast in size and varied in type. While FPS games do well just for being an FPS the biggest draw is the idea of replaying the game using the various different possible ways that the levels can be completed such as doing it once while invisible without killing then going through just like Van-Damme would punching everyone and then finally like Sly would with full-on guns in the jungle just like in Rambo.

While people might have been reporting issues with graphics settings in the demo versions, the full game is extremely easy to use and can scale to any system to give a perfect frame rate. No matter your system’s capabilities, one option that is a must in the graphics settings is Physics quality. The higher quality physics settings control effects such as buildings being able to come crashing down. Lets be fair that’s half of the appeal for the game so having it on high is a must!

There are some issues though that are hard to ignore. After spending up to the last 6 months hearing nothing about how much we are going to love this game, getting a single player campaign that only takes 10 hours to complete on a PC only title is a pretty disappointing. You end up wishing for the game to have been longer since you have been hearing about it for so long, it’s kind of anticlimactic. Some enemies get stuck in walls if you shoot them in close proximity to them which is a serious game play issue. There is also an escort mission, which is rather dull.

With a solid multilayer map set and an ending that leaves it open to a sequel, we can only hope that Crysis 2 fixes the issues with this game. While Crysis is fantastic to play, the excitement of blowing trees drys up pretty quickly and it only actually effects enemy characters directly in the rarest of cases.

Crysis also features a level editor called The Sandbox2. It doesn’t add that much value to the game as it’s way too technical for a novice to use. The program is hidden away in a directory on the install CD with only a single acknowledgment in the readme file and no directions on how to find it on the CD’s autorun let alone use it. The editor also isn’t mentioned at all in the instruction manual in the box.

Verdict: +

Ted Stokes

Proof of full version review before retail release.

We have had some comments on digg that some users doubt that this is a review of the full version. As is usual it is a review of a press unit and above are screenshots taken by myself to prove it is from the full version using the popular fraps screenshot program. Since promo shots are a single one or two from a level it was decided to give a number of non-action shots as to try and not ruin the game or at least the level. At the top of the review are the new exclusive screenshots. Look for the Stuffwelike name on the save screen in screenshot 3.

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Save Atari ?

Atari

Atari is a company that pisses me off sometimes. It’s pathetic that they can’t get themselves straightened up and solve their financial issues.

When I began writing this post, I originally wrote it as if Atari should be saved. Go buy their games, buy their stock – we need Atari. But honestly, do we Atari? What has Atari recently contributed to the video game industry other than its brand name?

Sure Atari was THE game development studio back in the 70s/80s but they’ve lost their monopoly on the industry years ago for the same reason that they’re losing it today: they simply don’t understand what gamers want anymore.

Looking at Atari’s future lineup, there’s only one game that I want and the release date is still listed as To Be Determined! If you can’t guess the game I’m talking about it’s Alone in the Dark 4. It is possible that this single title could save Atari from its doomsday, but the likelihood of that is slim. If Alone in the Dark 4 isn’t scary enough and isn’t entertaining enough (aka PERFECT AAA TITLE) Atari will die. What is even more said is that Atari’s actually more likely to go bankrupt before the game is ever released.

Atari is a company that grew into a brand which will always live on in the game world. It’s an example of why you should never put all your eggs in one basket – I’m looking at you Dragon Ball Z. It’s probably better to let Atari become a figment of gamer’s imaginations than a on-going embarrassment to the video game industry.

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Portal’s Appeal, and Why we need more games like Portal

There is something plain weird with Portal. I finished playing this game not very long ago, and it has me absorbed. Not just when playing it, but even when I’m not. I reach for my Portal Gun every so often, or hurriedly look for my Weighted Companion Cube or, well, back away and run out of the room when I see a cake, yelling “The cake is a lie! The cake is a lie!”

While navigating through portals is somewhat disorienting at the beginning of the game, you get used to it fairly fast. The same applies to the “flinging” concept – it can be frustrating in the beginning, but you get addicted to it later. Another addiction I found was to shoot one portal in the ceiling, one on the floor and jump into the infinite vortex thus created.

Portal appears so weird because it is the first game in a long time that doesn’t want to be “realistic”, it realizes that in a video game, you don’t have real life’s restrictions. You can do whatever the hell you like. And it is games like Portal that we need in the industry – games that are different, creative and stimulating.

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How hypocritical Nintendo ruined Maniac Mansion

Ah, classic LucasArts adventure games. They’re a memory I cherish, and they’re something you ought to play if you were under the belief that games cannot be funny or have decent storylines. While the adventure gaming scene was dominated by giants like the Monkey Island games, the Indiana Jones games and the later released masterpiece, Grim Fandango, one of the forefathers of the LucasArts adventure games brand was Maniac Mansion.

The satirical game was one example of how games back then were art, not some stupid high-graphics shooting trash. Apparently, Nintendo didn’t like free, liberal art a lot, and opted for more nerfed games. This article from Douglas Crawford exposes Nintendo’s hypocrisy quite well. Nintendo wanted LA’s masterpiece on their NES, but they didn’t want any of the bad words and suggestive things. Of course, they’d rather that you kill creatures and people, but it’s bad to say the word kill or suck.

Some of the edits Nintendo required included the ones like the line
“getting your brains sucked out” being cut, or “For a good time EDNA 3444” replaced by “Call Edna 3444”. Their anti-nudity clause involved cutting out a humorous poster of a mummy, wrapped head-to-toe in bandages striking a Playboy pose.

The most ridiculous one is the removal of the term “NES SCUMM system”, which the engine on which the game ran. Nintendo’s reaction? “Yeah, but it says NES SCUMM. What will people think?” Grow up, Nintendo.

One of the most interesting points in the rather well-written article is this:

The standards go on to prohibit

depictions of excessive and gratuitous violence,

which would seem to ban any game in which your character met people, killed them, took their money, and then bought more weapons. But in fact most Nintendo games are still faithful to that theme, so we were unclear as to how to interpret Nintendo’s policy. In the Super Mario Bros games, which are considered clean and wholesome, kids routinely kill creatures, and the only motivation is that they are there.

At least most other games give you a reason to kill enemies. Nintendo screwed up Maniac Mansion on several reasons, and will probably not admit it, since screwed up is a sexually suggestive term and against Nintendo policy. If you, for any reason at all, played the NES port of Maniac Mansion, you’ve played a stunted, nerfed version of it and I ask of you to play the PC version ASAP.