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• The Four Greatest Videogame/Drug Combinations of All Time (Speaking From Personal Experience)

  The world’s worst fears are true: you need to take drugs to play Grand Theft Auto. The only way to get the most out of your time in Liberty City is to eat ecstasy, let the chemical take hold, and swim in an ocean of thick joy as you wreak impossible acts of havoc on the digital world’s citizens. I’m sorry I’m stealing your car, I need it right now, but I looooove you, man. Just the way it is, I guess. Bold choice, Rockstar! I kid. It was no doubt an unpleasant surprise for Richard Thornhill, a father of two, to open his recently purchased copy of GTA and find four mysterious pills sitting in the game’s case. I can’t imagine the confusion and fear. My god, what have I touched? Is this poison? There’s nothing more noisome than someone telling you that drugs of any stripe enhance an experience. Oh man, you can’t listen to Dark Side of the Moon if you aren’t stoned, man. Shut up. You’re a moron. I would, however, be a liar if I said that I haven’t had a marvelous time playing videogames while using illicit substances. Yes, like President Obama, I too inhaled during the heady days of my youth. Amongst other things. Let us take a brief stroll down memory lane. I will be your pharmacological guide across the gaming landscape. Read More... Posted Apr 08 2009, 04:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 8 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, xbox 360, resident evil, legend of zelda, nes, ocarina of time, gamecube, grand theft auto, resident evil 4, barack obama, burnout paradise, duck tales

• Question of the Day: Why Can’t I Play Online?

  It’s getting bad. Ugly even. A friend walks up to me and asks the simple question, “Hey, John, what are you playing right now?” Then I think of the backlog. It’s a pile of games sitting by the consoles, a gargantuan mass of briefly played games, none of them seen to completion. I started Persona 4 in December! MadWorld? Yeah that first stage was a hell of a good time, for sure. My plan to beat Vagrant Story by March? Didn’t work out so much. What’s worse than the line up of single player games sitting by the boxes is the pile of those other games. Some of them I’ve even “finished”. You know the ones I’m talking about. The games that you’re supposed to play with other real live human beings over the internet. Resident Evil 5 without pushing around an artificial intelligence. Left4Dead with more than two people in split-screen. Racing in Burnout Paradise against, you know, drivers. Those games. The ones that keep slipping to the bottom of the backlog. Read More... Posted Apr 07 2009, 09:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, boom blox, resident evil, madworld, halo 3, question of the day, resident evil 5, burnout paradise, left4dead, persona 4, vagrant story, jenga

• The 61FPS Review: Resident Evil 5

  Resident Evil 4 is one of the greatest videogames ever made. It is top three, desert island material, the one to play before you die. It is Shinji Mikami’s definitive statement as a creator. It is the best three-dimensional game to ever come out of Capcom across all of their internal teams. It is Dark Side of the Moon to Super Mario 64’s Sgt. Pepper. These are not things that can be argued. These are facts. So when every single person that plays Resident Evil 5, whether as a demo or as a finished, ten hour game say that it is just “gorgeous Resident Evil 4", you know they are not damning it. That is a compliment. And an accurate one. Producer Jun Takeuchi and his team of toughs followed the recipe precisely: Mix claustrophobic, over-the-shoulder gunplay, careful resource management and a dollop of flip-the-switch puzzling. Add an adventure through a forbidding village of transformed locals, then some marsh land hiding a water-bound monstrosity, then one industrial complex. Slowly blend in one spooky castle/ruin and one evil laboratory. Garnish with final confrontation that culminates in rocket-launchering a monster in the mutated face. Do battle with human, canine, insect, and various oozing grotesques. Let rest occasionally near save point, serve chilled. It is an expertly-made game, its only serious flaw being the partner AI’s occasionally spastic behavior. Sheva Alomar (or Chris Redfield on a second single-player run) is capable throughout the chapters, but useless in boss fights, especially the last. The addition of a constant partner, whether AI or player controlled, does not change the rules, the flow of Resident Evil as a game. It can, at first, make the game feel quite different, giving combat a refreshed sense of immediacy and panic. Read More... Posted Mar 19 2009, 06:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, resident evil, capcom, 61fps review, jun takeuchi, resident evil 5, chris redfield, sheva Alomar

• You Like Resident Evil, eh? How About All the Resident Evil in the World!

  After one last cold snap here in good ol’ NYC, spring is finally in the air. Yesterday had itself a brutal chill, but today, it’s been nice and mild. Spring is full of all kinds of great stuff. A young man’s fancy turns to love, flowers bloom, it rains a lot, and every last one of us post-industrialized humans have horrific allergy outbreaks because we’ve never lived lives that necessitate a hearty immune system. Modern living rocks. Spring is also the season for rumors! The fiscal year is just about to end and all kinds of precious secrets are starting to ooze out of corporate orifices like nobody’s business. Yesterday, it was Pandemic taking over Star Wars: Battlefront III. Today, its Resident Evil: Code Veronica on Wii. Read More... Posted Mar 06 2009, 08:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, resident evil, wii, capcom, gamecube, star wars battlefront iii, code veronica

• Sailing the Internet Seas, Historical Preservation, and The Great Rumble Roses vs. Silent Hill vs. Metroid Dance Party Throwdown

  Beware! Sail too far to the east, brave soul, and you will come upon that most dangerous of seas. The sky changes to a sickly fresh bruise color, all angry purple and yellow, and the waves will toss madness and froth against the bow. Even the sturdiest ship, the steadiest mind, will be shaken by the foul humors waiting for them beyond the horizon. Ye have been warned. Beware! Beware the internet! I got lost in an internet vortex this afternoon. It all started innocently enough. Smooth sailing, reading Multiplayer’s interview with Steve Papoustis about Dead Space: Extraction. This led to Matt Hawkins’ Fort 90, and that’s when things started to veer off course. For anyone unfamiliar, Matt’s one of NYC’s great games journalists, but he’s also a madly prolific renaissance man. Fort 90 is a dangerous place, dense with images and text. It’s an easy place to lose your bearings, and that’s what happened to me. Matt linked to the Garry’s Mod work of one MrWhiteFolks. MrWhiteFolks made some spectacular high resolution images of No More Heroes character models stripped of their cel-shading. Very cool stuff. He also made this: Oh there’s more. Much more. Read More... Posted Feb 26 2009, 06:30 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, metroid, no more heroes, resident evil, silent hill, gears of war, halo, resident evil 4, dead or alive, dead space, mtv, silent hill 2, dead space extraction, gmod, silent hill 3, rumble roses, fort 90, garry’s mod

• Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li Is Not For Critics

  There's a famous Penny Arcade strip—the very same strip that first introduces the quaint and chaotic cartoon duo Catsby and Twisp—that begins with Tycho making some remark about how Kevin Smith had decided that his film “Jersey Girls” was “not for critics.” Gabe responds, “Wow, I didn't know you could even do that.” Seems you can. The latest film to shut out critics is “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.” That is to say, there won't be an exclusive screening for Ebert and his kin. If they want to review Chun-Li's searing soul-search, they'll have to get in line for tickets and popcorn with the rest of us mortal slobs. Chances are they won't. But hey, no reviews mean that we'll go into the film with clear heads, right? Yes and no. “The Cutscene,” a Variety blog, confirms what even the most optimistic Chun-Li fans know deep in their hearts: [I]n 95% of cases, not screening a movie is the studio's way of admitting critics are sure to hate it -- usually because it's bad, occassionally because it's a genre, like horror, that critics rarely appreciate. Read More... Posted Feb 20 2009, 12:23 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with no comments Filed under: street fighter, resident evil, penny arcade, game movies, nadia oxford, resident evil degeneration, the legend of chun-li

• Unsolicited Scares: Terranigma and the Desert

  When we talk about games that made us scream like grandmothers treed on a kitchen chair by mice, we default to the obvious. “Ohhh, Resident Evil 4 made me poop myself in fear,” one contributor gasps. “That's nothing,” another counters. “Silent Hill made my poop poop itself in fear!” And so on. It's only natural that we think about the survival horror genre during these conferences of memory. But I've been thinking lately about games that gave me the chills when I certainly didn't expect them to. I won't say I have the hardiest soul around, but even JRPGs and Super Mario games have some genuinely creepy moments that can blindside you. Not necessarily the whole game (unlike Resident Evil or Silent Hill), but maybe a specific scenario that comes back to haunt me when I wake up from a nightmare and fail to conjure something soothing to help me sleep again. First example: The “Desert” music from Terranigma. Terranigma was Enix's follow-up to Illusion of Gaia for the Super Nintendo. It's best known for never showing its face in America despite demand. It's known almost as well for its haunting soundtrack. “Desert” is a sound clip that tends to visit my memory when I'm alone in some dark place, usually when my imagination is already engorged with fear. The clip doesn't have to be taken in context for its haunting whine to skittle down your neck and back, but it helps a bit. Read More... Posted Feb 12 2009, 07:27 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with no comments Filed under: resident evil, silent hill, game music, retro, 16-bit, nadia oxford, terranigma, survival horror, unsolicited scares

• Take a Look Back in Hunger with the Resident Evil Retrospective

  With the much-anticipated Resident Evil 5 about to hit store shelves in a month, I'm sure we're all going a little survival horror crazy; hell, I had to stop myself from replaying RE4 for a third time through careful consideration of all of the crap I own that I still have yet to finish. Instead, I've decided to cut out the middle-man and turn my attention to the significantly less time-wastey Gametrailers Resident Evil Retrospective. Like all of Gametrailers' retrospective pieces, the series promises to be a pretty comprehensive piece of work--and it even covers the pre-RE roots of survival horror, though they could have devoted a lot more time into that section. So far, one out of six episodes has been released; the only thing that worries me at this point is how increasingly convoluted the franchise's timeline gets by Code Veronica. The only way to explain anything at that point in the story would have to involve Back to the Future's Doc Brown and several hundred chalkboards. We'll see how well they do. Video after the cut. Read More... Posted Feb 09 2009, 02:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: resident evil, capcom, bob mackey, gametrailers, survival horror, retrospecitve

• Once More Into the Breach: A Final Peek at Resident Evil 5

  Sitting down for one last taste of Resident Evil 5 before the game finally comes out on March 13th, I received the saddest possible news: the shopkeeper from Resident Evil 4 is gone. That’s right. No more buying it at a high price. No more good things on sale, stranger. No more gunning down the purple-bandana-wearing-sumbitch when he won’t sell you any more first-aid sprays. In RE5, you do your buying and selling from a cold, faceless menu. Maybe it’s for the best. Like the original demo, now available to all on Xbox Live and PSN, Chapter 3-3 of RE5 makes it clear that there isn’t a whole lot of down time to be had in Kijuju. Chances are if you stopped to hang with your old pal Shopkeeper, a zombie would bury an axe in your shoulder. Then your co-op partner would swear at you for window shopping so long. It would be bad. Read More... Posted Feb 05 2009, 05:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, resident evil, capcom, resident evil 4, resident evil 5, chris redfield, sheva Alomar, t virus

• Resident Evil Arguments that Need to Die

  With the recent release of the Resident Evil 5 demo, I've been subjected to something far more stomach-turning than hordes of the undead running amok in an African village. Of course, I speak of the Resident Evil fanboyism I assumed had ended long after the release of Resident Evil 4; you see, with the newest RE being made in the model of the series' previous game, purists are still upset that many of the things they've come to cherish about Resident Evil have been left to rot nearly 5 years ago. If you're a sane and functioning member of society, then you've probably realized that the Resident Evil 4 renovation was the best possible thing to happen to the series--and I commend you for your common sense. However, it's entirely possible that the drastic shift in the franchise still burns the living hell out of your beans; if this is the case, I bear you no personal grudge. I simply wish to ridicule your wrong opinions out of existence. And now, friends, I present the Resident Evil arguments that need to die. Read More... Posted Feb 02 2009, 10:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: resident evil, capcom, resident evil 4, bob mackey, demo, resident evil 5, survival horror

• Meet People (Yay!) On the Internet (Oh.) Play Games With Them (Fine, I Guess…)

  Personality tests are stupid. Unless they are being given to you about by a psychiatric or sociological professional, a series of multiple choice questions meant to reflect some fundamental aspect of your nature is almost assuredly complete, fragrant bullshit. Like everyone else wandering the wide halls of the internet, I find myself clicking on them incessantly, the stupider and more specific they are the better. Of course I want to know what character I am from The Adventures of Pete & Pete! Why the hell wouldn’t I? Yes, certainly, tell me what type of pants I am, internet. Let me know how compatible I am with dogs, tell me how the music I listen to defines my past lives. I insist that you judge my abilities as a lover on a sliding scale of temperatures! MyGameMug, alongside their gamer personality test, actually provides a service. The site is about, in their own words, “connecting similarly-minded gamers together through a proprietary matchmaking algorithm, for all games and all platforms.” It’s a noble ambition, but I cannot attest to the quality of said algorithm. Read More... Posted Oct 24 2008, 06:30 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, resident evil, resident evil 5, mygamemug, multiplayer

• Resident Evil 5: Continuing on the Transformation Trail From Horror to Suspense

  It might seem strange, considering how often I’ve expressed my adoration for the genre here on 61 Frames Per Second, that I wasn’t always a fan of horror. In fact, being frightened was not something I considered a good time in any way, shape, or form. Call it a symptom of an extremely over-active imagination, but even a scary story told at summer camp was enough to keep my childhood self wide-eyed and sleepless, sheets pulled over my head while my mind conjured even greater terrors than the ones in fiction. Scary movies, scary stories, and even scary games were simply too much for me. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-teens that I started to come around to the thrills of being afraid for fun, but it was still a slow process. The original Resident Evil was, in many ways, horror training wheels for me. I’d be lying if I said the game didn’t still freak me out a little. It was never the “BOO!” moments either, the dogs jumping through windows or the rushing camera POV that signaled the arrival of the first Hunter baddie. It was the atmosphere, the lonely clacking of feet on the floors of empty hallways, the score, and that very first zombie, its grisly visage slowly turning to the camera, rendered in CG just abstract enough to seem unreal. The campy dialogue and ridiculous live-action intro weren’t enough to dull the menace, but the action and puzzles kept me hooked. By the time Resident Evil 2 came out in 1998, I was converted and I’ve remained a devotee of horror gaming since. I’ve stuck with the series too. But Resident Evil hasn’t really been about horror, or even fear, in almost ten years. Each successive entry has brought the series further across that delicate line, from horror into suspense. Resident Evil 4 was a true sea change, but it’s the upcoming Resident Evil 5, which Derrick and I got to play at Capcom’s New York preview event today, that cements the franchise’s transformation into a full-bore action experience, one whose tension comes from overwhelming numbers and a sense of claustrophobia instead of limited resources and lurking dread. Read More... Posted Oct 22 2008, 06:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, resident evil, capcom, dead space, resident evil 5

• The 61FPS Review: Dead Space

  In 1986, the world bore witness to one of gaming’s most important watershed moments, an event whose profound impact on the medium is still seen today, in games released every week. Protagonists, game worlds, sound effects, and art direction; there is no facet of design that this single creative work hasn’t influenced. It isn’t The Legend of Zelda or Metroid. It isn’t Out Run, Adventure Island, Kid Icarus, Bubble Bobble, or Castlevania. It isn’t even a videogame. The gaming legacy of James Cameron’s Aliens cannot be overstated. Ignore all thirty games actually based on Aliens and consider the past twenty-two years of gaming as a whole. Syd Mead’s art and designs cover every game from R-Type to Halo 3. H.R. Geiger’s titular xenomorph is mirrored in hundreds of enemies, even beyond Contra. The group dynamics and character archetypes of Cameron’s protagonists are the template for almost every squad-based shooter ever made. And the forbidding labyrinth of colony LV-426 has defined entire genres, particularly the first-person shooter. This movie is where the space marine, modern videogames’ essential lead, comes from. Aliens made many, many games what they are. But no one game has ever gone as far in recreating the entire Aliens experience – of allowing you to actually enter a dilapidated, abandoned science fiction world full of monsters hunting you from the shadows – as EA Redwood Shores’ Dead Space. The Ishimura and its broken, dimly lit passages, the bloodthirsty and relentless necromorphs spawned from the ship’s dead, the weapons you wield as Isaac Clarke (the pulse rifle and flame thrower being the direct nods,) even Jason Graves and Rod Abernathy’s screeching, dissonant score are all explicitly lifted straight out of the film. The game’s disparate parts conspire to let you actually play James Cameron’s sci-fi survival ride instead of watch it. The gameplay follows the formula precisely: at the start of all twelve chapters in Dead Space, you are instructed to go to a place, locate that chapter’s MacGuffin (a machine that needs fixing, a person, a creature that needs killing,) eliminate a specific obstacle, and survive a constant and seemingly unstoppable, unpredictable threat aided only by limited supplies and unreliable supporting characters. What’s more, Dead Space succeeds, a work that ends up as far more than the sum of its borrowed parts. Read More... Posted Oct 14 2008, 08:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, ea, resident evil, 61fps review, aliens, dead space

• TGS Trailer Time: Resident Evil 5

  A trailer for Capcom's upcoming Resident Evil 5 debuted at the Tokyo Game Show, and--fortunately for you--watching it is now mandatory. Note to Capcom: if you're going to introduce a female character by first showing us her butt, you might as well go all the way and throw in a cartoony thumping bass drum for full effect. This is the most story we've seen out of RE5 yet, which may be why this preview reminds me so much of Metal Gear Solid (mainly when the stirring music kicks in).  And the real return of longtime series villain Wesker should delight all of the RE fans who poo-pooed 4 for essentially being a side-story.  Yes; there are seriously people who didn't like RE4 because it was only tangentially related to the series' tortured, ludicrous continuity--and they walk among us, so watch out for that. Read More... Posted Oct 09 2008, 12:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with no comments Filed under: trailer review, resident evil, capcom, bob mackey, tgs, resident evil 5

• Whatcha Playing: Weight of the Stone

  Videogames are rich with memorable moments. Born of both play and story, there are those images, those brief passages of achievement, that are emblazoned in your memory: the first time you clear 100,000 points in Tetris, the dogs bursting through the window in Resident Evil, the booming march that begins to play after the baby metroid’s sacrifice during Super Metroid’s climactic battle with Mother Brain. We are tied to these events thanks not only to those games’ mechanical and artistic design but because of our agency in them. We facilitate these conclusions and, since the game is well-made, we feel them. Another classic: Solid Snake’s first fight with the cyborg ninja, Grey Fox. Like so much of the Metal Gear Solid series, this sequence is ludicrous: simplistic to play, overdramatic, over-everything. But when Grey Fox begins screaming, “Make me feel!” and your controller begins to shake in time with his uncontrollable gesticulations, the scene becomes something else. In 1998, rumble technology was still relatively new in home gaming, so having this drama reflected in the physical world made that much more of an impression. Every time Snake was kicked in the gut or when you landed a hit amidst this half-man’s yowling was tangible. I feel a lot like Grey Fox when I play videogames these days, particularly action fare. I want an action game to make me feel. Not necessarily a profound emotional reaction – though that’s always a plus – so much as a physical one. Read More... Posted Sep 29 2008, 05:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, whatcha playing, metroid, star wars, resident evil, metal gear solid, sega, lucasarts, tetris, yakuza, die hard arcade

• Men Are From Hyrule, Women Are From Simville: If Gender Defines the Games We Play, Why Does Everyone Play By the Same Rules?

  The problem with working on the internet is that you inevitably find yourself plummeting down some horrible information vortex while trying to be productive. It could be some hyperlinked sentence in a Newsweek article or that godforsaken new email icon popping up on your screen, but no matter the form it comes in, your cognitive process is sent down the road of endless consumption, natural curiosity leading you by the nose, sniffing out even more useless information. Today, Pete Smith sent me a nugget of knowledge from the Wikipedia entry on game addiction and, so, I fell down the information rabbit hole. Somehow I missed this back at the end of May, but Professor Allan Reiss of Stanford University published a study on the effects of videogames on male and female brains. The experiment entailed monitoring a number of men and women’s brain functions while playing a simple strategy game; players gained control of territory from other players by clicking on dots on a screen. MRI scans of the players’ brains, both male and female, showed activation of the mesocorticolimbic centre, that lovely chunk of grey matter associated with addiction and reward. The scans, however, showed more activity in the mesocorticolimbic centre in men than in women. Reiss’ conclusion was that this explained men having greater interest in the common videogame, one in which territory is at stake, than women. I find the Professor’s findings damned peculiar in light of the most successful PC game in all of history. Read More... Posted Sep 12 2008, 01:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, gamasutra, resident evil, the sims, nintendogs, bejeweled

• Rumors, Rumors, Riz-u-mors: Resident Evil 2 Wii and The Glory of Speculation

  When discussing videogames with my extended family, I usually have to use a lot of different language than I would when talking with a casual game fan or writing for 61 FPS. Certain words and acronyms go straight out the window. You can’t say platformer or RTS. You can’t say Capcom and expect it to carry the same contextual weight it would when chatting with someone who can name multiple Street Fighters. My grandparents in particular are mystified by my obsession and so I usually have to rely on the power of metaphor. When it comes to describing what blogging about videogames entails, I tend to fall back on sports coverage. Just like following the NFL or NBA, a lot of excitement can come from following trades (corporate mergers), defeats (marquee creators leaving publishers), and scandal (Hot Coffee). Following videogames isn’t just about the games themselves, but following the people who make them, the industry that publishes them, and, most importantly, the delectable drama that results. And rumors. Oh, rumors are the best. Read More... Posted Aug 29 2008, 05:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, resident evil, capcom, soul blazer, rumor, shadow hearts

• FMV Hell: Star Studded Casts - Do you Give a Crap?

  Boy, I don't. EA has announced that the new Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 will star the following B-listers: Gemma Atkinson (the UK's Hollyoaks), Tim Curry (Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Hunt for Red October), Andrew Divoff (LOST), Kelly Hu (X2, The Scorpion King), Jenny McCarthy (Scream 3, former Playboy Playmate of the Year), Ivana Milicevic (Casino Royale), Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Caribbean), J.K. Simmons (Spider-Man, Juno), Autumn Reeser (The OC), Peter Stormare (Prison Break, Armageddon), George Takei (Star Trek, Heroes), and two of the most recognizable names in competitive mixed martial arts Randy "The Natural" Couture (former UFC Heavyweight champion) and Gina "Conviction" Carano (Undefeated Elite XC fighter, American Gladiators).   Jenny McCarthy was just blown away:  "I wasn't sure what to expect when I came in to work on a video game," said Jenny McCarthy from the set of Command & Conquer Red Alert 3, while playing Tanya, Allied commando and the most beloved heroine in the history of the Command & Conquer universe. "What I realized is Red Alert 3 is not just a video game, it's absolutely an interactive movie. Ho ho HO! Absolutely!  Diff'rent Strokes' Dana Plato in Night Trap, Mark Hamill in Wing Commander III, Dennis Hopper in Black Dahlia -- live-action Full Motion Video has historically been populated by washed up Hollywood rejects. In the go-go nineties, development studios could only afford also-rans, which brought middling acting to the medium. Within a few years of FMV's birth, 3D rendering technology evolved to the point where developers could easily create pretty characters at a fraction of the cost of hiring from Hollywood. It was too expensive, not that fun for players to watch, and eclipsed by superior technology. The infamous live-action sequences from Resident Evil could probably be considered the swan song of live-action FMV. Read More... Posted Aug 20 2008, 11:00 AM by Cole Stryker with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: resident evil, cole stryker, fmv hell, dennis hopper, wing commander, terri garr, night trap, mark hamill, command and conquer: red alert 3, black dahlia

• Interview Round Up: Suda 51, Shinji Mikami, and Mikami’s Replacements on Resident Evil

  This is what happens when Shinji Mikami and Suda 51 work together. The greatest interviews in the gaming world can’t all come from 61 Frames Per Second, dontcha know! While we’ve been chatting with the OCRemix crew about Street Fighter II HD Remix, Gamasutra’s Christian Nutt has been chatting with director Yasuhiro Anpo and producer Jun Takeuchi of Capcom about their controversial sequel, Resident Evil 5. Read More... Posted Aug 15 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: gamasutra, ea, shinji mikami, resident evil, 1up, grasshopper, jun takeuchi, suda 51, killer 7

• Overworld: Friday the 13th

  Overworld examines how one game or series establishes a unique sense of place. Buzz for EA Redwood Shores’ Dead Space has gone from indifference to genuine excitement in the weeks since E3. Now that people have actually played the interactive paean to Cameron-Carpenter-styled horror, they’ve found that its forbidding atmosphere, sound, and HUD-free presentation are hype-worthy and legitimately scary. I haven’t gotten to try it out myself but I’m anxious to get my hands on it. Redwood Shores have taken the essential road to designing quality interactive horror; Dead Space is, at its core, a game about confinement, about being trapped in a hostile environment with limited means of survival. Videogames lend themselves to this method of creating tension and anxiety because their environments are, naturally, closed. System Shock’s dilapidated space station, Resident Evil’s mansion, and even the more expansive town of Silent Hill are perfectly closed spaces, places that simultaneously create dread and a functional goal: how do I get out? It’s far rarer to see a game take the opposite route. After all, it isn’t easy to make a game that makes you feel lost. If a game forces you to lose yourself in its environment, by way of randomly generated environments or trick passages that lead to incongruous locations (as in Zelda’s Lost Woods), it risks frustrating the player – this is especially bad if the game’s intent is horror, since frustration can easily replace anxiety. It’s equally difficult to create a closed environment that is delicately constructed to confuse the player. The original Metroid and its Game Boy sequel are two of the only games that manage to successfully pull this off thanks to its series of identical hallways and dead ends. Another is Friday the 13th. Read More... Posted Aug 14 2008, 03:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, overworld, metroid, nintendo, ea, resident evil, silent hill, nes, dead space, Friday the 13th, ljn

• Games to Film to Games to Film: Resident Evil Degeneration

  Capcom, come on buddy, you know I love you. You been so good to me, you treat me right, you take me dancing and bring me flowers everyday. But we need to talk about the new CGI Resident Evil movie you’ve got going. It’s not that I don’t want to see the continuing adventures of Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy, you know I do. But you are terrible at writing dialogue, Capcom. You have always been terrible at writing dialogue. Why, just look at all the Resident Evil games! People are still making “master of unlocking” and “Jill pancake” jokes twelve years after the game came out! If you insist on making this Resident Evil movie, please hire another writer. Not Paul W.S. Anderson. On a serious note, Resident Evil Degeneration looks alright. See for yourself after the jump. Read More... Posted Jul 28 2008, 07:30 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, games to film, resident evil, capcom, final fantasy, paul ws anderson

• Revenge of the Port: Dead Rising Shuffles, Moans on Wii

  The true death of the arcade came at the beginning of this decade. It wasn’t when gamers started opting for the comfort and value of playing at home; it was when home consoles finally started equaling (and surpassing) the technological heft of the arcade cabinets themselves. Sega, one of the only surviving arcade giants, signed the death warrant themselves when developing the Dreamcast and its arcade-motherboard-twin, Naomi. Games at home and games in the arcade, identical for the first time. The move may have had the negative effect of killing off the already declining amusement center population across the Western world, but it also had a significant silver lining: the death of the shoddy arcade port. Approximations of more technologically demanding games have been a staple of gaming in the home since the 1970s, but, with the exception of stray PC-based ports, downgraded game experiences have largely disappeared since 2000. Today, in 2008, the fracturing of the console space seems to be bringing them back in force. Read More... Posted Jul 16 2008, 01:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo, xbox 360, resident evil, wii, capcom, nes, PC, pokemon, sega, grand theft auto, dreamcast, port, koei, Naomi, dead rising, dynasty warriors

• Games to Film: Paul W.S. Anderson’s Castlevania

  For the life of me, I cannot figure out how Paul W.S. Anderson keeps getting paid to make movies, especially movies based on videogames. The man is a different sort of enigma than Uwe Boll. Boll, after all, manages to self-finance the majority of his filmic game adaptations through a labyrinth of German tax shelters and Satanic covenants. Paul W.S. Anderson, on the other hand, gets actual studio funding to make stinkers like AVP and Soldier. In all fairness, Anderson’s Resident Evil trilogy and his legitimately hilarious Mortal Kombat don’t actually lower a viewer’s IQ like Boll’s House of the Dead; Anderson makes trash, not garbage. But it doesn’t change the fact that his movies suck. Yes, even Event Horizon. When it was announced in 2005 that Anderson had gotten his mitts on the Castlevania franchise, it was pretty disappointing. Read More... Posted Jul 14 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, games to film, resident evil, castlevania, mortal kombat, uwe boll, paul ws anderson

• The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great, Part 3

  And now, the bad... Metroid: Zero Mission (Game Boy Advance) Is Metroid: Zero Mission a terrible game? By no means. On its own terms, it's rather good. But as a reconception of one of the greatest, most influential games ever made, it's a disaster, taking everything that made Metroid spooky and replacing it with a thick layer of corn. Metroid was heavily influenced by Alien. Remember the petrified extraterrestrial skeleton in Alien? What if that bastard had gotten up and started bombarding Sigourney Weaver with some hack's idea of ancient wisdom? Wouldn't that have pretty much thrown the movie's chilly austerity out the window? Like so many latter-day games, Zero Mission thinks comic-book jibber-jabber is cooler than eerie silence. This lack of subtlety is echoed in the gameplay itself, which, while it controls a lot better than Metroid, is chock-full of egregious hand-holding and advice-giving — pretty much the exact opposite of the original's sprawling openendedness. Metroid is practically Lovecraftian in the way it makes you feel tiny and alone in a vast and hostile universe. Don't look for that feeling in Zero Mission. Oh, and it also mangles the most immortal climax in videogame history — the truly unsettling slaughter of a shrieking brain in a jar, followed by a hair-raising escape sequence — by tacking on a (sigh) stealth section. — PS Read More... Posted Jul 03 2008, 05:02 PM by Peter Smith with | with 17 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, metroid zero mission, resident evil, super mario bros 3, final fantasy, top ten, list, rondo of blood, chrono trigger, final fantasy iv, ninja gaiden trilogy, golden axe, super mario kart, space harrier, castlevania dracula x chronicles, sega ages, tomb raider anniversary, tomb raider legend, super mario advance 4, five greatest enhanced remakes, five bad enhanced remakes, mega man powered up, gunstar heroes, square, mario kart wii, panzer dragoon, outrun, cruis'n usa, best of 2008

• The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great, Part 2

  Final Fantasy (WonderSwan Color) The first in a vast battalion of Final Fantasy rereleases, the Wonderswan remake actually gets it righter than any that were to come. Sure, the Playstation version has FMV intros (whoo-hoo?), the GBA version has some mostly extraneous new dungeons, and the PSP version has sharper graphics. But the Wonderswan version gave the NES original a beautiful visual makeover that later ports would simply poach, and more importantly, it corrected some of the original game's antiquated design quirks in a totally optional fashion. In the NES game, if two characters attack one enemy and the first one kills it, the second character's attack will be ineffective. This is annoying, but it also forces you to plan; it adds some strategy to the essentially one-dimensional battle system. You could really argue for or against the feature, and the Wonderswan port gives you a choice. The same goes for a number of other idiosyncracies we cranky old-timers like to keep in our enhanced remakes; subsequent rereleases dumbed the game down until you could grind through it with a rubber band around the A button. — PS Read More... Posted Jul 03 2008, 05:01 PM by Peter Smith with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, metroid zero mission, resident evil, super mario bros 3, final fantasy, top ten, list, rondo of blood, chrono trigger, final fantasy iv, ninja gaiden trilogy, golden axe, super mario kart, space harrier, castlevania dracula x chronicles, sega ages, tomb raider anniversary, tomb raider legend, super mario advance 4, five greatest enhanced remakes, five bad enhanced remakes, mega man powered up, gunstar heroes, square, mario kart wii, panzer dragoon, outrun, cruis'n usa, best of 2008

• The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great, Part 1

  Well, having burned through our annual pants-replacement fund on the announcement of Chrono Trigger DS, we here at 61FPS now find ourselves surprisingly ambivalent about this remake (or is it just a rerelease?) of the greatest game Square ever made. Sure, it could be handsome and polished. But it could be sloppy and buggy, too. It could add new gameplay elements, or it could dumb down those that were already there. Chrono Trigger's a delicate thing! Be careful with that priceless art item, you sausage-fingered renovators! And here to guide you on a righteous path are five enhanced remakes that got it right — and five that didn't. — Peter Smith FIVE GREAT REMAKES Tomb Raider Anniversary (PlayStation 2) Most games simply do not need to be remade. As beautiful and ambitious as Square's impending Final Fantasy IV DS is, its voiced dialogue, new script, and three-dimensional overhaul are icing on a cake that was already delicious despite its simplicity. The original Tomb Raider, however, is a once-revolutionary title ravaged by the passage of time and the growth of technology. Forget how Lara's 1996 debut looks. Just think about trying to play a fully-3D game that requires precision platforming using only a d-pad. Crystal Dynamics' full remake of Tomb Raider put the engine from Lara's rebirth, the decent Tomb Raider: Legend, to great use, re-introducing the world to the game and, most importantly, preserving it in a way so people can actually play it in the years to come. Plus, grappling hooks are awesome. — John Constantine Read More... Posted Jul 03 2008, 05:00 PM by Peter Smith with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, metroid zero mission, resident evil, super mario bros 3, final fantasy, top ten, list, rondo of blood, chrono trigger, final fantasy iv, ninja gaiden trilogy, golden axe, super mario kart, space harrier, castlevania dracula x chronicles, sega ages, tomb raider anniversary, tomb raider legend, super mario advance 4, five greatest enhanced remakes, five bad enhanced remakes, mega man powered up, gunstar heroes, square, mario kart wii, panzer dragoon, outrun, cruis'n usa, best of 2008

• Up All Night: Dark Sector

  Dark Sector was one of the very first games for “next-gen” consoles ever seen by the public. When it was revealed in 2004, everyone was saying, “Oh, man. Look at those hot, hot graphics.” They were also saying, “What’s up with all the idiotic Guyver rejects hanging out in space?” Yes, despite its bleeding edge technology, Dark Sector was looking generic from the start. It’s cool though. Digital Extremes spent the next few years playing a ton of Resident Evil 4 and made some important changes to Dark Sector’s look and play before it came out this past March. First on the list of changes, dark-and-tortured protagonist Hayden only looks like the Guyver for half the game. Instead, he looks, controls, and moves exactly like Leon from Resident Evil 4 (he’s got darker hair and no leather jacket. Big differences!) Second, Dark Sector would no longer take place in space but in an evil future Russia overrun with some techno-plague that makes regular dudes into zombies (making it Easter Europe instead of Western Europe is hugely innovative. Hugely.) Finally, they added a smear of kill.switch’s duck and cover mechanics that are all the rage these days to compliment the Resident Evil controls. The final result of all these changes? Dark Sector came out as what it looked like: a silly generic mess of a game. But what a silly generic mess it is! Read More... Posted Jun 23 2008, 06:30 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, up all night, resident evil, dark sector, kill.switch, krull

• Films to Games: Ghostbusters Really is Ghostbusters 3!

  So be good, for goodness’ sake! Wooooaaaaahhh ohhhhh. Somebody’s coming! Let me be the first to tell you that even watching the new Ghostbusters game leads to uncontrollable quoting. During 61FPS’ visit with Sierra last Wednesday, we got to wash the taste of 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand out of our mouth with a demonstration of the sequel that’s been twenty years coming. About a month back, I talked about the momentousness of Ghostbusters: The Game’s development as a collaboration between developers Terminal Reality and franchise creators Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis. From the brief look we got, I can say wholeheartedly that the collaboration is a success. Read More... Posted Jun 16 2008, 04:20 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, games to film, resident evil, Ghostbusters, dan ackroyd, Harold ramis, 50 cent, folklore, terminal reality

• Captivating Discontent: Where's the Nintendo Love, Capcom?

  Written by Derrick Sanskrit Like a lot of other gamers, I was rather perplexed by the announcements at the Capcom’s recent Captivate ‘08 event. Sure, Street Fighter IV is starting to look like a worthwhile return to the franchise and Bionic Commando just looks awesome - both got me wanting to pick up that Xbox gamepad again - but what the hell happened on the Nintendo side of things? Neopets Puzzle Adventure and Spyborgs? Capcom doesn't really believe that ALL Nintendo gamers are eight years old, do they? But as the media rolled in, I started to warm up to these new IPs. Read More... Posted Jun 05 2008, 01:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: resistance, nintendo, nintendo ds, street fighter, derrick sanskrit, resident evil, wii, capcom, world of warcraft, bionic commando, call of duty, neopets, spyborgs, puzzle quest, ratchet & clank, tony hawk, zack & wiki, the sims

• Screen Test: Alone in the Dark

  As a youth, conceptual horror was enough to scare me into insomnia. Violence was one thing - I could process that as fantasy - but lurking terror was too much. If someone said that they were going to watch a horror movie or tell a scary story, I would freak out. It was right around pubescence, when my capacity for abstraction was growing exponentially, that I developed a taste for fear. Like any other extreme emotion, fear can be delightfully narcotic. After watching It (yes, it scared me. You look at Tim Curry in a clown suit without shitting yourself, I dare you,) I was finally clued into what everyone else seemed to know: being scared is fun. It wasn’t until the late ‘90s, with early Resident Evil and Silent Hill entries, that I started getting my fix from videogames. So those games’ shared ancestor, Alone in the Dark, is an unknown quantity for me outside of reputation. The new Alone in the Dark from Atari, after a couple of years of development purgatory (not quite hell), is looking like it will live up to that reputation. Read More... Posted May 29 2008, 10:00 AM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, resident evil, silent hill, screen test, atari, alone in the dark