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Marty O'Donnell is one of the more recognizable names from Bungie, and really in the videogame music circle, up there with Nobuo Uematsu, Akira Yamaoka, and the like. He's the man responsible for all of the amazing Halo music, and this time around, he's heading up the Destiny soundtrack with the assistance of some major star power.
While Bungie was only just skimming the surface in regards to what they were willing to reveal of Destiny to the press, Marty and his team really opened up and revealed how Sir Paul McCartney, of Beatles fame, joined the project and what he brought to the table.
Finally, after years of speculation Bungie and Activision have revealed the first bits and pieces of what exactly Destiny (yes, that's the official name) is all about. It's a first-person shooter. It's an open-world sandbox. And it's a persistent world. It's all that and more -- something Bungie is calling a "shared-world shooter."
Bungie is betting big, offering so much promise that only a studio like them could potentially pull it off. They redefined the first-person shooter genre with Halo, and they're looking to redefine the genre all over again with Destiny.
Contrary to popular belief, competitive multiplayer is not required for every shooter that releases these days. Heck, it's not even required for every AAA game. We've seen multiplayer shoehorned into multiple high-profile games like BioShock and last year's Spec Ops: The Line, which featured an exceptional campaign but still chose to include a competitive suite.
Insomniac Games is one of the few developers that believes this notion, and thus, chose not to include any sort of versus multiplayer with their upcoming co-operative shooter, Fuse. Instead, the developer placed its efforts into creating more co-operative goodness.
Five long years have passed since the original Race Driver: GRID offered racing fans an excellent hybrid racer with edge-of-your seat thrills in a great variety of racing styles. While the DiRT series has branched out a bit in GRID's absence, it has never really fulfilled the great scope of the robust experience since its primary focus has always been on rally racing and showy tricks rather than a great variety of races with aggressive A.I. opponents.
GRID 2 is finally on its way. In a hands-on preview of a few races with Codemaster's Senior Executive Producer Clive Moody, I had a chance to see just what has evolved for the sequel -- and what has fallen by the wayside.
The upcoming downloadable story content for DmC picks up right where the game finishes, so needless to say this will be one spoiler filled preview.
At the end of DmC, Dante plunges his sword into Vergil and nearly kills the misguided brother. Vergil is spared, but he's left battered, bruised, and lost in a new realm that's closer to that of a hell-like dimension compared to the limbo areas that players went through as Dante.
Not only is Vergil badly hurt and lost in an unknown dimension, but he's also lost the amulet he was given by his parents, thus losing a good portion of his powers.
Originally a PlayStation 3 exclusive known as Adrift, Paris based developer Dontnod Entertainment suddenly found itself without a publisher for their game. With countless hours and manpower already poured into it, they continued working on it in hopes of finding a new publisher. After further development and making some waves at a few gaming conventions, Adrift caught the eye of Capcom, and subsequently, became their new publisher.
Now titled, Remember Me, Dontnod’s debut title attempts to make a name for itself with a uniquely familiar take on the future, and what technology’s advancement can leave behind.
Last month, Capcom announced the release of Resident Evil: Revelations for consoles and PC. Originally playable on the Nintendo 3DS, Capcom saw Revelations as a return to the series’ roots, and taking a step back from the action of the later RE games, in favor of more horror gameplay and resource management.
Resident Evil fans responded quite favorably to Revelations, and in many eyes, it is seen as a more faithful and truer survivor horror experience. However, because of its release on the 3DS, many fans without the handheld had to opt out. But after the divisive reception RE6 received, Capcom figured it was the best time to see what more gamers thought of Revelations.
CastleStorm is definitely not a game that's easy to draw a frame of reference for. One part Jenga, and one part tower defense, this mash up certainly draws from opposite genres to get its own formula going.
Once it's off though, its may surprise with just how tasking, and fun, it can be.
The next Skylanders is the last thing fans were probably expecting as there's three major changes going on with Swap Force, the new entry in the series. For starters, it's not developer Toys for Bob making this one. Vicarious Visions, the team responsible for the 3DS version of Skylanders Adventure, and the Wii U version of Skylanders Giants, is in charge of making the core versions this time around (With N-Space doing the 3DS version and Beenox handling the Wii version).
I'm not even going to give you a second to doubt another studio handling things here -- Vicarious is really bringing it. The studio is using a new graphics engine that can very easily be mistaken for a Pixar movie. Seriously, it's that good looking.
The biggest changes, though, are with the new toys. Swap Force is adding 32 new Skylanders heroes, 16 of which you can pull in half and fuse different top and bottom parts together to create new Skylanders. Take that in for a second. That's a total of 256 unique combos.
Everything we've seen of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us up until now has featured humans as enemies. Really mean, crazed, do-anything-to-survive type humans. In everything we've seen it was like the entire starving, crazy, post-pandemic world was up against lead duo Joel and Ellie, and that was plenty scary on its own.
But with the reveal of a new type of enemy that is not fully human, Naughty Dog has turned up the thrills and tension to a new pit-sweaty level of scary.
Our first hands-on with The Last of Us scared the sh*t out of us.
We've been seeing bits of pieces of upcoming PS3 game God of War: Ascension since last year, but we've really only seen it's multiplayer side. That changed this week when director Todd Pappy and his team unveiled the game's single player side at a press event in Los Angeles. And instead of some controlled, limited demo, they just plopped down the first 30 minutes of the game in front of us, letting us play it as if we just popped in the disc. And instead of forcing me to recap the whole thing for you, they've given us video of exactly what I played.
In the video above you aren't seeing my play through, but you are seeing pretty close to what I experienced. You'll see for yourself how good it is.
Super spy Sam Fisher is back after saving the President in 2010's Conviction. Third Echelon has been dissolved, and in its place is Fourth Echelon. Yes, very original.
Sure, not the most creative name change, but there is indeed a significant shakeup with the the spy organization as Sam is in charge of all operations now. But just because he's in charge doesn't mean he won't still get his boots dirty.
Blacklist brings up a number of changes to the serious, and I found six striking things that all fans should know about from my recent hands-on time.
October was a hell of a month here in San Francisco. There’s nothing like sports to shore up the bonds of comradely in otherwise disparate, eclectic pockets of the world. Just look at how the Olympics create a national binary; some seek sanctuary amongst the loudly irreverent while others buy into the nationalistic fervor. Those just trying to go about their lives get bombarded from on high by either side.
This year, the hometown Giants, a team I've followed with ardor since childhood, made history, winning nine straight do-or-die elimination games to propel them to the World Series, which they then swept against a favored Detroit Tigers team. This is a thing that does not happen, and has never happened before. And if you follow San Francisco game journalists or like sports, you probably heard about it from either side of the fence.
Come March, Sony's excellent MLB: The Show series will be making its yearly rounds, just in time for spring training and just in time to whet a collective appetite for the American pastime. There have been a lot of changes, not the least of which is the new Post Season Mode, intended to replicate that heart quickening post season play without the 162 games prior -- and to help build narratives like the one the Giants wrote with their historical 2012 run. Add in rebalanced gameplay skewed toward offense and the new beginner mode and you got something that's looking to be the most accessible, plainly fun The Show yet.
Destructoid’s love affair with the inimitable, idiosyncratic Deadly Premonition is a point of public record. Jim’s infamous, glowing, 10/10 review turned a lot of people onto the game -- myself included -- and for that we are as thankful as Resident Evil 6 are indignant. Or, if you’re playing along at home, substitute any game that we score low. “[x] gets a [y] when Deadly Premonition gets a 10,” the commenter scoffs and chortles into his Cheetos.
We’re all aware, of course, that there are some technical issues in the game. Deadly Premonition’s release was a rare one. A Japanese studio was developing, plainly, for a Western audience. The project was helmed by a man, SWERY (or SWERY65), committed to his bizarre vision and allowed creative control. That something so unique and personal got a retail, console release was amazing enough. The team being able to revisit the title to address niggling concerns, beautify it, and add content just seems unreal. Yet, that’s precisely what’s happening with Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut.
CCP's ambitious first-person shooter Dust 514 is now in open beta. The free-to-play shooter, as you may already know, is linked to EVE Online, the crazy space game that's an actual viable export of Iceland. I'm not joking.
The game will officially launch later this year, but until then CCP plans on improving Dust 514 on a regular basis. The big hook to the game is that players in EVE can rain down space lasers on targets you designate on the ground while playing Dust 514. There's a whole economy system in place, so EVE and Dust players will benefit from working together.
In the match I played at a recent preview event, I saw a number of EVE attacks hit my enemies, and my own team too. I like the overall idea to the concept, but based on the latest hands-on I don't see myself getting too invested.
My main gripe is with the player cap. Right now they're at 32, and eventually they want to get to 48-players per map. Hopefully that happens sooner than later as the maps are so big that it gets a little boring trying to find people to kill. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done before this one grabs my attention.
At the advent of Namco Bandai’s press event last week, we were treated to a cozy little presentation, the highlight of which was Tales of Xillia producer Hideo Baba talking a bit about the new game, through a translator, and then showing off . This was mainly the highlight because of Baba’s meticulously maintained hair, earnest smile, and plushy he carried around with him throughout the afternoon, but the bits with videogames were definitely a part, too.
Tales of Xillia came out in Japan in fall of 2011. Its sequel came out in November of last year. So we’re a little behind the curve, us folks stationed in other parts of the world. Still, there were some who didn’t even expect Xillia to leave Japan, yet last week I played an English build of what is the thirteenth iteration of the venerable Tales series
