More E3 goodness!


The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword


Kirby's Epic Yarn


Shank


Rayman Origins


Child of Eden


Project Dust


Portal 2



I have to say, these trailers were really surprising.  Zelda: Skyward Sword looked surprisingly bland, while Kirby's Epic Yarn and Shank looked surprisingly gorgeous.  I love the art direction that both of those titles are taking.  I would like to see more gameplay from Shank, though, to see just how well that graphical style looks during extended play.

Rayman Origins looks like yet another campy Rayman title, but Project Dust looks somewhat promising.  The producer of Another World is working on Project Dust, so I'm somewhat psyched to see where they go with it.

Portal 2, of course, looks absolutely amazing.  That said, I'm a total Valve fanboy (and I've been replaying Half-Life 2 lately), so take that with a pinch of salt.  I'm anxiously awaiting the November 2nd release date!


-b0b
(...w00t!)

X wrote on Jun 18^th, 2010 at 3:50pm:


Here are a handful of Wii titles that I personally found very enjoyable.

• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
• Super Mario Galaxy
• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
• Mario Kart Wii
• New Super Mario Bros. Wii
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl
• WarioWare: Smooth Moves
• Mario Strikers Charged

I'm not sure what your definition of "hardcore gamer" is, but I'm pretty "hardcore" if you ask me.


-b0b
(...pwn3d.  Next!)

microsoft = cool games
sony = look our machine can do everything!
nintendo = cash machine... or Hey! let's repackage a gamecube with the same regurgitated franchises and oooo motion controllers!

It looks like Interplay has finally gotten off their collective butts and put together a website for the Fallout MMO.  I'm not a fan of MMOs, but I do love me some Fallout!

http://www.fallout-on-line.com/


-b0b
(...shrugs.)

Regarding the fallout mmo:

Interplay is just basically doing their part to avoid giving up online rights of Fallout to Bethesda.  Screw interplay, until recently they were just a couple of lawyers with lots of IP.

Bioware has officially announced Dragon Age II and it appears to be slated for 2011.  I loved Dragon Age and played the heck out of it, and I'm definitely looking forward to the sequel!

This seems like a surprisingly quick turn-around for such a massive game, especially considering how long the original Dragon Age was in development.  Bioware hasn't failed me yet, though, so I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt!


-b0b
(...squeeeeeal!)

http://hellmode.com/2010/08/05/on-morality-and-making-choices-matter-in-video-ga...

A good article with plenty of examples of morality in video games.  Eric and I talk about this a lot.  We both agree that we like games who have a neutral morality stance but allows you to make your choices.  If I want to kill good guy 1 but not good guy 2, then I shouldn't get light side and dark side points that add a little to my stats; it should effect me and my character as a choice I have to deal with.

A good article with good examples and some good dicussion in the comments section...any thoughts from this crowd?

X

Ironman, I absolutely agree.  Bioware themselves have admitted to the shortcomings of the good/evil bar.  It bears very little resemblance to real life because it restricts character development to a purely two-dimensional path.  The character is either good or evil or somewhere directly in between.  There is no freedom to develop a more complex character that sits outside of that scale.

I think Dragon Age was a huge step in the right direction.  The "morality scale" is completely hidden from the player and the consequences of actions are believably limited to those NPCs that could realistically know about those actions.  For instance, if I commit a crime in a human city, the guards there will react negatively toward me in the future.  However, there is no central morality scale, so guards in a dwarven city won't react negatively toward me because they simply aren't aware of the crime.  This makes a lot more sense then KotOR/Fable/Oblivion/etc's "aura" that follows characters wherever they go.

Admittedly, these systems are incredibly complex.  The good/evil bar is a very easy way to determine how an NPC should react toward a character because only a single variable needs to be monitored.  With a game like Dragon Age, hundreds of variables need to be recorded to determine how individual NPCs or sets of NPCs will react to a character's prior actions.


-b0b
(...wonders what Briney thinks about this.)