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Nier is a game with split-personality disorder, aiming to please everyone with elements drawn from a raft of sources, but in the process it never excels in any one area. While IGN does appreciate that a game like this tends to take more risks than a franchise hit like Final Fantasy, they can’t help but wonder if Nier might’ve been a better game if it had focussed in on delivering a few key elements exceptionally well, rather than spreading itself so thinly and watching the good ideas go to waste.
Presentation – 7.5
Graphics – 6.5
Sound – 8.5
Gameplay – 7.0
Lasting Appeal – 7.5
Overall -
As today’s crop of consoles allow developers to create titles with heightened levels of graphical fidelity and storytelling, will gamers start to see more and more realistic portrayals of sex within the interactive medium? With this question in mind, let’s take a look back at some of the sexiest and steamiest scenes in the history of videogames.
Samuel Claiborn writes "It’s hard to criticize 3D Dot Game Heroes for invoking Shigeru Miyamoto, widely recognized as gaming’s most important figure, as its muse. 3D Dot Game Heroes offers a repackaged vintage gaming experience with obvious, but appropriate, improvements in graphics and presentation while leaving some elements — like a frustrating difficulty — untouched. Other Zelda imitators seem to lose sight of the playfulness and irreverence that Miyamoto and others infused classic games with, but 3D Dot Game Heroes never pretends that it’s anything but a game, and games like 3D Dot Game Heroes should be played."
EA and Visceral Games are gearing up for Dead Space 2. Although not much is known about the title — Isaac’s back, there are more necromrophs, etc. – a small snippet of the game was shown at PAX East just a few weeks ago. In that clip, Issac was rocking his new body suit, which will display all the health bars and functions of a HUD just like last game, and at one point leapt from a train car and flew with the next.
With Modern Warfare 2 now old news, Gears of War 3 on the horizon and Halo: Reach landing in between – you’d think gamers with a love for epics have rarely had it better. You’d be right – but what you might not realize is that these blockbuster games are arriving at the expense of other smaller, less popular titles. What’s more, it’s beginning to strangle the development scene with an ‘only the biggest survive’ mentality.
Despite a few questionable level design choices, Splinter Cell Conviction is a great addition to the series. There’s no way IGN could go back to a stealth game as it used to be; they’ve been converted. The only reason to hesitate and pick this up is if you only care about the single-player story and want nothing to do with anything else Conviction has to offer. If that’s the case, then there’s not a lot of game to be had. And also, you’re nuts. The best parts of Conviction are the experiences you have long after you’ve left Sam Fisher behind.
Presentation – 9.0
Graphics – 8.5
Sound – 9.0
Gameplay – 9.0
Lasting Appeal – 8.0
IGN – Dark hallways will never be the same after the chilling Alma first stalked players in the original F.E.A.R. A first-person shooter franchise that combined survival-horror aesthetics with traditional gunplay, F.E.A.R. garnered a fair number of fans and those fans have plenty of reason to be excited. Today, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced F.E.A.R. 3 for the PS3, 360 and PC. The game will feature Alma’s sons, Point Man and Paxton Fettel, as playable characters, as well as introduce co-op play to the franchise.
If you’re a videogame and social networking nut – and who isn’t these days – there’s little doubt that you’ve heard that Cliff Bleszinski, Design Director for Epic Games (the folks who made Gears of War 1 and 2), is appearing on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon this Thursday. It’s no secret that the talk show host is a huge videogame fan, so everyone is pretty sure that Cliff is going to show the world Gears of War 3 for the very first time on national television.
But what if he doesn’t? What if Cliff announces something no one sees coming? Perhaps something having to do with Tina Fey, the guest that precedes Bleszinski on Thursday’s show. Or maybe Cliff is there to talk about Epic and EA’s project with the new People Can Fly studio? Few know for sure, but we’re going to take a stab at what Cliff’s intentions are, even if that means sounding slightly psychotic in the process.
The iPad is the start of a potentially brilliant product, but it just simply hasn’t reached that point yet. The iPad has a few obvious shortcomings that will undoubtedly be improved upon with future iterations, including cost, and with that knowledge the expense is hard to justify for anyone other than passionate early adopters.
