I'll be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of horror, let alone the survival-horror videogame genre. So it is rather strange that the original Dead Space managed to hit all of the same notes that made a film like Alien so haunting and memorable. It was a fantastic game and left me eagerly anticipating the sequel. Luckily EA and Visceral Games have delivered to us Dead Space 2, and only made things better.
Mickey Mouse was not the first character created by Walt Disney. Some time earlier, when he was contracted to Universal Studios, he created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. However, dissatisfaction with his superior caused him to leave Universal, leading to the start of his own studio, and the creation of Mickey Mouse. Mickey’s popularity grew, while Oswald was soon left by the wayside, and ultimately forgotten.
The politics of streaming television programming over the internet just keeps getting more and more complicated as time goes on. And every time at the center of the debate have been the major television networks, the cable distributors, Hulu, and Netflix.
When Retro Studio finished their work on the Metroid Prime series, they went silent for a very long time, working on a secret project. Speculations ranged from non-Metroid based side-stories within the Metroid universe to the revival of one of their original titles before production of Metroid Prime 1 to a totally new IP. No one was expecting the announcement at E3 2010 that they were working on a retro-revival project, Donkey Kong Country Returns, a reboot of the SNES franchise originally developed by Rare.
Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit is the third game in the Need For Speed series to carry the Hot Pursuit subtitle. Unlike the other games, which were developed by various internal EA studios, this iteration of Hot Pursuit was developed by Criterion Games, best known for the Burnout Series (though studio DICE helped with world building).
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood is a direct followup to 2009’s Assassins Creed II. The story follows Desmond Miles, heir to the assassin legacy, as he further experiences the life of his ancestor, Ezio Auditore, literally picking up the story with the closing scene of ACII. In a combination tutorial and Metroidvania style “abilitease”, Ezio escapes the Vatican and returns to his family’s villa, days before it is attacked and destroyed by the Papal Armies under the command of Borgia family (this is early enough in the game that it is not a spoiler). Following the attack, Ezio escapes to Rome to take his revenge. Meanwhile, in the real world, Desmond and co. are forced to move their operations to the now ruined Auditore villa.
I remember two or three months ago when the first trailers of Skyline played in front of whatever movie it was I had gone to see that day. Blue lights streak down from the sky in a city, causing no damage when they hit, and two people looking upwards as people around those lights get sucked upwards into what are revealed to be alien spaceships, followed by the title card. Though I did not see them, I know that later trailers included rampaging creatures, and a massive aerial battle against those ships. The movie looked really good. It looked like it was worth seeing.
There was a moment early in the game when I realized that Vanquish was not just a standard third person shooter. That could have been when the Argus robot broke through the ground into the area, but that, technically, happened during a cutscene. No, this was later in the chapter, when a ship crashed into the battlefield. It may have been scripted, but literally crashed into the stage. The sheer spectacle of Vanquish starts early, and doesn’t let up.
Super Meat Boy is remake/pseudo-sequel to Meat Boy, an indie-game that was featured on Newgrounds and gained enough of a following to get the XBLA and WiiWare game. It’s also one hell of a game.
Front Mission Evolved was released in September for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC. It was developed by Double Helix (known primarily for licensed titles), and published by Square-Enix. The most recent addition in the Front Mission series, and breaks the series tradition as a tactical strategy RPG, instead coming out as a third-person shooter.
