Features « Gamesugar

June 8, 2011

E3 2011 – Eyes On Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City

Filed under: Features — Tags: Capcom, E3 2011, Hands on, Operation Raccoon City, Raroo, Resident Evil — Mister Raroo @ 10:09 pm

Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City
Judging by the long line required to play Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (I’m going to call it ORC for short), people must really like it. Or maybe they think they’re going to like it before they play it. One person told me he waited two hours to have a turn. When I asked him how it was, he said, “It was pretty good, I guess.” Not quite a glowing endorsement!

And that’s kind of the vibe I got from watching it: It seems pretty good, but not great.

I didn’t want to wait in line to play, so I just took some time to do an extended “eyes on” with the title, watching a number of multiplayer matches. I’m not so hip on the types of games where you run around with guns and kill things, unless they’re totally crazy like Gungrave. Remember Gungrave? The words “Kick Their Ass!” displayed on the screen before every stage. That was awesome, even if the game wasn’t the greatest.

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E3 2011 – Hands-on PixelJunk SideScroller

Filed under: Features — Tags: E3 2011, Mister Raroo, PixelJunk, Q-Games, SideScroller — Mister Raroo @ 4:29 pm

Handson PixelJunk SideScroller
The PixelJunk Shooter games didn’t light my world on fire, to say the least. I thought they looked gorgeous and the concept was great, but I just didn’t find them to really be all that much fun. Getting through levels was more work than play, in my opinion.

But PixelJunk SideScroller? Ah, it might be love! I adore 2D shooters, and this is perhaps one of the best to come along in a quite awhile. If you grew up playing horizontal shooters, you know the drill. Pilot a craft left to right through horizontally scrolling stages and blast everything that moves. In many ways SideScroller feels like it was ripped right from the golden age of space shooters.

Even the game’s logo is clearly an homage to Gradius. Super cool.

And the retro love doesn’t end there. The game is designed to look as it were being displayed on an old CRT monitor, complete with washed out colors and scan lines. The screen also warps a little at the edges, which is a charming touch. The environments are a mix of vivid neon colors and minimalist vector graphics. It’s kind of like the lovechild of PixelJunk Shooter and Trajectile (Q Games’ cool rocket-firing puzzle game for DSiWare). The experience is only enhanced by the soundtrack, which is very akin to the spacey, beat-heavy tunes found in the Shooter games. It’s safe to say Q Games knocked another one out of the park in the audiovisual department and the end result is lovely.

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June 3, 2011

Konami’s Pre-E3 Show

Filed under: Features — Tags: E3, Konami, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, Zone of the Enders — Jamie Love @ 1:12 am

Konami E3 Pre-Show
I’ve returned from Konami’s first Pre-E3 showing with a powerful yearning to sleep after a long day, but I’ll instead endeavor to string together some words for you Sugarfiends regarding the event – that’s just the kind of guy I am after all.

Members of Team Sugar attended the Toronto event, which consisted of video announcements simultaneously screened for audiences in several locations around the globe and online, which Konami cited as an effort to reach fans more directly before the more closed nature of E3 commands the thunder next week.

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May 23, 2011

The Spirit of ’47: A Primer to the Influences of L.A. Noire

Filed under: Features — Tags: detectives, film noir, L.A. Noire, movies, PlayStation3, pulp, Rockstar, Team Bondi, Xbox 360 — Gregory Gay @ 1:34 pm

Rockstar and Team Bondi’s latest game, L.A. Noire, hit stores last week. The game shoves you into the role of detective Cole Phelps as he solves a number of brutal crimes in the aftermath of World War 2 – think of it as a mix of Phoenix Wright and Grand Theft Auto. The thing is, L.A. Noire isn’t just a sandbox game set in the 40’s. It’s a love letter to the film noir genre – a distinctive cinematic genre from the 1940’s and 50’s mired in the shadowy world of crime.

Like every other Rockstar game, L.A. Noire will probably sell roughly a bajillion copies, and a few of those owners may just feel an urge to dive deeper into the game’s source material. Given that possibility, I thought this would be a good time to go into a bit more detail on the movies that have influenced L.A. Noir.

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April 18, 2011

Gears of War 3 Beta Impressions (Or Tales of Chainsaw Bro Assault)

Filed under: Features — Tags: beta, Epic, Feature, Gears, Gears of War 3, GOW 3, impressions, Microsoft Game Studios, Multiplayer Beta — Brad Johnson @ 6:24 pm

I had the opportunity to get in on the Gears of War 3 multiplayer beta this weekend, and after three days of chainsawing bros and falling victim to body-shattering shotgun assaults, I am now prepared to discuss the matter with you.

Gears, of course, remains ever-Gears: ridiculous wartime linebackers trudge heavily through the warzone, struggling to tame their wild, uncontrollable weapons in an effort to smash the bodies of the enemy soldiers and grunt approvingly.

It can be clumsy and it can be awkward; Gears is not Call of Duty, and you are not an unstoppable precision laser performing actions per minute approaching infinity. Instead, you are a brute. Certainly, this is not for everyone; Gears of War owns frustrating deathstreaks like no other—but there is undeniable charm in this brutal, uncontrolled frenzy, and Gears 3 continues to embrace that.

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December 5, 2010

The Best Game of Never – The Devil’s Robot

Filed under: Features — Tags: awesome, famicom, features, Nintendo, SNES, Super Nintendo, The Best Game of Never, the devil's robot — Brad Johnson @ 8:24 pm

In our continuing mission to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and—er, no, that’s something else. In our continuing mission to bring you the ~~latest~~ ~~best~~ most amusing video game nonsense, we here at Gamesugar offer you our latest discovery: the best game you never played.

We first discovered the existence of The Devil’s Robot (Check out the cartridge!) in an advertisement in the back of an obscure comic book published in August of 1993. As internet demagogues of some repute, we sent out word that we were seeking a copy of this mysterious artifact, and it was not long before one of our loyal subjects responded. Apparently only distributed for six days in 1993, The Devil’s Robot is an RPG/Action/Platforming/Racer that sees the protagonist, SCIENCEMAN, navigating a post-apocalyptic wasteland, evading the attacks of the Devil’s Robot. The object of the game is to acquire the knowledge and artifacts to finally build SCIENCEMAN’s own terrifying robot construct to destroy the devil.

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November 25, 2010

Q&A – Remedy Talks Alan Wake

Filed under: Features — Tags: Alan Wake, Feature, interview, Microsoft, Q&A, Questions and Answers, Remedy, The Signal, The Writer, Xbox 360 — Jamie Love @ 1:32 pm

On my list of most significant games of 2010, it shouldn’t surprise regular readers and sugarfiends if I give a nod to Alan Wake – though even after reviewing the game and two installments of DLC, I still feel as if I haven’t captured the essence of the “why” behind that. Remedy’s work with Wake has left a lingering impression on me, a game I’m certain to remember for many years to come, which increasingly seems like one of the most significant accomplishments a videogame can achieve.

Despite my trouble of always putting exact words to that experience, I did cobble together some questions about the game and specifically about the DLC chapters that followed, which Remedy writer Mikko Rautalahti was good enough to take the time to answer.

Catch it after the break.

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