Should Games Have All Content Unlocked From the Outset?
November 17, 2014 | Originally Published by Ars Technica
Back in the NES era, many games included cheats or Game Genie codes to unlock some of the more difficult levels or fill our coffers with 1-Ups. How else were we supposed to beat Battletoads? But today’s games don’t do that, opting instead to lock much of their advanced content behind a scavenger hunt for baubles or a seemingly impossible boss fight. Most games, but not all. Halo: The Master Chief Collection is a rather notable exception. Ars Technica’s Kyle Orland writes that Microsoft’s decision to unlock every campaign level and multiplayer match type was a master stroke:
It doesn’t have to be this way, as Halo: The Master Chief Collection and its immediate unlocks show. Original campaigns aren’t going anywhere, and we’re not about to start skipping content by default. But there’s no reason to prevent players from deciding how and when they can access whatever content is in a game—from levels and items to weapons and costumes—at the moment they first launch it.
Video Game Titles Have Gotten Ridiculous
November 19, 2014 | Originally Published by Destructoid
Video game titles have gotten ridiculous. I think I really noticed it earlier this year when Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix decided use Rise of the Tomb Raider as the title of the next game in the series. I’d gotten my fill of the word “rise” (and its variants) after being subjected to The Dark Knight Rises, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Hannibal Rising, and many others at the movie theater. Especially because very few of the people or groups who are supposed to rise in those movies actually do!
Destructoid’s Steven Hansen shares my pain and has put together his own list of words that need to be stricken from game titles. Unsurprisingly, it all loops back to Call of Duty:
Lords of the Fallen and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare just came out and they should be laughed out the damn building for their horrible, generic videogames names.
I originally typed “Armored Warfare” and was confused when Google failed to bring up results for our “Call of Duty: Armored Warfare” review. Then I realized it was “Advanced Warfare” after remembering I kept getting it confused with Advance Wars originally.
DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM?
Should Assassin’s Creed: Unity Be Recalled?
November 23, 2014 | Originally Published by Forbes
Can you recall a video game because it’s too buggy? It’s an interesting question. For the most part, a software purchase is considered an “as is” piece of property by publishers, retailers, and most of the general public. Whether you prefer to use “Buyer Beware,” or the classier sounding “Caveat Emptor,” a software program is considered yours as soon as you break the seal. But the bugs found in Assassin’s Creed: Unity aren’t like the average glitches found in your average game. And Erik Kain of Forbes wonders if it’s time Ubisoft issued a full recall instead of resorting to patch after patch after patch:
At this point we sort of take it all for granted, however. Another buggy game release? Color me surprised. We’ve done this so many times before it hardly makes us bat an eye.
But we wouldn’t stand for it in any other industry.
The Rise and Fall of THQ’s Empire
December 12, 2014 | Originally Published by Polygon
Gamers often didn’t know what to make of THQ. The publisher built its empire on the backs of tie-in games based on Nickelodeon and Pixar properties such as SpongeBob SquarePants and The Incredibles. But they also produced intriguing original games such as Saints Row: The Third and Darksiders. They were even the initial driving force behind Evolve, one of 2015’s most anticipated games. But that all changed when the company went bankrupt early last year.
So what happened? Tracey Lien, writing for Polygon, set out to discover the answer by talking to as many former THQ employees as she could including the charismatic (but possibly crazy) Danny Bilson. Her portrait of a publisher in free fall makes you wonder, could anything have been done?
Many blame the company’s fall on the licensed games well drying up. Some pin it on the commercial failure of the company’s uDraw tablet for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Others point to poor management and too many risky bets.
“There isn’t any one, isolated event that killed the company,” says a former THQ executive who asked to not be named. “This was one of the most successful video game businesses in America. We were a billion dollar company. It was complicated.”
THQ suffered a “death by a million spider bites,” the executive says.
Broken Games Are Still Broken
December 19, 2014 | Originally Published by Joystiq
Yes, we’re still talking about games that were shipped to stores broken and still haven’t been fixed after nearly half-a-dozen patches apiece. In light of all the problems that Assassin’s Creed: Unity and Halo: The Master Chief Collection has caused for Ubisoft and Microsoft, respectively, Joystiq’s Richard Mitchell looked at what companies are trying to do to prevent this from happening in the future. And the answer seems to be… “not much.”
Sony will gladly take your $60 to pre-purchase Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End through the PlayStation Store, and that’s because they’ve added a disclaimer stating they don’t have to refund your money if it gets canceled. But on the other hand, CD Projekt delayed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt when it became obvious that they wouldn’t be able to ship the game in February as originally planned. Even though the average gamer now expects the games they purchase to be patched many times over:
What’s really alarming, however, is that this process is standard practice now. Not only do we expect games to have problems at launch, but we tolerate it. We shrug our shoulders, saying “that’s just the way it is,” while developers and publishers take advantage of one of the most passionate audiences in existence.
That’s unacceptable.
A History of Fan-Made Mario Games
December 31, 2014 | Originally Published by Joystiq
There’s no reason to hide it, Mario Maker is one of my most anticipated games for 2015. The ability to create my own Mario courses (and play courses created by others) has got me giddy with excitement. Writing for Joystiq, Lawrence Bonk has revealed that he’s just as giddy as I am. He is so giddy that he dove into the shadowy world of unauthorized ROM hacks of Super Mario Bros. and other games in the series. These fan-made creations are sometimes scary, but they’re always interesting:
Of course, long before there were dedicated toolsets, there was the humble game ROM. In addition to allowing people to finally brag about beating Ghosts N’ Goblins, NES game ROMs had/have the added bonus of being fairly easy to manipulate. What better title to screw around with than the original Super Mario Bros.? It didn’t have too many sprites and, oh yeah, there’s that whole “pretty much defined video games for an entire generation” thing.
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