Hey Casey Hudson, executive producer of Mass Effect, what are you up to nowadays?
Ooh, cool. Thanks, Casey.
So what do you guys want to see in the next Mass Effect? And when do you think they should start changing the ending?
You know the ones. Sometimes you start a new game, and a few minutes in—before you even do anything—and ping! Achievement Unlocked. Congrats, you earned that achievement by, um, existing?
It's achievements like that, the gamer community at large seems to have decided, that give achievements a bad name. Developers give them out willy-nilly, and in doing so, these achievements mean less.
Hold up, Super Crate Box developer Rami Ismail says. What assumptions might we be making there about the people playing the game? As a different developer put it on Twitter recently,
Ismail illustrates this point further on his blog by telling us the story of his girlfriend picking up Assassin's Creed 2.
As every gamer knows, it's tough to sit back and watch someone walk into walls endlessly. She did exactly this in her first ten minutes of Assassins Creed II, frustration levels rising slowly to the point where she would just give up and never try again. After minutes that seemed like hours of desperately trying to steer a character straight ahead, she finally succeeded.
I used to argue that just achieving that goal in itself should be an adequate reward to motivate new gamers to continue playing, but I did not take into account that new gamers are fully aware walking should be a trivial tasks; they know that it isn't a tough challenge to walk straight in a game, even if it is fully reasonable for them to find it difficult having never used gamepads before. They realize it is not an accomplishment by any standard and thus the argument fails.
She was already tired of playing and about to quit when the console played that unmistakable notification sound: achievement unlocked.
That sound changed everything. Instead of quitting, she gave the game a few more minutes of her time—the achievement acting as an unobtrusive encouragement tool. That same achievement is one that many of us would receive with an eyeroll even though it's likely that the game in question has its share of respectable achievements meant for us in addition to the easy ones meant for less motivated players.
The constant barrage of morale boosts is something that casual gamers are acquainted with when acquainted with when playing titles "for their demographic." And this is where Ismail gets incisive: maybe that's the point. Maybe we recognize that anybody—even those pleb casual gamers—can get these achievements, and we don't like that.
As I started digging deeper, a realization set in: the problem these people were having wasn't so much with the achievement being too easy to unlock for them – the problem was that others could unlock it just as easily. It's the idea that if a ‘non-gamer' can do it, things can't be an achievement. At best, it's a cry for more challenging games – at its worst, it's an attempt to safeguard the exclusivity of hardcore gaming from newcomers. The underlying thought is simple: achievements are supposed to be for ‘real' gamers.
When you think about how fervent the gaming community can be about the lengths games go to make things accessible for casual gamers, and the sense that the challenge and difficulty in games is something of the past because of that endeavor, the derision of easy achievements makes sense.
Going further, even though "achievement" implies earning something, what that means can vary. For some, it's an achievement just to walk straight. Games marketed toward these folk know that this is the case, and will make all of the achievements easy—like awarding the purchase of in-game items. But it's not too common. You don't even have to get extreme about the example, though, the skill level from one gamer to another can vary. We can't assume that all achievements will accommodate all people, but making them all difficult—or all accessible, even—is typically not the answer.
We intimately know how great small acknowledgements of our actions can be. There's a reason games like to pile achievements, medals, commendations, and level-ups on us—these are things that remind us that we're progressing or that we're being awesome. That feeling shouldn't be exclusive to a small sect of people, and if developers can give it to new players without hindering the overall experience, why shouldn't they? As Ismail notes, the alternative is to put tedious tutorials that explain every. single. thing. to you while playing—and we all know how much that sucks.
There's nothing wrong with easy achievements, really. You get some points for your Gamerscore and are welcome to try achievements that are on your level, and those who aren't skilled in the same ways will feel as if they've earned something—making it more likely that they'll keep playing. Everyone wins—and is that such a bad thing?
An Argument For Easy Achievements [Rami Ismail]
Image made possible by technology ninja
I've had the Wii U for one day, and the way I play console games at home has already been forever transformed. I think you should know how. It's the only rational reason I have for sharing half of the floor plan of my apartment with you. (Please don't turn it into a Counter-Strike map!)
If you're at all interested in the Wii U, this is important.
Nintendo sent me a Wii U earlier this week. I got it yesterday and took it home. I set it up in my living room (you can see its location in the floor plan above). I powered on the new Super Mario Bros. game it's launching with. The game's graphics appear on your TV and on the Wii U's GamePad—the signature controller with the six-inch screen—at the same time.
I looked down at the GamePad.
I started playing.
Then I started walking around my house and learned the three things about the Wii U that will literally reshape how I play console games at home.
See, most consoles force you to play their games on your TV, so I can only play an Xbox 360 game on my TV. The PS3 clumsily does let you stream some games to the PSP, but I could never get that "Remote Play" feature to work. (I should try it with my Vita but haven't yet.)
The Wii U, however, lets any game that supports "off-TV play" run on the controller. This controller is wireless, which means... maybe I could play New Super Mario Bros.—oh, I don't know—in the bathroom?
Nintendo suggests that the GamePad can work up to a range of 26 1/4 feet, but that's presumably under ideal conditions: big open rooms, through thin walls, etc. I live in a pre-war condo in Brooklyn New York. The walls are thick. My WiFi router, which is in my bedroom, can't get its signal through more than two walls (it gets into my dining room but not beyond into the kitchen). So... the Wii U?
The results of my test:
Click the top image of this post to get a better look at the Wii U's range in my home. It will differ in yours.
I'm not sure I can effectively convey how odd it is to have these new options for playing console games at home. It's not quite like the shock I felt in the late 90s when I got a cell phone and was suddenly able to make phone calls while walking down the street, but we're in the same ballpark at least. It's impressive and exciting to have these new options, and I'm curious to see how widely-implemented the support for off-TV play will be. I'm also curious if advances in tablet gaming and dedicated handhelds will diminish how impressive this is in the coming years. But, for now, the prospect of playing a new console Zelda in various rooms of my house? I'm into it.
A few extra notes about the test I ran: 1) The GamePad also ran Mario when I went out my apartment's front door, closed it behind me and walked halfway down the stairs. 2) As you reach the GamePad's outer range, the framerate of the Mario game begins to get choppy, but, oddly, the chop is more pronounced when you're walking to that outer range and then smooths out if you stand still. 3) I've only tested this with New Super Mario Bros. U and therefore have no idea if any of these tests would have gone differently with different games. I don't see why they would, but you never know.
We'll have tons more on the Wii U in the days and weeks to come. The system will be out on November 18.
Looking for a way to earn more Mastery Stars in ChefVille without cooking some of the more difficult dishes? You can now earn stars via the brand new Sandwich Station that Bello has delivered to your restaurant for free. This comes via a three-part quest series called "Sandwich Situation," which sees you building the Sandwich Station and, of course, cooking dishes available within.
The Tower of Bello
• Place and Finish the Sandwich Station
• Serve 5 Bello's Huge Hoagies
• Cook 1 Roast Beef Sandwich
The Sandwich Station is a full-sized appliance that requires three energy to "unwrap." From there, you'll need to collect a variety of building materials to finish it off. You'll need to collect seven Spreadable Secrets via general news posts on your wall, while another seven Sandwich Suggestions must be earned by sending out individual requests to friends.
While you're waiting for those ingredients to arrive, you can cook the Roast Beef Sandwich on the Broiler using two Garlic Toast, five Sirloin Beef and four Salts. This dish takes 16 hours to prepare, but thankfully, you just need to "cook" it for this quest, and not actually serve it.
Finally, the Bello's Huge Hoagie recipe is available after you've finished the Sandwich Station. It requires three Wheat Bread, two Sirloin Beef and three Wild Mushrooms to cook, and takes just one minute to finish. When you complete this quest, you'll receive three Mayonnaise, 50 coins, and will unlock a new dish: the Chicken Salad Sandwich.
Moving On Up!
• Serve 5 Chicken Salad Sandwiches
• Give Chef's Service with 10 Turkey Paninis
• Ask for 8 Frilly Toothpicks
The Frilly Toothpicks are earned by posting a general request for the items to your news feed. Remember to check out our general link for sorting your news feed to only ChefVille posts to help you make progress faster. As for the cooking tasks, the Turkey Panini sandwich can be cooked in just five minutes using two Wheat Bread, four Turkeys and two Mixed Greens each. If you're like many players, you likely have a ton of Turkeys in storage, so cooking a few of these should be no problem. As for the Chicken Salad Sandwich, this takes a bit longer to cook (at five minutes), and requires four Chicken, two Wheat Bread, and three Mayonnaise to prepare. Luckily, if you've built your Mayonnaise Dispenser, you'll have a permanent way to earn more Mayonnaise, making this quest easier to complete in the long run. This quest series will continue to expand in the future, as we learn more about what makes these quests tick.
Republished with permission from:
Brandy Shaul is an editor at Games.com
Warning: MAJOR spoilers in this post, video, everywhere, just leave.
If you're not up for the task of completing Halo 4's campaign on the hardest—aka Legendary—difficulty, or are just too antsy to wait for it, feel free to watch GameFront's spoilery video above.
You get the tiniest, briefest glimpse at the man under the helmet for the first time in the franchise's history.
Halo 4: Master Chief's Face (Unmasked) - Legendary Ending [SPOILER] [YouTube]
Grand Theft Auto V will star three protagonists. All male. Here they are.
This comes courtesy the December cover of Game Informer, which you can see in its entirety here:
This news confirms what Kotaku reported last year: both that it will be set in Los Santos, Rockstar's take on Los Angeles, and that it will have more than one playable lead character. Grand Theft Auto V is slated for Spring 2013 on PS3 and Xbox 360.
MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic is officially going free to play on November 15, EA confirmed today.
The game launched late last year, to positive reviews, but had trouble holding onto a subscriber base. EA announced in July that SW:TOR would transition to a free-to-play game this fall, but didn't provide a specific date.
Players reading early announcements about which features would and would not be included for free felt that the limitations were excessively restrictive, and EA made some tweaks in response. The publisher has also added and enhanced its reward program for existing and returning subscribers; former subscribers who reactivate by December 20 will receive complimentary Cartel Coins for their prior paid months.
Old Republic lead designer Damion Schubert posted an update yesterday on the game's official site, describing the philosophy behind the transition and progress the team has made so far, with the target launch date now only one week away.
Is Halo 4's multiplayer different from what you remember? In some respects—new weapons and armor, call-in ordnance drops, map markers that show where special weapons are located (and when they disappear)—yes, it is different.
But it's also still a really polished game, with fun maps and an enormous amount of customization options for both your Spartan as well as your game and what mode you're playing. And if you're still not satisfied, you can create whatever honor-based rules you like in your own set-up in Forge mode.
To give you a sense of what the multiplayer feels like, above is a montage video of me killing people a lot. I know I'm not the most amazing player you've ever seen. If I was, I would be streaming every moment of my game-time on Twitch.tv instead of plastering it here for informative purposes. In fact, here's a montage of me dying a hell of a lot, too.
Whether it's from being silly and trying to use the Warthog to ram into people at an awkward angle, or from freaking the F out when being attacked by a fast-moving Flood enemy, or, hell, this being the first time I got my hands on the game, I am definitely not immortal. Feel free to poke at my immortality.
Photoshop artist Valentin Baguirov used a combination of Photoshop and Valve's Source Filmmaker to create these movie poster beauties. Drag the slider over to compare and contrast.
You can view the full-sized versions—both original poster and Team Fortress 2 poster—below.
TF2 Movie posters [Behance via Dotcore]
A lot of people are worried about The Elder Scrolls Online, a Bethesda-published online game set in the world of their fantasy RPG series, which includes games like Skyrim and Morrowind.
But I must say, this video makes the upcoming game look pretty good. Some spectacular art. What do you think? Can Bethesda convince you to jump into another MMORPG?
