New Games |
- Sony says goodbye to 2014 with a PSN flash sale
- Contest: Win a PlayStation TV and an Xbox One controller courtesy of Titan One!
- Anime app Crunchyroll is now available for Wii U
- The award for best world design of 2014 goes to...
- Toys"R"Us sending out amiibo discount codes to those who had canceled orders
- Review: Xeodrifter
- Whoa: Wind Waker map re-created in LEGO form
- What do you think of 'weekly resets' in online games?
- Report: PSN and Xbox Live down after DDoS attack
- Nintendo Download: Duck Hunt
- Duck Hunt on the Wii U Virtual Console is too easy
| Sony says goodbye to 2014 with a PSN flash sale Posted: 25 Dec 2014 01:00 PM PST Find any PSN gift cards under your Christmas tree this year? Well, as luck would have it, there's a flash sale going on right now to help you stretch that newly acquired credit as far as possible. The deals aren't overly stellar, outside of perhaps The Walking Dead Season 2 for $6.25. You can also grab Akiba's Trip 2 for $24, Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris at $13.39, and a smattering of hot games like The Evil Within and Dragon Age: Inquisition in the $30-40 range. The sale draws to a close at 9am PST on Monday, December 29. See the full listing here. Flash Sale: End of Year Discounts on 30+ Games [PlayStation Blog] |
| Contest: Win a PlayStation TV and an Xbox One controller courtesy of Titan One! Posted: 25 Dec 2014 12:00 PM PST To celebrate the news that their Titan One cross-compatibility device now offers full support for Sony's PlayStation TV, our friends at ConsoleTuner are offering up a PlayStation TV, Xbox One controller, and Titan One adapter to one lucky Dtoider! The PS TV is just the latest in the long line of devices supported by the Titan One, which allows cross-play between your favorite consoles and controllers, controller modding, and more! That means you can, for example, plug a Microsoft controller into a piece of Sony hardware (or vice versa) and have it work seamlessly, right out of the box. It's pretty awesome! For a chance to try this out for yourself, just leave a comment in the thread below! Limit one entry per person, and you have until next Wednesday, December 31 at 11:59pm Pacific to enter. Contest is open to anyone with a US mailing address (unless you're a HUGE member, of course). Good luck! And remember, our Huge Members get automatic entry into all contests (and double entries if you enter one manually), exclusive beta code giveaways for upcoming games, ad-free browsing, and more! And most of all, your $3's a month helps directly support the site you love. Try us out! |
| Anime app Crunchyroll is now available for Wii U Posted: 25 Dec 2014 11:00 AM PST Crunchyroll is pretty cool, right? I'll admit: I don't really know from experience. The only anime stuff I have watched lately have been Miyazaki films and the Professor Layton anime. But following people like our former Editor-in-Chief Dale North leads me to believe that Crunchyroll is the way to go for watching anime outside of Japan. Starting today, Crunchyroll is available for the Wii U. Using it requires a premium Crunchyroll membership, which runs about $12 per month. Any new members wanting to dip his toes into the cartoon waters can get a free 14-day membership through the Wii U app. |
| The award for best world design of 2014 goes to... Posted: 25 Dec 2014 10:00 AM PST [Image credit: Mike Lambert] Growing up, a lot of kids I knew liked to try to sound grown up by saying they played videogames "for the story". Maybe they had adapted the phrase from the adults they saw on TV who said they read Playboy magazine "for the articles". Regardless, the stories in the games they loved were often terrible, and they weren't the only ones. I'm not one to point fingers. There was a time when this was some of my favorite storytelling ever, in gaming or otherwise. So why are we so enthralled with bad stories? I can only speak for myself when I say that the world crafting in a game can often compensate for failings in narrative. When we watch a good movie or read a good book, effective storytelling can transport us to other worlds. A game doesn't need to rely on storytelling to do that. Instead, we can skip over the storytelling part through methods unique to gaming as a medium, planting us directly into their worlds through techniques that we're still learning to truly understand. This year in videogames brought many amazing worlds to life. The write-in votes for this category, including Tomodachi Life, Shovel Knight, Broken Age: Act 1, Bayonetta 2, Hohokum, and Extrasolar are about as varied a bunch of games as you could expect to see. That came across in the voting as well, where our staff's preferences were on full display. One staff member would give nearly every vote to South Park, where another would place the game at the bottom of the barrel. In the end, we had yet another three way tie for third place between Valiant Hearts, Five Nights at Freddy's, and Dragon Age: Inquisition. That left two games to fight it out, Bravely Default and Alien: Isolation, with just a vote between them deciding the winner. Read on to find out who came out on top, and don't forget to vote in our reader's poll on the way out. |
| Toys"R"Us sending out amiibo discount codes to those who had canceled orders Posted: 25 Dec 2014 08:41 AM PST [Update: Pit seems to be back out of stock.] It looks like the Lucario incident of 12/19 is coming to an end. After abrubtly canceling hundreds of orders for their exclusive Lucario amiibo, Toys"R"Us has re-instated some orders, and promised another group of people (who payed with PayPal or a gift card) another means of ordering. That method is clear as of this week. If you were in the fabled "group two," check your email now, as you may have a redemption code for Lucario or some of your canceled Wave 3 orders. The affected amiibo are currently $999 online, so the coupon will bring it back down to $10.99 -- ensuring that scalpers can't grab your stock. The elusive Pit and Little Mac are also in stock now at GameStop.com. Go ahead and grab them at the aforementioned links! |
| Posted: 25 Dec 2014 06:00 AM PST A lot of the kids who grew up with Metroid, Super Mario Bros., and The Legend of Zelda are now older than than their creators were when those legendary Nintendo franchises were first released. Some of those kids are now videogame developers themselves. Jools Watsham of Renegade Kid is one example. He created Xeodrifter in five months, fueled by financial stress, time constraints, and a raw love of Super Metroid. You can read about his process here. Showing your Metroid DNA on your sleeve is a blessing and a curse. It instantly communicates to the relatively large Metroid fan base that your game was made for them. It also sets the bar incredibly high. Begging for a comparison to Super Metroid is a dangerous thing. As we saw with the reaction to Other M, a disappointed Metroid fan can be an intensely spiteful force. My guess is Xeodrifter won't inspire that kind of caustic reaction in the Metroid faithful. If it were an official Metroid game, it would rank near or above many of the other games in the franchise. As long as you go into it expecting something short and sweet, it's hard to imagine that Metroid fans will be disappointed. |
| Whoa: Wind Waker map re-created in LEGO form Posted: 25 Dec 2014 05:00 AM PST The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is just one of those games you never forget. Although the slow sailing in the original version was a bit of a pain at times, and that scavenger hunt was even worse (both fixed in the Wii U remake), the world was just beautiful and a joy to explore. It sounds like a fan who goes by the name of BrucilSprout feels the same way, as having recreated the overworld from the game tile by tile. This was created by way of Lego Digital Designer Software in case you were wondering -- it's roughly 1,900 pieces if you want to make it yourself. Wind Waker [imgur] |
| What do you think of 'weekly resets' in online games? Posted: 25 Dec 2014 04:00 AM PST Many, many MMOs and other such online games (Destiny) have weekly "reset" periods. They usually take place on a Tuesday, and allow you earn raid loot and weekly quest rewards again, as well as earn whatever tokens or currency are part of the "cap" system, designed to elongate the game and prevent players from maxing out their gear instantly. For the most part, I'm ok with them, as I've gotten used to the idea over many years. But sometimes they annoy the hell out of me, as is the case during the 2014 holidays. This week I have a lot of family related happenings, and I probably won't be able to get to games like Final Fantasy XIV, effectively putting me a week behind my friends. It's not a huge deal in the slightest, but it got me thinking -- do people even like this concept in the first place? Do "caps" and limitations have any purpose in an MMO or loot-based game? Do you think developers do it to curb addictions or more often than not, just to keep people playing week after week? I'm interested to hear your thoughts whether you're a veteran of online games and deal with this issue all the time, or you are put off by the concept entirely and avoid them. |
| Report: PSN and Xbox Live down after DDoS attack Posted: 25 Dec 2014 03:00 AM PST I'm currently away from my consoles so I can't confirm this myself, but word on the street is that PSN and Xbox Live are both inaccessible. They've apparently been down off-and-on since last night. Business Insider reports that this "downtime" is a result of an attack from some group of bored internet people that like to annoy others in order to create the illusion that they have some power and/or purpose in this world. Good luck with that, annoying internet people. Definitely update us in a few years to let us know how much better you feel about yourself and the world you live in, knowing that your primary effect on the human race has been make a lot of people's lives slightly worse. Of course, it could be that the platforms are down due to routine maintenance and/or a big I hereby challenge the purported parties responsible for this attack to make that information public posthaste. Time to prove that you really are the smoothest criminals in all of internet land, if you dare. |
| Posted: 25 Dec 2014 01:45 AM PST In an interesting turn, Nintendo has a great Nintendo Download week for us on Christmas Day. On the Wii U there's Shantae and the Pirate's Curse with a few extra upgrades like off-TV play. Additionally there's Duck Hunt, Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World, Mario Party Advance on the Wii U Virtual Console. Spy Chamelon and Toon Tanks are also on the eShop. The 3DS isn't getting much, as it's only debuting Puzzlebox Setup and Super Mario Bros. Deluxe. In terms of sales, there's a LEGO discount event, a sale on the new 3DS version of Korra, and sales for Two Tribes, Level-5, and Ripstone games. |
| Duck Hunt on the Wii U Virtual Console is too easy Posted: 25 Dec 2014 01:00 AM PST [Update: Reader Darren Bolton reports you can turn off the cross-hairs by using the D-pad. Is this true, dear readers? Has my Duck Hunt Christmas been saved?] Nintendo released Duck Hunt on the Wii U Virtual Console today, complete with Wii Remote pointer control support. Pointer controls were one of my favorite things about the Wii. From Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition to the Resident Evil on-rails shooters, and even that silly old Dead Rising: Chop Til You Drop, aiming at things and shooting them with a gun-like controller proved to be a consistently exciting alternative to all the other murder methods available to me in videogames. With that in mind, I was excited to revisit Duck Hunt on the Wii U Virtual Console. It's the original "use a real-fake gun to kill!" family videogame sensation. An updated version on Nintendo's latest console would surely be worth a few bucks, right? Maybe not. If you found the original Duck Hunt to be painfully difficult, then maybe you'll prefer this new easy-operation port. The rest of you may be bored out of your skull. I'm getting flashbacks of Zombii Attack already. It's almost impossible to miss thanks to that cross-hair. I understand why they thought that was necessary, as the Wii remote pointer doesn't have 1:1 accuracy, but it's still a drag. Clay Pigeon mode offers a minor challenge at times, but the traditional duck hunt mode is more like repetitive duck slaughter now that you can see exactly where you're aiming. Hopefully Nintendo will offer an update that allows you to make the cross-hairs invisible. |
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