This week, Sly Cooper expanded his thieving ways and we had some rather unusual news items.
TOP STORY: Sly Cooper headed to Vita
At E3 last year, Sony revealed that the beloved raccoon Sly Cooper would be making a return on the PS3 this year. Since then, we’ve seen bits and pieces of information and gameplay that has only served to whet our interest. This week, a new trailer was released that showed that Sly Cooper would also be making his Vita debut at the same time. Like a few other games have done, the Vita version will feature cross-platform saves, letting you play on the big screen or take your adventures on the road. Of course, it will also have touch screen and motion controls.
MMOs, like most games, are very derivative. Generally, when you see an original idea in an MMO, it isn’t a full game, just a new component added to the mix. EverQuest probably did the most, though even then, many of the things it brought were simply mechanics well-known to RPG players brought into an online world. I mention this because when Blizzard Entertainment developed World of Warcraft, it really didn’t do anything that new or innovative. The success was purely gained from taking existing mechanics and making them less tedious and more fun for players, while keeping that same gradual progression that keeps players coming back for more. READ MORE
Writer Mike Walbridge’s goal: play every Molyjam game and tell you about as many as he can. Want to know more? Click here.
196: These automatic arms.: “Game where your arms are controlled by a psychopath who keeps firing guns at innocent people. You must turn away from them and run.”
This is the most creative and best-implemented version of the “uncontrollable arms” tweet, despite its minimalist art style. There was a unique pause mechanic, a theme, a story, and characters that manage to involve you in the game. I also enjoyed the challenge of figuring out the best way to get through the rooms. It is difficult to successfully mix strategy and player’s real-time responses in a 2D top-down room-to-room game, but here it is. READ MORE
Cycladeswas one of my favorite new games in 2010, but it has not made it to the gaming table too often since then for various reasons. Perhaps the mix of expansion modules contained within Cyclades: Hades can bring it back a little more often? Three new additions and one optional rules modification flesh out the mythology of the game. Players can use as many of these as they wish, perhaps adding one at a time to get used to them, although adding everything is probably the way to go. READ MORE
The trenches of World War I are not a familiar battleground for any gamers, as most games tend to focus on the Second World War. However, that’s exactly where you’ll find yourself in The Wasted Land. These trenches aren’t populated merely with Germans though, but also the horrors of the Cthulhu mythos. Your squad is the last hope for saving humanity. READ MORE
Right before 3DO’s death, they had a few upcoming releases that showed promise. Back in 2003, the one that stood out to me was The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, an action game set right before the supposed end of the world. In it, you control the archangel Abaddon and team up with a group of three humans known as the “chosen,” to track down and kill the riders of the apocalypse in order to prevent, well… the apocalypse. It attempted to mix heavy action with some light exploration and horror elements to create a game that was not unique, but had some interesting potential. READ MORE
Ronimo likes taking games that are typically 3D and squishing them into a 2D plane. It worked with Swords & Soldiers, the 2D cartoon RTS, and it works here with Awesomenauts, the 2D cartoon MOBA. Awesomenauts only has one game mode, but there are enough variables that you don’t need a ton of menu choices to ensure that each game played will feel different. Between multiple characters and myriad upgrade paths, you’ll have to cook up a new strategy each game if you want to win more than one match in a row. READ MORE
The Best to Own Forever series isn’t about what’s great right now. It’s about what will be great in 10 years, even though there will be better-looking games and later sequels, and what will keep you pulling that dusty old console out of the closet every once in a while. We start the series with the Wii.
The fact that we even got a sequel to the original Boom Blox is strange, considering how poorly the first game sold, but the sequel improves upon everything while maintaining what made the original so much fun in the first place. The addition of new multiplayer modes makes this the best Wii game to play with kids while still remaining as addictive as ever in during the single-player content. The simplistic motions play to the strengths of the Wii’s controls without ever running into any of the typical motion gaming problems you might be accustomed to. This is one of the few family-friendly Wii titles that belongs in every gaming library. - Andrew Passafiume
This week, BioShock Infinite moved to 2013, creating a hole in the fall schedule that other publishers are trying to fill. Above: Max Payne 3‘s releasing this week! Have a launch trailer.
TOP STORY: BioShock Infinite delayed
BioShock Infinite was expected to arrive in October this year, but this week, Take Two announced a delay until February 26, 2013. Specifics for the delay were not given, but Ken Levine, head of Irrational Games, said that it plans to use the time to make Infinite ”even more extraordinary” than it would have been. It will also be absent from upcoming game conventions, so that time can be spent on development rather than preparing for public displays.
The massively-multiplayer genre has always been polarizing among PC gamers. While some are staunch supporters of their chosen game, others can’t stand them at all, thinking them no more than a meaningless timesink. And others love them not as a game, but as a social experience. Something of a social network built within a game, as opposed to a game like Farmville, built within a social network. READ MORE
