Video Games

Uncharted 3’s Buddy System and Treasures

Today, Naughtydog posted on the PlayStation Blog explaining a cool aspect of Uncharted 3‘s multiplayer.

The Buddy System as they call it is an interesting new part of Uncharted 3’s multiplayer that rewards people for playing in pairs in the various competitive team modes of Uncharted 3.  To request someone be your buddy in any online match, you simply need to stand aside them and press the d-pad down.  If they agree to be buddies from that point onwards, any kills or tasks you both are working on will reward extra experience and treasures if you work well together.  Occasionally, enemy players will drop a treasure unique to you and your buddy.  It may be for them or you, but regardless who claims it, extra points and medals will be rewarded.  Likewise for performing something like a high-five (a taunt unique to being paired with a buddy) you are also rewarded more experience and more medals.

PAYDAY: The Heist Official Release Confirmed

After a brief delay PAYDAY: The Heist is finally ready for its big day.  Announced on the PlayStation Blog, October 18th is the day PAYDAY: The Heist
hits the PlayStation Network.  Developer OVERKILL and Sony Online
Entertainment originally delayed the game to further polish the title
and insure you, the gamer, has the best experience while playing their
game.

Vita US Launch Dated and Detailed

In early 2012, sometime before March, Sony will be launching the PlayStation Vita in America following the Japanese launch this year on December 17th.

Sony has now detailed how customers will be able to acquire games for the system, stating it will come with several means of purchase on day one.  In an interview with GDC Online, Chris Norden, senior staff developer support engineer at Sony, stated that all games will have both retail and digital copies available at the same time, similarly to how PC games are now released at stores and through services like Steam.  Price differences, if any, have not yet been discussed.  3G will be available for use when downloading on the PSN Vita service, as is typical with modern phones, though the 20 megabyte cap will prevent many games from being acquired this way. The second option is standard Wi-Fi which no doubt most games will use if bought digitally due to their size.

The Wonderful World of Live Streaming

I was never the best of my friends at video games.  Due to my disability and the increasingly shooter heavy selection of games, if I ever wanted to play, I found myself trying to do with one hand what Mountain Dew filled 12 year olds across the globe were doing with two, which led to a two-fold conclusion; first, my KD ratio would be much higher in the D area than the K, which in turn created the second, which was that I stopped playing shooters for the most part.  But while I stopped playing them myself, I still occasionally wanted to see the top level play that created the intrigue to play the game in the first place, and this is where I found Ustream.tv.  For those who don’t know what Ustream.tv is, it is a place where people can stream what they are doing live, so you can essentially watch an event as if you were there.  Ustream had thousands of streamers that would stream everything from sports to politics, but what I was most interested in was the games.  On Ustream, I could watch top-level players playing pretty much any game that could be played, and while the majority were a lot of Starcraft 2 and LoL/HoN players, if I searched, I could find someone playing whatever game I was in the mood for.  On the release of LA Noire, there were at least 15 channels that were broadcasting the game, and while a large part of LA Noire is the story which could be ruined, live streaming provided that look into the game that you could get before buying to make sure that it is something that you wanted.

Become An Adonis For Your Next Convention

The New York Comic Con and Animefest is this weekend and many of our readers will be attending, but some are afraid they won’t look sexy enough in their Doctor Manhattan costumes, or may not have the necessary stamina to participate in the weekend-long event.  However, Player Affinity’s fitness experts are here to offer some advice to help you become healthy and attractive in just hours before any comic book, or video game convention.

Transformers War for Cybertron Sequel Confirmed

High Moon Studios announced they will be making a follow up to Transformers: War for Cybertron.  The sequel, titled Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, continues the story of the Autobots and Decepticons and looks to darken the tone significantly.  When High Moon set about going to work on Fall of Cybertron they really took the fan feedback to heart.  High Moon says they have made significant and fundamental changes to the game in developing Fall of Cybertron and feel it is “a natural successor more than a true sequel.”

Why Mass Effect 3 Doesn’t Need Multiplayer

It’s official that Mass Effect 3 will have a four-player cooperative multiplayer mode called “Galaxy At War”.  Details aren’t in yet, but many gamers are quite excited by the prospect of fighting the Reavers alongside other players, or engaging in the as-yet-unconfirmed possibility of head-to-head combat against their friends.  While this is enticing, it’s probably not the best use of Bioware’s resources, and even if the developer had as much time and money as they like, Mass Effect 3 still doesn’t actually need multiplayer.

Electronic Arts describes the multiplayer mode as putting “Players in the role of a team of elite Special Forces soldiers”. This sounds like shorthand for “A team of Generic Space Commandos”.  They’ll inevitably be described as“Highly-trained, Heavily-armed”, and poorly-written.