Video Games

Comparing Amnesia and Penumbra

Back in 2010, a Swedish independent developer named Frictional Games released a survival horror game by the name of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It featured no combat, and rather, asked you to survive against unknown horrors in an eighteenth century castle by hiding, running, and general problem solving. It was a huge success for an independent title, selling over 200,000 copies on digital distribution sites, and winning several Game of the Year awards, including some over here at Player Affinity. To some, this is the first title from Frictional Games they’ve seen, those who have followed Frictional before Amnesia, know of their earlier series, Penumbra. Unsurprisingly, the Penumbra games are very similar to Amnesia, from the need for low gamma settings to the stealth gameplay. This is why it’s interesting to see just how similar these games are.

Will We Ever Play These Old Games?

We all have that shameful backlog somewhere in our house; a stack of old games that we bought on impulse years ago, but never got around to playing despite the fact that we just had to own the thing.  Then there’s all of those games we started playing and kept meaning to finish off, but were constantly distracted by the latest installment of Call of Duty.  Well, Player Affinity’s PC crew pried open our chest of neglected classics and had another go at them to see whether or not we’ll ever play these old games.

Hard Corps Uprising Review

If
you take a minute to consider the current state of the gaming industry, it’s
quite amazing that a game like Hard Corps: Uprising has come out. This is a
game rooted neck deep in the older days of gaming that began in arcades. All
the trademarks of that era are present in this game; a vertical learning curve,
brutal checkpoints, severe penalties and borderline broken mechanics. The
question is though; does this still make for an entertaining game in 2011?
Well, I’m going to get to that now as answering that question depends on a ton
of other elements.

Firstly,
the difficulty in this game is absolutely nuts. When you first start out you
will curse at your X-Box like you were back in an arcade in the days of
Pac-Man. The main thing that makes this game so hard is at the beginning there
is a complete lack of preparation for the player. Apart from a control screen,
the rest is up to you. Hard Corps: Uprising takes a huge inspiration from
Contra and for those of you who don’t know what Contra is, it’s a side
scrolling shooter with some platforming thrown in that is notorious for being
hard. Hard Corps: Uprising has the difficulty part in spades, but with equal
amounts of frustration.

Gabe Newell Speaks To Senior High Marketing Class

Gabe Newell recently addressed a Sports & Entertainment Marketing class at Tippecanoe Valley High School, speaking very clearly about the industry, how it works, and how Valve goes about their business. He detailed the differences between how a company should address their customers when they are dealing with them directly, and how they would normally address them via a brick-and-mortar store. He went into detail about individual customers’ values in games that they buy and even went so far as to say that people who attract other people to the game should be rewarded by being a part of the community.  Newell also detailed how every person values their time at different monetary rates and will pay accordingly.

Infamous 2 Lands in June

Sucker Punch recently announced in a blog post that Infamous 2 will be landing on store shelves June 7th in North America. They also shed some light on the features of the game’s “Hero Edition”. For $99, this collector’s package of the anticipated sequel includes the full game, an 8.5” statue of Cole, a courier’s sling pack modeled after the one in the game, a DC mini-comic book, and a voucher which gives access to retail-exclusive bonus content. This additional content will also be available to those who reserve either copy of the game. The game’s soundtrack is also being offered by all participating retail stores who are selling the collector’s edition ofInfamous 2
.

TNT Racers Review

TNT Racers is an easy game to miss in the Xbox Live
Marketplace. The market is saturated with all sorts of racing titles, most of
which you could probably live without playing. T.N.T Racers seems to borrow
elements from other games, but it’s hard to fault it for being unoriginal,
especially when you’re talking about a driving game. T.N.T Racers is worth your
time, but you may want to take heed before you drop 10 dollars on this quirky
racing title.

New Command and Conquer Studio

Fans of RTS games may be happy to know that a new studio will be reviving the Command & Conquer franchise with a new installment. The studio, named “Victory Games”, has been created by EA to develop the next game and will have three offices. These offices will be located in Los Angeles, Austin, and Shanghai. According to Jon Van Caneghem, General Manager of the new studio, the name is derived from what players see at the end of a good match which is very fitting for the branch-off company. This news should be very exciting for fans of the iconic franchise, especially after the release of Command and Conquer 4 — which was given mostly negative reviews last year. Nevertheless, Victory Games aims to redeem the C&C name and will hopefully develop a game that reignites the genre.