If action games can be thought of as interactive movies, and role-playing games can be thought of as interactive novels, then what sort of game might be thought of as an interactive poem? The answer to that is a new independent game called Winter Voices by French developer Beyond The Pillars.
So I’m sitting here wondering why on earth people keep harassing me at work, the bosses telling me to ask customers “if they want help?” Surely, if you go into a game shop (or any shop come to think of it) you don’t want to be harassed by a member of staff. If you need help you can ask someone but why would you want someone to be hired just to bother YOU? Is this how all game shops are, or is it just the bad ones?
Other things are playing on my mind, like what is the future of gaming; I have read a brief article (more of an open letter to the public) asking whether the next generation of gaming consoles will kill the disc. A good question, but it won’t happen, and if it does it will not be cool. Take for example games which you can download already on the xbox dashboard. They charge the full retail price as though it was a box on a shelf. Now £24.99 for Alan Wake may be well priced but why is it not cheaper then the disc variant??
Finally, the first big games of 2011 are starting to appear. Although there are only two full PlayStation 3 store releases this week they are both excellent games. LittleBigPlanet 2 is everything that made the original special, but with improvements in all the right places. And Mass Effect 2 is one of the best action RPG’s of the last few years.
As well as the big games there are a couple good smaller titles new on PSN, including Modern Combat: Domination, and the Japanese import version of the first Mega Man on PSOne.
Square Enix have announced a direct sequel to Final Fantasy XIII, which will be arriving on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2011. The game, called Final Fantasy XIII-2, is being made by the same team as Final Fantasy XIII, including the director Motomu Toriyama.
“We made a promise to gamers at E3 that Portal 2 for the PlayStation 3 would be the best console version of the product,” stated Gabe Newell, president and confounder of Valve. I’m sure many of you are with me on this when I asked myself, “And how so, Gabe?”.
Today, Tuesday the 18th, Amazon is running a series of Gold Box Deals which are all video game related. All day long they’re selling the Wii exclusive Epic Mickey at 40% off, but every hour or so throughout the day a new deal will go live. As is typical with Amazon’s Gold Box deal, they don’t say in advance what items will be for sale, but instead offer cryptic clues about the upcoming sales. Here are the hints we have so far:
Last week Good Old Games, Gog.com, was doing one of their goofy marketing gimmicks, and today we get to see what they’ve been up to. As of now, they’re selling the classic text adventure Zork and all of its sequels along with Planetfall, another text adventure form the same publisher. All of this can be yours for $5.99. That’s isn’t actually a sale, but it’s a bargain basement price. In addition to Zork, Gog.com is also selling the four games from the Police Quest series of point-and-click adventures for $9.99.
