Posts By Daniel Iverson
Who are you, and what have you done with Jack Tretton?
Sony’s E3 press conference Monday night was striking for a lot of reasons, but the greatest contrast of all wasn’t between Sony and Microsoft. It was between Sony and itself.
Light at the end of the tunnel.
Metro: Last Light's first achievement may be the fact it exists. As a sequel to an atmospheric first-person shooter adapted from Russian literature, it was already a risky game before development even started. Bad working conditions, delayed release, and THQ's bankruptcy followed. Yet despite everything going against it, Last Light has emerged from the darkness to become one of the year's best games so far.
First it giveth, then it taketh away.
Last June, EA Labels President Frank Gibeau said the publisher's objective for Dead Space 3 was to increase accessibility without upsetting established fans. To give credit where it's due, EA was half successful—the first half. But with its compromised and uninspired design, Dead Space 3 is streamlined almost beyond recognition. And I'm upset.
"Plus" may be a stretch, but this port is at least equal to its source.
Dead or Alive 5 earned my respect with its accessible and fluid combat, healthy challenge, and wealth of single-player content. Following the Plus ports of the first two Ninja Gaidens, DOA5 is Tecmo Koei’s latest re-release to hit the Vita and joins Mortal Kombat and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 as another fighting game port done right for Sony’s handheld.
The Dragon Ninja returns with enough suffixes even Capcom would blush.
Like a photocopy of a photocopy, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Plus reproduces the content of its original source but degrades the quality. The source is Ninja Gaiden II: Team Ninja's hack-and-slash action adventure game released for Xbox 360 in 2008. A port would be released for PlayStation 3 in 2009 (hence the Sigma) and again for PlayStation Vita in 2013 (hence the Plus). What we’re left with is that third clone from Multiplicity.
Capcom's cinematic action experiment is a (shotgun) blast to play.
In film, “popcorn flick” often holds a negative connotation, but like any genre it comprises both good and bad works judged by their own set of standards. Resident Evil 6 is a popcorn game and despite a few misguided design choices, it’s a damn good one.
Project would require fan support, rights from EA
American McGee Wednesday asked fans if they'd support a third Alice game, provided he's able to get the rights from EA.
Tomb Raided!
Games evolve quickly. Despite a trilogy of quality releases ending only five years ago, Tomb Raider was already starting to get left behind by the genre it helped to create in 1996. Now the industry’s best-known heroine is back and reinventing action-adventure once again.
Castlevania returns to its side-scrolling roots, but things are a bit different now.
Rebooting a beloved and well established franchise like Castlevania was risky even before Konami outsourced the project to MercurySteam. But the little known Spanish developer, whose only major credit was the unremarkable Clive Barker's Jericho, would impress critics and fans with 2010's Lords of Shadow enough for Konami to greenlight two sequels. Mirror of Fate, a 3DS exclusive, is the first.
Namco Bandai's commercial failure was Ninja Theory's creative success.
While history always remembers the games with the perfect reviews and the record sales, sometimes the best examples of the industry’s work have neither and become forgotten to all but the few who recognized them for being something special.
