Digo Blog: Reviews and stuff.

So I finally put my stuff together and made a video review for Resident Evil Degeneration.

I hope you find it amusing as it’s my first edited video in like 4 years

Enjoy!

Here’s a collection of pictures that will make you go WTF. Enjoy!

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What’s the difference between Epic and an Epic Fail?

When you are creating a sequel to the game that pretty much propelled the sales of the Xbox 360 — you’d better damn make sure you don’t make a flop, because the bar is set so high that even the slightest fails will be accounted for.

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For those who grew up in the early days of PC adventure gaming, Al Lowe needs no introduction. To those whom need such an introduction, Crecente is coming by your house later to use his feared hair whip fatality. Anyway, here’s what the point and click adventure god had to say about developing adventure games in the modern gaming world:

No, not futile, but not mainstream either.

He continues:

They’re not the majority audience as they were in the 80s. That same small slice of people who enjoy puzzle solving, being stuck, and figuring things out still exist. Of course, the Internet has hurt the puzzle aspect of adventure games. When you know that Google can find the answer to any puzzle, it’s very tempting to go take a look!

He’s right, part of the fun of those games was that, other than a few strategy guides, there was nowhere to turn for answers but to your PC dork friends. (And btw, did anyone ever beat Wayne’s World? I never could.) Hit up Rock, Paper, Shotgun for the entire superb interview if you have any interest in Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, the history of modern gaming, etc etc etc. Seriously, this one is well worth the read.

RPS Interview: Al Lowe [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action

Toaster-headed space horror news now, with EA outlining its intentions to get Dead Space running equally well on both of its intended console platforms. When asked if the PlayStation 3 version would suffer any Madden-ing technical shortcomings (as we’ve sadly come to expect from certain publishers), executive producer Glen Schofield told Videogamer.com, “The plan has to be, and it will be, on parity with the 360.”

EA Redwood Shores is currently developing the sci-fi screamfest with the Xbox 360 as lead platform, with a shift to the PS3 following in the next few months. “That is so that you’re not downgrading the PS3 later,” said Schofield. “We’re putting all our engineering muscle into making the PS3 great, and then we’ll know that the 360 will be great.”

Great news, especially if Dead Space turns out … great.

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Yahtzee isn’t all that fond of taking requests, but it seems that the horde of Call of Duty 4 fans hungry to see their favorite game get slapped in the face with Croshaw’s angry, spite-filled penis have moved him to action. In reviewing the game he comes to realize what we’ve known for months - Call of Duty 4 is just as good as a prostitute with three identical sets of genitalia. Of course he draws this conclusion out a good four minutes, but it is a very good four minutes indeed. I think I prefer it when he reviews games that he likes, as it seems to make him try harder.

Zero Punctuation [The Escapist]

Variety has a pretty epic story in their March issue that delves deep into LucasArts upcoming Star Wars game The Force Unleashed. Writer Frank DiGiacomo does not only an amazing job of shedding light on a hotly anticipated game, but also manages to lead the uninitiated on a quick tour of both the history of video gaming and the problems the emerging medium still struggles with. The story then quickly plunges into the making of the upcoming game and some of the issues the devs have run into while trying to blend new tech with old for the game.

The story does mention a few things interesting to the hardcore as well, like the fact that they had to play down the game’s realism because if a person was really hit with a force blow it would be like being smacked with a cannon ball, and perhaps a bit too gruesome for the T-rating they are shooting for.

The article says that Force Unleashed, which is meant to tell the story of the time between Episode III and Episode IV by fleshing out Darth Vader, has a plot twist “almost as good as the “I am your father” moment from Star Wars: Episode V–The Empire Strikes Back.” The game also contains surprising revelations about the birth of the Rebel Alliance.

There isn’t, actually, a ton of detail about the game’s play in the lengthy three-page article, but it ends with this gem of a description of a play through on the PS3 of the prologue:

The Dark Lord of the Sith is on Piper’s screen, his black cape billowing, his death’s-head helmet gleaming in the computer-generated sunlight. Piper guides Vader forward using the game controller and eventually arrives at a narrow rope bridge of lashed-together logs. As the Wookiees begin to charge across the bridge, Piper mashes buttons and summons up a ball of Force energy that, in a nice artistic touch, withers the plant life beneath Vader’s boots. Then, pushing another button, he hurls that energy at the furry, fanged Wookiees. A bunch of them go flying off into space, causing the D.M.M.-enabled bridge to start rippling like a water bed. This sends more Euphoria-infused Wookiees toppling over the sides while those that remain struggle to regain their balance. They are only prolonging the inevitable. Using a more personal form of the Force, Vader hoists a struggling Wookiee into the air and dashes him against a wooden support beam, which cracks and splinters with remarkable authenticity. As another warrior is lifted, he grabs on to one of the remaining beams and hangs on for dear life, but Vader dislodges the wooden buttress and hurls it, with the Wookiee still attached, over the bridge.

I highly recommend either picking up the magazine or clicking over to the link to read through the article. DiGiacomo’s fresh look at some of the issues video games face as they strive to recreate life on a screen are quite poetic at times and his take on the merging of Euphoria’s AI and Digital Molecular Matter with the physics of Havok are alone worth the time. There are also plenty of screens and interesting images.

I’ll leave you with this wonderful description of the process of making a video game, to hopefully convince you to go read the article:

To observe the men and women of LucasArts in action–aside from noting their propensity to wear their security badges on bright yellow lanyards–is to realize that the process of making a video game is really the fulfillment of French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes’s dream of putting “the world into equation,” in the words of LucasArts lead software engineer Cedrick Collomb.

The Game Has Changed [Vanity Fair]

Filed under: PC, Action

In case you weren’t one of the 2.5 million people to pick it up in its first month of sales, Ubisoft is bringing history lesson-cum-assassin simulator Assassin’s Creed to the PC platform in March. The only difference: when you drop “a few coins” on this version, you’ll be rewarded with “four brand-new exclusive types of investigations” which should go a small way towards silencing complaints that the game (one of our favorites in ‘07, by the by) was repetitive. And, at $50, it enjoys the obligatory PC game discount.

Please sir, spare a few coins …

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In a series of emails with the Dallas Business Journal, 3D Realms’ President Scott Miller confirmed all sorts of news about the Duke Nukem franchise of games. (We wish that anything “confirmed” about Duke Nukem didn’t just make us giggle at this point.)

First and foremost, the elusive Duke Nukem Forever is slated for a late 2008 release. As for platforms, Miller explains:

We haven’t formally announced any platforms for DNF…But, of course hitting the big three makes the most sense (PC, PS3, 360).

As for rumors of an XBLA version of Duke Nukem 3D, those are now looking pretty legit.

The details are light, but the XBLA version will feature everything you’d expect, including online multiplayer, co-op (unspecified if that is online or not), and your typical scoreboards and achievements. 3D Realms is negotiating with Microsoft to get a release window of “sometime this year” on this title as well.

But this XBLA download makes me wonder—I’ve always considered LIVE’s retro titles to be designed for “glory days” gamers who were looking to recapture magic of years gone by. How many of our younger readers use the service to download games that they never originally played, like Tapper or Doom? How many of you will download Duke Nukem 3D if you like the new version?

‘Duke Nukem Forever’ confirmed for 2008, coming to home consoles [Dallas Business Journal via Maxconsole]

At the Warner Middle School in Farmington Hills Michigan this morning a fire broke out in a young boy’s pants. According to police, the PSP in the student’s pocket overheated and exploded, burning a hole in his pocket and causing minor burns on his legs. A teacher at the school managed to separate the boy from his gaming system, after which a lockdown was instituted at the school to facilitate emergency personnel reaching the injured young man, whose burns were treated on school grounds before being transported to a local hospital. Police are currently investigating the cause of the PSP’s malfunction. In the meantime, you might want to consider moving that puppy from your pocket to a backpack - preferably lined with asbestos, which is easily found at many schools across the country. I’ve had video games get my pants hot before, but somehow this just seems a whole lot less pleasant.

Child Burned By Video Game In Pocket [ClickOn Detroit]