The word “hype”, in this business at least, in most cases refers to the buzz surrounding an upcoming video game. For fighting game fans, though, it has a very different and not-so-specific meaning. More »
Few video games reach trending topic status on Twitter. It’s the sort of thing normally accorded to disasters, celebrities and global news. NBA 2K11 has been a trending topic every day since Monday, for 57 hours straight at one point. More »
Leigh Alexander has a nice piece up on what she calls the “dysfunctional family circle of game industry, game media, and game consumer,” focusing on the whys and wherefores of the ‘hype cycle,’ hot (sometimes misleading) headlines, and a culture of jaded consumption. There’s been a lot of talk of the problems of game ‘journalism’ lately, but Leigh’s piece is particularly well-written and reasoned. Are we dealing with a chicken or the egg question?:
You have plenty of time between now and the proposed release date of BioWare’s role-playing game Dragon Age to stoke your enthusiasm. What might help are promised new details on the PC-bound RPG, which the official Dragon Age site says is due on July 9. That’s just a mere two days from now. Normally, we’d expect to see a Flash-driven countdown clock to ratchet up the anticipation, but sadly we don’t get one.
Hopefully, we’ll get to play it at E3. Talons crossed!
Dragon Age [BioWare - thanks, Mystery Tipster!]
Hi everybody. Lots of you tipped us off to the countdown at Chrono Trigger’s Japanese website. Technical difficulties over here, compounded by the short weekend, meant I couldn’t get advance word out to you in time. But there’s the screenshot above, with two seconds left, to prove I was watching!!!
The site has now transitioned to a flash movie introducing the various characters in the game. FYI, the North American Chrono Trigger DS site still has the clock ticking, but no countdown yet.
Chrono Trigger [Square Enix]
What the hell, Blizzard? All of that teasing, all of those runes, and here it is, the Diablo III splash page. No fancy transition from the ice to this, just wham, bam, thank you fans. Oh well. At least we can still have fun figuring out what the penguin and Lost numbers signify.
I think the penguin stands for hope!
Hey Portuguese speakers! If you’ve ever wondered what I or Crecente sound like in your native tongue, you’re in luck. Both of us are writing regular editorial columns for nice lookin’ gaming culture mag Hype!. (No, we aren’t writing in Portuguese, but rather, our columns are being translated into the language.) Anyway, if you live in Europe and can understand Portuguese, take a gander. And if you don’t understand Portuguese, just look at the pictures. More »
What Did You Think of Halo 3? Comment by Lososaurus
I played through the campaign only and played one online match. Judging only on campaign, I’d give it a 8.7/10: Very good overall, however the storytelling elements become annoying towards the end and there’s a few glaring issues on difficulty spikes and feeling like one is just running laps around an area rather than progressing. One thing that really bothered me about campaign were my squadmates driving. More than a handful of times, I wound up with my squadmate driving in circles and I had to get out, drive the warthog across a small area, get back into the gun seat in order to progress.
I wasn’t grabbed by the story either, felt like something was ‘missing’.
The graphics are beyond excellent, I think it’s a type that people don’t really realise how good they are, what effects are going on, how many are going on, no framerate dropping and several characters on screen with several effects on each. You really have to take a technical look at the graphics to appreciate them.
The replay mode is awesome, watching from every angle, seeing where you made mistakes, where you made smarter decisions. The online play is fun too(at least the lone match I played), balanced enough to where one player isn’t totally dominating.
All considered, campaign, presentation, the replay mode, online/multiplayer/co-op modes, I’d give the game a solid 9.5/10
Comment by aelfin
Personally I’m distinctly underwhelmed. I’m only three full levels down, but it doesn’t really either feel or look like Halo to me. The levels are too open (possibly to cater more for the 4-player co-op?), and the graphics boost serve mostly to make the levels look too complex for their own good (and thus just serviing to confuse re the layout) and also to make it not feel like playing Halo. It may sound weird, but the graphics are too shiny and detailed to *be* Halo, for me :/. It’s strange coming across so many Brutes so early on; seeing AFAIK there isn’t too many levels of enemies more powerful than Brutes in the Covenant hierarchy, it makes me wonder what they could possibly offer over the next 2/3rds of a game to mix it up. I guess it’s a wait-and-see for me, but so far, it’s just not that fun to play.
