Small Steps or Giant Leaps? The True Next Gen Battle

Now that E3 is finished for another year, the show has left us with a blur of new information regarding the coming year. There were some new Ips, some long dormant franchises are being resurrected, existing series’ are being continued, but this was no ordinary year for E3, it was a transition year. The big news from the show was a more formal detailing of the next generation consoles – Microsoft in one corner with their Xbox One, and Sony in the other with Playstation 4. While the reveals of new consoles and their software are usually an even to savor, much of the spectacle this year fell flat. People didn’t seem to be wowed by executive’s espousing the ways in which the leap from one generation to the next will transform the way we play (and experience) games. No, people seemed to...

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The Lesser of Two Evils

When Resident Evil was first unleashed upon the gaming world in 1996, few people could probably imagine the tumultuous struggle with identity into which the series would eventually descend. In many ways, Resident Evil was the quintessential product of its generation – a game whose design was very much informed by the technical limitations of Sony’s first Playstation. As the series and the hardware upon which it appears have evolved, so have the foundational elements of the series. The quality of the character models has risen significantly, fixed viewing perspectives have given way to a fully player controlled camera, and the detailed yet flat pre-rendered backgrounds have long since given way to fully three-dimensional environments. Yet despite the technological advances the series...

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Press [A] to Start is live!

Press A to Start. What does that phrase mean to you? Maybe it represents the anticipated first step into an exciting journey? Maybe it doesn’t do much more than conjure up a variety of good memories spanning the lifetime of a beloved hobby. Maybe it represents something different altogether. To me, it represents the beginning of a dialogue – a conversation between myself, friends, and just as importantly - the digital realization of all the hard work by any given dev team. In fact, some of my most cherished gaming memories involve talking about games, just as much as playing them. But what then does the conversation revolve around? Gameplay? Sure, that’s a part of it. Narrative? That has a place too. The truth is, games can spawn any number of topics, from a variety of different...

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