PixlBit

Details about the upcoming prequel in the God of War series have surfaced and chief among them is the inclusion of multiplayer. A full description of this new addition to the series can be read here. I had a feeling that this might happen and I know it makes sense from a business perspective but I just have to ask the question: do we need multiplayer in a God of War game?

G4 posted this on their feed and it's nothing short of awesome. It seems like there's more to look at as well. Without further adu, a parody of Beyoncé's If I Were A Boy - "If I Were A Core"

Last Wednesday, I noticed an unusual bombardment of the evils of the world and the negativity that infests our daily lives. The world is by no means perfect but we all are relatively desensitized in order to handle the usual problems we deal with everyday and the bad news constantly at the top of the docket in the news. However, with the news of a person who used Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to train for mass-murder, the sad news of Adam Sessler leaving G4 and my fellow PixlBit writer Angelo Grant feeling that IGN is bad for gamers (along with other non video game related things like my friend complaining about the lack of diversity in television with me over Facebook), I had to take a step back and do something positive because I had by this point became rather glum and depressed. To quote one of my own tweets, "Need some positivity right now. Listening to my 70s Summer Breeze mix while writing some video game announcement news." That was no mistake either. I purposely chose to write up the Uncharted 3 GOTY and Resistance trilogy story because those were positive stories. Also, listening to America, Seals and Crofts and Ambrosia will always mellow you out.

When I was 13 years of age, I stayed for a summer with my other mother. We didn't have much as she had just moved to a new city and was still trying to get settled. She had a job and a nice house but there was little left over to make ends meet. I remember sleeping on a futon mattress on the floor and saving pennies to afford cheeseburgers at McDonalds because they were only 39 cents at the time. Another memory I remember is staying up late. My mother didn't care if I stood up late and often times I did as she would work the graveyard shift at the local newspaper. She was a manager and would be in charge of making sure people went out to deliver the papers. More often than not, someone would flake out and she would be stuck doing their route and I would come along to help but that's another story...

Sometimes there are news stories that aren't too important to report on. Sometimes some stories take priority over others. That's why I welcome you to the inaugural edition of Back Page News. This will be a weekly blog compiling stories from the past week that were less than big news. Without further ado, let's get to it!

If you hadn't read the PixlBit feature about Operation Rainfall and its impact on JRPGs, check it out here. The feature made me think about when I first got into RPGs, which was about 10 years ago. I started buying every RPG I could find, whether I finished them or not, and most of them were JRPGs. One of the first games I got was SaGa Frontier. For a newcomer to the genre, I didn't have much luck with the game but I found the worlds, multiple characters, and battle system so interesting that I still aspire to be able to play and complete it. To be fair, it isn't what I would call a great RPG or even a great game. It's definitely for fans of the genre only and its open world gameplay further exacerbates that fact. Nonetheless, fans of the genre should check it out. It's relatively cheap, as a used copy can be found for around $15. Check out the video below for an overview of the game, as well as some gameplay.

Okay, to start with a clean slate, I'll update on the games I mentioned I was playing before. I completed Vigilante 8 Arcade and got all the achievements except one for 10 victories in online play because no one is online. Once again, screw all the negative review scores, this is a lot of fun and plays just as good as the originals. The lack of content is disappointing but the controls are better than the original. Plus you have the option to go back to the original controls in case you don't like the new ones. At $5 or 400 MSP, it's an easy buy. I also finished Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and I really enjoyed it. It isn't a deep game and it was rather short at seven hours or so but if you like the Prince of Persia series, this is an easy buy. The final boss fight is also really awesome with some impressive set pieces and graphical effects. The ending is disappointing but I didn't really expect much. This game is better as enjoying what you're currently doing rather than what you're working towards. I also completed the Fable III DLC and basically, I can't really recommend it. It's too much for what you're getting, which is about two to three hours of content (that's both DLCs combined) and some extra achievements that you may not get because its glitched. Seriously, I should have 60 more points than I do right now.

The recent announcements about Epic Mickey 2 and Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion has gotten me reminiscing about when Disney had good games being released. Oddly enough, this reminded me of something else from my childhood that I rarely think of. When I was little, for some reason, I was always being babysat. I wasn't a latch key child per se but since both my mothers worked, after school, I was picked up by a babysitter and I stayed at their house until one of my mother's came to take me home. There were various caretakers throughout my childhood but one of them I remember because she had like twenty some games that I had never heard of.

So I'm looking at the case for my copy of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I haven't really looked at it or read the manual, which is something I like to do. So I removed the awesome albeit unnecessary slipcover and check it out, admiring the cover art and reading the various tag lines and descriptions on the back. I look at the case itself and it's virtually the same so I open the case and pull out the manual to read. At this point, I discover that behind the manual is a little high quality piece of paper with printing on one side only.

A quick look on Metacritic and from my knowledge of game releases from the first quarter of 2012 and I've noticed a noticable set of titles that have been less than good. That's not to say there have been nothing but bad games released recently but for the most part, the most critically acclaimed games from January to March 2012 have been the expected ones, like Mass Effect 3. Many games that were resonably high profile have either underwhelmed (SoulCalibur V, Twisted Metal) or just failed completely (Ninja Gaiden III, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City).