Ray Carsillo had a chance to sit down with Brian Jarrard, the Community Director for Bungie, to talk about this last Bungie derived Halo adventure, Halo Reach. Take a look to see how far Ray emerses himself into Noble Team and the totally revamped Firefight mode!
What a year 1998 was, we saw Bill Clinton and the Lewinsky scandal, Titanic won 11 Oscars, Google was founded, and StarCraft was released. For those of you who have just crawled out of a cave, StarCraft was big, being the best selling PC game of the year. Not only that, but since its release it has won 37 separate awards and has been entered into the Guinness Book of Records FOUR times. Twelve years later and we are finally getting a sequel. It’s been a long journey, so with StarCraft II just days away, here is a rundown of events leading up to its release.
StarCraft, it was a game that defined a genre. Even today I still compare games to StarCraft, but what made it so great? For me the best thing about the game was the story, it sucked you into the Koprulu Sector and got you attached to all the characters. I was angry at Mengsk for leaving Kerrigan to the Zerg, was touched at the sacrifice made by Tassadar, and I actually felt a loss when, in the expansion Brood War, Fenix was killed. It was this that made me play the single player campaign time and time again.
The new version of Alien Swarm allows solo-play or online multiplayer to control a squad of grizzled space marines. Players choose between eight characters, then customize a loadout of weapons and equipment, to engage in top-down shooting action. As players level up they gain access to unlock-able weapons and equipment.
The story and setting should be recognizable to any James Cameron fan: you’ve lost communications with a space colony, and “a Xenomorph may be involved”. Your marines can weld doors shut, set up auto turrets, and use motion trackers in their fight against the space bugs; it comes a close as possible to being an Aliens game without actually violating trademarks. It’s all very familiar, but the developers present it so earnestly that it comes across as a loving homage, rather than hackery.
When it comes to how great a game is, there are many components that people discuss. Most players attribute the greatness of a title to the addictive gameplay, beautiful graphics, a compelling story, or fluid controls. Most reviewers in this day and age would follow suit, arguing that gameplay is the most important, followed (in no strict order) by graphics, story, and controls. Music in video games however, often fails to hold a candle to other elements of gaming in terms of importance. This week in the Unsung Heroes column, my aim is to demonstrate that video game music is far better than most people give it credit for.
Hello, and welcome to another session of the Xbox Economist! The feature where we show you the best way to spend your buck, and give you the best fun to price ration possible. This week we leave the fun loving zombie killing we discussed last week, and focus on something far more dark and scary. Come in, and be ready to see a shockingly good deal. ***warning naughty language***
Dubbed “Ghosts of the Past”, this balls-out-kind-of-campy-but-somehow-kind-of-fitting trailer is the last major signifier that South Korea’s productivity levels will shut down by at least 50% forever and that people will, people who have played StarCraft, somewhere in their lifetime will now get the bloody chance to play its sequel. If you were pretty excited for StarCraft II, you will be really excited for StarCraft II after this trailer. If you’ve no interest in it, claiming the game to be a copy-and-paste job, then, well, you can be grumpy and misanthropic all you want, because the rest of us will be playing StarCraft II.
This trailer covers a lot of ground, going back to Kerrigan being abandoned and Jim Raynor having to live with that. It’s a little unsettling to see Kerrigan a little more… “sexed up” than she was in the first game (Her red braids and her soft green eyes in the original had its own appeal… I, anyway.), but whatever. That’s definitely Kerrigan and that’s definitely a distressed Raynor with some awesome vocabulary, like “OVERDRIVE”. It’s a little silly, but after this long a wait for a sequel, it kind of works. Anyway, enough blabbing. Check it:
Do you like video games? Do you like Performance Art as well? If you do, the Brick Theater in Brooklyn New York has a Performance Art festival for you. “Game Play” is running now through Sunday the 25th, and has a smorgasbord of video game-theme productions. Over the last week I had the chance to see several of them.
Theater of the Arcade was written by Jeff Lewoncyk and Directed by Gyda Arber; it consisted of five short plays, each telling the story of a classic video game, but written in the style of a famous playwright. It was the epitome of absurdist humor. Imagine if you will Asteroids as a tense workplace drama about spaceship pilots in a high-pressure competition right out of Glengarry Glen Ross. It’s a clever show with inside gags for both gamers and theatre fans, highly recommended for both demographics.
