RIP Nintendo's Satoru Iwata

Please name a Nintendo console after him.

In Defense of Fallout New Vegas

Here’s the thing. You kids can hate New Vegas all you want, because unlike 3, it didn’t have a constant, unrelenting, oppressive atmosphere of misery and horror, and didn’t look like it took place in the Matrix under the same green haze.


I like that game, so I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that.


But New Vegas FITS THE TONE OF THE INTERPLAY GAMES MORE ACCURATELY, okay? Fallout 3 is the diversion in this series.


 These games were always a combination of ultraviolence and goofiness. New Vegas adopted a lot of stuff from Van Buren, and Van Buren was right in line with the other Interplay games. All of the stuff you probably don’t like about New Vegas is probably stuff FROM INTERPLAY. As in, it’s original, old style Fallout, what this series was about from day one.


You can prefer Bethesda’s version in 3. As I’ve said here before, Interplay kept ramping up the goofiness and smut and swear words with every new game, until by Brotherhood of Steel they’re making extended Vault Boy sex jokes and every woman you meet in the game is a hooker who says the f-word all the time.


Granted, I personally would LOVE a really good Total Recall RPG. But I don’t think the Fallout universe was the place for it. Interplay was getting too broad and desperate with it, perhaps in a desperate attempt to appeal to a wider audience (see everything THQ did right before they fell apart). And Van Buren / New Vegas are right in the midst of that, so you’re within your rights to think the tone of New Vegas is too sassy and goofy to be a “core” Fallout game.


But if your only real experience of Fallout is 3, then you want something this series was for literally only that one game. And again, fine, but I don’t know if Bethesda intends to do that again. Clearly, they decided to let Obsidian make a Fallout game that was way more in line with the old Interplay years than 3. Was that itself just a temporary diversion? Were they trying to see which was going to sell better?
…Kind of stupid then to let Obsidian put out something that barely worked.


Plus, I think it came out too soon after 3. People had wasteland fatigue and weren’t ready for another game like that, of that size.
But maybe Bethesda knew that, which is why they had Obsidian do it. Maybe it really was yet another temporary diversion, this weird throw-back to the old Interplay stuff.


But that seems an odd thing to do, when you’ve only done the one other game, and the next one is so highly anticipated by most people.


At any rate, we’re going to have to see what they do with 4 to know their intentions. Based on the trailer, I think they’re certainly going for more of a serious, melodramatic tone. …In a game with flying war robots that yell like drill sergeants as they’re fighting deranged, invisible purple Hulk-Frankensteins. And most of the other Vaults you come across are stupid joke vaults, because Vault-Tec knew the Apocalypse was coming, but figured the resulting 500 years of devastation would be a great time to see what happens to 1000 people when you lock them in a metal box for half a millennium with only oatmeal to eat. Ha ha ha!…anyone would care to see the results of that experiment are going to be BEYOND dead. Why would you…?


But THAT’S FALLOUT. That’s the kind of thing that underpinned the Interplay games. That sardonic, broad commentary about unchecked human greed and stupidity being the one unbroken constant in the world - that’s what the entire game was about. “War Never Changes” - and war is the ultimate expression of rampant human stupidity. That’s, like, the whole POINT. That’s why the Apocalypse happened. The US and China were fighting over oil and uranium rights, so China invaded Alaska, the US annexed Canada, and when we reached a stalemate we responded by NUCLEAR BOMBING THE ENTIRE PLANET. The entire premise is fucking goofy and stupid. But that’s the point!


Google them, and compare the Fallout 4 trailer with the opening cinematic from Fallout 1. The Fallout 4 trailer is about the dark devastation and human toll of the apocalypse. The opening cinematic from Fallout 1 makes a joke about ‘50s cars being ugly and slow, and shows a flying robot octopus holding a spatula, right after it shows American space marines committing war-crimes against Canadian citizens and laughing and waving at the camera about it.


Fallout NEEDS that kind of dark sarcasm. Otherwise it’s just oppressive misery and shotgunning rage-zombies in sewers. I really like Fallout 3, but it erred too much on the side of melodrama. I personally think New Vegas is, tonally, a more perfect Fallout game: it has strains of the melodrama and anxiety, but it’s also colorful and boldly goofy, and everything works and is held together by the good writing and great characters. It’s not too much Interplay goofiness, and it’s not too much Bethesda washed-out brooding.


I don’t need more Fallout 3. We’ve had enough of that. I don’t need more Fallout 2. We’ve had enough of that. But more New Vegas would be perfect. That’s the mix I’m looking for in a Fallout game. That’s when Fallout becomes 100% Fallout, and really works as an IP. If anyone could figure that out and stick to it, it’s Bethesda. I don’t think they’ll do 100% what I want, because they never will (see the Elder Scrolls progression as proof of that). But I hope in 4, all of the Sims and Minecraft and dog-petting stuff don’t trample the guts of the series. And I personally hope it’s not Fallout 3: II.


Excellent post my man.


But dwell on this… What if with New Vegas, Bethesda were setting themselves up with a [I hate to say this] Call of Duty style franchise? They do the core game title. Fallout 3. Fallout 4. Fallout 5. Obsidian get to do a follow up title which is more ‘Falloutverse’ than the previously released Core title.


This way, they get to please the fans that came on board with 3, and the older fans get to enjoy the slightly more goofier follow up.
It’s all just a pipe dream of course, but it would be lovely to get a couple of Fallout games every seven years rather than just the one!
In a perfect world they might try something like this, but I think these HD games just cost too much to make at this point for them to do it. They didn’t bring Obsidian on board for New Vegas as a cost-cutting measure - it was literally because they wanted to put out a new Fallout game, but the entire Bethesda team was working on Skyrim, and TES games are their principle IP.


Plus, remember that Obsidian employs a handful of old Interplay people who worked on the old Fallout games, so they could trust that the story and characters would at least be “core Fallout.”


But that said, they vetoed some of their ideas. They agreed to Obsidian’s choice to set the game in the West, near the Fallout 1 map, but Obsidian also wanted to make it a PREQUEL to Fallout 3, set between it and 2, which probably meant they were looking to tie it into the Fallout 1 map. But Bethesda said no. Who knows why, but I’d guess it’s because Tod Howard and crew really wanted to continue to establish that these were BETHESDA’S Fallout games. Yes, it’s a continuation of the old series, but it’s not Interplay’s bag anymore. It was either simple ego, or because they knew, as I said above, what these same guys had done to the series before Interplay fell apart. They wanted to keep a tight rein on it. So we still got a ton of Van Buren stuff, but Bethesda forced it to more closely fit their new, slightly more serious and brooding tone.
If they were going to “split” the series, they would’ve done it then. They would have let Obsidian make whatever goofy nonsense they wanted, because they wouldn’t have cared. They clearly do, so that means they’re keeping it a single, consistent, AAA Bethesda franchise.
Plus everyone knows what Fallout looks like as a simplified shooter, and it’s gross and hollow and not what anyone wants. -Via tumblr

State of Gaming

"Listening to all too depressing gamer rants, on why games fail to meet their marks these days, wanna know why? They bite too much off, they promise too big then what their capable of.


Medieval Total War 2, was supposed to be multiplayer for up to 4 people, same for Empire, and Napoleon the same. Why they couldn't they go into mass mess story of the why, filled with big words meant to distract you and make you think how they dodged a bullet by being smarter. Till you look those words up in a good old fashioned page turning dictionary, and it all sums up to mean, "we don't, nor will ever know how to do that shit."


My rant isn't the I don't know stance game devs have when they fail, it's their hubris. The fact that they revolve around their games so heavily, when asked what other games they play and are excited for, they lie, maybe this is why games suck massive ass these days, because outside of the games being developed by ass hats, outside their studio, nothing really exists."


Via friend Jesse E. on Facebook


Well said Jesse.

Morrowind - v 1.0 - gameplay - beginning

Super Adventures in Gaming: Wolfenstein 3D (MS-DOS)

Super Adventures in Gaming: Wolfenstein 3D (MS-DOS): Developer: id | Release Date: 1992 | Systems: DOS, SNES, Mac, Jaguar, 3DO, GBA, Apple IIGS, PC-98, Archimedes, etc. Today on Super Adv...

5 Things Video Games Do Better Than Any Other Forms of Art - Cracked

 
5 Things Video Games Do Better Than Any Other Forms of Art

The Return of System Shock 2 - IGN

After thirteen years lost in cyberspace, Bioshock's ancestor is back.

By Rick LaneFor the past decade something has been lurking amid the vast electronic tangle of cyberspace: a name whispered with a strange mixture of fondness and fear by those who remember it; a creation that reigned supreme at the tail end of the last Millennium, and then almost completely disappeared. Just a few days ago, however, it suddenly came back, determined to regain its former glory. I’m here to tell you why you should be afraid and delighted in equal measure.


The alluring monster in question is, of course, System Shock 2, often referred to as the spiritual predecessor to Bioshock, the game that earned Ken Levine a place in the virtual hall of fame. For more thirteen years, legal problems have kept it locked in cyberspace, inaccessible to anyone who didn't buy it in 1999. But now, finally, that's all be resolved, and Good Old Games has released a version of it optimised for modern PCs.

Bioshock and System Shock 2 are linked by far more than spirit.

In both form and function, so much was carried over from the harrowing hallways of SS2’s Von Braun to the underwater dystopia of Rapture. The spacecraft is divided into a sequence of open environments, each with its own particular flavour. The story is largely told through recordings made by the ship’s inhabitants. Most of the crew have been infected by a hive-minded alien organism known as the Many, and are less extroverted, more unsettling versions of Bioshock’s Splicers. The tools at your disposal range from conventional weapons to hacking abilities to psionic powers analogous to Bioshock’s plasmids. It even has creepy vending machines.

Bioshock is a cataclysm within a circus, all action and spectacle, whereas System Shock 2 is about survival.

Yet whilst they are structurally similar, the two games play in strikingly different ways. The Bioshock games are a cataclysm within a circus, all action and spectacle, whereas System Shock 2 is about scavenging and survival. The former explores grand political and philosophical ideas, the latter simply presents to us a struggle for existence, as the squishy, organic Many clash with synthetic AI, with you trapped in the middle of this inedible sandwich.

Artificial Intelligence is a massive component of System Shock 2 on both narrative and mechanical levels. Built with Looking Glass’ famous Dark engine, it utilised the same tech that powered Thief, and the standout feature of the Dark Engine was how its sound system was interwoven with its AI system. Consequently, AI could locate and respond to sounds made by the player, and even sounds made by other AI. This in turn influenced another major theme of the game: horror.

System Shock 2 is frequently cited as one of the scariest games ever made. Despite the suggestive title, however, it never really tries to shock you. Enemies patrol freely through the Von Braun’s metal halls, and you frequently hear them before you see them. Nothing leaps out of vents making weird gargling noises a-la Dead Space. Instead of cheap thrills there is a constant sensation of dread, upheld by the knowledge that you are being perpetually hunted, that something might attack at any moment. Worse, the longer you hang around, the more desperate the own situation becomes as ammo, health and psionic energy are expended with each encounter.

Pervading this oppressive atmosphere throughout is a deep underlying sense of wrongness. The ship’s infected crewmembers apologise to you as they try to kill you. Escaped lab monkeys, their brains exposed through scientific experimentation, chatter pleasantly when unaware of your presence, but shriek with rage the moment they spot you. The Cyborg Midwives are the antithesis of birth and life, their womanhood replaced with cold, bloody steel. And the game is obsessed with worms, hiding them under every shelf and table, sometimes in huge writhing piles. Unlike most survival horror games, where you gradually numb to the unpleasant surroundings, the Von Braun becomes more unnerving the longer you spend trapped beneath its metal hull.

It’s a challenge intended specifically to provoke defiance, for the player to demonstrate their freedom.

And, as if that wasn’t enough, there is also the small matter of dealing with one of gaming’s most infamous antagonists. Right at the outset, SHODAN challenges the player directly, and in a few brief sentences demonstrates everything which makes her so abhorrent and compelling, her vanity, her god-complex and her and contempt for any being seemingly less intelligent than herself. It’s a challenge intended specifically to provoke defiance, for the player to demonstrate their freedom to act against her.

Only when SHODAN finally reveals herself does the significance of this become apparent. From that moment, the player is subject to her every whim, and knowingly so. She proposes an alliance to defeat the Many (and of course to regain the powers she lost in the first game). It’s an alliance in which you have no choice, and so you follow her orders and complete her objectives while she taunts and belittles you. It’s this complete control SHODAN appears to have over you, contradicting the game’s own apparent freedom, that makes her such a memorable adversary.

03:55

Fourteen years on, System Shock 2 feels remarkably fresh. The Dark Engine holds up far better here than it does in the original Thief. The clean lines, angles and surfaces of the Von Braun are well matched with late nineties 3D rendering, although character models look rather like the developers beat the polygons into shape with a tenderising mallet. The eerie, pulsating musical score from Eric Brosius also helps to keep things lively. The skills system shows its age in places – distinguishing between repairing weapons and maintaining them seems completely arbitrary, and the ending is weaker than a McDonald’s coffee. The game is so strong otherwise though, that these issues can be easily forgiven.

System Shock 2 was probably the last great game of the twentieth century.

System Shock 2 was probably the last great game of the twentieth century, and it’s desperately sad that a generation of gamers have missed out on it. I can’t help but wonder how the development landscape might have been different had more gamers experienced it between Looking Glass’ demise and the arrival of Bioshock. Its understanding of level design, storytelling and choice in play style is visible in so many fantastic games from Deus Ex to Dishonored, and wouldn’t we all like a few more like those? 
 
Nevertheless, it’s wonderful to be able to play it again; and more importantly for newcomers to access it for the first time. Night Dive deserve a lot of respect for sifting through the rights wrangle between EA and Meadowbrook insurance group and rescuing it from legal limbo. System Shock 2 has been lost in the wild for too long, we should all be glad to see it finally shepherded from the darkness.-Rick Lane via IGN

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/02/15/the-return-of-system-shock-2

Why I'm A Hardcore PC (and console) Gamer

I am a hard-core PC (and console) Gamer and no. Games stimulate our brains, relieving stress, anxiety, worry and boredom plus enhancing critical thinking, logic, multitasking and puzzle solving skills plus reflexes, hand-eye coordination and so forth.

 (Just remember people to take breaks every 1-3 hours of playing a game, for at least 20 minutes.)

Also PC Gamers last year raised $50 Million + for various charity's including Doctors Without Borders (source: PC Gamer) and some games run complex programs that help figure out future cures, treatments for diseases like cancer, etc.


I love console games but PC games are the absolute best. I will admit consoles are more PC like these days.


Great memories of not just NES games but also SNES ones, Playstation, N64 and PC games like SimCity 2000, Doom, Quake, Normailty, etc.


The keyboard WASD and mouse controls are a plus.

Video Games Rated A For Addictive

"Those who consider gaming as addictive highlight similarities between models of addiction and the behaviour of those who can’t seem to stop playing video games, despite the consequences

What does it mean to be addicted to a video game? Addiction used to be a term reserved for drug use defined by physical dependency, uncontrollable craving, and increased consumption due to tolerance. Advances in neuroscience show that these drugs tap into the reward system of the brain resulting in a large release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. This is a system normally activated when basic reinforcers are applied, like food or sex. Drugs just do it better.

Gaetano Di Chiara and Assunta Imperato, researchers at the Institute of Experimental Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Cagliani, Italy, found that drugs can cause a release of up to ten times the amount of dopamine normally found in the brain’s reward system. This has led to a shift in how addictions are viewed. Any physical substance or behaviour that can “hijack” this dopamine reward system may be viewed as addictive.

When can you be sure that the system has been hijacked? Steve Grant, chief clinical neuroscientist at the National Institute of Drug Abuse, says it happens when there “is continued engagement in self-destructive behaviour despite adverse consequences.”

Video games seem to hijack this reward system very efficiently. Certainly Nick Yee, author of the Daedelus Project, thinks so. He explains, “[Video Games] employ well-known behavioral conditioning principles from psychology that reinforce repetitive actions through an elaborate system of scheduled rewards. In effect, the game rewards players to perform increasingly tedious tasks and seduces the player to ‘play’ industriously.” Researchers in the UK found biological evidence that playing video games and achieving these rewards results in the release of dopamine.

This same release of the neurotransmitter occurs during activities considered healthy, such as exercise or work. Since dopamine release is not bad per se, it is not necessarily a problem that video games do the same thing." except from Psychology Today article

Bioshock, System Shock 2

"Both of these games (System Shock 2 and Bioshock) thrived on vulnerability. It wasn’t so much about shooting people as it was about being there, in the moment. Up until the “would you kindly” moment, Bioshock presented a world that still felt real, where you were just a guy with a wrench trying to survive against superpowered maniacs and walking tanks with father complexes."


Alone in Rapture: why vulnerability was Bioshock's greatest strength
Bioshock wasn't a great shooter, but it's nonetheless one of the greatest games of all time. Why? Because it made us vulnerable.

Via pcgamer.com

Ten Years of World of Warcraft

"The space it entered as a competitor is largely “dead” in the sense that WoW takes up all the oxygen in the room. Experiments in virtual world design began to dry up, to curtail their ambitions to being nibbles around the edge of WoW’s design. Like toothpaste squeezed out of a tube, the design qualities of sandbox games ended up finding their expression elsewhere, to great success. Their children served as the basis of genres, from Facebook farming games to DayZ-style survival games to the true heir of the MUD tradition: Minecraft, a virtual world based on simulation and crafting, where users run their own worlds and script and build adventures and are basically questless. It’s just that no one calls them MMOs anymore. That title is reserved for World of Warcraft, and those largely similar games that strive to topple it from its seat. Its influence is such that it now defines the genre it refined. It is the best Diku ever made; the best combat MMO ever made; the thing to which everything like it will ever after be compared. World of Warcraft effectively made MMOs perfect, and in the process, it killed them."


 Ten Years of World of Warcraft ☀ via azspot.net and said link

Hello!

Welcome to All Video Games (AVG for short) blog. I will be featuring on my site articles from various video game sites and blogs, both retro, classic and modern, arcade, console and PC games, from classic platformers, FPS, adventure, RPG's to survival horror games not to mention my own reviews from time to time and everything in between.


This site is still a work in progress btw.


Enjoy!