As characters throughout the A Song Of Ice And Fire novels periodically intone, “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.” This pithy reduction of George RR Martin’s unfinished fiction doubles as the tagline to its TV adaptation, which has now romped to the conclusion of its second season, but on both screen and paper it’s a dichotomy that conceals a multitude of means. Not so in its videogame form, in which a new side plot is delivered via a seldom-branching corridor of skirmishes, lined with cursory gestures towards RPG convention.
Genres, and debate surrounding them, are nothing new. When gamers disagree on these labels, it can result in diatribes, appeals to dogma, and even existential crises in extreme cases. To which genre do the Deus Ex games belong? Is thirdperson shooter a full genre or merely a sub-genre? Is that the same as a so-called ‘character action game’?
Another game jam means that there’s another slate of brand new games to pick through; I’ll probably spend the next few weeks going over some of the best entries from this year’s 7DFPS event. As the name suggests, the idea is to create a firstperson shooter in just seven days. “1) Make a game. 2) Have fun.” Those are the rules, apparently.
You could chart a history of console gaming based on the way our hands have migrated around the gamepad. Do you remember when the face buttons were the stars of the show? They were used for jumping, punching and basic movement – after all, there were no other input options. But as 2D gave way to 3D, and platformers succumbed to shooters, the analogue sticks and triggers got most of the action. They were new on the scene, and made sense for a medium that was increasingly firstperson, and increasingly tethered to iron sights.
Nintendo has announced 3DS XL, the handheld's first hardware revision with a screen 90 per cent bigger than the launch model, due in Europe and Japan next month.
The system, previously rumoured by Nikkei, was unveiled in the early hours of this morning during a Nintendo Direct web broadcast hosted by company president Satoru Iwata, who pointed out that 3DS XL had the biggest screen of any Nintendo handheld to date.
Yesterday, Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 8, the next generation of its mobile operating system. Due later this year, the company says we can expect "amazing games" from WP8 - but with only Gameloft and Zynga specified, it's clear Microsoft needs more developers on board.
Two questions arise when confronted with the notion of Steel Battalion – a series of mech games controlled, and made infamous, by a dedicated controller that wouldn’t look out of place in a NASA vessel – joining the Kinect catalogue. First, why? Second, how? The former is the simpler to fathom: the push to make Kinect more appealing to ‘core’ gamers has attracted and encouraged both leading and slightly more obscure brands to gravitate slowly but surely towards the hardware.
Next week, the fifth GameHorizon Conference takes place on the banks of the Tyne in Gateshead, UK. Themed around games, entertainment and technology, this year’s line-up once again combines big names from the international game industry and a couple of familiar faces from the North East.
This revival of the god game is mortally flawed, but it is an appealing idea. God games often force you into the role of a benevolent deity, with few opportunities to abuse your divine powers. Here, however, your only concern is stopping humanity from constructing a tower, affording you plenty of chances to indulge in Old Testament fury. Fire and brimstone make up but a quarter of your elemental abilities, with water, wind and earth attacks offering a range of ways to smite these persistent heretics.
Theory Interactive’s trailer for its debut game has received nearly 400,000 views in a matter of weeks, which is thanks in part to its powerfully sombre mood and astonishing visuals. More surprising yet is that the trailer, consisting entirely of realtime game footage, represents only ten months’ worth of work from just two people: Alpo Oksaharju and Mikko Kallinen.
Microsoft has unveiled Windows Phone 8, promising "amazing games" and a host of new features for the next generation of its mobile operating system.
The company showed off WP8 at a developer and press event in San Francisco yesterday, and Joe Belfiore, Windows Phone product manager, has since posted the details on the Windows Phone blog.
Saturday Morning RPG is ostensibly a dungeon-crawler, but it feels more like a spin on Pokémon. You level up, complete quests, and deal out criticals, but the real fun (for a certain generation of player) comes in spotting the references. The mini-boss who resembles Skeletor, the footsoldiers plucked from GI Joe, the special attacks that invoke Transformers or Tenderheart Bear: this is an experience in which context often trumps fairly rudimentary mechanics. It’s an old school action game about old school action figures.
An app developer has been found guilty of infringing copyright in a mobile game that adhered a little too closely to the design and mechanics of Tetris.
Irish television writer and comedian Graham Linehan is responsible for such notable TV sitcoms as Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd. His work has earned him a shelf full of BAFTAs and even a coveted Emmy. Like The IT Crowd’s Maurice Moss character, though, Linehan has is own geeky streak, being a lifelong gamer.
What was your first experience with videogames?