Reggie Fils-Aime says Nintendo Not Good at Making Core Games

In an interview with Industry Gamers at GDC 2010 , Nintendo Chief Operating Officer Reggie Fils-Aime, drops the bombshell remark that Nintendo is not good at making core games. [Continue Reading]

BioShock 2 Review: I Want To Be Under The Sea

2007 was a big year for video games; that’s an undeniable fact. So many great games came out that year that it’s hard to nail down one in particular as the best game of that year. However, there’s one game almost always comes out near the top of the heap; “BioShock.” Ken Levine and 2K Boston’s underwater masterpiece is something that gamers will always look back on as a true classic. “BioShock” was both a critical and commercial success, so a sequel was inevitable. However, “BioShock 2″ wasn’t handled by the same development team, with 2K Boston passing off the reins to 2K Marin, and it didn’t even feature the same characters. However, “BioShock 2″ somehow managed to be one of the most enjoyable and compelling games to come along in a while. [Continue Reading]

What Happens At The End Of BioShock 2?

There’s hope yet for “BioShock 2.” It’s not like there was ever really any question about how good the follow up to one of 2007’s best games would be, but, there was one fatal flaw with the original – the last boss encounter.

 
After hours upon hours of both challenging and rewarding gameplay throughout the sunken city of Rapture, Jack Ryan works his way up to (spoiler alert) fighting Frank Fontaine in, what should have been, ultimate fight to end the game. However, for all the greatness that went into the rest of the game, the final fight was a bit of a letdown, feeling flat, and fairly easy compared to some of the other inhabitants of Rapture that Jack had to battle.

 
At a recent demo I asked “BioShock 2”’s Creative Director, Jordan Thomas, about whether or not whatever the end of his game holds a similar encounter, and, while there was very little he would actually confirm, here’s what he had to say: [Continue Reading]

A Pineapple Under the Sea: Revisiting BioShock

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or perhaps, at the bottom of the ocean) for the past five years, you’ve likely heard of an underwater, dystopian adventure by the name of “BioShock.” The 2K Games epic in which you traverse an abandoned, decayed metropolis at the bottom of the ocean has won numerous Game of the Year awards and has been the central topic when speaking on the matter of injecting fresh, original ideas into a FPS-market plagued with been-there-done-that gameplay and sequelitis. Recently, my roommate picked up “BioShock” for the PS3, and even though I finished the game on the 360 (again, with my roommate purchasing that copy… sorry 2K) I couldn’t wait to take the plunge all over again. Now, I’ve finished the game twice, on two different systems, and it remains one of the freshest, most satisfying gaming experiences I’ve had in the last decade. So, with the recent announcement of a February 9th release date for “BioShock 2,” I’ve decided to revisit what made the original so special, and provide things I look forward to in the sequel. [Continue Reading]

Teaming Up For Bioshock 2’s Multiplayer

While “Bioshock 2″ has been in the spotlight for a good couple of months now, there’s still plenty left out their to be discovered for the sequel to 2007’s game of the year. Today, more details emerged on what will be included in the final package once “Bioshock 2″ sees its release on November 3rd. But this isn’t any juicy info on the game’s hush hush single player campaign, this is news on the multiplayer front.

2K Australia senior designer Dean Tate told Gamespot today that they were handing over the multiplayer reigns to Digital Extremes, the people responsible for hellishly, fast-paced multiplayer hits like “Unreal” and “Unreal Tournament.” [Continue Reading]

Super Trailer Madness – New Bayonetta and BioShock 2 Videos

Happy Friday, everyone. I’m so glad the weekend is here. Work was really bringing me down this week. Just kidding! I’m unemployed, so have fun on your two (maybe three) days off suckers.

Now that I have that out of the way. I have a couple of awesome trailers for your eyes to feast upon this weekend. First of is Platinum Games’ new action thriller “Bayonetta.” The people behind “Bayonetta” are the same ones who brought you the original “Devil May Cry.” Action mastermind Hideki Kamiya promises his new title will be sexy and “sadistically hard”, and from the looks of it, he wasn’t lying. Every trailer I’ve seen for the game gets me more and more excited for its release. The game has its protagonist – Bayonetta – using her hair as her ultimate weapon, and that sexy black suit you see her in is actually her hair acting as a defense system. Her hair even branches out to form giant monsters and brutal weaponry. If this all sounds weird… who cares. It’s freaking Hideki Kamiya, and it’s going to kick ass! [Continue Reading]

Bioshock movie coming!

Universal studios and director Gore Verbinski of Pirates of the Caribbean fame have teamed up to bring last year’s XBOX hit Bioshock to the big screen. Bioshock is only the latest in comic book / gaming franchises to hit the big screen. It seems every summer there are ever more “Fanboy” franchises turning up on the big screen.

With the announcement of Bioshock i’m of two minds. The great thing about the game was the story was unique and you didn’t really know what was going to happen. In the past, I remember vaguely enjoying going to see a movie in which i didn’t already know the outcome. What happened to that?

It seems as if, well I should say seemed… it is, Hollywood will only make stories that already have a vetted audience. Meaning that they will adapt books, plays, games, tv shows or whatever with proven success so there’s less chance of failure. Money makes the world go round, but in the art of story telling, isn’t the main idea to guess about the ending?

Even stories that try to remain secret, with the onset of the Internet, within hours of a viewable copy being pressed you can find out everything. I’d like some mystery surrounding the experience. I think that is the root of why I’ve increasingly stopped watching internet movie trailers and “early looks” of video games. If one has already seen the good parts, what’s left?

But then my other half of mind says, “Yes! Finally games are being recognized for their narrative merit!”

The movies can reach so many more people than the games will. But then we have drudgery from the likes of Uwe!

Thankfully we don’t have to worry about that, this film is being helmed by the man who made Disney a multi-Billion Dollar franchise out of Pirates. I think the Bioshock franchise will be safe.

P.S. check out our playview of Bioshock on the Joost network

Bioshock Review

Honestly, you don’t need me to convince you to buy this game. Considering all the hype this title has gotten you can only wonder if it has the strength to carry its own Big Daddy’ish Weight under seven thousand leagues of press coverage, online videos, commercials, developer interviews, previews, E3 parties, and Lord knows what other form of marketing approach was thrown at it.

I do know one semantic from Marketing 105 though and that’s if you make a thing that people like, even within the realm of a niche market, you’re more than guaranteed to reap from them again when you release version 2 of your product.

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A Night in Rapture

I got a chance to download the Bioshock demo tonight for my PC [vista enabled 5gb dual core *2, 512mb nvidia GC rig] . I will pick up the full game later this week so I can loose myself in it over the weekend after being teased by this demo. Below you will find my general impressions and some screens that I took while playing.

Besides the obvious fact that this game looks good, it plays just as well. There was an interesting difficulty setting in the game called “You played a lot of Shooters!” that was not selectable. I was very annoyed by this as my brethren are aware of my love for taking on an impossible challenge. That must be the insane setting because playing it one difficulty lower will be challenging enough for most players. Even though that’s the case the game still plays well, rewarding you just in time so that the difficulty does not appear to be too harsh. While playing I had a heighten sense of all the objects in the game, and this is a must if you expect to survive.

If dirt was the leading elemental character in Motorstorm, then water takes the spot light in Bioshock. Mind you the game is running on limited settings. Though I was able to max out the settings on my PC, there were few options that were not made available in the demo, specifically shadow highlighting and all that volumetric mama-jama nerds go gah-gah over. But looking at the above picture, with the game running at a mere 800*600 resolution, do you really need it? Then again I was running it on Vista, so take note.

The entire feel of this game is something to talk about, from the audio, characters, and the themes used to get a design point across, this game is top notch. Though the default PC control layout was questionable, once you have it set to your liking, everything works beautifully. It’s tough to get an FPS to feel right, and this game ebbs a level of smoothness that I haven’t felt in a FPS for quite sometime. The default sensitivity is a little high for my tastes but this is adjustable as well. A key setting that should be adjusted as you will have several foes attacking you at once. During the insanity of switching between plasmids, and weapons, and dealing with the roster, the game maintains a solid frame rate. My hat’s off to 2K for this game as I haven’t been impressed by a demo this much in a long time. Expect my full review soon, Click “more” to check out extra screens.

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