epic Archive

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Infinity Blade 2’s ClashMob Mode

Donald Mustard, Chair Creative Director talking to Douglass C. Perry for Kotaku:

“This is part of the great social experiment,” said Mustard. “We live now in an asynchronous world. Here’s an example. My wife and I love to play Scrabble, but with our kids and schedules, we don’t have enough to play together. So we play it, turn-based, on our phones.”

I’ve been having a ton of fun with “Infinity Blade 2’s” ClashMob. It gives me everything I want from a mobile game – bite-sized action, great graphics, tangible rewards, and reasons to check back every so often on my own schedule. Basically imagine “Tiny Tower” except you actually play a game and get rewards. The cherry on top is that you feel like you are a part of something more epic by taking on a boss with a billion hit points alongside people across the world.

Like real life, though, it’s kind of deflating when you contribute a lot to a seemingly doable task and find out that your teammates couldn’t do the same. While I think the mode could definitely use some tweaking, Chair is really onto something here in creating a truly great unique mobile gaming experience that combines the best of all worlds – skill, graphics, time commitment, and rewards.

via Kotaku – It Takes A Global Effort To Drain New Infinity Blade II Boss’ Billion Health Points.

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Review: Infinity Blade

I’m just going to go ahead and say it:

Infinity Blade is the best gaming experience I’ve had on the iPhone.

Seriously. You can take your Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, and all of your lame tower defense game clones and shove them in your favorite orifice because this game makes those look like amateur hour. From the time I downloaded Infinity Blade on my phone last Thursday, all I’ve wanted to do is play it nonstop.

To put this in perspective, you’re talking a guy who has all of the video game consoles, a gaming-ready PC, a Kindle, a Blu-Ray player, Netflix, a backlogged DVR of TV shows, and a sports fan. Needless to say, I’ve got a lot of entertainment that I could/should have been plowing through instead.

Nope, I had to max out my Infinity Blade character first.

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First Infinity Blade update next week, multiplayer coming soon

Shit. and Yes.

Also, while unsurprising, it’s still mindblowing to know that the iPhone  is capable of pushing the same essential graphics required for a Gears of War.

From Joystiq:

“We’re all very thrilled with how cool it looks, but the same amount of time it takes to make a high-res character for Gears is the same amount of time it takes to make one for Infinity Blade or to make these environments,” Chair’s Donald Mustard told Joystiq. “It takes time to make this stuff look awesome, and we want it to look awesome.”

via First Infinity Blade update next week, multiplayer coming soon | Joystiq.

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Infinity Blade conceived as a Kinect game

Now that I think about it, Infinity Blade would make a whole lot of sense on the Kinect. Just hold a plastic tube in your hands and you’ve got a ready made Kinect game.

Chair co-founder Donald Mustard:

“We always have some cool ideas on deck, and kind of the inception of Infinity Blade began as a discussion around: ‘If we were going to make a Kinect title, what would we make? What would a Chair Kinect game look like?’,”

Infinity Blade conceived as a Kinect game | Joystiq.

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Epic Citadel Brings Unreal Engine To The iPhone/iPad

Hot off the announcement of their first iOS game (Project Sword – check out the clip at the end of this post!) this morning at Apple’s iPod event, Epic Games (Gears of War, Unreal Tournament) sends word that a playable tech demo of Unreal Engine working on the iPhone is now live on the iTunes store.

Entitled Epic Citadel, the demo gives you a sneak peek as to what kind of graphics you can expect from Project Sword when it releases later this year. As you can see from the screenshots below, the graphics are jaw-droppingly good. It reminded me a little bit of the wonder I experienced when I saw the first Unreal engine fly through way back in the 90’s before the first Unreal game came out.

Now, don’t expect much of a game with Epic Citadel, it’s basically a really pretty graphics tech demo. You can move around using virtual dual analog sticks or you can let the software take over and provide a “Guided Tour”, which is basically an autopilot demo. You can also navigate by tapping anywhere on the screen and the character will automatically walk there.

I gave it a short test drive and the frame rate was locked in at about 30fps for the most part, but dipped below during a flyby or when a lot of the environment was in view. Nevertheless, it’s a real impressive piece of software and might be worth keeping on your iPhone/iPad just to show off to your friends. Plus, at “free”, its the right price.

We’ve already got a cool gyroscope control proof of concept with ngmoco’s Gun Range. Epic’s Epic Citadel shows us what the graphics capability of the iPhone/iPad is. Come on devs, enough with the demos. Let’s get a real game out now, eh?

Download Epic Citadel for free on iTunes

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Has Final Fantasy Lost Its Magic?

I think I’ve officially outgrown Final Fantasy.

Don’t get me wrong, I used to love the series. Most people had their formative video game experiences with Super Mario Bros. I had mine with Final Fantasy II on the SNES. I remember begging my parents to purchase an obscenely priced Final Fantasy III cartridge for $74.99 at a specialty shop. I even had my relatives pick up an import copy of Final Fantasy V from a trip to Japan even though I knew no Japanese whatsoever. Hell, I was determined to learn kanji as a 12 year old solely to play that game.

Final Fantasy used to be the reason I chose a particular console over another. It was why I wanted the Super Nintendo, Playstation, Playstation 2, and Playstation 3. Each new entry in the franchise was an event. I would spend every free moment lost in the world of Final Fantasy until the epic tale was over.

It took me nearly five months to finish Final Fantasy 13. There were stretches of multiple months where I didn’t even touch the game. I eventually finished the game, but it took a herculean feat of self-motivation to do so.

What happened?

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