When I plugged my brand new PlayStation 1 into my TV one Christmas morning, the first game I fired up was Coolboarders 2. I love that game. It wasn't very good and there was really only one mode that was even mildly entertaining, but for some reason I kept playing it over and over again. Single player, multiplayer, no matter what I was doing I could always find a reason to put the game on and play just a little bit more. Ever since that time I've been looking for a snowboarding game that makes me feel the same way, there have been a few contenders, some have failed miserably and some have come close, but nothing made me feel the way I did back then. Maybe it's just nostalgia or maybe, just maybe, the developers of Coolboarders 2 managed to add something that still makes me feel happy to this day. When Gamers Nexus was contacted by Exient to review their latest game, X2 Snowboarding, I jumped at the chance. Not only was it an excuse to play more iPhone games and claim that I'm working, but from the screenshots that I saw it might have been the Coolboarders 2 game I was looking for; from the aesthetics to the modes, quite a few of the things I was looking for in a snowboarding game seemed to be there.
Gaming Jobs: Public Relations Representatives
By Steve Burke Published December 01, 2010 at 11:00 amIn our quest to interview the ever-expanding array of job functions within the versatile games industry, I had a chance to interview the omni-awesome (totally a word) David Martinez, a public relations 'account executive' at TriplePoint PR. This new column focuses on filling in the gaps between industry professions, so all of you who want nothing more than to delve into the bowels of gaming - short of MLG's bathroom stalls - this is the place to start! Last time, we made it a point to hone in on the often overlooked members in gaming - like audio directors; my interview with David continues the trend of examining the commonly forgotten contributors. PR reps are normally the people that set up the interviews with developers, although it is not uncommon to find them "working the floor" at conventions and expos.
I've been working with David for a little over a year now, and finally had a chance to meet him at PAX Prime (linked above). I'll let him do the talking in a second - but being on the receiving end of bountiful PR-ness, David is as good as they get. As he remarks below, a public relations rep has to be outgoing, open-minded, and generally knowledgeable about their selling points. Whether or not you want to work in the industry, the man is worth listening to! Continue on for the interview.
“Here we go! It's Crrrrrrraaazy Money Maker! Ooooops … erm … I mean Crazy Taxi”
If you walked into an arcade in about 1999, you would have seen the Crazy Taxi cabinet. It was almost everywhere. The fast-paced gameplay would eventually speak to the speed freak within all of us. I spent many of my precious pounds picking people up and dropping them off while attempting to find the quickest route through a busy city in Crazy Taxi. The phrase “Crrrrrrazy Taxi” alone would often catch my highly-tuned sense of hearing (tuned to video game themes in arcades - it made locating them easier), and off I'd wander to find out where, in the maze of machines, my fix was.
Releasing expansion packs at a frequency that challenges a machine gun's rate-of-fire is an old practice, and despite the (disputed) push toward DLC, has not been entirely forgotten. Majesty 2 establishes the player as King of numerous outposts and towns, and through a supremacy-styled campaign, he must conquer monsters and overlords of each map. By using indirect control of heroes - such as beacons with gold coin rewards - our player acts somewhat equivalent to a Dungeon Master / Game Master for tabletop RPGs. That is, you put rewards on BBEGs (big bad evil guys), pray that an adventurous group of wizards and warriors will compete for the rewards, and repeat. The formula is elegant and simple, and makes for a distinctive play opportunity to perform from the throne room (as opposed to being 'the hero,' as is typical in fantasy games).
Level design is akin to writing: eventually, the creative flow of ideas is impeded by some form of 'block' (level designers block, perhaps?). I've done a lot of level design for video games (Majesty 2, Mount & Blade) and tabletop games, and I recently came across a unique idea for planning out a steampunk-based dungeon. Bear with me here - I will be designing this dungeon through use of lyrics in a song; yes, that means lines will be metamorphosed into rooms (or elements) of the dungeon. This trick can be applied to video games and tabletop gaming, and I've tried to make the dungeon described below as neutral as possible. For sake of knowing, I designed this dungeon with Savage Worlds (a Dungeons & Dragons-esque tabletop rules system) in mind.
I realized the lyrics in the song "Re-Education (Through Labor)" by Rise Against had fantastic lyrics for a steampunk or skeletal dungeon. Since skeletons and undead are overdone in level design, we're going to opt for something steampunk-driven. It's more fun, anyway. This trick won't work for every song (you might have trouble converting Bieber or Beyonce to dungeon-crawling), but a lot of rock and punk songs should be convertible. First: Let's take the lyrics and begin siphoning ideas from them.
Black Friday - or as I've grown to call it, Black November - exploded into the gaming scene with the evolution of websites and applications like Newegg or Steam. My press inbox alone has been flooded with around thirty-seven emails about sales on just as many (or more) websites... and that was just in the last twelve hours. What was once an American tradition of treacherous line-camping from dusk to dawn - rain, sleet, or snow - has advanced into a global phenomenon of e-sales. There was a time when gamers made their annual pilgrimage from their homes to electronics stores, venturing forth under the cover of night to stake their claim of a 5'x5' piece of concrete. This day would be theirs to plunder! When the doors to shops opened, a ravenous crowd of (mostly stinky) nerds stampeded security guards and "rent-a-cops," leaving a wake of empty shelves and destruction on the quest to the "Consumer Electronics" aisle. It's become obsolete!
Perhaps the only game I've ever been embarrassed about when asked the question “What are you currently playing?”
If there was one game on the Xbox Live Arcade Marketplace that I would have, without a shadow of a doubt, proclaimed that I would never play - it would have been Faery: Legends of Avalon. The cover, the synopsis, the screenshots, even the trailer: it's the kind of game you'd feel embarrassed about playing, just for the title. Then, as if the gaming God himself had come down and demanded that I stop thinking such thoughts about a product that people had worked hard on, Gamers Nexus was contacted by one of our nice PR contacts and asked if we'd be interested in reviewing Faery: Legends of Avalon. Being the generous, kind-hearted, soul I am, I knew that our loyal readers wouldn't have been able to go a week without reading about the thoughts streaming from my brain, so I decided to give it a good honest go.
Rushing through small towns causing fear and panic as you utterly destroy everything in your path, compiling an incredibly massive mound of cold, hard gold, and stealing princesses straight from the castle. Life never gets any better than this! ..Or does it? Try doing all of this as a terrifying dragon in Hoard. I mean, it was great on foot - but as a dragon!? Like any other dragon, your one and only goal is to amass as much gold as possible within a time limit. From burning villages to destroying wizard's towers, you'll uncover gold piles and gem stones that you must take to your hoard. It's not easy though: you've got competition, and it's fierce. Other dragons will attempt to expand their own hoards and prevent you from doing the same. It's only business to attempt the same; entering the free for all are knights and archers, out to rescue the fair maiden from your clutches and defend their human settlements. Better yet, multiplayer makes it possible for even more dragons to compete for gold!
Arrgh Maties! Best turn yer sails an' flee before ye' accidentally end up playing this game. No, seriously.
Woody Two-Legs is a game with artful charm, and opens with the pirate (Woody Two-Legs himself) convincing you he's worth your time, and his intentions are reinforced with gold. Woody managed to finally gather up some gold in his travels and now he merely seeks to bury it humbly under the ground. It is here that the to-be antagonist makes his entry - and Davy Jones wants his gold back. Woody (that's you) has to fend off a couple of waves of Jones' minions - each wave is completed by slaying a mini-boss, inevitably leading to the release of a Kraken and finally, Davy Jones himself. All this effort just so Woody can bury his gold under a red X. Sounds like quite the daunting task for a washed up pirate, right? Wrong. The game's largest set-back is simply difficulty.
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