Video Games Archive

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This Is The Coolest Portal Plush Toy I’ve Seen

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on April 28, 2011Posted in: Video Games

I wish I was as engineering-savvy as Jonathan Guberman because he and Leigh Nunan have managed to create the coolest interactive plush toy I’ve seen yet. Yeah, the Companion Cube from Portal is great, but it just kinda sits there, unlike the turrets in the game which have some adorable one-liners that really give it that human touch.

This baby has both a lift and motion sensor and responds to both with lines straight out of Portal. The only thing it’s missing is a laser and actual bullets. (And yes, it kinda looks like a white headcrab plush if you use your imagination, but it’s still awesome nonetheless.)

I want one now.

Check it out:

Interactive Talking Plush Portal Turret from Jonathan M. Guberman on Vimeo.

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Nintendo Confirms New Console To Succeed The Wii

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on April 25, 2011Posted in: Articles, Video Games

Originally published on lalawag

(image credit: IGN)

Remember that Christmas of 2006 where finding a Wii was akin to finding the Holy Grail at retail? Well, get ready to relive those fun times soon because Nintendo just announced that its new gaming console will come out in 2012.

From a note posted to its investors this morning:

To whom it may concern:

Re: Wii’s successor system

Nintendo Co., Ltd. has decided to launch in 2012 a system to succeed Wii, which the company has sold 86.01 million units on a consolidated shipment basis between its launch in 2006 and the end of March 2011.

We will show a playable model of the new system and announce more specifications at the E3 Expo, which will be held June 7-9, 2011, in Los Angeles.

Sales of this new system have not been included in the financial forecasts announced today for the fiscal term ending March 2012.

(Gotta love their salutation: “To whom it may concern.” It really gives you a sense of warmth for investing in the company.)

While it’s not surprising that Nintendo has been working on a successor to the once-monolithic Wii, it does come as somewhat of a surprise that they will already have a playable version of the hardware (codenamed: Project Cafe) at E3 this year. But what’s the “gimmick” for this new system?

According to a quote in Reuters, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata hints that it probably won’t be 3D:

“We would like to propose a new approach to home video game consoles. It’s difficult to make 3-D images a key feature, because 3-D televisions haven’t obtained wide acceptance yet.”

If it’s not 3D, then what is it?

According to speculation by IGN, the controller will have “integrated touchscreens and be capable of streaming games to each controller.” Those who remember the VMU functionality of the Sega Dreamcast back in the late 90s will have an idea of what IGN is getting at, except the Project Cafe implementation will be far more advanced, with presumably HD color displays wirelessly streamed from the console and tighter integration with the games.

IGN’s sources also say that the console will be in full HD and more powerful than the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360:

Additionally, IGN has learned that the system will be based on a revamped version of AMD’s R700 GPU architecture, not AMD’s Fusion technology as previously believed, which will, as previously reported, out perform the PlayStation 3’s NVIDIA 7800GTX-based processor. Like the Xbox 360, the system’s CPU will be a custom-built triple-core IBM PowerPC chipset, but the clocking speeds will be faster. The system will support 1080p output with the potential for stereoscopic 3D as well, though it has not been determined whether that will be a staple feature.

In terms of the design of the console itself, the overall size will be comparable to that of the original Xbox 360 and the system is likely to resemble a modernized version of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES).

Hopefully, this won’t be too hard on our wallets. It sounds like Nintendo might not enjoy the same “budget priced console” market segment when this baby comes out.

via Kotaku

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This Is The New National Song From Portal 2

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on April 19, 2011Posted in: Music, Video Games

With Portal 2 officially in stores today, we can finally hear the new The National track from the game, “Exile Vilify.” Unsurprisingly, the song sounds extremely mopey and downtempo. At least Matt Berninger writes about trials and “mind troubling.” That sorta sounds like what Portal is about.

Granted, I haven’t played through the game yet so I’m not going to comment more on the song in the game’s context. However, anyone expecting anything remotely resembling “Still Alive” needs to quickly reevaluate their expectations.

via YouTube – The National- Exile Vilify.

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Some Dude Soloed Yogg-Saron In World Of Warcraft

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on April 18, 2011Posted in: Video Games

Alright, this one may be just for me and those who have ever played World of Warcraft, but this video is pretty damn mindblowing.

Some dude killed one of the toughest raid bosses (Yogg-Saron, the tentacled, thousand moutheyes Old God) from the last World of Warcraft expansion by himself. This encounter used to take either 10 or 25 HIGHLY coordinated people and was the final boss of the game for a bit. I remembered doing this with a ten person group and still wiping for hours.

The real life equivalent would maybe be like an NBA player playing 1 on 5 vs, say, a high-school team. Yes, he’s a lot more skilled than the high-schoolers, but it’s still a cooperative team-game at heart.

Apparently it took him hours of trial and error to get the strategy and execution done right, but, by golly, he won in the end! I tip my hat to you, sir.

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They Are Making A Street Fighter Vs Tekken Game

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on April 12, 2011Posted in: Video Games

Given that there’s a Street Fighter vs _____ game for almost everything these days, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Capcom and Namco are working on Street Fighter X Tekken. But I’d be lying if I said I knew of its existence before. It looks like a mashup between Tekken Tag Tournament and Street Fighter 4, which is shaping up to be pretty darn awesome if you ask me.

Also, after watching this trailer it’s no surprise why the Tekken fighters are such big pussies. They can’t shoot fireballs or sonic booms and shit so they get their asses kicked by some real fighters. I mean, look at this shit, they get beastified by the Street Fighter dudes. (Can you tell which game I was partial to as a kid?)

via IGN.

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This Is The Dude That Says “Double Kill” In Halo

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on April 11, 2011Posted in: Video Games

Jeff Steitzer is an accomplished broadway actor, but you and I probably know him best as the guy who tells you when you are winning (and losing) in Halo. Double Kill! Triple Kill! OVERKILL.

I always envisioned him as a younger man, though. He pretty much looks nothing like you would think he would. However, I guarantee that the next time you get a medal in Halo, you’ll get a mental image of the avuncular-looking Mr. Steitzer. Enjoy.

CHENEYMANIA!

via GameInformer.com.

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Child Of Eden Cannot Come Soon Enough

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on April 7, 2011Posted in: Video Games

I was immensely disappointed when I learned that Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Kinect title, Child of Eden, was delayed from its late March release date. Out of all the announced titles so far, It’s pretty much the only Kinect title that’s looked like a true killer app.

Ubisoft’s released a new trailer for it, so I guess we’ll have to just be mollified by this thing until the game finally releases in June. I am totally pumped to wave my arms around and make pew pew noises at my tv while feeling like a total boss.

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Sony Draws The Ire Of Anonymous

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on April 6, 2011Posted in: Video Games

Ohhhhh shit. If it’s one thing you don’t want on the internet it’s the scorn of internet hacker group Anonymous. Previously responsible for taking down Mastercard/Visa websites in defense of Wikileaks as well as the Church of Scientology, Anonymous is a loosely organized group of individuals dispensing online justice as they see fit.

A couple days ago they issued this video statement stating their intent to fight Sony for suing PS3 hacker, Geohot:

I particularly liked this line: “You saw the hive, and you stuck your penis in it.” As a large multinational corporation, i’m sure Sony sticks its penis in lots of hives.

But some people in Anonymous were not satisfied with merely taking down Playstation.com and the Playstation Store via DDoS attacks. They’ve decided to take vengeance to the next level by obtaining personal records of Sony employees and family members:

Sebastian Moss for PlaystationLifestyle:

For example, Robert S. Wiesenthal, Group Executive, Sony Corporation, leading Corporate Development and Mergers and Acquisitions at Sony headquarters’ family history is currently being released onto the internet. His marital status, age, place of address, education and even whether he has children has been discovered. Other main targets include Nicole Seligman and Sony boss Howard Stringer, but multiple Sony employee emails are noted as future targets. In fact, one anon complained “No one found ANY info on Stringers kids?”

Meanwhile, both OpSony and SonyRecon have targeted those involved in the actual lawsuit against Geohot, with members of OpSony singling out the judge of the case.

SonyRecon founder randomtask stated:

sony , the judge and sonys lawyers are all valid targets

I’m not so sure going after individuals and their families is the best way of advancing your agenda, but it’s certainly some frightening shit. Imagine if you were an innocent Sony employee caught in the crossfire of this “war.” The amount of harm that could befall someone by releasing their personal information online is staggering. Hopefully the damage will be limited to juvenile pizza pranks and fake craigslist ads and not something more sinister.

Kinda makes you reflect just how helpless you can be on the internet, doesn’t it?

via PlayStation LifeStyle.

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Who Are These Early Adopters Helping Nintendo Claim A Sales Record For The 3DS?

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on April 5, 2011Posted in: Articles, Video Games

Lost in the midst of the hubbub over a possible iPhone 5 delay and Amazon’s launch of a cloud music playing service is the fact that Nintendo launched the first glasses-free 3D handheld console this past Sunday, the 3DS. According to a statement issued by The Big N, the first day unit sales of the 3DS were the highest of any Nintendo hand-held system in its history. That includes the original DS, DS Lite, Gameboys, you name it.

U.S. day-one sales numbers for Nintendo 3DS were the highest of any Nintendo hand-held system in our history. More details about U.S. sales numbers will be made public on April 14, when first-week U.S. sales figures will be tallied by the independent NPD Group. Nintendo worked hard to get as much product as possible to retailers on day one to meet demand, and we will continue with these efforts moving forward.

-Nintendo of America

It’s important to note that they are indeed talking about unit numbers, because at $249.99, the 3DS is undoubtedly the most expensive hand-held console Nintendo has ever launched. Reporting the gross revenue as a “new record” would be just… silly.

Personally, I’m just surprised at the number of early adopters Nintendo convinced to buy the 3DS. I’m a self-identified gadget fiend and even I had trouble talking myself into getting one. There just aren’t any titles out for it that justify the splurge for the 3DS. A quick look at Metacritic shows a sea of mediocrity with one stand out title (Super Street Fighter IV). Unfortunately, that title has already been released twice on a multitude of devices prior, so chances are that you’ve already played it in some incarnation.

Greg Miller of IGN also had similar sentiments on the quality of launch titles:

As I write this, 11 3DS games have been reviewed for IGN — I’m counting Nintendogs + Cats once — and the average review score is 6.7. That’s “Okay” on the IGN scale. Admittedly, most of the games reviewed landed in the 7 out of 10 range and just a few crappy games pulled down the average, but that’s still not stellar.

To add insult to injury, the 3DS shipped without internet browsing or Virtual Console support, taking a page out of Motorola’s playbook for its Honeycomb tablet Xoom. “Rush to ship now, patch in the promised features later” is a disturbing trend for hardware manufacturers to be following, but it’s the world we live in.

Like Android tablet, without any “killer apps,” you’re essentially buying the 3DS for its potential in the future. Now, being a betting type of man, I would actually expect there to be many reasons to own a 3DS in the future. Nintendo’s had a sterling track record of success, plus with these great day-one numbers, things are looking up for the 3DS to become a successful platform with a large user and developer support base.

But Nintendo’s also had a track record of refreshing their handheld hardware within a couple of years of the original devices’ launches. In the 3DS’s case, this hardware update cannot come soon enough, with battery life being reported at a scant 3-5 hours for the current device. Until we see a truly “must have” title for the 3DS, you’re better off waiting until one of those two things happen before diving in.

Originally posted on lalawag

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Watch This Jaw Dropping Marvel vs Capcom 3 Combo Video

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on March 25, 2011Posted in: Video Games

This video compilation of people doing ridiculous, full-life bar draining combos in Marvel vs Capcom 3 is quite impressive. It’s also why I’m sort of afraid to play online regularly in this game. Although I guess if someone online pulls off a 170+ hit combo with Iron Man and Morrigan on me, then there’s not much else to do but tip your hat and say “Good game, sir.”

via Justin Wong’s Twitter.

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