Category Archives: Game News
The Games Industry Loses an Exceptional Individual as Kenji Eno Passes Away
Kenji Eno, famed game designer and composer, passed away yesterday from heart failure at the age of 42. Eno was truly a unique individual, both in terms of the games he worked on over the course of his more than two-decade-long career and the bold way he operated.
One of Eno’s first experiences with games was Space Invaders, which was quick to make an impression on him. “I liked how it made you feel kind of different. And the first time I experienced it, it’s like the first time you meet a woman — you feel something there; you feel some kind of chemistry,” he told 1UP in an extensive 2008 interview. “So I felt something like that for Space Invaders. That was probably love at first at sight. The sound was also what attracted me to it. Back then, I was in elementary school, and some schools banned kids from playing Space Invaders because kids were playing it too much.”
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The Orwellian Superheroes of Watch Dogs and inFamous: Second Son
Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed — no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull. — George Orwell, 1984
Ever since George Orwell published his dystopian masterpiece in 1949, people have compared it to the current state of national or international affairs. But in the always-connected, always-public world of 2013, perhaps the novel’s themes hit closer to home than ever. We’re living in a time of fierce debate over privacy concerns, an era where government and law enforcement argue for the right to GPS-track citizens without their knowledge. And like any form of art, video games are influenced by life.
During the PlayStation 4 event, Ubisoft and Sucker Punch gave the world a glimpse of their upcoming titles. And while there are clear differences between Watch Dogs and inFamous: Second Son, it’s hard to ignore the overriding sense of paranoia and fear over a totalitarian state. Superheroes don’t always wear a cape, and in the case of Aiden Pearce and Delsin Rowe, the rise of the anti-hero is a consequence of an oppressive regime.
PS3 Digital Games Could Be a Gentle Way of Easing Us Into Streaming on PS4
Much like their disc-based counterparts, PlayStation 3 downloadable games won’t be supported on PlayStation 4. What that means is your entire PlayStation Network library is going to have to stay put, and won’t be carried over to the next generation as many people were hoping it would. That’s no surprise considering the major changes to the system’s architecture which, other than the issue of backwards compatibility, are excellent news. This leaves gamers who wanted the PS4 to fully replace the PS3 currently sitting on their entertainment centers in an unfortunate position, although it does present Sony with an opportunity.
Backwards compatibility has never been a guarantee going into a new generation. More often than not, it’s been something we’ve had to do without: NES games didn’t work on SNES, SNES games didn’t work on N64, N64 games didn’t work on GameCube, Genesis games didn’t work on Saturn, and so on. More recently we’ve had exceptions to that as the media games were delivered on became more consistent across generations with CDs and DVDs. The current generation of consoles initially promised backwards compatibility to varying degrees, but eventually Sony stopped including the hardware necessary to play PS2 games on PS3, Microsoft stopped adding Xbox games to the list of those that could be played on 360, and Nintendo left GameCube support out of the most recent Wii hardware revision. Now, with not even PSN games being playable on PS4, you can see that there is more to backwards compatibility than having a way of getting the data onto the newer system — particularly when the system games were originally on had complex hardware.
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PS4′s Encouraging Start Centers Around Sharing and Developer Friendliness
It’s true, the games are ultimately what we are most concerned with when we talk about a games console. But when they are first announced, it’s the systems themselves that are often the most fascinating topics. This is perhaps truer than ever before in the case of the PlayStation 4, what with the industry changing so dramatically and the current generation of systems having lasted for as long as it has. Going into today’s event, I was of the belief that Sony needed to present a convincing reason for why it chose to make the decisions it would unveil and, more importantly, why it is that gamers should care about investing hundreds of dollars in a new system. At least part of Sony’s answer to the latter question revolved around making the PS4 a much more social platform than other consoles, though whether that’s a satisfactory justification remains to be seen.
The picture of the system’s new controller that has been circulating around the web for the past week did prove to be real. The DualShock 4 uses Bluetooth and is largely the same as its predecessor, save for some tweaks (like merging the Start and Select buttons into one, and the introduction of new, concave analog sticks, which are unfortunately not offset, Xbox-style) and a few new features: a headphone jack, a Share button, a touchpad, and a light bar. The touchpad, which I figured would have received some attention during the event, was all but ignored; I had hoped to see some reason for its inclusion. Perhaps it’s better that the games we saw didn’t include it, as it’s the sort of input that should only be used when it makes sense to do so, not simply because it’s there.
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