There are some developers that just make great games and they are so well known for it that people buy their games just by that name alone. Of course, not everyone is perfect and these are no exception. Check out these crappy games made by great developers.
The House the Mister Chief Built
Bungie is well known for the Halo series. In fact, Microsoft owes much of the successful of the original Xbox console to Halo Combat Evolved. But we won’t debate the merits of Halo CE and the aftermath of the console game industry after its introduction here. We don’t want to get the PC fanboys worked up in a stink. Let’s also not forget their previous popular games Myth and Marathon. But Bungie’s track record isn’t perfect. Before they made their mark with Halo, Bungie made this:
Oni was a third person action adventure game that came out in 2001. It had a lot of potential but many people felt it didn’t live up to its promises. It was missing features and content touted in development and when released was criticized as underdeveloped.
Free Roaming Home Defender
Bethesda has revolutionized the home console experience for role playing games. Many gamers grew up in front of their TVs playing story driven Japanese RPGs, walking along a preset path. This was changed when Morrowind hit the Xbox in 2002. The game focused not on story but choices. You were free to roam wherever you chose and free to do whatever you wanted. But before Bethesda took a PC staple and flooded our living rooms with it, they made this little gem:
Home Alone was a great family comedy about a little boy left behind over vacation who then had to protect the house from a pair of burglars. Bethesda took this empowering message and a game where “the purpose of the game is to escape the Wet Bandits while bringing all the McCallister’s fortunes from the house down to the safe room in the basement. Once all items have been sent down the chute to the basement Kevin must make it past rats, bats, and ghosts he encounters in the basement, then fight the spider king so he can make it to the safe room to lock away all his families riches.” Yes, the spider king hides in the basement awaiting Kevin and his riches. Maybe that was in the Director’s Cut of the film.
Orcs and Cyborgs
Blizzard is so well revered by its fans that it holds a convention once a year where they charge $150 for a two day pass and they sell out in 30 seconds. So it would be fair to say that Blizzard is well respected. They have created some of the most popular games in the world and they do it consistently. Except once:
The Death and Return of Superman was arguably one of the biggest events in comic book history. Once of the world’s most recognizable characters fought to the death against one of the Universe’s most devastating force. What follows was the line of comics known as “The Reign of the Supermen”. How do you take one of the most influential events in comic book and immortalize it? Side-scroller beat em up!
What lesson should you take from this? Maybe that your favorite developers are fallible just like you and me. Take hype with a grain of salt. Or if you ever get the chance to make a game based on a movie license, don’t make a side-scroller beat ‘em up. Unless it’s Scott Pilgrim. That game looks awesome.
PS. The fact that all of these developers begin with the letter B is purely coincidental.
Roger Ebert is following the ranks of Jack Thompson in criticizing the game industry and getting gamers up in a tizzy. He flat out stated that games aren’t art and will never be. And while we think that Ebert is entitled to his opinion, no matter how wrong it is, we want to present an idea on what art is.
Anyone who takes an art history class is constantly barraged with the question “What is art?”. Each new art movement is book ended with this question, mostly in response to a change in what people think art entails. Of course, there is no correct answer.
The closest consensus to an answer to this question is art is what you say it is. Art is in the eye of the beholder. If you believe it is art, then it is. Of course, if you don’t believe it is art, then it isn’t. People may disagree with you but they can’t be wrong and neither can you.
So we ask you.
If this is art,
why isn’t this?
If this is art,
why isn’t this?
If this is art,
why isn’t this?
Don’t listen to Roger Ebert, you don’t care what he says. Would you ask your Aunt Linda for advice on what motorcycle to buy? No. Aunt Linda doesn’t appreciate motorcycles like you do and has no understanding of what they are. Just like Roger Ebert has no understanding of what games are. Listen to someone who knows.
With the announcement that Street Fighter X Tekken will not be hitting our digital shores until 2012, Das Reviews is here to portend disaster.
The Mayan prediction of the end of the world (or some marketing idiot’s interpretation of the end of the Mayan calendar) has the year 2012 on the world’s mind. According to this ancient tribe of people, the world will end in disaster, either via sun flares ala Roland Emmerich or via electing a lipsticked pitbull in a power suit to the world’s most powerful political position.
But Das Reviews portends another cause: the marriage of the two biggest fighting franchises in the world in not one but two games. The mere presence of the games themselves will not be the cause but they will be the catalyst.
The makers are taking the Versus concept to an absurd level. Not only will fanboys fight over will game universe is better but they will fight over which company’s iteration of the game universes is better. It’s going to be Street Fighter vs Tekken VS Tekken vs Street Fighter, an acronym disaster just waiting to happen. The world’s Shift Keys can’t handle SFXTVTXSF.
The apocalypse will start when a Street Fighter fanboy argues that SFXT is a better game but upon realizing that he just including the word Tekken in a statement that looked favorably on it, a small vacuum will appear in his mind. This will compound as he tries to defend his statement. Unfortunately, he will not be the only one. If he were, the world would be able to fend off this disaster. But no, there will be others. Fanboys around the world will create mini vacuums in their minds from their contradictions and the effects will compound.
The collective vacuum will reach a threshold where it will start to affect weaker minds around them including but not limited to Twilight fans, rednecks and vegetarians. The vacuum will grow exponentially once it hits this threshold and a black hole will appear on Earth, sucking the world and all surrounding planetary bodies into an alternate dimension where all of the lost socks in history end up.
Someone has to stop them and I hear John Cusack is busy. Are you up for it?
Which is going to be your favorite? SFXT or TXSF? Hit your caps lock key and reply below!
Blizzard, the game company that rules the internet with a iron cartoony fist, has announced the newest facet of their RealID system: user’s full names with now be displayed in the official Blizzard forums instead of their avatar. That’s right. No longer can Trolly McTrollson hide behind a Level 1 hunter named Beeeeyonce. Anything they say can and will be used against them IRL.
Everyone’s all up in a tizzy but we at Das Reviews tend to look at the bright side of life. So here are the good aspects of this new system:
Real Life Ganking
Someone get all up in your grill while you were grinding raptors or jacked your herb that you were waiting hours for? Don’t gank in the Azeroth, do it here on Earth! Thanks to the powers of Google you can find anyone anywhere anytime. They guarantee it*. But be wary, the Real World is full of real life gankers too.
Real Life Grouping
That hot Night Elf in your guild mute you on vent again? That’s okay! Use The Google to find her cell phone number and call her! Don’t worry about wasting her minutes, just call her in the middle of the night when everyone has Free Nights and Weekends! It’s not stalking if you guys raid together! She stop picking up? That’s okay! Find her address and invite her to your group. Everybody loves rogues!
LF1M Love PST
Real Life PVP
You know that kid in your class always looking at you funny? The one with the emo glasses and too tight pants? Guess what? He’s Alliance! Better get your Guild together and represent! For the Horde! And if your teacher gets all uppity about “resorting to violence to solve your differences”, remind her that this is a PVP server and give her a Thunderclap to the face. I’m Rick James, bitch!
So don’t get all worried about the change to Blizzard’s system, it’s all for the better. And since everyone wants to be like Blizzard, you can expect the rest of the internet to follow suit. Forget avatars and clever usernames, we say names and faces! Someone disagree with your Digg comment? Go find them and give them a thumbs down… in the eye! Did some guy post pictures of his Mustang in your Scion xB thread? Find him and show him your 1.5L of stylish power… in the eye!
The biggest news at E3 this year was Sony and Microsoft showing off their new motion gaming systems (not counting Nintendo standing by and saying “We told you so.”). Some people were excited by the prospect of dropping the controller and using their body to control their games (or use a different controller in the case of the Move). However, some people are worried that they’ll be forced to pony up some dollars for new peripherals to play games that probably would have been just fine without them. While we’ve been told numerous times that we’ll still be able to play our games with the archaic two handed controller, the trend is definitely going toward the motion gaming.
However, this isn’t as bad for gamers as they think it is. Why you ask? It’s simple. The current generation of consoles are nearing the fifth year of market release. If things were turning out like previous generations, the big three would have been announcing new consoles at E3 instead of addons for the current one. Sure, the Xbox 720 does sound really exciting with killer new graphics and a bunch of new numbers that you don’t really understand but you must remember one certain number: the amount of dollars in your wallet.
The addons are going to be at or around $100 dollars for entry, tacking on whatever launch games you want. A new console will cost you far much more than that. Everyone remembers Sony’s E3 debacle back in 2006. Launching a game console at $600? Sure, it had a Blu Ray player but that’s the price of a car. A crappy one but it will get you a lot farther than a launch PS3.
So as angry as you are that the Playstation 4 video wasn’t real, you should be happy that it’s going to be a lot cheaper for you to stay the coolest kid on the block. If you weren’t, Susie wouldn’t even talk to you and that rat Jimmy would be holding her books instead. Man, we hate Jimmy.
What do you think? Should the big three have stuck with history and worked on getting some new consoles out in the market or is adding peripherals to extend the life of the current generation the right move? No pun intended.
Ready to get your motion gaming on? Head over to Das Cheap to preorder your Xbox 360 Kinect or your Sony Move for the lowest price on the internet.
For those gamers sitting in a dark cave, E3 happened last week. The biggest thing on display for the big companies was the motion gaming that Sony and Microsoft were embracing, the Move and Kinect respectively. But this article isn’t about the industries ability to iterate someone’s technology. This is about the 3D gaming trend that is sweeping through the industry.
Sony showed off rows and rows of the 3D ability of their Playstation 3. They had tech demos, games and movies on display for people to immerse themselves in their entertainment. The viewer on SONY glasses and stood in front of a SONY 3D TV and played a SONY Playstation 3. See a trend here? I can imagine the board meeting already. “Hey Playstation, meet TV. You guys go and play nice. Make us some money.” The departments butted heads together until they passed out dizzy. When they awoke, they were seeing doubles of everything and BAM, 3D gaming was born.
Of course Sony is invested in 3D gaming technology, they stand to make a lot of money by selling 3D TVs for the price of a healthy kidney. Microsoft has stated that they can do 3D but they won’t until it becomes a viable market for them. I bet if Microsoft sold TVs, they would have demoed some amazing 3D table interface at the Expo. Nintendo showed off their 3DS, a nifty piece of technology that doesn’t require extra costs and even is easy to turn off. Details are slim, but I doubt that Sony’s tech will be as easy to disable. They want you to remain engrossed in their tech so you can’t realize that you just spent your new car on HD Nausea.
Of course, it comes down to you. Does 3D gaming have a strong future in the industry or is it another ploy to cash in on a fad? Post in the comments below and let us know!
Los Angeles, CA – DasReviews had a hand-on experience with the highly anticipated Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds at E3 2010. Many new features were seen right away, which are nothing like the original Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and more like Tatsunoko vs Capcom. Button layout is different and tagging system is changed. One cool feature is the new aerial assist attacks, meaning you can tag in your partner mid-air and up to three times, opening the game up to a plethora of combination’s that can be made from this new function. Don’t think this will break the mechanics though as tag attacks can be countered to make your opponent pay for his sneaky diving attacks.
Check out OldSkools playing experience below along with some gameplay towards the end with the new Dante character.
Los Angeles, CA - DasReviews.com left a large imprint on the gaming industry this week during the E3 Show in our hometown. As we stomped through the hordes of crowds snapping pictures, and interviewing all the people and things we knew you guys wanted to know about.
On our adventure through the show we had a chance to meet many of the shows beautiful eye candies. With such a plethora of priss, we thought we would share with you guys the best of the best in our Top 10 hottest booth babes of E3 2010.
Checking out all the mood lighting-bathed video game madness at E3 this week has got me thinking. It’s kind of awesome point in time for video games. It’s definitely come into the mainstream. Gamers (some anyway) are actually “cool” and are no longer the sun-starved anti-socialites hiding away in dark, dank basements that belong to their grandparents. Video gaming culture in general has started to shift away from placing more value on pixel-pushing power and towards real innovation -toward evolution. Prime example: Music Games… the guitar-based ones to be exact.
I’d say music video games have a come a long way since the days of the Miracle Piano Teaching System or Mario Paint’s composer feature. Back then, it seemed like everyone thought of the Miracle was just gimmicky… not a viable gaming option of the hardcore. Was that concept even around back then? The hardcore gamer? As we all know… RedOctane and Harmonix changed all that back in 2005 when they released the first installment of the Guitar Hero juggernaut. Then all hell broke loose, the two split up with RedOctane becoming a property of Activision and Harmonix courting the folks at MTV games. Harmonix ended coming out their very awesome RockBand franchise. The two have been trying to one up each other ever since.
That brings us to now. When the original Guitar Hero came out, this is what the controller looked like:
A ukulele-sized non-reasonable facsimile of an actual guitar. With 5 fret buttons and a little plastic strum paddle, the original GH guitar controller, bore very little resemblance to its real life counterpart, in both look and style of play.
As of E3 2010, this is what the controllers look like:
Left: Power Gig's guitar, Right: RockBand 3's guitar
Cah-razy! What? You say they’re pretty much real guitars!? How astute of you, anonymous reader! While Rock Band’s 3 guitar controller opted for 102 fret buttons with actual pluckable strings, new addition to the fray Power Gig boasts a controller that is a bonafide six-stringed fretted instrument, magnetic pickups and all. To be fair, at E3 Harmonix also demoed a Fender Squier made for RB3, which was basically an actual Squier electric guitar with fret sensors and midi capabilities.
Tell me you Guitar Hero/RockBand aficionados haven’t had this conversation before, though. When Rock Band introduced the drum pad and everyone realized it was a little like playing actual drums, I know more than a few of my friends joked around about how they’re going to better approximate playing actual guitar… well, there it goes.
Combine the new guitar controllers with Rock Band’s new Keytar accessory, and the lines between video game and digital guitar teaching system start to get blurred even more.
I guess my point is: once we get to the point where the games are called “How Well Do You Play Real Guitar?”, how do we evolve from there? Will the uber-creative minds of today’s game designers find another way to push the envelope? Or will these music games rot away in their stagnancy? You know… like the Police Academy movies.
After going through the list of games that will be shown at E3 this year I have put together my top 5 list of games I am looking forward to getting my hands on when they release. Although I do like the majority of the games on the list, unfortunately there have to be 5 of them that I want to play that much more and here they are.
#5 Bulletstorm
Along side Gears of War 3, Epic games together with the People Can Fly development team are putting together what I think will be one of the most unique first person shooters in gaming history. On top of the commonplace futuristic setting the game takes place in, the gameplay is where the game really shines and has me very excited to play this game. The new gameplay mechanic is the Skill Shot, a system that gives the player more points for being creative in how they will dispatch their enemies, and after playing many games trying to make creative kills that gave me no points, this game is refreshing.
On the graphics side of things, the game looks really awesome and stands out by using brighter colors that make the world seem more alive and vibrant. Although there is very little information on this game as of now, I do look forward to what they bring to the table at E3 and I hope that they have more cool features to add to what they have put in the game than we know of. Bulletstorm is planned for a release sometime in 2011.
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