All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

In a lengthy post-mortem on Gamasutra, design director James Hague breaks down how his team at Volition developed Red Faction: Guerrilla's many, many missions while working with an enormous, open world where pretty much everything can be destroyed. Beyond the seemingly minor decisions (order of actions within a mission, for instance) being problematic, the sheer enormity of RFG's terraformed Mars and its fully destructible environment drove the game's developer to deliver on the promise of freedom not just between missions, but during them as well. This, as you might imagine, caused quite a bit of a hitch, resulting in the eventual boiling down of some mission objectives to their most basic elements.

"To truly fit into the open world model, missions have to provide the same sense of freedom that the world itself provides. And to make that work takes a change of mindset. It means letting go of being a control freak and instead embracing the chaos that's inherent in open world design," Hague says. For him, game design is often a struggle for how to control the player, and thusly, the player's experience. In the case of RFG, though, he exclaims the team had to "stop caring" about said control. "You can't control what the player experiences every moment. That's not a failure; it's what comes with letting the player do what he wants."

Hague goes into far more detail over four pages of individual mission dissection, so if you're a fan of the game like we are, we'd suggest checking out the whole piece -- it may not be as rewarding as destroying a tower and watching it fall on scrambling soldiers, but then what is?

#sega Speaking as an owner of the first series of Sega Gals capsule toys, toymaker Takara Tomy's latest venture into taking well-known women from Sega's long history of games and turning them into wee plastic figures is a bit disappointing. More »

#halo Halo creators Bungie love guns. Love big, bulky space vehicles,too. Love 'em so much they've released a ton of renders showing how both will appear in the upcoming Halo: Reach. More »

#journalism A report on news.com.au says that a former editor for Zoo Weekly, an Australian "lads mag", has been sacked after making public an email from Rockstar, publishers of the Grand Theft Auto series, demanding more "favourable coverage" from the writer. More »

#review Dead or Alive Paradise brings the lovely ladies of Tecmo's fighting game series back to the tropical getaway of Zack Island, a chance to collect and model increasingly revealing bikinis in-between playing an equally skimpy selection of mini-games. More »

Konami and Capcom team up for a dream collaboration.

We thought Activision had learned its lesson about manufactured controversy in the Modern Warfare 2 ad campaign after Infinity Ward's "Grenade Spam" video. Unfortunately, it would appear that the lesson learned was that manufactured controversy is awesome. So here's a YouTube-only ad (after the break; via Game Informer) featuring an older gentleman talking with disgust about what sounds like sexual behavior -- but what's actually Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer.

A shortened, milder version is currently appearing on broadcast television.

Speaking to CVG, THQ core games exec Danny Bilson revealed that he's got quite an ambitious idea for Microsoft's upcoming Project Natal peripheral; specifically, he cites plans for a "core game" that leverages Natal's motion-sensing tech "in a really, really cool way." That said, Bilson intimates that the budget for such a game -- which he estimates to be from $30-40 million -- would prevent the game from being released before the Natal install base is large enough to support it. Still, he adds, "The concept I have uses every corner of that tech and maybe in a couple of years we'll do it."

Whatever Bilson's mystery project is, he certainly seems excited by the technology. Just last week, Bilson was talking up another project that THQ plans to announce at E3, which may or may not be the "super awesome" and "physically active" Natal project he told Joystiq about during GDC. THQ was also one of the first companies to reveal it had been working on Natal dev kits when Microsoft first announced the peripheral last year.

#screengrab Bricks become pixels in this sidewalk art Mega Man, spied by reader Amanda B. near the Belk Tower on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. More »

#psp Snake's list of mortal enemies appears to have gotten a bit longer, as the latest issue of Famitsu reveals that upcoming PSP game Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker will feature a surprise crossover that we certainly didn't see coming. More »

Electronic Arts has officially launched Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online, its free-to-play version of the popular golf game. Players can sign in with an EA persona and play a limited number of featured courses for free (St. Andrews and Sheshan are the two currently available), while earning XP and money for the in-game Pro Shop. Alternatively, for you fat cats out there, packages of points are also available for $10, $20, and $40 that can be spent on in-game items or rounds of golf at locked courses.

The game also offers group tournaments and friend-to-friend messaging -- essentially, it's very much EA's attempt to bring the successful Battlefield Heroes model to a new audience. In an interview with CNBC today, Peter Moore made it clear that they're behind both star Tiger Woods and this game. The free-to-play title is designed to pull in an audience of "40-year golfers, mostly male," Moore said, adding that "it's our job to upsell them." If EA Sports can do that as well as the Battlefield Heroes team has, then we may see even more of these free-to-play online titles from the company.

#demo THQ, responding to community demand, has shed light on a few details about its upcoming UFC Undisputed 2010 demo. One of those details is not the demo's release date, although THQ hopes that will arrive before April 25. More »

How appropriate, you click like a cow!

That's right -- screenshot. LucasArts has released a single screenshot of the upcoming remake of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. For comparison, two screens of the original version, including one of the same scene shown above, have been re-released. Wood ya chuck it out?

The images come courtesy of the Monkey Island Facebook page, which promises the release of more screens every day. We must say, Guybrush is certainly looking more piratical this time around. Check out the new screens in the gallery below and keep an eye on the Monkey Island Facebook page for more images in the coming days. (The other, of course, should remain appropriately covered with an eye patch.)

#clothing Top shelf streetwear label The Hundreds is tapping the NES collector curiosity Stadium Events—which fetches a pretty penny on eBay these days—for their spring line of tees, a classy and understated reference from the Los Angeles based brand. More »

Our impressions and observations about today's flash-memory-enabling Dashboard update.

Just over a month after announcing a high-profile publishing arrangement with EA Partners for the XBLA and PSN release of DeathSpank, the game's creator (and locker room pinup at Joystiq HQ) Ron Gilbert announced on his personal blog that he has "left Hothead," the development team behind the game. Gilbert takes his leave as "the creative and production phases" on DeathSpank are ending and the "long and winding road of certification and testing" for the console (and "REDACTED" ... maybe PC?) versions are beginning; however, he isn't leaving the game behind. "I will be working closely with EA and Hothead on the PR for DeathSpank as the release date of [REDACTED] draws closer," he writes, cheekily poking fun at, well, posts just like this one we imagine.

Last month, Penny Arcade's Jerry Holkins told Joystiq that development on Penny Arcade Adventures was ending prematurely in large part so Hothead could focus on Deathspank. "Hothead has DeathSpank and they have a chance to do something really cool with it," Holkins said. "And they need to have an opportunity to make it incredible."

With a perceived surfeit of free time, Gilbert promises to "blog more" and remember his Twitter password ... which it appears he hasn't done yet. We've asked Hothead Games to comment on Gilbert's posting. We'll let you know what we hear back.

Reviewing the push for an R18+ classification for video games in Australia.

Coming from a GameStop listing… Thanks to Kutage for the heads up!

Reviewing the push for an R18+ classification for video games in Australia.

For the third year in a row, Microsoft hosted a community poll on Xbox Live to determine the best Xbox Live Arcade games as judged by the players. And like last year, when Joystiq favorite Braid was overthrown by those persistent party castle crashers, 2009's "Best Overall Arcade Game" goes to Trials HD over Joystiq Best of 2009 winners Shadow Complex and 'Splosion Man (which both did manage to win lesser awards in the Xbox Live poll).

We've posted the complete list of awards and winners, which also include Battlefield 1943, Hasbro Family Game Night and Banjo-Tooie, after the break. What, no love for Watchmen: The End is Nigh? We demand a recount!

Reviewing the push for an R18+ classification for video games in Australia.

#brilliant It's awesome enough that Rooster Teeth would rig up a Ford with a third-person camera, to attempt to drive like one does in a video game. What really makes this video shine are the Yakuza extras karate-kicking the test subjects. More »