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- Lara Croft and the Reinvention of Game Heroes
- Butterfly Sword Online (CN)
- I Played Blizzard DOTA and Died, and That’s OK
| Lara Croft and the Reinvention of Game Heroes Posted: 23 Oct 2011 07:48 AM PDT
In hindsight, the prologue of Core’s Tomb Raider is painful to watch, full of primitive computer-generated graphics, clunky writing, and rough acting. 15 years ago, however, this minute-long CG sequence represented the state-of-the-art. People found its tin-eared banter entertaining and, on top of that, thought its awkward-looking heroine was sexy. It seems laughable today, but Lara Croft — whose not-entirely-selfless exploits in ancient ruins and caverns firmly established her as the eponymous tomb raider — was sold as a sex symbol. It wasn’t a joke then, though; eager gamers lapped it up. The Tomb Raider games sold millions of copies apiece, at least until monotonous sequels and aging technology bled away fans. More than that, Lara herself was an icon. Tomb Raider publisher Eidos quickly made her sex appeal the focus of their ads for the games and tried eagerly to recreate it for lesser games such as Deathtrap Dungeon and Fear Effect. Douglas Coupland, author of seminal pop culture treatises Generation X and Microserfs, penned a book about her importance. Irish rockers U2 plastered her image across their massive LED concert screens (though this was admittedly at the peak of PopMart, their Andy Kaufmann-esque piss take on media culture, so their reverence for Lara may or may not have been ironic). Oscar-winning sex-bomb Angelina Jolie was cast to play Lara for two silver-screen adventures. The string of models officially representing the character at industry events became fixtures of British gossip rags, and one even parlayed her turn as Lara into a high-profile Playboy spread. Yet in-game, Lara was an almost comical stick figure of a woman. Her spindly limbs seemed decidedly incapable of dragging the massive limestone cubes that comprised the puzzles and labyrinths of her hidden world. In detailed publicity renders, she appeared to be a caricature of an adolescent male’s sexual fantasy. Her simple facial features were dominated by frightfully beestung lips, while her unnaturally narrow waist served as an impossible connector between her large, torpedo-shape breasts and a set of hips better suited to primitive carvings of fertility goddesses. Nevertheless, gamers hunted to unearth mythical nude codes with the same ardor Lara herself displayed while retrieving lost relics from dusty ruins. Enterprising PC modders crafted a startling array of do-it-yourself “Nude Raider” patches of varying quality (the gamut ran from “blindingly terrible” to “has clearly never actually seen a real woman naked”). Countless console-playing Tomb Raider dudes, bereft of the patch option, settled for backing Lara into a corner of the conveniently grid-like level geometry so that the camera would swing around to focus squarely on the single sharp-angled wedge that comprised her chest. Wired Magazine pundit Clive Thompson has also speculated that Lara’s appeal stems from empathy as well as attraction. Thompson cited the slasher film theory of “the final girl” — that is, the lone survivor who turns the table on a murderous psychopath and comes out of the ordeal alive — finding that it “maps perfectly onto the success of Tomb Raider. “As with the slasher flicks, there’s a Final Girl dynamic,” Thompson wrote. “A constantly threatened woman, fighting for her very survival, attacking goons on every side — and a captive audience of young men. Playing as Croft was an emotionally catalytic experience. Young guys had played tons of male characters before, from Nintendo’s Mario to the anonymous marines of Doom. But being Lara was different; it got its hooks into their psyches like no game before.” Looking back across 15 years of hindsight, the manic and/or protective behavior that surrounded (and accelerated) Lara Croft’s meteoric rise to virtual stardom seems equal parts strange and sad. Even at the time, the series developed something of a stigma among people who made (not unjustified) assumptive leaps about the nature of the games based on the sexually charged imagery Eidos used to sell them. Yet both Tomb Raider and its leading lady represented important turning points in the maturation of the medium. It’s admittedly a painful phase of life to recall — a particularly awkward portion of adolescence — but from this robotic British Barbie doll and the curiously rigid world she inhabited sprang many tenets of modern video games. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Posted: 23 Oct 2011 01:47 AM PDT
Developed using the Unreal 3 Engine, some would say Butterfly Sword Online is yet another cookie-cutter glorified by its astounding graphics (based on Free to Play standards). Well, they are not wrong, but not exactly right either. There isn’t really a fixed class, with 3 character models each given 3 different weapons to choose from. The character models have their own bonus as well, with the big burly guy having more HP and defense. Let’s jump straight to combat. This is the closest we will find for action combat in an open world in recent years, Free to Play wise. The dreaded tab or left-click select and ugly red target ring is still there, but there is more to it. Normal attack requires players to press the “F” button repeatedly, like an action arcade game. You can just hit the “F” button until it hits a mob without selecting a target first. Most, if not all attacks, can hit multiple targets. The weapon I chose is a double blade, which is really fun. The first few skills mainly consist of totem-like blades placed on the ground, dealing AOE damage to nearby mobs, stunning mobs when get into range and even one which increases defense. Not really the skills I expected, but combat is still fast and furious. I am loathing the fact why 9you did not bother doing away the red target ring and place the default normal attack button to left click. I mean, if they really want to export the title overseas, a pure open world action martial arts MMO will no doubt be an amazing hit. I don’t get developers sometimes. The game also has various Qingong skills, like scaling walls, dashing and walking on water. However, there is no active dodge or block in the game. Coupled with the normal weapon upgrade systems which needs tons of cash items, it is a pity for me the graphics and combat ain’t in Age of Wulin (though I am not complaining). I will be playing more, so stay tuned to see if I have anything else to report as the Closed Beta continues! Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| I Played Blizzard DOTA and Died, and That’s OK Posted: 22 Oct 2011 07:46 PM PDT I’ve always been very, very intimidated by Defense of the Ancients. I never really caught wind of it until a few years ago, and by then if you were not in on it, you could never hope to catch up. Stories are legendary of the game’s community and, and… I’m afraid to play it, OK? So with some mild trepidation I went to play Blizzard DOTA today at Blizzcon, and really liked it. In fact as soon as I turn in this preview I’m going to go back to get in a few more matches. Blizzard DOTA takes the same formula of picking a Tank, DPS, Support, or Siege unit type and face off in a 5 v 5 match across a single map that has a variety of routes to the enemy base. The goal is for your team to knock out the enemy towers (that fire on you) while defending your towers, all the while making your way to the enemy base to destroy it. You’ll have mercenaries you can rally to your cause as long as you capture their camps located on the map. Sounds simple in theory but is incredibly complex in execution, especially if your teammates don’t work together. “Part of this is to make the game faster, more accessible,” explains Kaeo Milker, senior game producer on StarCraft 2. “We don’t want you to get in there for 60 to 90 minutes. That’s because in the traditional sense of the Dota-style games, they’re really tense, and there’s a lot of bickering. Even on your own team they’re yelling at you and it’s not a very pleasant experience.” So how does the team intend to fix one of the biggest issues with finding a balanced game for a variety of player skill sets? That’s easy: matchmaking. “Not only are we going to use our matchmaker to match you against someone of similar skill, equal skill level.” continues Milker. “We just wanted to get you into the heart of what these games are and what’s really fun about them.” As the title implies, the entire game is themed around characters from the Blizzard universe. So your team could be composed of Arthas (Tank), Kerrigan and Nova (DPS), Thrall (Support), and the Witch Doctor (Siege) as one example. As the match unfolds you gain XP from killing minions — who consistently stream out of both bases — and by defeating other players. Of course the easiest way to level up is to take out these minions, allowing you to upgrade specific powers. My most successful matches were playing as Arthas and it wasn’t long before my powers started to get upgraded on the battlefield. Once an upgrade occurred, I just had to click the glowing orb at the bottom of my screen to assign the upgrade. Nice and easy. His powers were Death Pack, which summoned an undead being who would assist me in my attacks and could help me rejuvenate my health if I were to instantly kill him. Arthas’ other powers were Death and Decay, an AOE attack that I combined with the Wrath of the Lich attack that would grab an enemy and pull them within range of my sword. My second match was playing with Nova… and that didn’t go so great. I kept trying to take out other players instead of concentrating my fire on minions, thus hampering my early game by not leveling up fast enough. Not to mention I wasn’t earning any money from the kills I produced on the battlefield. You can spend your coin back at your base on a number of things like Health or instant upgrades to your damage and health. The items are all clearly labeled and I never felt over burdened by the choices. A nice feature in Blizzard DOTA is the mounts. You can summon these at any time on the battlefield, and they get you back into the fight ASAP instead of having to run across a large section of the map to assist your team. There’s no solid release date for Blizzard DOTA, but Blizzard intends to ship it the same day as StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm. In addition there are numerous ways to play the game. If you only own Wings of Liberty, you can still play Blizzard DOTA (it’s a full conversation mod of Wings) and you can still play a stripped down version of it with the free version of SC2 that’s currently available. There’s also going to be a public beta “soon” so if this is a genre you’ve been intimidated by, Blizzard DOTA looks to be a great jumping on point for a lot of players — including me. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
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