Gaming opinions, reviews, news, and impressions. Plus thoughts on other cool stuff.
Viewing entries tagged
PlayStation
I thought I'd do something a little different this for E3. I'll have some focused articles on various E3 games and announcements over the coming days and weeks, but I thought I'd also highlight some of my tweets with off-the-cuff reactions to the conferences.
You can follow along for the full discussion on my Twitter account, too, of course.
Historically, one of the main differences between developer Naughty Dog's two flagship series was stealth: the "Infected" (i.e. zombie)-filled world of The Last of Us required quiet and careful sneaking, while the pulp fiction swashbuckling action of Uncharted relied mainly on loud, flashy shootouts.
With Uncharted 4, however, those worlds have collided, and Nathan Drake now has some honest-to-goodness stealth abilities. The result is a set of levels that could be pulled straight out of a really great James Bond game. (Beware: some light spoilers ahead).
I played it in February, but Firewatch was my own personal summer camp. It offers a delightful, if sometimes melancholy and mysterious, departure from urban life with a vast expanse of nature to explore at your leisure.
A game that was highly anticipated, generally well-received at launch, and subsequently second-guessed for not being as life-changing as people thought it should have been, Firewatch is still an experience that sticks out in my memory as a very personal journey inward experienced through the eyes of a man searching for an escape (and maybe newfound purpose) after a period of loss and grief.
Back in 2013, Sony's Japan Studio released an extremely unique platformer called Puppeteer for the PlayStation 3 console. I knew it looked really interesting, I heard some good things about on gaming sites and podcasts, and I even bought the game digitally. But I didn't play it.
The game didn't get much of an advertising push, it wasn't heavily promoted on the PlayStation Network, and it quickly faded out of the public consciousness—and, apparently, mine as well. For well over a year, it sat in my PS3's games list unplayed and largely forgotten.
This weekend, I realized what a terrible mistake I'd made.
While not the oldest game I'm currently playing, The Swapper is hardly a new release. If you're not up-to-speed on the game, picture a Metroid-esque 2D platformer with a "swapping" gun mechanic that allows your character to create four simultaneous clones (all of which move together) and then swap freely between them. While the atmosphere would make Samus Aran feel right at home, the gameplay has more of Portal than of Power Bombs.
Check out the full post for my initial impressions on this unique indie title.
Well, here we are: the end of another year. 2014 is just about wrapped up, so I wanted to write one last post to reflect on the highs and lows of this year in gaming from my perspective.
Other sites have covered the biggest news stories, the best & worst games of the year, and every other kind of list imaginable. So, rather than retread tired ground, I'll just provide my take on what I played, what I liked, and what really captured my attention.
At Sony's recent PlayStation Experience conference in Las Vegas, one of the biggest, most anticipated announcements wasn't a game. It wasn't even a surprise, having been teased days earlier. It was instructions on how to purchase the PSOne-themed, 20th Anniversary, limited edition PlayStation 4 console—instructions that were followed by a near-immediate sellout of the consoles with resale listings on eBay going for as high as $15,000.
Was this really a good way for Sony to celebrate twenty years of PlayStation fandom?
Black Friday is approaching, and with it comes the promise of getting a shiny, new console at an unbelievably low price. I've already written a piece recently about Nintendo's Wii U (which, honestly, might have the best lineup of games for the holiday), but what if you want something with a little less Mario? Which console should you buy?
Finally! As announced on the PlayStation Blog today, Minecraft: PlayStation Vita Edition has a release date, and it's next Tuesday, October 14, 2014. If you haven't been following the saga, this might seem like such a big deal, but it's actually been a pretty long and winding road to get to this point.
The PSN Blog has announced the most significant PS Vita update in quite some time, and it's now live to download!
Since the early days of Mario sprinting from left to right on the NES, running has been a staple in a video games. And yet, each new generation of consoles brings with it more detailed and beautiful environments. So why, then, do game developers still insist on designing game systems around running past all this beauty as quickly as possible? How did we get here? And, more importantly, should we slow down?
UPDATE: So the rumors were true: Microsoft bought Minecraft for $2.5 billion. However, the good news, at least for now, is that the Vita version appears to be safe.
Original: Reports and rumors have been flying this week that Microsoft is in talks to acquire Minecraft studio Mojang to the tune of $2.5 billion. The most concerning thing, though, is that it may impact the fate of the yet-to-be-released PlayStation Vita port of Minecraft, which many have looked to as the perfect portable version of the game.
Telltale captured the world's attention with its first season of the episodic, narrative-based game, The Walking Dead, so it likely surprised no one that it managed to warrant a second season. However, it was probably more surprising that their next game would feature a completely different (and easily less well-known) property, the graphic novel Fables. Check out my review to see if this fairytale-inspired series stacks up to its zombie-infested predecessor!
