Tag Archives | Gaming

L.A. Noire's New Trailer Looks Good, But What Happens if You Fail?

Posted by Jared Newman on February 9, 2011 at 10:31 am

I just watched the first L.A. Noire trailer to explain how the game actually works. Consider me intrigued.

In addition to the duck-and-cover gunplay that has played a part in every recent Rockstar game (Grand Theft Auto IV, Red Dead Redemption), LA Noire promises to emphasize interrogation and critical thinking to solve crimes. Your “powers of reason and intelligence can make or break each case,” the trailer’s narrator says.

Fascinating, in theory. But if players are really expected to reason their way through a significant chunks of the game, I’m left wondering what happens when your powers of logic fail.

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Smuggle Truck: Tasteless Satire on a Serious Issue

Posted by Ed Oswald on February 7, 2011 at 6:01 pm

It seems every so often, some developer comes along with the need to produce a mobile app that makes you say, “Dear God, what is wrong with our society?” Enter Smuggle Truck, a proposed gaming app for the iOS and Android platforms which the goal is to smuggle as many illegal immigrants over the US-Mexico border as possible, without killing them.

The app pushes just about every possible stereotype possible: images of a rickety truck packed with people speeding across the desert countryside. Better watch out: drive too recklessly and people may be ejected from the truck bed –maybe even a newborn baby.

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Bungie-Free, Microsoft May Regurgitate Halo 1

Posted by Jared Newman on February 4, 2011 at 9:41 am

Halo’s been at a crossroads ever since Halo: Reach launched in September. With developer Bungie now locked in a 10-year, multi-console deal with Activision, Microsoft alone must decide what to do with its golden Xbox franchise.

But don’t expect anything rash in the near future. Over at Joystiq, Alexander Sliwinski’s sources say Microsoft will release a remake of the original game, Halo: Combat Evolved, in time for the holidays. Alexander has a solid record with Microsoft rumors — last year he broke the news that the Xbox 360 would support storage on USB sticks — and this report has a bunch of specifics.

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OnLive's Subscription Service Exits Beta; Now Comes the Hard Part

Posted by Jared Newman on February 1, 2011 at 12:26 pm

The free ride is over for OnLive PlayPack, the streaming game service’s all-you-can-play package.

PlayPack now costs $10 per month, with the first month free, and currently includes 38 games. OnLive had been giving subscription access away since December to owners of its $99 Microconsole, a small set-top box and controller for playing through televisions. Presumably, the service will now be available to PC gamers as well. If you cancel the service, OnLive will hang onto your data for a year.

OnLive’s claim to fame is its ability to instantly stream video games to low-end computers as compressed audio and video, using servers that handle all the heavy lifting remotely. (My experience was functional, but flawed.) But the subscription plan could be the most disruptive part of the package if it can gain more games on a regular basis.

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Activision Allows Website to Relive Sierra Classics, But Not on iPad

Posted by Jared Newman on January 31, 2011 at 3:03 pm

The good news: Sarien.net, a website that hosts free HTML5 ports of classic Sierra adventure games, will continue to operate with the blessing of Activision, which owns the rights to the games.

The bad news: The iPad adaptations of these games, which I wrote about in October, have been removed, along with any sequels to games that are part of a series.

That was the outcome of a back-and-forth between Activision and Sarien.net owner Martin Kool. When Activision got wind of Kool’s operation, the publisher’s lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter. Then, they offered to authorize Sarien.net as an official publisher of the first game in every Sierra adventure game series. For sequels, Kool will refer players to Steam or other venues where the games are sold as complete series.

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Sony Hedges Bets with Playstation Suite

Posted by Jared Newman on January 27, 2011 at 1:06 pm

While the NGP game console hogged the spotlight at Sony’s press conference in Tokyo on Thursday, the company made another announcement that could prove just as significant.

I’m talking about Playstation Suite, a software framework that will let Android phones run Playstation games. Sony skimped on details, but said Playstation Suite will start with PSOne games when it launches for Android 2.3 phones later this year — that’s “phones” plural, not just the rumored Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, a.k.a. Playstation Phone.

For as long as I’ve been playing video games, no console maker has handed over its ecosystem to other devices in this way. Sony is essentially admitting that it can no longer ignore smartphones, and that selling video games is at least as important as controlling the hardware or the operating system. This is a huge concession.

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7 Things to Know About Sony's NGP

Posted by Jared Newman on January 27, 2011 at 9:04 am

In typical Sony fashion, the newly-announced “next-generation portable,” or NGP, brings the kitchen sink to the console wars. It’s got every type of gaming input possible, hardware that beats any smartphone or portable game console and a 5-inch OLED screen.

I’m not in Tokyo, where Sony held a press conference for the new portable game console, but I’ve been digesting the press releases and news reports. Here’s what I think are the big takeaways from Sony’s NGP reveal:

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Kongregate Arcade Saga Concludes With Crippled Android App

Posted by Jared Newman on January 26, 2011 at 8:59 am

Hopefully this will be the last story I write about Kongregate Arcade, the Flash game compilation that Google removed from the Android Market last week.

The background: Kongregate Arcade is a portal for roughly 300 of the Kongregate website’s mobile-friendly Flash games. It has user reviews, recommendations, offline play and badges that carry over to the desktop version of the site. Almost immediately, Google yanked the app from the Android Market because it looked too much like a competing app store.

Now it’s back with a couple crippling changes.

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EA Brings Dead Space to iPhone, Not PSP or Nintendo DS

Posted by Jared Newman on January 25, 2011 at 9:59 am

Over the last two years, I’ve enjoyed chronicling the iPhone’s rise as a gaming platform, and had an even better time watching Sony and Nintendo pretend that Apple isn’t really a competitor.

Today marks another milestone, as Electronic Arts releases Dead Space for iPhone and iPad, in conjunction with the launch of Dead Space 2 for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Windows.

That alone wouldn’t be a big deal, except that EA isn’t releasing a portable version of Dead Space for Nintendo DS or Sony’s PSP — more evidence that the iPhone and iPad are not only capable of providing weighty video games to hardcore players, they’re also better for business.

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