Videogames highlights - March 2012
This is a pretty weird period for the gaming industry: the old Japanese stronghold is described as dying and closed on itself, the PC platform - that should theoretically be already dead ages ago from a gaming standpoint - is pointed at by the Epic veterans as the ideal place where to start developing new games, the renowned Smithsonian museum opens the doors of its long-awaited exhibition on the industry. Everything changes, even if it isn’t always for the better: “playing” with Dragon Ball Z on Kinect (Xbox 360) seems more like a wet nightmare than a dream come true…
Videogames highlights - February 2012
The new installment of my beloved/hated Videogames highlights (let’s call it “installment of the hopefully regained normality”) almost seems a first person shooters fair. Personally I would prefer to devote much more attention to the Half-Life sci-fi universe, but Gabe Newell says that it isn’t the case to stir things up too much before the time has come. Right: Half-Life 2: Episode 3 should be out just for Christmas 2007, so there is still room for rumors on improbable Steam consoles, BAFTA awards (Portal 2) and other niceties. Never mind, it means that I will spend time with Diablo III (coming out on the next 15th of May)!
Videogames highlights - January 2012
Finally the videogames highlights (pain and delight but mostly pain of this blog) return to their ordinary format, hoping that in the future I won’t have to torture my nights swimming in an amount of links and trailers well beyond the verge of tolerable. Before starting here is just a quick note about the Interactive Achievement Awards, given by the non-profit USA organization Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences during this year’s D.I.C.E. Summit: Skyrim, as predictable, ruled the show.
Videogames highlights - June-December 2011 special (part 2)
Here is the second part of the Videogames highlights special covering the last 7 months of 2011. In this case too, skimming of links and games collected in a so large period of time left out a good amount of nice things and other awful ones (Duke Nukem Forever, oh god…) but the final result pleases me anyway: there is so much good stuff to enjoy, gaming events to remember (Fus Roh Da! :-P) and little gems that in my opinion are worth all the attention they can get.
Videogames highlights - June-December 2011 special (part 1)
And after much waiting and trepidation (especially for myself), even the videogames highlights return on these pages with a maxi-update covering the last 7 months of 2011. While thinning the huge amount of links and games collected during the aforementioned period I’ve tried (as usual) to partly follow my personal tastes and partly listen to the industry ballyhooing horns, which have been able to stun the world anyway with events like E3 and related press conferences by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, Tokyo Game Show and the introduction of the PlayStation Vita console. There is so much stuff to digest, so now I close the intro and start discussing the single games pronto.
Videogames highlights - May 2011
With this new May installment, Sir Arthur’s Den video games highlights should finally return to their traditional monthly serialization. And even though it’s really just accidental, the choice my twisted mind made for the past month’s games pleases my hardcore PCist gamer’s nature: all things considered PC as a gaming platform always performs WAY BETTER than the industry windbags and the specialized “journalists” state, the DRM issue can be resolved with a bit of good will and the classics never go out of fashion. On the contrary.
Videogames highlights - October 2010-April 2011 part 2
So here is the second part of the videogames highlights spread over a too much long time frame to be allowed to happen again on these web pages (yes, it’s a promise; mostly to myself :-P). The titles featured below should represent the highest technological peak reached by the video gaming industry thus far, and among those there are games capable of excelling, for a reason or another (graphical resolution and clearness, superior controls accuracy), on PC rather than on console. After all the top grade developers say that too: the PC is a generation ahead of Xbox 360 and PS3. Crytek, don’t be shy: let’s say two 
Videogames highlights - October 2010-April 2011 part 1
A Video games highlights installment covering video gaming stuff (trailers, in particular) released during a seven-month timeframe? Why not… Besides letting me be on par with the news, the ride wiil be useful to clear the backlog while waiting for the E3. Furthermore I will divert my attention from horrors like the stratospheric evaluation of Zynga - a company developing “casual” shit with the aim of milking the idiots wasting their useless life on Facebook - compared to developers worth of the name. The installment has been conveniently split in two parts to be more manageable and smooth for reading - a solution I intend to use again in the future.
Videogames highlights - September 2010
Is a simple game better than a complex one? Are barebone game mechanics really the best starting point for an exciting gaming adventure? I’m not so persuaded about this: it’s true, when controls are few and the gameplay is prompt you can enter the game’s world with ease, but while browsing through the boundless oceans of retrogaming I often bump into games that are very far from the modern friendliness standards and yet as much compelling. I just hope that the rush to easiness of use won’t take away those games so difficult to master and still capable of paying back the experience with very high levels of satisfaction.
Videogames highlights - August 2010
Thus, let’s talk about video games again. And above all about the fact that everybody talk about them: the industry insiders ask themselves if it’s better for a game to be long, short or simply meaningful throughout the time it takes to be completed; USA college professors introduce modern videogame classics within their courses on humanity’s fundamental questions; the media go on arguing on the stupid question if video games are art or not (hint: yes, they are). Let them freely talk and gabble about video games: who writes, at least for the time being, is busy mostly playing them 
Videogames highlights - July 2010, Underdogs Edition
After the previous month’s feast of mainly “triple-A” games, this new round of videogaming highlights focuses for the large part on minor titles, original games and games anyway without great advertising campaigns so far. After all interactive entertainment has never been directly tied to the money spent by developers and publishers for its packaging in finished products. On the contrary: the more the gaming business becomes an “industry”, the less an eclectic and old-time player like me tends to care about just the big titles on the limelight. Big titles already receive all the attentions by everybody so it’s useless to state the obvious.
Videogames highlights - June 2010, E3 special
In the days between the 14th and 17th of June Los Angeles hosted the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the most important yearly exhibition of interactive entertainment where big names and small publishers showed an almost endless cornucopia of video games coming for the next months (and years). The E3 2010 edition was marked by publishers optimism for a market that suffers the economic crisis but hopes to return soon to make the same money they were used to. Many, too many sequels were showed, while the final result suggests a noticeable revival compared to the past editions. What follows is a personal survey of the stuff appeared during and around the video gaming show, where highly appealing games and underdogs with no big names behind them alternate as usual.
Videogames highlights - February-May 2010
I could continue to speak ill of the never too much abused downloadable contents (DLC) and video games digital delivery with my own words, but this time I will leave to Sony management official statements the task to chill the continuous, boring, stupid and annoying hype about an exclusively downloadable gaming future and other crap of this kind: 1) “I want it on the disc, that way when they buy it, they get it” - Rob Dyer, SCEA vice-president while commenting on the state of the DLC market; 2) The gloomy and failing UMD-free PSPGo “was introduced in a mature lifecycle to learn more about what the consumer wanted and we’ve definitely learnt a lot. Is that measured by success in sales? I don’t think it is” - words of Andrew House, SCEE president.
Videogames highlights - January 2010
I know, it has nearly become a kind of obsession yet I can’t help but talk about it: is the video games future within digital delivery? Bullshit. And so claims Sony after the disastrous “UMD-free” experiment of the awful PSP Go, hence this has to mean something. On the other hand console games (in this case PS3, but things aren’t any better on PC and Xbox 360) take up space, so much space, and downloading tens of Gigabytes before starting your game isn’t a practical thing and I don’t think it will be so soon. Meanwhile marketers and large dedicated chains say hello to the tiny weight of digital market. And I am with them
Videogames highlights - September-December 2009
Welcome to a new installment in the Videogames Highlights series. It is, considering the long period of time passed since the August one, a “remedial” post covering no less than the last four months of year 2009. These were intense months, from a video gaming standpoint, still the following contents collection is personal and variously assorted as usual. And seeing that there is so much to talk about I cut short with the intro and just report, after Stardock’s CEO opinion of the last time, the statements from UK accountable people for the three main gaming consoles (Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo) regarding the misleading theory according to which digital downloads should replace optical disks during the upcoming years.
Videogames highlights - August 2009
Likewise the improbable perspective to witness the extinction of joypads, mice & keyboards in the forthcoming (and faraway too) future I talked about the past month, the other pointless and ballyhooed media hype going strong these days is the one about ubiquitous digital delivery, ie the idea that sooner or later physical supports will be outclassed or replaced by on-line downloads on consoles and PC, it doesn’t mind if users have to deal with 50 Gigabytes or a few Megabytes sized games. It’s a complete nonsense, as Stardock CEO correctly points out in an interview with Shacknews.
Videogames highlights - July 2009
In this period there is a lot of talking about the new ways of interaction with entertainment devices and about the fact that things like Microsoft’s Project Natal would be destined, on the long run, to replace traditional controllers be they joypads, keyboards or mice. To me this seems more of an advertising nonsense than any other thing, the mouse lasted 40 years and there surely will be a valid reason to justify such a longevity. Of course, we’re all open to the future and tech evolution, but seeing myself playing to a remote descendant of one of the titles included in this videogaming compilation without a physical controller in my hands seems an unlikely perspective to say the least.
Videogames highlights - June 2009
This is a recession period and the videogaming industry suffers too, with a sales drop of 23% during May (for USA), a thump unseen since 2007. And yet the executives from the major companies in the field talk about sustained growth for a business that, in 2012, will be 55 billion dollars worth overall. Meanwhile market researches describe a “new golden age for entertainment software” and videogames permanently reside in two third of the American households. That’s an ideal condition, I say, to gather some relevant contents in what should be the last installment of videogames highlights’ old cycle before the new, more minimalistic setup.
Videogames highlights - May 2009
Ok I admit it, I’m a certified liar because if my personal review of old classics goes on tirelessly the amount of time required for a post of the series Videogames highlights is always the same, nay it’s getting worse. That’s the reason why I’ll change formula here, and instead of a monstrous and rebellious blob (at least for me writing it) containing any sort of thing I return to a less rich but more selected collection of videogaming stuff of the past month. Hoping that the June post won’t be on-line on September :-/
Videogames highlights - April 2009
It’s pretty interesting, from the perspective of someone steadily busy in revisiting old videogaming myths and old computer stuff in general, to immerse once a mouth in a stream of promotional stuff from the upcoming or recently published games. You can get a rather effective idea of how much time have passed since you secretly believed to be one of the few “chosen” people to know about this thing called “videogame”, and how much historical consciousness is precious to fully enjoy the wonders the market offers nowadays.
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