Last series was theblogabout platforms. Which one i thought was the best, which one the worst and which one missed its calling.

This week i follow withdevelopers.Along with the platformthey choose to develop for, without them we simply wouldn't have anything to play withh.

Best developer: Valve

Valve does shooters, that's their thing. Up until Space Marine, Relic were the RTS guys, Bioware the RPG guys and Valve the FPS guys. They are obviously not the first developer to choose to specialize in a certain type of games but few have been able to diversify so much and bring this high level of quality and polish over completely different games. From expertly paced single player experiences like Half-Life 2 and its episodes to fantastic multiplayer with Team Fortress 2, with some co-op zombie massacre goodness in Left 4 Dead and clever puzzle solving in Portal it seems very challenging to be a fan of shooters and not find at least one game in Valve's catalog that suit your tastes.

Worst developer: Square Enix

Up until the start of this generation Square Enix would have ranked pretty high up on my list of favorite and trusted developers. Having been a fan of most of their catalog of games since the early days of the SNES it pains me to see how badly they dropped the ball this generation. To me Final Fantasy XIII took all the best aspect of Final Fantasy X and threw them out the window while at the same time magnifying all of its worst traits. I know this game will always be very contentious among fans of the series, perhaps more then any other, but to me it just doesn't cut it. One game however i feel is very hard to defend even for the most fanatical fanboy is Final Fantasy XIV Online. That game was a disgrace at launch. Broken beyond belief and extremely insulting coming from a developer who already had years of experience with a successful MMO. There is just no excuse for that launch.

Also their habit of announcing games years before full production even begins (read FFXIII Versus) is ridiculous, this leads to expectations that are simply impossible to match and in the end do a lot more harms then good. They are also more then ever one of the leading company pushing remakes left and right instead of promoting new IPs. How many more time will they release Final Fantasy IV?

The pleasant surprise: The Indie and downloadable games revolution

This does not concern any one developer in particular but rather the indie scene as a whole. Indie games have always been around but they never had so much visibility and support from the platform makers and gaming press until this generation began. They make awesome games accessible to anyone for a low price and often bring with them some old and forgotten gameplay mechanics and modernize them. Side scrollers, dual stick shooters and Metroidvania ****of games were all but gone from home consoles all in favor of 3D environments before this indie and downloadable revolution took place. Games like Super Meat Boy, Limbo and World of Goo rank pretty high up among my favorite games of this generation and without those games to break the mold gaming today wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable as it is. In fact i think gaming is better then ever now and thanks to all the indie developers we can finally get the best of both world.

So those are my choices.

Here is my review for the witcher series , long time coming . Should have posted them a long while , still dont know why i didnt but anyway here are the reviews The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kingsand The Witcher: Enhanced Edition

Do check them out :)

Also got a mention in the community new for my review of Gears Of War 3

here's the link to that Gamer Reviews: Legacy Plays - News at GameSpot

And earned this sweet new emblem :D

I was thinking of creating a series of blogs about what is the best and worst about different topics related to this generation of the video game industry. ****cs like best and worst games and platforms of course will be covered but i'm also looking for ideas for original topics. Best and worst trends, business models, developers, publishers etc. This is where i need your input!

For this first best and worst i figured we should start at the very basic, platforms. Without a platform to play on there simply isn't anything to talk about.

Best platform: Steam

I say Steam but this really means every quality digital platform you can think of such as Onlive and GoG. Steam however is the one who made the biggest push towards bringing digital distribution to the masses without a doubt bringing a huge amount of visibility to a wider array of PC games. Also the crazy sales they have weekly do a lot to help mitigate this idea that PC gaming is expansive. Simplifying everything for everyone and creating this sense of community that you can have on Xbox Live and PSN and bringing it to the PC is one of the best thing to happen to PC games.

The PS3 and Xbox 360 are also both great systems but i felt that neither of them really did anything radically different and innovative. They played it safe and continued along the lines of their predecessors.

Worst platform: PSP

This one is really a shame. I have one, as well as a DS and i have more games for it and played far more often my PSP then my DS and yet i am forced to realize that in and of itself this portable system just doesn't have anything new or interesting to bring to the table. Playing gimped versions of PS2 games is not fun. The PSP and DS both came out at a time of great change in the portable scene with the emergence of smartphones just around the corner and while the DS remained a dedicated gaming machine it tried different things, offering gameplay not accessible anywhere else. The PSP was nothing more then the next logical step in bringing the home console experience to a handheld and this is no longer good enough, not when you have to choose which portable are you gonna carry with you.

The failed experiment: The Wii

This might not be a surprising choice. Everyone but maybe 3 people in the world though that the Wii was going to be a failure before it launched. I believed so too but i'm taking a different approach with this choice. I though it was going to fail but quickly outsold the 360 and its one year head start and never looked back and brought a huge amount of new players along the way and then something went terribly wrong. It just abandoned them. Was it Nintendo's fault, or did third party publishers just dropped the ball? Maybe a mix of both. The real issue however is; What happens to all of those new players now? Because make no mistake, just because those people didn't know much about games before does not mean they don't know when they are being served crap. It's hard to see how this can be a good thing for the industry and it's really sad because for the first time there have been 3 successful consoles out at the same time with one being completely different and this is a missed opportunity for great variety and innovation.

So there you go people. Don't agree with me? Then post your own choices and reasons! Agree with me but have other things so say about it? Post it!

The design of difficulty has changed greatly since the early days of video games. Arcade games were intentionally difficult in order to provoke the player into spending more money to play the games and to try beating them. Many NES games are notorious for their difficulty – from Ghouls and Ghosts to Mega Man. But as we near the current generation of games, many features have been introduced to make things easier and gentler for gamers, such as: regenerating health, an abundance of save points, and in-game hint systems.

Dark Souls is not like today's games.

Dark Souls is, no doubt, a success amongst consumers and critics alike. But there will obviously be a vocal demographic of players who absolutely hate the game for its seemingly unfair difficulty. Even I was scared off by the fact that the game prides itself on difficulty that harkens back to a time when beating games was about memorization of enemy spawns that were downright brutal to deal with the first time through.

I can safely say after a day of playing Dark Souls that it is a great game. But Dark Souls isn't your equal. It is an intimidating and powerful beast. You must respect the beast and learn how it behaves. For every challenge you overcome, the simple feeling of accomplishment is reward enough to push you further along. But for every mistake you make, Dark Souls is unrelenting in its torturous retribution.

Even by the first stage, which is formally the tutorial stage, you will most likely die if you decide to play without a guide. In fact, I died numerous times on a stage that's supposed to teach you the ropes.

In the first level proper, I died over 10 times before learning I was going in the wrong direction; while this particular path had tons of valuable loot, it was filled with enemies that you're not meant to fight during your early career in Dark Souls because of how incredibly tough they are.

In between my first real bonfire, which acts as the game's save points, and the second boss encounter, was an entire gauntlet I had to run filled with fire bomb throwing, ax wielding, shield brandishing undead. And if I wanted to go back to heal at the bonfire, they'd respawn so I'd have to do it all over again.

And the first time I actually managed to reach the second boss, I was mashed into an unrecognizable skid mark on the wall.

At this point, I was about ready to give up. My only experience with challenge driven games was Mega Man 9. I didn't want to fail again and lose the souls and humanity I managed to scrape together; but by some miracle, on my third try against the second boss, he fell off the rampart, dying instantly! The feeling of accomplishment was literally all I needed to continue on! My faith in Dark Souls was restored and even though I was still wary of booby traps ahead of me, I was convinced I could at least approach future problems intelligently after dying so many times. All the leveling up I had been doing in between was going to pay off.

After a minute of walking through empty halls, I was incinerated by a dragon.

This game has an amazing way of prodding you into appreciating the challenge it presents to you. After dying 10 times within the span of a half hour, I had incidentally farmed and grinded extra levels when I decided to retreat rather than continue. I had picked up somewhat rare drops, such as a new shield and a spear. And after countless retries, I managed to luck out a win against the second boss before being utterly destroyed by a new, insurmountable obstacle immediately afterward which would burn me to a charred husk if I so much as sneezed in its direction.

I was not angry at Dark Souls. It was at this point where I realized what Dark Souls was doing to me. It expected me to learn after every death. Just like Mega Man, there's always some sort of pattern; but beyond that, I had earned a few rare drops and managed to level up whenever I decided to be prudent. And after realizing the solution, probably after several deaths, the game rewarded me with souls, a brief respite, and then told me to do it again and to have fun with this new challenge, which was harder than before.

Certainly not everyone is going to like how Dark Souls handles. Newer gamers who grew up on Halo and New Super Mario Bros. Wii probably won't understand the charm of this kind of difficulty. But remember that Dark Soulsis not a bad game. It's a technical marvel that reminds us that games are supposed to challenge us down to our most basic instincts. Instead of throwing endless waves of enemies that you have to flank or monsters with predictable patterns of attack, Dark Souls gives us monsters that are just much more powerful than us and then it simply waits for us on the other side of the finish line before unveiling the next obstacle course.

And that's enough for me. I rented the game for only one day and died perhaps over 50 times by the end. But when I decided to return it, I understood what Dark Souls is all about.

Someday soon, I'll play it again, eager to pass that last impossible challenge, fully expecting another impossible challenge after that.

For Those interested here is the link

Gears Of War 3

Also check out reviews

Deus Ex - Human Revolution

Gaming is going to die soon ….

There is speculation that gaming as we know it will soon be dead. Gone will the days be where you could simply pick up a controller and toil away for hours exploring the galaxy's furthest reaches, or driving from one point in a city covered in crime as you find yourself taking people out to rise to power.

But what will you have instead? I mean surely there cannot be a life without video games? Life would become gray and humdrum. Video games will still exist. They will be replaced by multiplayer games in which you'll find yourself being blown apart by people who play this game every day whiles a 12 year old screams shrilly into your ear, "suck it noob, you totally suck at this!" But what if you're not into shooters? Well then maybe you should try something a little slower, where you can play with real people across the internet while you all try to decide which way to go, like some big road trip to the Black Gate of Mordor .


Part 1 – The dead art form
In late 2010, EA Games stated that singleplayer-only games were dead and that multiplayer is where it was at in terms of the innovation of games.(See here and here for the articles) While this is partially true that innovation is being seen in the use of online features and functions within games, pure multiplayer games have proven to be a bit of bust.

Right now, let's take a look at some multiplayer only games. Shadowrun, Brink, and who can forget Quake Wars: Enemy Territory ? Each of these games had a heck of backing from its creators in the form of its marketing as they tried to promote what they thought was the next big thing.



Many of these games did offer something new to the table. Take a look at the innovation that Shadowrun offered by bringing PC and 360 gamers together at the same time in the same game. This was unique and offered a chance for people to finally bridge the gap of gamers and reach that holy grail of cross-platform competitive game play. A few months after release, the player number dwindled and within a year of release the servers were shut down.

So maybe these games just don't work on consoles?

Taking a look at the PC market there are plenty of games which seem to show promise but none more prominent than those which lie in the MMO world. Beyond World of Warcraft, there really hasn't been a commercially successful challenger to this game; we've even have had some big names throw their hats into the ring – DC Universe, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and Conan the Barbarian to name but a few.



All of these games have tried to have a go at getting people into their game by offering them a chance at getting involved with some of their biggest characters within the universe, the most recent example of this being DC Universe Online. Here you get a chance to play against and with some of the biggest names in DC comics.

But where did it fail? Many users seem to have the attention span of goldfish and just lose interest in the game after the initial free trial period expires. This is the issue with multiplayer only games: there is nothing to come back to unless you keep it fresh and new each month, pushing the user to achieve new goals.

Wedging in the multiplayer

Single-player only games have shown that they don't need a multiplayer to be successful with the many games proving that you can make good money and a good game with games such as Batman: Arkham Asylum, Fallout 3, Dead Space, Assassins Creed , Bioshock, Heavy Rain, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, and Mass Effect 2 to name but a few.

The games all don't have a multiplayer mode in them and they're fantastic games. They all have other great elements which makes them great games such as fantastic writing, atmospheric settings, compelling stories, beautiful soundtracks, and fantastic voice acting. So why is it that some people think that in a sequel we need multiplayer adding?



The case in view here is Bioshock, a sequel in itself to System Shock. Bioshock was one of those rare games that came along and really made a name for its self by being pretty damn good as well as just a bit creepy when it came to moral decisions. Overall, the game was well written, created a fantastic atmosphere, and brought a unique twist to another wise bloated market, making it a well worthy game of the year.

Roll on a few years and we were treated to Bioshock 2 – Now with added multiplayer! How the internet groaned! Like many people, I was intrigued by just how this worked since at the end of the first game we got a very definitive ending. Either way, you played the game. It turned out that the single player element would have you play as a big daddy during the return to rapture while the multiplayer would be set before Bioshock 1 and was all about the splicers knocking the living daylights out of one another for the sheer hell of it.

Here lies the issue, and one the internet loved to point out – we have given the multiplayer a story – it's not big and it's not clever, so why do we do this? Don't the developers recall what it was like to play a game like Goldeneye on the N64? We didn't need to know why James Bond was suddenly shooting (a very blocky and manly looking) Natalia; We just got on with it! And this is why games like Call of Duty have been successful! They don't get bogged down in trying to give you a reason to kill other people.

I can hear you cry ARGH as I can counter you: what about the Battlefield series? Or how about your beloved Assassins Creed series in the form of Assassins Creed Brotherhood? They have shown to work in some of their iterations, however this (very nicely – almost planned like) leads me onto my next point.

Hands up. Who's played a sports game, ala Tiger Woods, Madden, NHL, FIFA, NBA … the list goes on! But what about other games like Battlefield, Unreal Tournament, Street Fighter, Tony Hawk, Mortal Kombat, Tomb Raider, Soul Caliber, Super Mario Brothers, Sonic Adventures, or Guitar Hero? These are all games which we would have played at some time in our gaming lives. Each of these games listed has a sequel to it and, in most cases follows the law of diminishing returns (see here for technical definition).



Many of these games developers feel that they must put out a new version of these games once a year in order to keep up with the market, yet each of these games only contains a minor set of updates and could technically be done within a patch to the original game. However, they'd then find themselves asking where is the profit in providing a patch to something you've already made money on?

There we have a lead into the "company mind" where each development company has only one thing on their mind and that is to get as big a percentage of the consumer's (that's mine and your) wallet. This means that each year they will take these minor tweaks to the gameplay and then pass this off as a new version. This is seen no clearer than in the EA Sports games where the only changes to the game now are the rosters.

Before this current console cycle (360, PS3, Wii) each new version of a game would try to improve on graphics and look to extend the story to aim for the ultimate goal of being lifelike. Yet in the current console generation we have consoles that are as powerful as their former benchmark (the PC) leading to developers looking to make the next big idea in gameplay.

Now we face only a limitation of what the human mind can think of. The only trouble is "the company mind" wants to make a lot of money from these games and somehow going for something that is radically different to the current market is seen as a big risk (as is any business idea) so sometimes it is best to follow the leaders in the marketplace to create a safe bet. This is where we get our clones from.

When you take a look at review now you hear a lot of comparisons to other games where they will begin a summary of a game with "like God of War but …" or "like GTA but …" or even "this is clearly inspired by Crackdown." Here it is not the developers who are being limited but the decision and power makers behind the scenes who have seen the kind of money that a game like Call of Duty makes and thinks ""I could make a ton of money off this,"

So the executives give the developers the basics and the developers go and try their best to create a game that is the next big selling version of Call of Duty or Gran Theft Auto. They get released into the world and all of a sudden people are shocked when they find that this game isn't actually any good and why a few weeks after its release you can find it entering the bargain section at the speed only paramount that the development team had to build it.



From time to time we do see games that actually work by using this formula as a basis to begin with and then moving into something quite unique. For example Saints Row was formally a GTA clone but now has its own unique spin on the sandbox genre. Here the developers used the idea of being in a gang in an open world environment and made it slightly more twisted and humorous, which can be seen in the upcoming release of its second sequel, Saints Row: The Third

Right now the consoles and PC gamers are all going to die a death of boredom if they don't get some new game ideas flowing soon. The only trouble is that the big companies have create a market of people who shun innovation and design as people crave the next Call of Duty, meanwhile titles which are looking to push the boat like Child of Eden get overlooked and pushed to the back of the shelf.

Thankfully there is a ray of light in this market of clones, and it comes from the smaller developers who are really able to push the boundaries of gaming on platforms such as Xbox Live Indi Games and Steam. Yet beyond the banality of console fares, the gaming market is facing an evolution with many developers looking at a new platform – mobile games.







These are the games which have come from nowhere yet we take them everywhere when we go about on our day-to-day jobs. These are the games which we can pick up for five minutes at a time and get in some quality gaming time with games that offer a unique take on a simple practice.. Take a look at some of the games that we have been given – Game Dev Story, Angry Birds, Broken Sword – all of these games offer something different but in a small bite size chunk, like a management simulation, or dominoes simulation, or a mystery story and makes a unique and involving game for any user to pick up and play.

Right now as gamers we are being fed games left right and centre.



Tune in for Part 2

Today I saw the return of my Xbox 360.It had been too long since my hands had touched the perfection of it's joypad despite it only being 10 days away from me on it's journey to Frankfurt and back. I couldn't hold back the smile upon receiving the box from the UPS courier and so I made my quickest signature ever on his new fangled piece of technology and nigh on ran up to my flat and fed it's cable once more into their housing. I couldn't decide which game to play what with owning 51 titles for it and so decided to flip a coin onto 'The Gaming Shelf'. The coin came down on Guitar Hero III and swiftly it was placed onto the disc tray. Feeling that I needed to work the controller but not myself I opted for normal mode and went in for 'When You were young' by The Killers. I flew through the song like no time I had ever done before and amassed a score of 131000+ beating my previous score by a good 13000. I thought it was just a good song and so moved on to my next choice 'Anarchy in the UK' by the Sex Pistols. It happened again, I had racked up a 5 star rating and thrashed on this occasion, my previous score. This has occured on 6 songs in a row now and I just couldn't believe that it was happening after not playing the game for a good 6 weeks or so.

So what is my message here some of you may be thinking, well I give you this; every now and then take a brief sabbatical from your games. Despite practice being the mother of all learning, taking a break can do you just as much good sometimes.

On a final note I would just like to praise Microsoft for their very quick service of my console which cost me nothing (Sony/Nintendo take note). I had little faith in them until today but I have been truly surprised. MInd you it would be better if they could make the console a little more reliable in the first place!

For the people who played HR , which ending did you choose ?

i chose the darrow ending

He was a great man! Marketing genius, innovator, and someone who wanted tech to be cool! I knew the moment the iPhone came out, that I had to haveone of those. And wow, was it as good as I thought it would be! You left behind an amazing legacy that lives on in your Macs, iPhones, iPads, iPods and everything else at Apple the last 14 years (he rejoined Apple in 1997). Let's hope Tim Cook, Scott Forstall and lall the creative minds at Apple can keep the company going strong for decades to come, and we see many more amazing Apple products in the future. RIP Steve Jobs, and thanks. : )

Also Andy Whitfield who many of us know as Spartacus also passed away due to cancer . I was really looking forward to seeing him in the sequel to Spartacus , he was a great actor :)

P.S - F*CK YOU CANCER !

Which is better Fifa 12 or PES 12 ?