April 2010 Archives

This week, Ubisoft announced that it intends to stop including instruction manuals in its games for environmental concerns and cost reductions. There are all kinds of possibilities with this new format. Ubisoft, get this right so other publishers will follow suit. I'll even give you some free ideas. Use them; I won't even try to take credit.

First, visual flair.

The instruction manuals of old were often the only content gamers had to flesh out the more primitive 8-bit versions of heroes to bring them to life. As graphics improved and more accurate representations of characters begun appearing in games, the need to do that has faded.

However, that doesn't mean we don't still want it! A full-screen, hi-def manual would be a great place to show off some of the concept art and supporting artwork that comes out of game creation. Normally reserved for an unlockable gallery that no-one every looks at, the freedom from paper should make for some great looking instruction manuals that encourage players to read by rewarding them with cool images.

Check out the full article.

One of the most common complaints about the first Mass Effect was the dearth of DLC following the promise of a bounty. Mass Effect 2 has been almost opposite. While the DLC hasn't had a massive effect on the gameplay yet, there's been plenty of it. Better yet, almost all of it has been free to those who logged into the Ceberus Network when they picked up their new copies of the game.

The bonuses had to end somewhere, though, and the Kasumi Stolen Memory pack marks the first paid DLC for Mass Effect 2 (not counting the horse armor, I mean character costumes). Like the first downloadable character, Zaeed, Kasumi is a mysterious, shadowy character that joins your mission on the condition that you help her with her own quest.

Check out the full review.

Whenever a game crashes through the top of the sales charts or even just pulls enough mindshare, you know what comes next: copycat after copycat.

There's a period of a few years after a big game where every publisher under the sun has to put out their own take on it. You've seen it. Grand Theft Auto breeds everything from True Crime and Saints Row; Modern Warfare's success results in Bad Company, new Medal of Honor, and more. We're right on the cusp of about a thousand Farmville clones, too.

Obviously, some of these games are good. Some argued that Saints Row 2 was more what GTA fans were looking for than GTA4. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has won over its fair share as well. Most of the games are just also-rans, very rarely are there actual contenders. Just like anything else that becomes popular suddenly, there's a temporary deluge of the given game type before settling into its place in the gaming genre pantheon.

Check out the full article.

This week we did graphics for Sonic. My contribution was small, but the overall piece turned out great. Matt Green and Joey Davidson also of Kombo worked with me on this one. Here’s one of my two contributions.

Check out the full article!

You know, I thought I had totally lost interest in Japanese RPGs. In fact, I was quite sure if it; passionate, even. But that might not be quite right.

The last week or so, I've been playing Yakuza 3. I haven't been thinking of it as a traditional RPG, and in some ways it does break that mold but in others it adheres to them quite closely. Much of Yakuza could be reskinned with kimonos and top-knots (or belts, zippers, and bare midriffs for you Final Fantasy fans) without having to really change anything.

There are towns with different shops, various weapons, dungeons (in the form of yakuza hideouts), and bosses with multiple transformations (the sword breaks and out come the throwing knives). You spend much of your time in Okinawa and Tokyo accomplishing side-missions for random joes on the street to level up your abilities.

It breaks away from RPG tropes first with the solo, real-time combat. The fast-paced brawls are more about speed and skill than strategy. The real draw for me, though, is the mature story. Not to say that other RPGs don't have mature, interesting stories. Rather, Kiryu Kazuma's story in particular draws me in.

Check out the full article.

Deadly Premonition sucks, and it's awesome. Don't worry, it'll make sense soon.

Deadly Premonition is developer Access Games' third release in the US, after Spy Fiction on the PS2 and Ace Combat X on the PSP; it's the latest from publisher Ignition Games, whose list of titles has grown rapidly in the last year. With a small developer and publisher bringing the game over, the game has been slow to pick up buzz. From a technical standpoint, Deadly Premonition feels as if it should be on the Xbox backwards compatibility chart rather than as a brand new release for 2010. The characters and story, though, are genuine and memorable, and at times even truly funny or disturbing.

Check out the full review.

On Kombo we’ve recently been trying some new stuff to drum up traffic. One such thing is our weekly humor column, Check Out These Graphics. Each week we pick on a game. Here are a few examples and their article links.

Mega Man – I had very little to do with this week’s work. Special thanks to Matt Green of PressTheButtons.

 

Dead Space – Kombo’s Joel Windels and I did most of the work on this week’s images.

God of War III

Modern Warfare 2

Peggle