Editorials – Page 7 – Obsolete Gamer

Cryptic Studio Has Moved On But Have Their Games?: Star Trek Edition

For those of you waiting for this review after the sudden ending of the previous portion of this two-part article, I apologize. I wasn’t having problems with time or just pure laziness. No, I had problems with how to word my feelings towards Star Trek Online and how best to give an honest review without completely belittling the game. I know, I know. You’re used to that kind of response from me but I decided to be a bit more delicate with how I explain the faults and pluses of STO.

Editorials

Umar Khan

Cryptic Studios Has Moved On But Have Their Games?

For those of you in the dark about the current state of Cryptic Studios, the group that created mega super hero sensation titles like City of Heroes and… that’s it, their sugar daddy decided it was time for a split.

Editorials

J.A. Laraque

Some movie studios to skip Comic-Con

You ever get the feeling that some companies just want you to show up, clap and then shut up and go home? The New York Times reported recently that movie studios Warner Bros., Disney, Dreamworks and The Weinstein Company are call skipping Comic-Con this year. Why might you ask, well some of the reasons include cost and time, but one of the main reasons is they are afraid of bad press.

Editorials

Umar Khan

EQ2 Has The Worst Players On Erf!

I know I could easily deny myself of these experiences if I only made my own group and wrote off some of these people with my own iron fist ruling. Trust me, I have! I don’t take shit when I’m group leader. I don’t like having my time wasted while someone is eating shit in real life. This is my break before real life kicks in and you’re ruining those precious few hours I have. There are just sometimes where it’s easier to join an already forming group than taking the reins into your own hands.

Editorials

Umar Khan

Lorin Jameson: The World’s Worst Bullshitter

In this world there are a special group of individuals who are hired to spit bullshit into the faces of others. These people are normally hired into public relations or in some dire situations they even ascend to an executive ranking. This is the case for Lorin Jameson, the executive producer of DCUO.

Editorials

J.A. Laraque

Did Smallville’s series finale deliver?

In my opinion Smallville’s series finale did not deliver. Don’t get me wrong, I am not going to go off on a tangent about how I wasted years of my life watching the program (however, there were those Lana episodes). Like the series finale of Lost, I felt it did not deliver, but overall I still liked watching the show.

Editorials

J.A. Laraque

The 30 Plus Gamer

Today your doctor shows you your stats and you’re encumbered with a D.O.T. that could kill you in ten years. Most of us will not give up games, but if we want to continue to play, we have to replace that Hot Pocket with a grilled chicken breast and a sweat potato.

Editorials

Umar Khan

The Unsurprising Incompetence of Sony

We all know what’s going on with Sony. For those of you who don’t know, you either don’t game or you live under a rock. The greatest hacking escapade of 2011 has left the company’s loyal consumers hanging on the sideline while they hope to the heavens that their credit card info hasn’t been sold to the highest bidder. If you haven’t cancelled your credit card, asked for a new number, or put out a fraud alert by now it’s best advised you do so now.

Editorials

Simon Lethbridge

Top Five PlayStation: Racing Games

I’ve always been of the opinion that fancy graphics are far less important than a well-designed game. I think my continued love or retro games and enduring disdain for modern gaming is evidence enough of this, but there’s always been one exception – driving/racing games. Try as they might, developers in the 80’s and early 90’s were rarely able to fashion both a playable and convincing into-the-screen racer outside of the arcades, and I can probably count on the fingers of one hand how many I personally liked.

Editorials Indie Games

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Indie Game Reviews: x3

When Grid Runner first appeared on the VIC-20 it was nothing more than a great but a simple and quite unassuming little budget game. Now, over 20 years later, Jeff Minter, the game’s original creator, has evolved it into the absolute shmup extravaganza, complete with tons of levels, fluffy sheepies, amazing pyrotechnics, eye-melting visuals, an ear-melting soundtrack, many extras and that quirky Llamasoft humour. Oh, and some finely tuned shmup gameplay with some brilliant touches, that even manages to subtly innovate. Losing a life, for a example, can be mitigated by picking up a nice sheep, whereas each life is represented by a different ship (not sheep, mind) with unique features..

Editorials

Umar Khan

The MMO Separation of Church and State

In those golden days, PvP wasn’t about fighting another player for hours. It wasn’t about outlasting foes. It was like how PvP was in almost every other game in existence, including FPS. Fights were quick and fast paced. It wasn’t about every player being Batman and trying to pull off as much bullshit as possible. It was about an Enhancement Shaman with Windfury WTF raping their way to victory. It was about the Mage hiding in the back charging up a Pyroblast combo. It was about a rogue hiding and doing what rogues do best, assassinate.

Editorials

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Mario’s complete Gameography: Almost

Mario. Had a friend named Mario. Quite a weird bloke, mind you, but that’s not the point. Besides, this post is neither about my friends, nor Marios in general. It’s all about Nintendo’s Mario, and his appearances (in cameo, supporting or starring roles) on video games of all kinds. Quite a few as you should have guessed, and what follows are the ones I managed to find. The list -I am sure- is not a 100% complete, and even though I feel that almost every important game and most Mario appearances have been covered, there must be some obscure and/or well-known omissions.

Editorials

Mukul Uppal

Your very first experience with a 3D game and its hits you

The impact of this one 3D game was so successful to have put some serious impact on my head at that time and I instantly found ,in my 8th standard of junior schooling, that I wanted to make games in the future as a career. I am pretty sure I wasn’t alone with such an uprising feeling of doing something which was totally fresh as a career option at that time and most of the people didn’t even know how to generalize it with a term.

Editorials

Simon Lethbridge

Top Five SNES Two-Player Games

It can’t be a list of the best two-player games without a Bomberman game included! Well, except for the Master System list as that console doesn’t have a Bomberman game. Poor old Master System. This was the first game in this great series that I played and it’s still one of my favourites. Although they’re not to everyone’s tastes,

Editorials

Simon Lethbridge

Top Five 3DO Games

The poor old 3DO was hardly a run away success, was it? It was released during a difficult period. Change was coming, but not quite ready to be embraced by the gaming public. The fact that it cost as much as a car didn’t help matters either, of course! Consequently it doesn’t have the biggest of software libraries. With this in mind, instead of doing a genre-based Top Five for some of its games, I have little choice but to simply select the five best games on the system from all genres.

Editorials

Simon Lethbridge

Top Five MegaDrive Shmups

This underrated gem was a pretty early release for the MD but still ranks among its best coin-op conversions. It doesn’t have the graphical tricks of some games (see below!), but it is one of the most polished, balanced shooters I’ve ever played. It’s true that it’s somewhat unforgiving (it’s basically a one-life game) and doesn’t really have much in the way of power-ups, but it’s hard to complain when the game is still so good! Varied levels, a rocking soundtrack, a well-graded dificulty curve, and perfect collision detection make this one of the best!

Editorials

Glen McNamee

Remake and Reboot

The Wii is also seeing several of these new “interpretations”, as evidenced by Klonoa. The original game of the series appeared nearly ten years ago on the original Playstation, and was a 2.5D platformer with the player’s movement controlled along set paths. Fast forward and the graphical makeover is very good (the dreadful Americanised character voices less so), but the movement restrictions remain. The old-school game mechanics may feel uncomfortable to the new audience drawn to Wii, but there is a real challenge in there.