When we think of high-budget games, we may think of the cinematic experiences that drag you along a roller coaster-like ride through scripted set pieces and quick time events, like Lego Jurassic World is four games in one.
This makes for adventuring that is bereft of tension and friction, leading to a game you just stroll through with very little resistance. Iconic scenes are replicated as Lego-built levels, like when Lex and Tim try to evade hungry velociraptors in a kitchen or a T-Rex stampeding through San Diego as Jeff Goldblum speeds in front of it. While it's quite pleasing to stroll through these set pieces as you progress through the game, you never feel like you're in danger in the slightest. The reason the velociraptor scene is timeless is the ever-present danger of the kids being found, the unsettling purring noise the raptors make, approaching closer and closer until the children are right under their noses. In Lego Jurassic World, no such tension exists. Again, you have to find the right thing to fiddle with to move on to the next section to find the next thing and repeat the process until you make it to the end. In the meantime, the two raptors are “looking” for you, but they never actually move from their pre-determined spots except to pace uselessly until you trigger their next movement. If you attempt to move close to them, the kids back away looking cautious and frightened--an inelegant cover for the dreaded invisible wall. Suddenly, you're not playing Lego versions of your favorite scenes but instead find yourself as the cast of a badly-acted Lego play where you can see the stagehands changing the scenery.
The only potential source of tension that the game tries to throw at you is when it occasionally sends a swarm of tiny dinos (or occasionally other Lego people) to attack you, but even this is hollow. Your punch attack is a pathetic wiggle that you have to be right next to an enemy to use. But everything goes down in one hit, so when things swarm at you, you merely have to mash the button as you move around and try not to get hit--and even that doesn't work, as an enemy might land a lucky shot on you as you're moving. The tepid combat makes any enemy encounter annoying, especially when they start pouring infinitely out of a hole until you plug it up. Notably, only the first movie's set of stages is completely bereft of combat segments, and it's all the better for it.
One-on-one dinosaur battles use quick-time events, but the cinematic payoff is one of the game's high points.
Don't get me wrong, though: Lego Jurassic World absolutely has its heart in the right place. Every scene is injected with the now-trademark Lego sense of humor. Events like seeing Chris Pratt gleefully play with toy dinosaurs during a tense scene or seeing someone's hair fall off and land on a raptor's head always produce a chuckle at worst. It helps that you have the very serious lines from the original movies juxtaposed with your silly Lego people doing ridiculous things. Unfortunately, the audio from the movies wasn't mixed very well with the game audio, which sounds jarring next to the pristine, polished sounds and voices recorded for the game. Luckily, the funniest aspect of the game requires no voice acting at all: the dinosaurs. They don't talk, so all their humor is relayed in pantomime, a trick not seen in Traveller's Tales Lego games since their earliest efforts. Since so much of the Lego multimedia experience relies on visual humor, the dinosaurs make up the lion's share of funny moments, like raptors chasing a tiny ice cream truck or the hybrid T-Rex from Jurassic World forming emoticons with bones from its pen. It really speaks to the strength of the game's charm and humor that the non-speaking dinosaurs steal the show, but then again, they are the stars of the Jurassic Park franchise, so it's appropriate.
The Lego games set out to create an accessible, joy-filled romp through our favorite pieces of popular media with as few barriers stopping the fun as possible. They are part of one of the few franchises that can get by on charm alone. But Traveller's Tales take this approach to extremes, focusing on the visual and thematic experience almost entirely while letting the actual gameplay languish. Jurassic Park in particular doesn't suit this design because flattening the mechanics removes all notions of tension from the game, an essential part of the film series. Lego Jurassic Park is a nice, pleasant nostalgia trip, but it won't be long before you're asking to leave.
Let us for a moment consider the idea that, one day, the sun might poof out and that the surface air of the earth will vanish in the process. Let us suppose that the remnants of humanity will flee below the earth's surface, where the core remains surprisingly warm. Furthermore, let us imagine that humanity will embrace a vaguely steampunk aesthetic straight out of .
That's all fine, but actually using the glove isn't. Grabbing an object and hoisting it up or down requires using both the left mouse button and the mouse's scroll wheel, which can be a bit of a feat when you have to direct the object you're holding with mouse movements as well. Adding to the awkwardness is Traverser's fixed camera, which often prevents you from accurately seeing how high or low an object you're holding is since the camera often ends up perfectly aligned with the beam. The crates and other objects often don't fall into place as easily as they probably should (which, again, might be the fault of the camera), leading to creations that tumble over just when you think you're almost done.
The puzzles themselves are usually simple, introductory affairs, although Traverser does manage to generate some excitement when Valerie has to use a number of techniques in quick succession. These moments are especially prevalent in the few boss fights and when Valerie has to switch between the top world and the bottom world to overcome obstacles. Never once, though, does Traverser present a challenge that's truly memorable or satisfying, and other aspects of its gameplay are complicated by the lack of a minimap or the occasional vague entry in Valerie's journal that leaves little clue as to what to do next. Traverser's at its best when it requires Valerie to use stealth, but even that's complicated by unwieldy objectives and guards who can apparently see through walls.
Most puzzles are predictable, but a bit of dynamite makes everything fun.
Still, there are worse ways to spend four hours, which is the amount of time you'll spend on a full playthrough, and the game's personality is generally strong enough to forgive some of its shortcomings. But it's a shadow of what it could be. Were it better able to traverse the gap between an attractive presentation and engaging gameplay, Traverser would be a game to remember.
Xbox’s Phil Spencer answers fan questions about backwards compatibility on Xbox One, and Assassin’s Creed co-creator Jade Raymond forms new studio at EA to work on Star Wars.
[UPDATE 2] Warner Bros. has now published the full, official version. Enjoy!
[UPDATE 1] Per a request from Warner Bros., we have removed the video embed of the panel footage.
The original story is below.
A teaser trailer for the upcoming Suicide Squad movie was shown at Comic-Con this week; it was meant to be exclusive to panel attendees, but of course, it has now leaked.
Watch the footage below--and you might want to do so quickly, as it might get pulled.
Suicide Squad, due in theaters in 2016, is all about the bad guys. Even if the footage is choppy and the sound levels are low, the video does a good job of setting up the story and I'm intrigued to see more.
The audience erupts when Oscar-winning actor Jared Leto appears as Joker toward the end. The movie also stars Will Smith as Deadshot and Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn.
Crossover fighting game and Tekken 7 both on the way, Harada said Namco is having a tough time deciding on the launch timing for Tekken X Street Fighter.
This matches up with what Harada said last year.
"It's still in development, and it is moving forward, but that's on the development side," he explained at the time. "So obviously, with all of the products, there's that special timing that we need for that to have its own spotlight. So on the marketing side, it's a special situation, but we can say that it hasn't been cancelled, so please relax."
CD Projekt Red has officially on Twitter, though a specific release date was not announced. We also don't know when The Witcher 3's big new patch is coming, but CD Projekt Red says it will let fans know as soon as it has determined a date and time.
What do you think of Ciri's new outfit? Let us know in the comments below.
Mimes are littered throughout Grand Theft Auto V. But these supposedly mute NPCs will break character if you get them angry enough. If you do decide to attack mimes (why wouldn't you?) their health is astonishingly high, so bring a weapon ... or five. (Photo: Rockstar)
Transform Into an Animal
Grand Theft Auto has expanded the use of drugs throughout the series. In GTA V, players can find and consume peyote plants. After an intricate cut scene, players instantly take control of a mammal. Get this: NPCs still interact with you as if you're a human. (Photo: Rockstar)
Search for Bigfoot
In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, rumors swirled that Bigfoot could be found in the forests. Players searching for the mythical creature are rewarded in GTA V with two missions involving the cryptid. (Photo: Rockstar)
Punch Sharks and Find Treasure
Since Grand Theft Auto III, Rockstar has emphasized the aquatic side of the open-world game. GTA V takes it to a new level with random shark fights and buried treasure. (Photo: Rockstar)
Take All The #Selfies
With the rising popularity of selfies in today's world, it's no shock that the fun feature was added to Grand Theft Auto. The GTA selfie phenomenon has spawned its own website, where fans can post their favorite selfies from the game. (Photo: Rockstar)
Wreak Havoc!
Who would've thought the first Grand Theft Auto, with its original title of "Race 'n' Chase," would spawn one of the best gaming franchises of all time? The inaugural GTA game let players cause catastrophic damage while stealing cars. The novelty of that first game earns it a place on this list. (Photo: Rockstar)
Get Sucked Into a Side Mission For No Reason
Grand Theft Auto 2 instituted a wide-ranging gameplay option that's been adopted by nearly every open-world game: side missions. Those missions may not directly impact the main story, but they do often give birth to some of the most ridiculous characters in any series. (Photo: Rockstar)
Play Games Within Games
Staying in shape is a major factor in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, but Rockstar takes it to a whole new level in GTA V. If you're tired of running over pedestrians and high-tailing it from the cops, why not let loose on the golf course or find your inner chi doing yoga? (Photo: Rockstar)
Rid the City of Pigeons
Story mode and side missions can only entertain for so long. GTA IV mixed things up with an interesting achievement: kill 200 pigeons in Liberty City. Players could get all kinds of creative when it came to the disposal of the rats of the sky. (Photo: Rockstar)
Play Fetch ... With a Grenade
Chop from Grand Theft Auto V isn't the first pet to be introduced in the series. But this dog can be tricked into playing with a grenade. We won't tell you any spoilers about what happens next. (Photo: Rockstar)
Flip the Bird to the Police
Police are just so cumbersome in Grand Theft Auto. If you don't want to instigate a high-speed chase, Rockstar has incorporated another outlet for your digital road rage. While unarmed in a car, players can press the left trigger to give the one-finger salute. (Photo: Rockstar)
Fly Over Area 69
Area 69, the Grand Theft Auto version of Area 51, is an off-limits no-fly zone that first came to the screen in San Andreas. If you happen to fly over Area 69, you'll automatically receive a four-star wanted level. To survive such a harrowing adventure, steal a jet to defend yourself from the government (and aliens). (Photo: Rockstar)
Skydive Onto a Yacht
Skydiving in Grand Theft Auto is a ton of fun. But try skydiving out of a plane onto a boat. Now that's fancy. (Photo: Rockstar)
Remake the Classics
When it comes to customizable, open-world games like Grand Theft Auto, players can take the creativity into their own hands. One fan of the franchise re-created the opening of Will Smith's old sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with Grand Theft Auto's Franklin as The Fresh Prince of Rockford Hills. (Photo: YouTube)
Satoru Iwata's story is one laced with unbelievable risks, bright thinking in dark times, and a bold ambition to make a difference. For all that can be said about his charming mannerisms, his warm smile, his unquestionable love of video games, it should not be overlooked that Iwata was a visionary businessman who saved Nintendo by reinventing it.
He was a radical force; a revolutionary figure who commanded a century-old company as though it was his own start-up. Foreseeing a bleak future in retreading old ground, Iwata took Nintendo down the uncharted path, often with its future hinging on little more than his peculiar ideas. Those who believed in him were rewarded with the most prosperous period in the corporation’s proud history.
Even Iwata's appointment to the head of Nintendo, in 2002, was unconventional by nature. He was the company's very first elected president who had no blood ties to the Yamauchis; the family that had founded and managed Nintendo across three generations.
His promotion came at a bleak hour for Nintendo, with the
with Roy Lee (The Departed, The LEGO Movie) and Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg of KatzSmith Productions (the upcoming Beetlejuice sequel) signed on as producers.
With the passing of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, the video game industry has lost one of its most bold and inspiring luminaries. To honour Nintendo's fourth CEO, GameSpot has put together a short gallery chronicling Iwata's career, starting from aspiring developer to iconic president. Images for this gallery were found on the official GDC Flickr (http://bit.ly/1O0S20D)
Satoru Iwata was born on December 6, 1959 and raised in Sapporo, the capital city of Hokkaido, the largest and northernmost of Japan's 47 prefectures. Iwata’s love of gaming began at a very early age, as did his ambition to develop them. According to Iwata, the first game he ever played was Pong, which he “loved.” This spurred him to buy a Hewlitt Packard Pocket Calculator, which he used to program a baseball video game.
Iwata joined the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1978 and enrolled to study engineering and computer science. At the time, game programming was not commonly taught. Despite being unable to study game programming, Iwata’s innate desire to create games pushed him to independently seek out avenues through which he could realise his dream. Instead of studying, he travelled to a Tokyo department store--the first in the city dedicated to PCs--and met like-minded people with dreams of game design and development.
With the friends he made hanging out at the PC retailer, Iwata moved into an apartment in Akihabara, where he spent nights designing and programming games. The group would eventually form a company called HAL. Though Iwata didn’t know it at the time, this studio would deliver some of Nintendo’s most cherished video games including Mother, Kirby, Smash Bros., and more. HAL was named after the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Following the completion of his studies, Iwata became the fifth full-time employee of HAL. By his own account, he joined “the smallest company of any graduate in [his] class.” At HAL, he was a programmer, an engineer, designer, and also marketed the team’s games, “ordered food, and helped clean up.”
The small team at HAL eventually began hearing whispers about a project at Nintendo which involved the development of a machine “capable of incredible new graphics.” Convinced the hardware would be the platform for HAL’s breakout success, the team arranged a meeting with Nintendo. Its first task, however, was a rescue mission. Iwata and his colleagues were put to work with helping bring a game that had fallen behind schedule to completion. That game would eventually be released as NES Pinball.
HAL’s consistency earned it a close relationship with Nintendo and, over time, it was given the opportunity to develop franchises that would go on to become Nintendo icons, such as Kirby. However, its early days were spent doing work-for-hire arcade ports. In between it released numerous entries in the Eggerman series (known in the West as the Adventures of Lolo). As well as this, members of the HAL team took on consultancy work to keep the company afloat.
HAL would go on to work with Shigesato Itoi, a renowned Japanese writer, on his first game: Mother. The role-playing game would eventually be released in the West as Earthbound and, thanks to its unique visual style and mature themes, amassed a passionate cult following.
In 2000, Iwata became head of Nintendo’s corporate planning division. Two years later, Hiroshi Yamauchi, who had served as company president since 1949, retired and Iwata succeeded him as the fourth Nintendo president. He was the first Nintendo president who not part of the Yamauchi family through blood or marriage since it was established in 1889 as a Hanafuda card company.
Iwata’s appointment as the head of Nintendo came in the heat of a crisis. At the time, the Nintendo GameCube’s performance was being eclipsed by its main competitor, the PlayStation 2, and faced stiff competition from Microsoft’s first ever console, the Xbox. It was around then that Iwata began to think about distinguishing Nintendo’s consoles from its rivals, and also appealing to a wider audience by creating approachable, creative experiences.
Iwata’s vision for a successful new Nintendo was defined by “lateral thinking with seasoned technology,” a principle developed by Gunpei Yokoi, father of the Game Boy, Game & Watch, the modern day directional pad, and creator of iconic franchises such as Metroid. It posited that a creative person could take mature technology and find radical new ways of using it to create transformative experiences. The first fruit of this ideology was the Nintendo DS which, in the face of adversity from Sony’s slicker, more powerful PSP, went on to sell over 150 million units, making it the second-best selling console of all time.
At E3 2005 Satoru Iwata took the stage and proudly held a diminutive black box aloft, proclaiming it a gaming revolution. That same year, at Tokyo Game Show, Iwata reiterated the company’s ambition to expand the gaming audience and speak to a wider market and revealed a new controller that “attracts those who aren’t playing games and offers new sensations to veteran” would be the key. The Wii outsold the competition from Sony and Microsoft by a considerable margin and became a bona fide sensation. Importantly, it achieved Iwata’s ambition of placing video games firmly in the mainstream eye and attracting a wider audience. At the height of its popularity, Nintendo’s stock became the second most valuable in Japan.
Iwata’s most recent years were spent trying to maintain the momentum achieved by the Nintendo DS and Wii. Given the magnitude of the success, many would argue this was an impossible task. The follow-ups to both of those devices, the Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U, marked a downturn in the company’s performance. At the heart of these missteps was marketing that failed to distinguish new hardware from old, and a slowness to properly capitalise on the move towards mobile and tablet gaming. Despite this, Iwata remained a shining beacon of Nintendo’s ambition and an unwavering leader, famously refusing to lay off staff.
Last week, Amazon from Walmart.com CEO Fernando Madeira. "But the idea of asking customers to pay extra in order to save money just doesn't add up for us."
"We're standing up for our customers and everyone else who sees no rhyme or reason for paying a premium to save."
Walmart will roll out special deals "with no hidden costs or admission fees" this coming week. And unlike Amazon's Prime Day, which will be held for one day only on July 15 to mark the retailer's 20th anniversary, Walmart's sale period will run for multiple days.
"Our customers will see thousands of great deals on Rollback beginning this week along with some special atomic deals (more on that in the days to come)," Maderia said. "In addition, we're rolling back our free shipping minimum order to $35 from $50."
Walmart did not say what items will be discounted, but you can pretty safely assume video games will be on sale.
Xbox’s Phil Spencer answers fan questions about backwards compatibility on Xbox One, and Assassin’s Creed co-creator Jade Raymond forms new studio at EA to work on Star Wars.
Danny spent a few nights with a preview build of this PlayStation 4 survival horror, adventure game. So was he scared stiff, or bored to tears?
Tahm Kench, the River King, is feature in this champion spotlight for League of Legends.
Her Story is certainly a unique gaming experience, but what is it that makes it so good, and is it worth your money?
Take a look at this gameplay trailer for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5.
