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Insert Quarter: Video Game Titles Have Gotten Ridiculous
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
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?
You can read the rest of the article at Destructoid.
New Releases: Halo Master Chief Collection, AC: Unity/AC: Rogue, Lego Batman 3, More
With Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare‘s launch behind us, game publishers have moved forward with a massive amount of mid-November releases. Chief among them (that’s right, I went there) is Microsoft’s Halo: The Master Chief Collection, an Xbox One repackaging of Halo: Combated Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 4. More Achievements than you could ever ask for and four of the best shooters to ever grace a gaming system. Not a bad deal. Also available this week is a double shot of Assassin’s Creed from Ubisoft. Assassin’s Creed: Rogue (PS3, Xbox 360) closes the book on the franchise’s “Americas” saga while Assassin’s Creed: Unity (PC, PS4, Xbox One) shifts the series to the French Revolution.
The remaining new releases can also be slotted into several long-running franchises including WB’s Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham (3DS, PC, PS3, PS4, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One), Sega’s Sonic Boom two-fer (Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric on the Wii U and Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal on the 3DS), Bandai Namco’s Tales of Hearts R (Vita), and Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 (PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One).
Finally this week, Blizzard is back with another World of Warcraft expansion… World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor.
A complete list of this week’s new releases can be found after the break. (more…)
Insert Quarter: A Profile of the Video Game Archivists at the Library of Congress
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
With more than 6,000 titles, the Library of Congress is home to one of the largest video game archives in the world. But the curation and management of the collection is in the hands of just four part-time employees. BuzzFeed’s Joseph Bernstein reached out to these four men to learn how the Library of Congress is attempting to preserve America’s gaming heritage and how much more still needs to be done:
No, the work of game copyrighting and archiving at our country’s signal institution for cultural preservation is not done by a dedicated full-time staff. Instead, it’s the passion project of a handful of archivists who want to be the new standard-bearers in the preservation of video games. Indeed, the state of video game collection at the Library is something of an expression of the liminal state of video games in American popular culture writ large. The Library recognizes the cultural importance of video games, but only devotes four people part-time to their archiving; Game companies insist that their products are the medium of the future, but don’t trust archives with their source code; Collectors sell their troves on Craigslist and eBay rather than considering donation.
Even to get to this point, though, has been a journey in and of itself.
You can read the rest of the article at BuzzFeed.
Insert Quarter: The History of Music Games
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
Almost 50 years ago, Paul and Art Garfunkel asked, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?” in their hit song, “Mrs. Robinson.” DiMaggio would later tell Simon that he hadn’t gone anywhere, even though his playing days were long behind him. Likewise, today’s gamers have probably asked themselves, what happened to all the music games? The conventional wisdom says that they just don’t sell anymore, but who can turn down an invitation to rock out with your plastic guitar out?
IGN’s Chris Reed dug in to the history of the music from its humble roots (1996’s PaRappa the Rapper) all the way through the Guitar Here/Rock Band rivalry and into the future of the genre:
Music/rhythm games have run a surprisingly dynamic path through gaming history. Some genres drift into popularity and gradually fade out as technology and popular taste change. You might not even realize it’s happened until one day you look around and wonder, for instance, where all the 3D platformers went. Music games, on the other hand, moseyed along under the radar for the better part of a decade before taking off like a shot, attaining meteoric success before drying up nearly all at once.
You can read the rest of the article at IGN.
Madden NFL 15 spikes the competition by outselling all games in August 2014
Even though his stance said, “stop,” Richard Sherman took it to the house as the cover athlete of Madden NFL 15. While it’s too early to be concerned with The Curse, EA Sports’ latest football sim, as expected, toppled the competition and emerged as the best-selling game of August 2014, according to The NPD Group.
Only a small number of new releases made their way onto store shelves last month and many of them were re-releases of older titles. This tactic helped Diablo III: Reaper of Souls reach the #2 spot as the “Ultimate Evil Edition” is now available for previous-generation and current-generation consoles. And thanks to its PlayStation debut, Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare cracked the top ten for the first time at #7.
Joystiq posits that this lack of major releases is the reason why game sales were down when compared to last August. The eighth month of 2013 saw the release of Madden NFL 25 as well as Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Saints Row IV, and Disney Infinity.
A full look at the top ten best-selling games of August 2014 can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, DS, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Battlefield 4, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Lego Marvel Super Heroes, Madden NFL 15, Minecraft, NPD, Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare, The Last of Us, The Lego Movie, Watch Dogs
The Last of Us returns to the top of the best-seller list in July 2014 NPD report
In previous years, the best-sellers chart for the month of July would normally be dominated by the latest entry in the NCAA Football series. But EA Sports canceled the series last Fall, so a new emperor is sitting upon the July Throne in 2014. Or rather, an emperor we’ve seen before in a spiffy new set of clothes.
This is a roundabout way of saying that the Remastered re-release of Sony’s The Last of Us (combined with more sales on the PS3) pushed the game to the top of the best-sellers chart. July was a pretty sparse month as far as new releases go, but 505’s Sniper Elite III also cracked the top ten. It was number eight… with a bullet.
You can check out July’s complete top ten list (which includes May releases Watch Dogs and Mario Kart 8 hanging tough in the top five) after the break. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, DS, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Call of Duty: Ghosts, FIFA 14, Grand Theft Auto V, Lego Marvel Super Heroes, Mario Kart 8, Minecraft, NBA 2K14, NPD, Sniper Elite III, The Last of Us, Watch Dogs
Nintendo Download: Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge, Double Dragon II, more
The Nintendo eShop has been updated on this fine Thursday and Double Dragon II: The Revenge leads a mostly anonymous pack of titles. I spent a lot of time busting heads with the Lee brothers back in the late 80s and early 90s, and The Revenge is as good as it gets. Plus, any game that features a battle inside a flying helicopter with a malfunctioning door is just fun.
Also available this week is Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge, the latest addition to Capcom’s “Mega Man August.” As the title makes plain, Battle Chip Challenge is a card battling game set within the Mega Man Battle Network universe.
Over on the 3DS side of the store is Gaiabreaker, a nifty looking vertically-scrolling shooter, and Hidden Haunts: Gothic Masquerade, a hidden object game.
More information on all of these games (as well as a few others) can be found after the break. (more…)
Nintendo Download: Guacamelee!, Bombing Bastards, Squids Odyssey, more
How can you not be intrigued by a game known as Bombing Bastards? The game, which is an homage to the Bomberman franchise, is now available through the Wii U eShop courtesy of developer Sanuk Games. And it’s joined by another uniquely named homage (this time to lucha libre wrestling): Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition.
Over on the 3DS, players will be able to download Squids Odyssey for the first time. The game is actually an enhanced compilation of two other games (Squids and Squids Wild West) and is described as “a unique mix of an action and turn-based RPG.”
More information on all of these games, as well as many more (including the Wii U release of Mario Tennis: Power Tour), can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, DS, News, Wii U
Tagged Guacamelee