When Shane Bettenhausen, former business development director at UTV Ignition Games, passed me the controller to sample El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron after watching him demo it for a few minutes at a long-ago NYC showcase, I noticed something–or a lack of something–that wasn’t apparent when he played: the protagonist, biblical hero Enoch, didn’t have a health bar.
2011 was an incredible year for gaming, especially for Sony. PlayStation 3 owners suffered battered pockets as at certain points throughout the year the collective cries of broke gamers could be heard everywhere. It was gamepocalyse. Sony hammered gamers with first-party exclusive after first-party exclusive: Uncharted 3, Little Big Planet 2, Kill Zone 3, Infamous 2, Socom 4, the list can go on. And 2012 looks like it will repeat the set trend. Sony’s 2012 line up looks stellar once again with Starhawk, Sly Cooper, Twisted Metal, The Last of Us, and hopefully The Last Guardian (don’t hold your breath).
After years of alternating between misjudging and flat-out ignoring the personal computing gaming space, I can now officially state that I am a PC gamer. I have Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony to thank. And the Xbox 720, Wii U, and PS4 won’t coax me back.
The 2012 Consumer Electronics Show kicks off in a matter of days, bringing the collective technology world to Las Vegas for a week of nerditry that no other show can duplicate. Although the product showcases held at the Las Vegas Convention Center and adjacent hotels lean heavily toward laptops, TVs, headphones, and other assorted tech toys, there will a small (but satisfying!) amount of gaming wares on display. Gaming wares that you need to know about. Here is what you can expect.
Fast forward to the present and everything old in video gaming in new again. Instead of arcades we have online play. Instead of local in-house tournaments, we have EVO. And developers such as Capcom have simplified complex inputs to make them more mainstream-friendly. The video game industry itself has created an environment conducive for the return of fighting games.
Once upon a time, there was no such thing as online multiplayer. You blew into a cartridge, jiggled it around until your system read it and played a game until you beat it or hit your frustration limit and saved it for later. Whether it took you 3 hours or 3 days to complete, there was a sense of accomplishment and never a complaint about how long it took. You beat it… so that was that, right? Hell no. It may not have been in the days after or the weeks after or even the months after but at some point you remembered how fun it was and decided to play it all over again.
Pretty crazy, huh?
The role-playing game genre has made great strides since its early days as a thinly veiled Dungeons & Dragons rip-off. Stories have grown increasingly complex, the music and graphics have greatly improved, and the battle systems have evolved into wonderfully varied schemes. There are many great RPGS, but which is the best of the bunch? A handful of 2D-X RPG-lovers offer their selections for the best RPG of all time.
Then there are the people who are complaining that Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is too “cartoony” and unrealistic. Question: When has the Metal Gear universe been anything but silly? There’s a walking, robotic dinosaur that launches nukes (and roars!), cyborg ninjas, clones, and super-soldiers. It’s G.I. Joe, but without the jingoistic trappings. Plus, Kojima has dropped “Solid” from the title, thus denoting that this game will differ from its predecessors.
I’d like to say that this tale ends on Christmas morning with a teenage Jeffrey L. Wilson sporting a smile that stretched from ear to ear as he enjoyed his new home video game console. It doesn’t. It ends with me sitting on the living room floor, dazed and confused, pondering how such a beloved property could squat, grunt, and drop a load on my heart.
Rainwave is a streaming internet radio station that specializes in video game music. Logged in listeners may request and rate songs and actually vote for the next tune, which is a feature that sets Rainwave apart from other video game radio stations. The idea for Rainwave came to McAuley eight or nine years ago, back when a similar station called GamingFM was popular. McAuley spent some time combing through the website, trying to figure out what made it tick. He was annoyed that he had no idea when his song request would come on the air, and thought users should be able to pick what came next. He started working on Rainwave, and opened it to the public in 2007.
