A Cooperative Borderlands Review
Note: I enlisted the help of OXCGN’s Arthur Kotsopoulos in Australia to take a different look at the time sink that is Borderlands. This cooperative effort at reviewing the cooperative game also ran on OXCGN.com.
Borderlands [review]
First person shooter gamers and role playing gamers do not really mix that often. The former enjoys the thrill of a headshot and multiplayer melees while the later is hooked by personalizing their character and looting new gear from dungeons.
Borderlands takes a little from each genre and adds enough cooperative elements to create an addictive game best played with others. Whereas Fallout 3 was a role playing game first and a shooter second, Borderlands is the opposite.
A Boy and his Blob [review]
One of the best things about the Nintendo Wii has been how it has invigorated Nintendo’s massive catalogue of games. It has been 20 years–for those that remember–since we were first introduced to Blobert, the amorphous white goo ball who works for jellybeans.
Brütal Legend [review]
Perhaps no greater tribute has ever been offered at the temple of an entire genre of music than Brütal Legend. This game idolizes the power and energy of heavy metal, creating an entire world with metal as its central mythology. The world of Brütal Legend is steeped heavy metal symbolism; with every scenic vista looking like it belongs on an album cover.
Prev
1
2
3
4
Next
Virtual bank heist pays for son’s real-life medical bills
I don’t play any MMO games, but every time I hear a story from the EVE Online universe I am intriguied.
EVE Online, set in humanity’s space-faring future, has 300,000 subscribers. Players can organize corporations and use underhanded tactics to lie, cheat and steal their way to ingame fortunes.
The strategy is so deep that working banks have emerged within the EVE Online universe. Banks that accept deposits, make loans and issue bonds.
In a story that highlights these troubling economic times as much as the nature of the game, an executive at one of these banks embezzled 200,000,000,000 of the game’s currency, causing panic and a run on the bank.
Full Story »
Fight Night Round 4 {review]
Here’s another sneak peak at my review for the Omaha City Weekly this week:
Fight Night is like sushi, oysters or stinky French cheese: it is an acquired taste. It is ...
Full Story »
Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker now a collector’s item
Michael Jackson’s role as a musical pioneer is being examined at all levels today at the news of his passing. But what you may not know is Jackson was somewhat of a pioneer in the video game industry as well.
Moonwalker is a game where Michael Jackson uses magical dance movies to rescue young children from a mobster. It was released in 1990 and based on the movie of the same name. The game was co-developed by Jackson himself, which has to be among the earliest examples of a world-class star collaborating with developers on a video game. Jackson even went on to work with Sega again on the music/rythym game Space Channel 5
Full Story »
A Sims Story: Alice & Kev
Narrative in video games is a topic close to my heart. I want to believe that video games can tell compelling, dramatic stories. Most games that I do declare to have excellent stories end up needing the qualifier “for a video game.”
UK game design student Robin Burkinshaw is conducting an experiment that turns stories in gaming on its head to explore the stories you make up yourself while playing. His tools are The Sims 3 and Wordpress. The beauty of the Sims is you can create characters with specific personality traits, dreams and goals and let them loose to watch how they interact together.
He created a family, Alice and her father, Kev, and made them wander the world of The Sims homeless. Kev is a disparaging asshole lunatic who is constantly putting his daughter down and Alice is a miserable teen with no friends.
The brilliance of Burkinshaw’s project is the stories he weaves on his blog about his two characters. Kev persecutes and insults his daughter with zeal while she’s around. When she is not, he tries to mack on ladies in his wife beater and underwear. Alice is constantly depressed whose friendship goals are thwarted when her targets are repulsed by her desire to sleep in their comfortable beds and take a shower when invited into their homes.
Full Story »
Ghostbusters: The Video Game {review}
This is the Ghostbusters game fans across the world have been waiting for. It is as close to a true successor to the original films as could be hoped, and the paragon of how to turn a successful movie franchise into a great video game.
Children of the 80s will want to play this game. While it still does not hold a candle to the movies, the plot is so entrenched in their mythology that it feels like an organic growth of the franchise.
Full Story »
How you play video games reveals you character
I stumbled across this photo project by a photographer called Mr. Toledano.
For this series of photos Toledano says: “I wanted to take portraits of people that would reveal a hidden ...
Full Story »
Game covers aint what they used to be
The Atari 2600 was a little bit before my time, but I remember some of the covers from old Intellivision games as if through the haze of a dream.
In this ...
Full Story »
Cartoon on video games & libraries
Cartoonist Neal Obermeyer has joined the criticism of Nebraska Auditor Mike Foley. Check out his latest cartoon here. Full Story »Nebraska bureaucrat says games and libraries don’t mix
The Nebraska Auditor’s Office is sure that video games are nothing but a waste of time and have no place in a public library.
Nebraska State Auditor Mike Foley released a ...
Full Story »
Prince of Persia’s consequence-free gameplay relies on fluidity, artistic style {review}
Bottom line: Prince of Persia is a visually stunning, laid back and engrossing video game. A prime example of games as art and games as storytelling devices. Much like the Prince’s movements across the landscape, the game is fluid, albeit repetative. It is easy to complete because you cannot die and cannot be defeated, yet it is challening as sometimes a mistake will force you to replay large chunks of gravity defying leaps from cliff walls while avoiding the black goo of corruption.
Full Story »
