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Monthly Archives: October 2008
Taking consequences in games
In recent news there have been talk about the lack of consequences in games in general. There are very few moments in gaming history where your desicion acctually makes a huge difference and change the gameplay ahead (while there are desicions, there is often only one real option that advances gameplay).
While examples such as BioWares “Mass Effect” where certain decisions change the way the game playout are hard to find BioWare themselves state that they will bring consequences back in their upcoming Star Wars MMO. In traditional games you can often save the game at a point just before a major decision is made and thereby go back and change the choice if you ever regret it, in MMOs you rarely (if ever) can save your progress as all is happning continously in an on-line world. This puts the use of consequences to the test since a player needs to be able to “feel” all those decisions as they should be interpreted in the game. If a player recieves a quest to go chop someones head off he will most likely go chop someones head off without ever contemplating if that is a really good idea to do or not.
In other news the develops from Fallout 3 says they’ve restricted the gamers from being able to kill children in the game as they do not believe it’s something a player should be able to do. With school shootings in several countries this might be a very responsible choice from the developers but it really just walks around the larger issue of lack of consequence. What if you could do whatever you wanted in the game, but that some actions just carry a too high a price for your character or gameplay.
There are other games where the killing of some innocent characters have been restricted, in Blizzard’s World of Warcraft for example there are children that cannot be killed even by the opposing faction. This restriction have instead made people do put in extraordinary effort into killing a “non-killable” character, like draging a huge dragon from the other side of the planet into a major city just to see those “immune” characters suffer. This sort of behaviour is of course considered highly inappropriate by the game masters (Blizzards empolyees who act as “police” in the game) and if you are ever found doing such “game breaking” behaviour you risc being banned. Again, what the world lacks is consequence, if either you draged a huge dragon into the city or killed a child for that matter there should be some kind of penalty for your character but there is not!
Then again… this is games we are talking about, should we restrict games? “World of Warcraft” have some 10 million active players, I very much doubt “World of Consequence” would have the same.
New “real” version of Tetris!
It’s sounds so boring but is so addictive and fun! Tetris has been around for some 20 years and now it makes an apperance on WiiWare for 1200 points. With all the bad copies around of this game the Tetris Party is looking in good shape to take them out with original creator Alexey Pajitnov designing it!
Blizzards next MMO not World of Warcraft
Blizzard is one of the few companies that enjoy the hype to acctually make an “unannoucement” prime news. Blizzard’s CEO Mike Morhaime said on the topic of the MMO being developed: “It’s not going to be a World of Warcraft sequel.” When pressed he said, “So let’s just say it’s going to be different and it’s not going to be a sequel to World of Warcraft. It will be different. We’re not trying to replace World of Warcraft with this new MMO. We’re trying to create a different massively multiplayer experience, and hopefully World of Warcraft will still be going strong when that one is released.”
Fresh SC2 gameplay trailer from BlizzCon
Start Craft 2 is coming along nicely! I just can’t wait to get it. Apparently the “goodie bag” at BlizzCon contained beta keys for Star Craft 2. Other news from SC2 is that it will be a trilogy, one campaign for each race. I guess we have lots of games to buy ahead of us! Meanwhile alot of speculation is going about regarding Blizzards other games in development. Diablo 3 recently got an official new class, the wizard. Other than that Blizzard are still holding out on another secret game project.
Google AdSense to games – making use of commercials
In recent news on Slashdot it was reported that Google is aiming to include Google AdSense in flash games, much in the same way they allready do with normal webpages. This new way of showing ads got my head spinning into other cool options that might be coming to gaming platforms. We’ve allready seen commercials for all kinds of different things in console games like FIFA and Grand Turismo. Just like in normal sports the arenas and cars are stuffed with commercial messages. What if these could come to life AND bring about a better gaming experience?
What if, you have the latest version of FIFA for example, and whenever you play it it connects to the Internet and checks if there are new ads available. These ads are payed for just like normal ads and the amount of downloads to the game can be tracked and the game can keep track of which are shown. You can also take it one step further and let the player decide which ads should be shown on the team uniform or home arena.
While the above suggestion hardly improves gameplay it does one other thing: it gives the publishers kickback on the usage of their product. This can bring about better games in two ways, first of all the publisher would really want you to keep playing these games in order for them to sell more ads so they will make sure that they release top quality games to keep this extra revenue coming. Secondly in order to make you play more an in game currency can be established that makes you gain in game money in exchange for shown ads, this currency could be used to buy on-line powerups and that can be added to the game on-line after the release. In the FIFA example a new player can be added and downloaded and saved to a memory card, in Grand Turismo a new car might become available.
Tokyo Game Show: Nintendo News
Nintendo had lots of news for us at the Tokyo Game Show recently. First of all, as promised, an old franchise came back: Punch Out!
Other games announced where Pikmin, Another Code, Sin & Punishment 2 and Dynasty Warriors.
In other news from Nintendo they have finnally addressed the memory problem of the Wii and have announced that as of January 2009 (worldwide?) the Wii will get the capability to save downloaded content to SD memory cards! I hope when they say “save” they also mean use it from the SD cards directly without having to do some “shuffling” of the data every time you want to play a game from a SD card.
The last piece of “big” (but anticipated) news was the new DSi which will feature two cameras and be 12% thinner than the old DS lite but at the same time having a 17% larger display! To bad I recently bought a DS lite eh? As with the Wii the DSi will get an on-line shop where additionall content can be bought.
I will be standing in line for Punch Out!
EDIT:
I found a nice complete list of games announced for Wii that I also include here:
2008
Wii Music (Nintendo) – 16th October
Animal Crossing: City Folk (Nintendo) – 20th November
The Melancholy of Haruhi (Kadokawa Shoten) – 27th November
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Cross Generation of Heroes (Capcom) – 11th December
428 (Sega) – 4th December
Samba de Amigo (Sega) – 11th December
Let’s Tap (Sega) – December
Cooking Mama 2 (Taito) – 4th December
Rygar: Muscle Impact (Tecmo) – December
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith (Activision) – 16th October
Karaoke Joysound Wii (Hudson) – 18th December
Sky Crawlers (Bandai-Namco) – 16th October
Happy Dance Collection (Bandai-Namco) – 23rd October
Family Ski: World Ski & Snowboard (Bandai-Namco) – 13th November
Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (Bandai-Namco) – 4th December
Taiko Drum Master Wii (Bandai-Namco) – 11th December
Tenchu 4 (From Software) – 23rd October
Harvest Moon: Exciting Animal March (Marvelous) – 30th October
Rune Factory Frontier (Marvelous) – 27th November
Shape Boxing (Rocket Co.) – 30th October
2009
Wii Sports Resort (Nintendo) – spring
Start w/ 100 Conversations! English Conversation (Nintendo) – 2009
Punch-Out!! (Nintendo) – 2009
Trace Memory: R, Gateway of Memory (Nintendo) – 2009
Kensax (Nintendo) – 2009
Cosmic Walker (Nintendo) – 2009
Spawn Smasher (Nintendo) – 2009
Dynamic [illegible] (Nintendo) – 2009
Takt of Magic (Nintendo) – 2009
Sin & Punishment 2 (Nintendo) – 2009
Forever Blue 2: Beautiful Ocean (Nintendo) – 2009
Everyone’s the Star on the NHK Red-and-White Quiz Battle (Nintendo) – 2009
Line Attack Heroes (Nintendo) – 2009
Castlevania: Judgment (Konami) – winter 2008-2009
Dead Rising: Zombies’ Sacrifice (Capcom) – winter 2008-2009
FFCC: Echoes of Time (Square-Enix) – 29th January
Sonic and the Black Knight (Sega) – spring
Fragile (Bandai-Namco) – winter 2008-2009
Arcrise Fantasia (Marvelous) – winter 2008-2009
Oboro Muramasa (Marvelous) – spring
Posted in Nyheter
Tagged Download, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Nintendo DSi, Punch Out, TGS, Tokyo Game Show, Wii
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World of Warcraft fitness
Think if you ran all the length your character in World of Warcraft ran, wouldn’t you be pretty fit by now?
On another note of fitness, someone in Japan came up with an idea of making Wii Fit more appealing… The solution? Have a maid run next to you! “Only in Japan” kind of comes to mind.