That’s PAX Prime 2013 summed up with one image. It’s kid-friendly Donkey Kong right next to Bayonetta 2’s bad posture. There’s your thousand words right there. It’s cosplayers rubbing shoulders with salespeople in suits. It’s techno music blaring out of speakers right by the restrooms. It’s 15-foot tall TV screens showing pre-recorded gameplay on a 30-second loop. It’s card floppers and dice chuckers sitting near kids trading virtual pocket monsters. It’s thousands of gamers packed into one convention center jockeying to play what the marketing folks will allow them to see. It’s chaos and it’s awesome.
Let’s take a tour through PAX after the jump! Continue reading →
Contrary to what Tom Chick thinks, you really don’t need all those words to review a game. And you don’t need a five-star rating system either. You don’t even have to play the darn things. Allow me to demonstrate with the games of this past summer.
After the jump, someone get Metacritic on the horn Continue reading →
It’s hard to narrow it down to ten. But nine simply isn’t enough and eleven would be unprofessional.
After the jump, the things you’ll hear in Steelport. Continue reading →
Square-Enix re-releases Final Fantasy XIV. In case you can’t keep the Final Fantasies straight, this is the one that’s an MMO. It’s aptly subtitled “A Realm Reborn” because the informal “version 2.0” makes it sound like something Tron. I’m a card-carrying Lost Planet 2 fanboi, but I have zero hope Lost Planet 3 is anything other than a throwaway sequel. Developer Spark Unlimited, who had nothing to do with Lost Planet 2, is known for a console port of the original Call of Duty and then two shooters you’ve never heard of. For Lost Planet 3, they apparently thought it was important that you see the character’s faces (pictured). Suda 51’s Killer is Dead is the “spiritual sequel” (i.e. published by someone who doesn’t have the rights) to Killer 7 and No More Heroes. Unfortunately, the Suda 51 brand, as it were, hasn’t been a reliable bullet point for a game since 2005. Finally, basketball fans will be delighted that Madden 2.5 is available.
There are certain issues in gaming that ebb and flow like the tide. People will argue and fret over whether games are art or if the ratings system is effective or whether or not there’s a 7-9 scale. One of those common subjects of dissection is whether or not violent gaming desensitizes the player, making human life cheap and giving birth to a new generation of young killers. I never took much of a stance on the subject outside of knee-jerk reactions to criticism of my beloved industry. That all changed during one standard workday a few months ago.
After the jump, the rat before the storm Continue reading →
I have already played all the way through pre-release versions of Saints Row IV and Splinter Cell Blacklist and I can say about them something I can say about very few games: I will eagerly play them again when they come out. Which is this week. Like Tomb Raider, another game I eagerly played a second time, these are mainstream AAA franchises at their latest best, with great production values, shrewd game design, and a vivid sense of identity. Sometimes mainstream is mainstream because it’s good.
Indie gem Race the Sun officially launches today. But if you’re like me, you’ve been visiting the beta daily for your fix of an “infinite speed experience”. Still, it’s always satisfying to see a version number make the decisive click from 0.9 to 1.0. Which reminds me that the free-to-play and web-based — normally, I’d run screaming from either of those things — Card Hunter comes out of beta this week. I can’t get a sense yet for whether it’s got legs, but I’m really enjoying how it shuffles a tactical combat game with a deck building game.
Disney Infinity, an action figure delivery device, launches with a whimper that includes two Johnny Depp characters and no Star Wars, Marvel, or actual Disney characters. And I have no idea what to expect from 2K Games’ long-in-troubled-development X-com flavored shooter, also out this week. I can’t even keep the title straight. I think it’s something about a bureau or an administration or a classification. But I’ll play anything made by the studio that made Bioshock 2.
UPDATE: Card Hunter just got pushed back a smidge. The new release date is early September.
One of the biggest trends to hit gaming in years is the concept of free-to-play (or F2P if you’re hip and like acronyms). You download the game for free and then have the option of paying for some bonus or another or using an often pared-down version of the game. I’ve spent a good bit of time with a handful of these titles over the last few months and have taken away mixed feelings about the whole concept. Let’s take a look at a few of these titles.
After the jump, I choose you, Pikachu… or I would if you weren’t five bucks Continue reading →
After a few weeks that were no real threat to your wallet, it’s the week of August 12. Which is no week of August 19, but it’s close.
If you liked Payday, you need — yes, need — Payday 2. Developer Overkill really lived up to their name with this one. Unfortunately, I’m not going to sink much time into such a deeply progression-based game when my progress is just going to be wiped at release. So after sampling a press build, I’m poised to pounce as soon as the game goes live tomorrow. Or tonight. What time is it?
Unfortunately, there’s one problem. That problem is Europa Universalis 4, also out this week. Paradox’s strategy games have been getting exponentially better in terms of design smarts — Victoria and Crusader Kings are nothing short of revolutionary, and their sequels are better in every way — and also in terms of interface, AI, and quality control. I can’t wait to sink some serious time into this fourth version of their magnum opus series. But there’s one problem. That problem is Payday 2.
Also, there’s another problem. Occult Chronicles is Vic Davis’ fiendishly clever and fiendishly fiendish strategy game about exploring a haunted house. After a beta period of letting players bang on it while he does his usual fine-tuning, Davis releases the final version this week.
Also this week Craig Hubbard, the man from Monolith who arguably invented Kate Archer (pictured, because she’s awesome) in the No One Lives Forever series, releases an early access version of his new studio’s game, Betrayer. It’s just an alpha, but given its pedigree and how absolutely weird it is to play a black-and-white shooter about zombie conquistadors, it’s a viable wallet threat for anyone who doesn’t want to wait until the game is done.
What is League of Legends? I’ve written about the game for years, but I’ve never thought about how to describe the game to an absolute newcomer. Until today.
After the jump, I would like to introduce you to my friend Tibbers… Continue reading →
As the staff of Quarter to Three goes home for the long holiday weekend, we’ll leave you with a touch of our own fireworks in the form of an annual half-year list that may or may not include The Last of Us. Why else would there be a picture of it up there?
After the jump, the ten best games of the year so far. Continue reading →
High Moon Studios has been doing yeoman’s work with the Transformers games. Can they rise to the absurdity required for a good Deadpool game? We find out this week.
Nintendo’s latest collection of Wario minigames comes out for the Wii U under the name Mario & Watch. I’ve played the multiplayer, where I found exactly one mode worth playing more than once. It’s a Super Monkeyball style game where you and other players try to land your pieces on scored targets. I mainly like this mode because I don’t have to dig out any Wiimotes to play an old copy of Super Monkeyball. Otherwise, I don’t see the appeal of Wario & Game for anyone who isn’t a Wario completionist.
Endless Space, a strategy game without an AI, gets DLC called Disharmony. Among the additions is an “Adaptive Multi-Agent Artificial Intelligence System”. I didn’t make that up. The developers made that up. That’s actually one of the new features. In my experience, the fancier the name for the AI, the dumber the actual AI. But I’d love to be wrong. Endless Space is far too stylish a sci-fi game to be left to languish brainlessly.
The DLC I’m really excited about is the dedicated Tiny Tina add-on for Borderlands 2. Or, as I like to call it, the Burches are back. The conceit is that Tiny Tina is dungeonmastering a session of Bunkers and Badasses. I just failed my saving throw to resist.
This year’s Magic the Gathering release, Magic the Gathering 2014, gets a new sealed deck tournament and more flexible deck-building. These seem like fine additions to an already fine game. At this point, the biggest drawbacks to these digital versions of Magic the Gathering is that you’re still only playing Magic the Gathering. I can think of about a dozen other card-based games I’d rather play.
If you like your vampires in hoodies, Dark is an action/stealth RPG from the German studio that made a Dungeon Keeper clone called Dungeons.
Finally, Company of Heroes 2 is out this week. Have you played the original Company of Heroes? If so, you’re good to go.
Now that Microsoft has announced the reversal of its DRM policies for the Xbox One, their next-gen console is in a more competitive position. The Xbox One still costs more than other consoles, but price objections are something that can be overcome with value propositions. Unfortunately, one of the things that the Xbox One could lack is a strong indie game catalog. Why? Because Microsoft has stated that their indie game approval process will remain similar to how it works now.
After the jump, let’s check out the complaints! Continue reading →
Now that everyone’s presumably done with E3 — all that’s left is to watch how deep a hole Microsoft digs themselves — let’s get back to a far more important topic: games we can actually play right now. I’m not surprised that publishers try to drive the conversation to upcoming games. That’s their job. But I am surprised at how well it works. Why are so many of you peering so intently through carefully jiggered binoculars handed to you by various marketing departments? Had enough yet? Are you ready to come back to the amazing stuff already at your fingertips?
Because here are ten games you should still be playing Continue reading →
The only major release this week is Capcom’s latest appeal to nostalgia with Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, an action RPG with official D&D flavoring available for download for the Xbox 360. This seemed like a good idea to me. Until I played it. This is a direct port of an arcade brawler from 1993 and its 1996 sequel, both of which hurt my eyes and my game design sensibilities. Who would play this? It’s like having Spin Doctors songs in your iTunes library.
This week Capcom releases Remember Me, a sci-fi adventure game in which the main character climbs around a lot (“Can we appeal to the Tomb Raider crowd?”), gets in fistfights (“Can we appeal to the Arkham City crowd?”), and manipulates memories (“Oh, right, we have to fit the central conceit into the game somehow…”). It begins with an interesting aesthetic, but once you escape from the laboratory and climb out of the sewers, you come to that moment when the music swells and a sweeping vista of the amazing sci-fi city stretches before you. My reaction to that moment in Remember Me was, “Really? That’s all you got?” Any further curiosity about the world or the gameplay pretty much dimmed once I got hung up on the first puzzle, which involves watching a doctor give medication to someone over and over again. Basically, these are puzzles about fast-forwarding and rewinding through cutscenes while you guess at whatever obscure solution the developers have in mind. If you really want to play an adventure game, I’m sure someone other than me could recommend a good one.
Also out this week is new DLC for Sins of a Solar Empire, a fantastic RTS that’s no less fantastic for its ongoing touch of feature bloat. Every time I play, there are about six or seven cool things that I know I’m probably not going to touch this time. Whether it’s mines, starbases, titans, some of the cruisers, superweapons, artifacts, inter-imperial pacts, refineries, or cultural boundaries, there are far too many nifty features for any single play sessions. Consider the trade port subgame. You might not even know it exists. But if you string together an unbroken line of trade ports, you get an income bonus. So you don’t just want that dwarf planet because your people need a place to live. You want it because it will extend your trade route by one system. Spacerailroad Tycoon in my RTS. The $5 Forbidden Worlds add-on will lets you further tweak planets, and it will add news planets, bonuses, and technologies.
A possible release this week is State of Decay. It’s in certification at Microsoft, and if all goes well, it will be included in Wednesday’s Xbox Live Arcade releases. Why should you care? Because of all the genres that need more games, single-player open-world zombie survival games need more games the most. Besides, I haven’t headshotted a zombie since dinking around with Resident Evil: Revelations a few weeks agao. I’m starting to go into withdrawal.
Finally, I wouldn’t normally care one whit about a free-to-play action RPG/MMO. But given that Marvel Ultimate Alliance is one of my perennial “you know, I should go back and play that yet again…” games, I’m actually looking forward to the free-to-play action RPG/MMO Marvel Heroes. The early launch this weekend has apparently been beset by problems — the PR rep sheepishly slinked away after last Thursday’s “hey, do you want early access to Marvel Heroes?” email — but whenever its issues get ironed out, I’m looking forward to getting my Jean Grey on. That right, Jean Grey. That’s how I roll.
