The president of Nintendo recently gave a talk about the upcoming Wii Super Mario Bros title and expanded a bit on the “help” feature. Apparently at any point in the game players will be able to get assistance with what they should try or how they can beat a specific puzzle that might be too difficult. This is being done to allow the game to appeal to a more hardcore gaming audience than it might otherwise. He said that this Mario game will definitely present a challenge and please old school Mario enthusiasts while this new help feature will allow more casual players to beat the game as well.
I think this is a great idea and it should be tried more often in video games. Lately the gaming market has becoming increasingly divided between hardcore and casual gamers but things like this merge the two again and allow both to be happy. I’ll definitely be picking this game up and I’m looking forward to trying to beat it without using any of the in game help.
So I picked up Fat Princess after finding out it had been released. I had no idea it finally came out since it was being delayed so much I stopped following it. The game was incredibly fun for the first day but now I’m kind of sick of it. It was already worth the $15 I payed for it though.
There are a total of 6 classes with 4 abilities each. This is because each class has an unlockable alter ego you can switch to whenever you’d like. Each of these classes has 2 abilities. Usually an area effect and a single target attack with some exceptions. My personal favorite is the priest as you can really push/hold the line when playing.
Much more fun than a night at the movies. I always compare gaming expenses to a $10 movie ticket but now that I think about it aren’t movies just overpriced anyway? Maybe I should find a new standard of entertainment expense vs reward to judge games by.
It seems like there has been a struggle between quality physics and quality graphics in games as of late. Either a game has an incredibly nice physics engine with decent graphics or the opposite. I think this is trending towards gaming PCs and even consoles requiring a physics card in the future. Right now physics are handled by the CPU but with a dedicated physics card the CPU could be freed up to perform more base level engine code with the physics card picking up all of the slack.
There have been some attempts at this in the past but nothing has really stuck. I think this is primarily because no game developer wants to adopt a standard method of physics modeling which a physics card will require. Basically, no one has made OpenGL/DirectX for physics yet. A physics library like that would be incredibly useful though.
So I played a little bit of the newly released Monopoly City Streets game. Unfortunately I think they did a horrible job overall with it. There’s is almost zero actual gameplay involved. The most effective way of getting ahead right now is to signup multiple accounts, buy properties with your main account and then have your “trash” accounts buy them from you for overpriced amounts. It’s clear that the people leading the scoreboards are doing this as they’ve made billions or trillions of dollars which is impossible by playing normally at this point.
It’s really too bad because this could have been such a fun game if they had put any real effort or thought into the gameplay. Part of me thinks this might have just been some ploy from Google to help with their maps data somehow. I can’t figure out how but the gameplay is just so monotonous and boring that it doesn’t even make sense to release it as a game. Too bad.
The L4D2 boycott leaders were flown to Valve to supposedly see that L4D2 is worthy of being a full sequel and not just additional content. They said they agreed the game was nice and well polished but they weren’t giving in. I applaud their decision. The original L4D was supposed to get many more updates than it actually received. Releasing them in a sequel even if it does include things that weren’t possible in L4D doesn’t make up for the half finished title they released.
One of my major complaints now is that when I try to play L4D there are only a handful of lobbies available. Like literally only 3-4 games to choose from. You can’t even play all of the maps anymore because not enough people are playing/creating lobbies.
Just added a new category “Much Needed” and this is my first post in it. This category will focus on things that the gaming industry needs to create. This installment of Much Needed will focus on additional peripherals in gaming.
It seems like ever since Dunk Hunt came out no gaming peripheral has been able to compete until the guitar of Guitar Hero. What is happening in the gaming industry that no other interesting control schemes can be created? One thing that comes to mind is a “Mech” type game that required a $120 joystick/control system to play. I wonder if this cost barrier is the main reason we don’t see more interesting peripherals.
With a game like Rock Band you can appeal to a huge audience including non gamers. However, with a joystick and “Mech” game you’re still limited to people who play games often. Then in addition to that you’re limited to the gamers who can afford such a setup. This is basically adults or spoiled children which is probably a smaller market (currently) than the casual child/teen gamer.
I could definitely stand to see some new interesting controllers especially when it comes to PC games. I’d like some kind of Wii type aiming system that incorporates movement as well. I have to imagine a title like this would be cheap to produce and sell extremely well considering the PC market has essentially zero peripherals other than the keyboard/mouse/joystick.
