E3 2012 – Hands On With Hitman Absolution
Chinatown; The fish, the soup, the assassinations…
Yeah, the E3 2012 articles are going to keep coming for a while, mostly because we saw so much stuff it’s nearly impossible to bang out all of the articles at once. This time around I’m going to talk about Hitman Absolution by Square Enix and later, I’ll be talking about Sleeping Dogs, also by Square Enix.
While we were at E3, I did get a chance to play Hitman Absolution, for…well, for a while. There was only one mission available but I played through it a few times and was able to get a good feel for how the game plays. Read on to see what I thought about it.
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Should You Get The iPhone 4S For Virgin Mobile?
Should you pop your cherry?
There was a time when I loved Virgin Mobile. Heck, I even sold my iPhone 4 just for them! That was back when they offered $25 for unlimited data and texts. When things changed for the worse, I jumped ship. As of yesterday, part of me wished I hadn’t. Why? The iPhone 4S is coming to Virgin Mobile.
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E3 2012 – Hands On With Trion Worlds’ Defiance
A cross-media, video game / television series? Yeah, that's happening.
When Trion Worlds told me about their upcoming title “Defiance”, I was immediately intrigued. Not only were they sporting a “Best OF” caliber RTS but now they were telling me they have an MMO-Shooter which is going to tie in to a television series on SyFy?
Well, I just had to find out what this was all about, so I headed over to Defiance and had me a little peek!
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Indie Game: The Movie Review – The Challenge Of Being A Small Developer
FEZ (no relation) developer Phil Fish struggles at PAX East when his demo stations keep crashing
Disclosure: I contributed to Indie Game: The Movie’s development through its Kickstarter campaign and received the title free and a “Special Thanks” credit as part of the tiered reward system.
One thing that becomes abundantly clear walking around the halls of E3 is how much game development has become a science. Titles are pitched, given a precisely-calculated budget with precisely-calculated personnel, developed to include specific features at certain milestones, and then marketed on specific focal points by teams of public relations agents. Games didn’t used to be this way, they were developed by one or two people in garages who just hoped to make enough money to make their next title and not have to return to the land of retail work… or worse. Those people are still around, but now they’re making iPhone games or Xbox Live Arcade titles – a class of games that didn’t exist ten years ago. Indie Game: The Movie takes a look at three of these developers as they bring their games from hand-sketched drawings to a title you download to your console.
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Kill Speed Review – Direct-to-DVD Dreck
I worked really hard to sift out the good parts of this film. For example: Tom Arnold dies in the first five minutes by fiery explosion. Kill Speed explores a new realm of dudebro-ism with, as the film calls them, “light, experimental aircraft!”, but in reality, they’re just the small prop planes that your fifty-year old uncle is totally yammering on about all the time. Our three “fer real, yo” playas (including a one Nick Carter, former Backstreet Boy) use these lightweight craft to smuggle Mexican drugs across the desert southwest while Robert Patrick acts as the President in three scenes for no reason whatsoever. And then the film keeps going.
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E3 2012 – Hands On With Trion Worlds’ Award Winning RTS – End Of Nations
Yeah, it's like THAT.
At E3 this year I was invited to join Trion Worlds to try out their groundbreaking new RTS “End of Nations”.
Now; I’m not going to lie…I’ve never been a fan of RTS games. I played Command and Conquer and Warcraft and Starcraft and all of the rest of them because as a gamer I’m pretty much obligated to, so I have a damned good idea how they play…I just don’t like them very much because…
…Well because I suck at them.
That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a nice RTS, though, and that’s just what End of Nations is. A very, VERY nice RTS.
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From Argo To Xbox Music: The Birth, Life, And Death Of Zune
On the morning of May 11th, 2012, Robbie Bach stood before the Northwest Entrepreneur Network while a PowerPoint projection burned bright behind him. The 50-year old former Microsoft executive was graying at the corners while a “Hello, my name is…” sticker began to peel off his shirt. “If I had hindsight, 20-20, and could do Zune over again,” he started, “we would skip portable media players completely.” As the former head of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division and 22-year vet, Bach had been invited to give a presentation on intrapreneurship – in which startups are formed inside an already-existing company – and how it was used to create Xbox and Zune under his watch. While one brand had taken off and become Microsoft’s key to the living room, the other’s attempt to ‘kill the iPod’ had failed miserably, despite gaining a cult following and introducing features that changed how many of us experience music. While Microsoft may be sunsetting the Zune brand now, there’s still a lot to learn about Microsoft’s musical foray. This is that story.
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E3 2012 – Fable The Journey Hands-On
I got my hands on Lionhead’s new Kinect title Fable The Journey during this year’s E3 (or hands off, as this is a Kinect game). Fable The Journey is ambitious, to be sure – the team is striving to make an epic adventure game that will deliver at least 15 hours of gameplay, and all played with motion control via Microsoft’s Kinect. So what do we think?
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E3 2012 – Derek Smart Isn’t Afraid Of PlanetSide 2 With Line Of Defense
“Oh, shit!” was Derek Smart’s reaction upon hearing the announcement of Sony Online Entertainment’s PlanetSide 2. Smart and his team of thirty at 3000AD had been working on his newest, similarly-themed title Line of Defense for some time before Sony broke the news, but Smart is a PlanetSide fan and has no hard feelings toward the game or its team. “They’re not doing anything different. They’re not doing anything innovative. I see it’s more of a polished PlanetSide… which isn’t a bad thing. I say it on Twitter all the time, but I think people are going to be disappointed if they’re expecting anything different.” The bombast of SOE’s large and loud booth to play that game kept things in perspective as a few days earlier, I’d visited Derek Smart in a quiet hotel room for a one-on-one interview and preview of his new indie game, one he hopes will be his most approachable one yet.
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E3 2012 – Avatar Motocross Madness Hands-On: A Light-Hearted Reboot
Hiding in plain sight, Microsoft had a single kiosk dedicated to Motocross Madness on the E3 show floor. The game hadn’t been announced in any capacity and it was a bit of a surprise, but Microsoft deemed it worthy enough to fly one of its twenty-five developers from Austria-based Bongfish to show it off. Destined for a post-Summer release, Motocross Madness is a reboot of the series for Xbox Live Arcade, something that Microsoft actually came to Bongfish with after their success with the snowboarding title Stoked.
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