Added: 04.05.2015 10:17 | 4 views | 0 comments


GamesRadar - I approached Bungie's Trials of Osiris on Wednesday as I imagine most Destiny players did. I expected 'stuff': new stuff, different stuff, exciting stuff. 'Stuff' is, after all, the way that the ongoing growth of a massively multiplayer game is tracked and measured. New armour, new weapons, new maps, new modes and events: stuff you can arrange into a list, stuff you can hold up next to the asking price for House of Wolves to determine if the expansion is worth the asking price to you.

Added: 02.05.2015 22:17 | 14 views | 0 comments


Carl Williams writes, "Futurama is one of those cartoons for adults that was not quite as offensive as Family Guy but was not as family entertaining as The Simpsons. It is also one of the least ported to gaming cartoons that we have seen (it did get a PS2 or Xbox 3D action adventure but that is it). For some reason the rich world of Futurama has not been ripe with videogame adaptations/interpretations. Developers could, almost, literally write whatever wild loosely science fiction related story they wanted and it would probably work in the world of Futurama. Now, a couple of new, unlicensed, adventure titles are in the works- both of which look rather interesting."

Added: 02.05.2015 17:00 | 3 views | 0 comments

How would Nintendo solve that? How would they create a consistent story but still allow non-linear exploration? I have an idea, and it's pretty simple: they could decouple the narrative progression from the item and dungeon progression. Look at The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask for an example: the Zora storyline is a self-contained arc which unfolds primarily in the Great Bay. The Gorons' snowy plight is resolved by completing tasks within Snowhead itself. These "story pockets" often required certain items to resolve, and you could bookmark them and return to them if you did discover where that item lay. However, access to those pockets was still restricted by the hub and spoke approach to its world, as in Ocarina of Time. Resolving these narrative events with items is far more satisfying, and feels far less artificial, than opening a new route to travel through, or overcoming a physical barrier to exploration. When exploring an open-world Hyrule, I shouldn't run into those barriers. But if I want to progress the narrative? That's when a hero like Link should run into problems to resolve.

Added: 02.05.2015 17:00 | 2 views | 0 comments

How would Nintendo solve that? How would they create a consistent story but still allow non-linear exploration? I have an idea, and it's pretty simple: they could decouple the narrative progression from the item and dungeon progression. Look at The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask for an example: the Zora storyline is a self-contained arc which unfolds primarily in the Great Bay. The Gorons' snowy plight is resolved by completing tasks within Snowhead itself. These "story pockets" often required certain items to resolve, and you could bookmark them and return to them if you did discover where that item lay. However, access to those pockets was still restricted by the hub and spoke approach to its world, as in Ocarina of Time. Resolving these narrative events with items is far more satisfying, and feels far less artificial, than opening a new route to travel through, or overcoming a physical barrier to exploration. When exploring an open-world Hyrule, I shouldn't run into those barriers. But if I want to progress the narrative? That's when a hero like Link should run into problems to resolve.