TJ returns this week, as Blizzard continues to embarrass itself. No Gaming Flashback this week.
This week’s news includes:
Let us know what you think.
It’s that time in the life-cycle of the PlayStation 3 where a few of their hit titles go into “classic” game mode, which translate to a price drop. We saw this with a few games like Kameo on the Xbox 360 a year or so after the launch of the console.
The first games said to be going “classic” or, as Sony calls it, “Greatest Hits” will be: Motorstorm, Warhawk and Resistance: Fall of Man. The rumored date is July 27th, as it’s part of a print ad which boasts the new price tag of USD $30.00 for the titles, these games, currently, are USD $59.99.
More than likely this will be one of the minor E3 announcements to spread a bit more love for the PlayStation 3. The games are too expensive considering the console investment, having a few games you can buy for a nice price makes the console a bit more attractive. They are also the games the PS3 is best known for which doesn’t hurt either.
(Thanks, PS3Fanboy)
One of the first games I was introduced to on the 2600 was River Raid, back in 1982. I remember it vividly, as I was at my cousin David’s house, who was older than me, and he’d “baby sit” me so the adults could have some adult time hanging out in the dining room. We’d sit in the family room playing 2600, mainly River Raid.
This is an Activision game, and was later ported to Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit, C64, ColecoVision, IBM PCjr, Intellivision, ZX Spectrum, and MSX. The player controls an airplane in a top-down view over a river and gets points for shooting down enemy planes, helicopters, ships and balloons (for versions after the Atari 2600). By flying over fuel-stations, the plane’s tank can be refilled. The player can shift side to side and change the speed of the plane. Sections of the river are marked by bridges.
The game was highly acclaimed for its ability to stuff tons of map into small amounts of space. The map was huge and it fit on the disk because it’s randomly generated using a common starting seed, basically, imagine some of the Diablo dungeons…they’re randomly generated but the starting seed which starts the random process is also ‘random.’ (probably based on clock time which isn’t too uncommon). Atari, rather than try to make a random level each time used the level random generator to build a procedural based level rather than drawing it and saving it into the cart. GENIUS.
A more highly randomized number generation system was used for enemy AI to make the game less predictable.
Germany consider this game harmful to children, indexing it on their list of games “harmful for children” along with the game Speed Racer. It remained on their list until 2002 (since 1984) when developers petitioned it off the list before the PS2 launch of Activision Anthology (otherwise they’d not be able to put it in the game)
Some of the Germany reasons: Minors are intended to delve into the role of an uncompromising fighter and agent of annihilation (…). It provides children with a paramilitaristic education (…). With older minors, playing leads (…) to physical cramps, anger, aggressiveness, erratic thinking (…) and headaches (wikipedia)
All in all, a great game! To hear all the details on River Raid and our opinions, checkout TD Gaming Podcast Episode 78.
We review our experiences of PAX East in this podcast and the second half is full of gaming news and community comments. Derrick reflects at his fun experience of Orcs Must Die while Jonah spent some time with LA Noire and Star Wars: The Old Republic. The news highlights include:
This week’s question of the week: Which convention would you want to attend most: E3, PAX or Comic Con?
