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| Posted: 16 Dec 2011 08:45 AM PST
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| Saving the System II: More Failed Consoles that Went Wrong Instead of Right Posted: 16 Dec 2011 02:44 AM PST Failed game systems come in two flavors. Some are simply bad ideas, conceived in delusion and marketed in hubris. These systems, one could argue, deserve to die early and unpleasantly. Other systems aren’t to blame for their downfalls. They fail because something went wrong at a higher level, and they end up the victims of a few bad decisions, misguided marketing, or the specter of internal corporate squabbling. We’ve covered three of these unfairly doomed systems before, and now we return to the halls of failure and the game systems that rest there. We’re playing by the same rules, so we won’t change a console’s internal, game-playing capabilities. We’ll just look at what these three game platforms could’ve done to succeed — and what happened when they didn’t. The Atari LynxThe close of the 1980s found Atari in an awkward position. The company had survived the console crash of 1983, but the shakeout let Nintendo seize the reins of the industry. Atari, once the dominant force in game consoles, saw the Atari 7800 beaten thoroughly by Nintendo’s crushingly popular NES. Atari would try again, this time in the handheld market. As Nintendo prepared its black-and-white Game Boy for a 1989 launch, Atari planned a counterattack. A weapon was found at Epyx, where Amiga designers R.J. Mical and Dave Needle created a portable system called the Handy in 1987. Atari bought the device, rechristened it the Lynx, and debuted it in September 1989, only a month after the Game Boy. The two systems forged different paths. A rampant success, the Game Boy went through several redesigns and wasn’t retired until 1998. The Lynx let out a final breath by 1994, with only a fraction of the Game Boy’s market share. Perhaps there was no way to beat Nintendo, but the Atari Lynx might well have stuck it out. Make it Smaller and Longer-LastingHandheld game units existed before 1989, but they were usually single-game diversions with basic displays. The Game Boy and Lynx offered the interchangeable cartridges of a home system, and the games they ran felt much like the things you’d see on an NES or, in the Lynx’s case, a decent computer of the era. Most importantly, they were portable. Kids could throw the systems in their backpacks and pockets, and they could play them without tying up the television. And here the Game Boy excelled. Nintendo luminary Gunpei Yokoi designed a system that offered the responsive controls of an NES pad in a device not that much larger than a point-and-shoot camera. The Lynx had to be bigger by necessity: it had a large color screen and a design that allowed left-handed players to flip the system and use the D-pad on the other side. But it also needed to last.  What Happened Instead: Lynx games looked better than the Game Boy’s black-and-white display, but the system couldn’t run them for extended periods. The Lynx was lucky to squeeze five hours from six AA batteries, while the Game Boy lasted twice as long with fewer batteries. “I rarely put batteries in my Lynx,” recalls Chris Bieniek, who reviewed and previewed Lynx games extensively at VideoGames Computer Entertainment. “It just wasn’t worth it to play without the power adapter. On the other hand, people tend to forget how long you could play the original Game Boy on a set of four AAs. It was a pretty good, long time. For somebody like me who played both systems regularly, it seemed like an eternity compared to what you’d get out of the Lynx, which could suck six batteries dry in an afternoon.” The Lynx was also a bit too big. Atari went with a large, bone-shaped chunk of gray plastic, with plenty of grip space and two separate buttons for ON and OFF. It was nearly twice the Game Boy’s size, and it proved cumbersome to carry around. Lynx co-designer R.J. Mical attributes the handheld’s size to focus groups, who suggested a large system… and then complained that Atari’s final design was too large. “It might have been a few pennies cheaper, but not enough to change the price, I don’t think,” Mical says. “But people would have thought differently about it, and that would have made a huge difference… no pun intended.” Atari redesigned the Lynx in 1991, resulting in a smaller system with better grips, a lower price, and better battery life. By the time the Lynx II came out, however, it was competing against the Game Gear as well as the Game Boy… and many players had already decided against Atari. Remake Atari’s ImageTechnical comparisons were one thing, but Atari truly suffered when pitted against Nintendo’s brand. Pervasive and kid-friendly, Nintendo was buoyed by its own magazine and marketing that made the company’s name synonymous with video games in the late 1980s. This success came at Atari’s expense. “Nintendo tried to rebuild the trust of retailers and consumers by drawing a clear distinction between its products and the bloated, headed-for-a-crash games business of the early ’80s,” says Bieniek. “Sullying Atari’s reputation was one unavoidable side effect of those efforts.” Atari needed a makeover to refashion itself and its systems into valid rivals of Nintendo. Sega did as much for itself in the early 1990s, mocking Nintendo with catchy marketing. Atari could try that, but first it would need to shake the dead weight of an era gone by.  What Happened Instead: Atari mounted a meager offensive. Perhaps inspired by Sega, the Lynx’s marketing teams devised a few confrontational ads, and one TV commercial opened with the unsubtle “You gonna buy the same old game, boy?” It did little good against Nintendo’s defenses. “Comparing the Lynx and the Game Boy is almost an apples-to-oranges proposition,” Bieniek says. “People weren’t going to the store looking for a portable game system and weighing the merits of the available handhelds. In a scenario like that, who would choose a blurry, Gatorade-colored LCD screen over a color display? The truth is that the specs didn’t matter much. They bought the Game Boy because it was a new game system from the company that made the NES, which was awesome. And if you look at it that way, maybe they didn’t buy the Lynx because it was a new game system from the company that made the VCS, which was old hat.” Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Review Posted: 16 Dec 2011 02:44 AM PST Skyrim is a serious Game of the Year contender, bringing some incredible layered questing into the modern gaming age, and offering a sweeping world full of Like Oblivion before it, Skyrim lets the gamer explore the massive world at their leisure, using any combination of spells, arrows and melee to fight off the hordes of enemies that litter the dungeons and castles. There are a lot of places to explore, and although the initial map seems a bit limited, it's absolutely stuffed to the gills with things to do, with many caves and dungeons going down many levels. In Skyrim, Bethesda has attempted to avoid the repetition of previous Elder Scrolls games by giving most areas their own identity, story and atmosphere. It's both wonderfully believable and immersive. A brief intro sets the scene, as your character, later revealed to be Dragonborn – people with the ability to speak the Dragon language and perform Shouts – has been unwittingly caught up in a civil rebellion. Just as your hero is about to be executed, unforeseen events break you loose and thrust you into the open world. From there, you are on your own, and despite a lengthy and impressive main quest line to complete, most players will quickly find themselves diverted by a world full of interesting people and fun stuff to do. The side quests alone number in the hundreds, and are often strung together in storylines that make other titles look bare, and the volume of things to do at times can be overwhelming. It's easy to spend many hours of game time hunting and crafting to make a set of armour, but it never feels like a chore – in fact, it's usually a lot of fun. One of the stand-out side quests on offer involves a random drinking game in a small village. Downing several tankards of ale leads to your character blacking One of the first things you'll notice on firing up the game is the visuals – although Bethesda is still hard at work tidying up some texture glitches, the PC version absolutely sings when running on a rig with a relatively modest spec. Although the draw distance and model quality seem only modestly better than the console versions, the leap is big enough to sway the choosy gamer towards the keyboard and mouse. But alas, the controls – and the PC loses points here – offer a set up that is clearly intended for the console market, as keyboard compatibility occasionally becoming a slight struggle. Plugging in a controller helps, but vanilla PC Skyrim has annoying menu to mouse interaction, a low vertical view movement, and a lack of key remapping which grates somewhat – Bethesda is working on fixes, however, and a simple search of the web throws up all manner of mods and patch commands to help out. And what PC review would be complete without a bit of news on the mods available? In short, the modding community has been busy since launch, with some classic additions to improve and streamline the game for the PC. The best ones around currently deal in visual tweaks and graphics enhancements, but if Oblivion is anything to go by, the future holds a lot of excellent content for PC gamers. For that alone, the PC version is worth every penny. A quick line on some of the glitches found in game – yes, it's expected of every Bethesda game to be glitchy, but at times Skyrim can be a bit of a mess. Surprisingly, a few laughable issues returned from previous games, but the odd problem resulted in a frustrating need to reload a save – luckily, Bethesda are shipping patches regularly to fix all the issues as they crop up. Known issues already out there in the wild include some side quests randomly glitching so that But, as anyone you ask will tell you, it's a Bethesda game – most of us can overlook the silliness for what is clearly an immense piece of work, and the new benchmark for RPGs and single player games as a whole. It can be a tiny bit rough on the odd occasion, but half an hour spent tweaking and patching really make the game a masterpiece. Skyrim really deserves every accolade it's getting right now, as the sheer depth of character and gameplay is truly mind blowing. With enough quests to make an MMO blush, and storylines that could have come from RPG classics of yesteryear, it's hard to think of anyone who wouldn't enjoy this game. This is a welcome change of pace, especially in another season of rehashes and sequels to repetitive genres. And as for the ability to mod, tweak and tinker, the PC version is the one to get, because in six months time, you'll thank us for the recommendation. 9/10 Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Actually, You Can’t Easily Switch PSN Accounts on Vita Posted: 15 Dec 2011 02:43 PM PST Having already contradicted itself once before, Sony now says it is not possible to switch between PlayStation Network accounts on a PlayStation Vita without a factory reset. Catalogs handed out at a Vita event in Japan earlier this month contained an FAQ, and among the questions it answered was one regarding the ability to use more than one PSN account on the same system. It stated a factory reset was needed before another account could be logged into, thereby eliminating any convenient way of using multiple accounts on the same system. This is important not just to those who want to share the system with a fellow PSN account holder, but also those who wish to create a foreign PSN account for the purpose of accessing digital content not available in their region. A Sony spokesperson then claimed this wasn’t the case, and that buying multiple Vita memory cards would make it possible to juggle more than one account on a single system. A factory reset would, however, still be required for anyone wanting to log in to a different account with only one memory card. At least until the next clarifying statement comes along, Sony says a factory reset is needed to switch PSN accounts, regardless of your memory card situation. “[The] PSN account is tied to the hardware and the memory card, not just the card, which means that if a second person is using your Vita, it’s not just a case of switching out memory cards, it’s clearing out all of your saved data on the Vita itself when you do the factory reset,” a Sony representative told Wired. “In other words, PlayStation Vita is intended to be played by only one user.” Although the multiple memory card solution wasn’t exactly ideal, it was at least a method for sharing the system. Vita is set to be released in just two days’ time, on December 17, in Japan (where gamers seem eager to get their hands on it). It’ll then be out in North America and Europe on February 22. Those who pre-order the First Edition bundle will get it a week early, on February 15. In the meantime, a handful of new Vita game trailers were just recently released — check them out here. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Posted: 15 Dec 2011 02:43 PM PST
Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
secrets and mysticism rarely found outside the classic RPG genre. But yet again, Bethesda has shown us why it is streets ahead of the competition, by simply delivering an incredible single player campaign with enough variety, intrigue, and good old fashioned, solid gameplay that lasts several months.
out and waking up in a temple way across the map. As it happens, you trashed the temple in a drunken frenzy, and the resident priest is none too happy. Retracing your steps in a similar vein to the movie The Hangover, you discover exactly what you got up to while out of your skull, and attempt to put it right. Once the mystery is resolved, you will likely look at your game clock to discover that you've yet again lost two hours to a seemingly random side quest that hit you out of nowhere.
they can't be completed, completed side quests remaining as unfinished on your quest journal, and there's also the little matter of dragons flying backwards.
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