New Dead Space feels like old Dead Space

As people were when the second installment first came out, the fans worried about whether or not the game would actually be scary or not. I worried too, with the announcement of Co-op being a choice and the early teasers showing off just mostly the shooting aspects, one can wonder if this would just become another Shoot-em up game... It's not!

Single player alone is said to still be as scary as the original one was, perhaps even scarier, and the Co-op has been said by early viewers to be something that works and has never been seen in a co-op campaign before. But this new trailer released by EA and Visceral helps to ensure that promise tenfold!


Dead Space 3 comes out in February 2013...

Behold the glory of Killzone: Mercenary!

The Playstation Vita is indeed a powerful device, but none of the recent games have shown its true potential yet. But the highly anticipated Killzone Vita might be the first to do just that.

The new game has just gotten it's official title at Gamescom, Killzone: Mercenary, and already the graphics look to be on par with the second and third installments on the PS3. And fans know that the Killzone 2 and 3 graphics were among the best ever seen thus far.

Like most spin-offs, Killzone: Mercenary will be quite a bit different from the core Killzone franchise, as this time around you’ll be playing as – surprise! – a mercenary working with both the Helghast and the ISA. This marks the first time in Killzone history that you’ll be working alongside the Helghast. It uses the behind touchscreen rather nicely for close encounter kills. As can be seen by this GIF picture below:




What's the best part? This handheld spin-off was not handed down to another developer! That's right, Guerrilla Games is indeed making this! So no worries for a sub-par game. They are also using their Killzone engine too, which is why the graphics look so neat. This might just turn out to be the high-profile, console-quality game the PS Vita needs. This alone certainly makes up for the poor looking Call of Duty Vita game, and will certainly be much better than Killzone: Liberation (another handheld spin-off that came out for the PSP).

They said the game will come out next year, more info will arrive soon...

The Pros and Cons of Video Game sequels

Video games tend to mostly be good, but usually there are bad or horrible ones. However some both bad and good get sequels that either help or corrupt a franchise.

We live in a world where sequels to almost anything is both welcomed and expected. Usually it's for continuing story and plot sequences, other times it's just an excuse to improve one gameplay or graphics, but in the end the developers have some kind of logical reasoning behind making sequels, or is it logical? Here are the Pros and Cons to what may or may not make a sequel worthwhile...

Pros:

• Much needed enhancements: Usually beginner games, or firsts in a series, are usually bland or simplistic when first released. This is not a problem at all, for the first is to nearly get people interested and to get their attention and awareness for when any future installments come out. I'm pretty sure that Bungie had no idea at the start that Halo would become this big when they were just releasing the first Halo game way back on the original Xbox. Even look at Killzone, the first game wasn't exactly worthy of a gold medal, but its sequels did amazingly well all due to Playstation fans remembering the first back on the PS2. One last example would be High Moon's Transformers games, the first was just a mere set up to prove that an actual fun Transformers game was possible, and now a sequel is coming out with lots to offer. While sometimes graphics and gameplay may change, as long as it achieves what the first one started it'll be great.
• Story frenzy:  Sequels sometimes tend to do best when they are the continuation of an unfinished story. Gears of War for example ended on a cliffhanger, with a woman at the end speaking about the humans having no idea what's in store for them and the war. A cliffhanger like that helps to make Gears of War 2 that more more of an anticipation. What about Darksiders? The first could've concluded there and then but instead decided to show the other three horseman awakening from their eternal slumber. This opened a lot of "what's next" questions which led to the excitement of Darksiders II. 
• Great build up:  A good sequel is possible to show up without you ever noticing, this can sometimes be a bit of a complication for sales or anticipation. So a sequel that is able to praise itself with the right amount of appraise should most certainly be... well appraised. New Super Mario Bros 2 was the equivalent of having a hammer continuously bonk you on the head for the entire week that it was Present at E3, which of course isn't a bad thing to do especially for Nintendo, since they understand the kind of popularity that Mario is. Dark Souls also did a fine job advertising, it even had TV commercials which in our lifetime is a rare opportunity. But more recently Halo 4 has been doing a fine job at advertising. I've noticed that it's cinematic trailers have been popping up in movie theaters just before the film starts.

Cons:

• Zero Effort:  The only thing worse than a bad sequel is a bad sequel that shows. This is usually done when a game company, new or the same from the first entry, make a sequel just for either A: the money, best examples would be all the guitar hero, rock band, and dancing games (not that every entry they made was necessarily bad), B: complications, a company could be in debt and have no choice but to make a new game ASAP, especially sequels to well known earlier entries, or C: Brainwashed, the creators can tell when a game they make is loved and so they believe all the fans will immediately buy any kind of sequel, no matter how bad, just think of all the people in disbelief when they first played Crackdown 2 (Geoff was one of those people). Basically, the argument is that some game creators will work next to nothing to make a good sequel because they can simply do it.
• What goes up, brings something else down:  Most game companies try to improve on a dislike or downgraded quality from the first game. Sometimes doing this will ultimately ruin another factor in the game. Example: Force Unleashed II had an amazing improvement on the battle statistics and new useful force powers, but it seems as though that was the only thing Lucas Arts wanted the reporters to know about, cause the rest of the game was too short with a less satisfying story. Perhaps a game could even have nothing new to it at all, even when it is shown to the public as being new. Resistance 2 was an anticipated sequel to the original, but in the end that game ultimately was nothing more than a rehash, it's a good thing Resistance 3 fixed those wrong doings.
• The worse that could, can, and has:  This goes to all the many other wrong happenings you can imagine. Character changes, unrelated story lines, or new stupid mechanics are of the few too many that haunt gamers everywhere. What could happen is that Call of Duty Black Ops II will try too hard to be new, what can happen is Sly Cooper 4 not living up to expectations, and what has happened is all the wrongs in Prototype 2.

Controversy:

• New company in charge:  Usually a sequel will head straight to a new company for a sequel due to the original makers being either busy or uninterested. This usually tends to be a raised flag for some people (or however the saying goes) because they believe the new company will destroy the boundaries that the original set. However most others would give congrats to the newbies, getting excited for what new and interesting improvements can be made. This is neither a pro or a con, or perhaps both, let's just say it extremely varies.

Really not all game sequels are horrendous, games like Infamous 2 or Super Smash Bros Brawl have been prime examples of games that stay true to the original. Heck, I'm playing Darksiders II now and I am amazed by how they were able to make it basically the original again while still bringing in many new things. What are your favorite sequels? What are your most hated sequels? any future sequels you're either excited or worried for? Any games you think need or don't need sequels? Please Comment!

Introducing the Collections videos!

Due to a Gmail request, Geoff and I decided that we would all show off our Game and non-game related, well mostly game related, Collector's editions, special editions, extended editions, and pretty much whatever valuables we have.

To start, I show off mine. It had to be split into three videos and the presentation is bad. But in the end I'm glad I was able to get mine done:

GeekBeerz vs Cybertron PART II was accidentally Deleted

For anyone wondering where our second part of the demo video is, or was, a problem occured.

The video was pretty much done with editing and whatnot and was about to be published onto Youtube, but then the Computer screwed up and the entire video, both edited and unedited, completely gone! Now we have to start from scratch again, hopefully it'll be done by this week...

TAD: the Total Achieving Dorks comic will be completed on August 20th / plus announcements

[UPDATE]: Tom's comic, TAD, is nearing it's final stages and hopes to get it done by August 20th. And will be able to bring it to a publishing company!


Other reports that Tom wants to bring up, ZA4M 3 will be his next book after this. It will come out sometime in 2013 for his fans (his fanbase has been dead for some time due to Tom being too busy with other things and sites like this one, but they keep urging him to bring out the second and third book)


Tom also started writing the draft script for his three year planned comic series titled "Bizzarnage", which will be more like a graphic novel than anything else. No story plot has been given but two characters are based entirely after Bergy and his brother.


Until next time...

Is The Last Guardian Dead? UPDATE

UPDATE: Sony has told Chris Kohler from Wired that Last Gaurdian is still in development

Original Post:
Today on NeoGaf, it was revealed that Sony dropped the trademark for "The Last Guardian" as of August 6. This is a sad day indeed...or is it?

When hearing about it, at first the news was horrible. But after reading the thread, there have been many theories about what may be going on.

First there's the theory that it may be canceled. Not very exciting, and a very interesting looking game is lost forever.

Second, it might be a rebranding. This could be very smart on Sony/Team Ico's part because the name "The Last Guardian" has been thrown around for YEARS. With a rebranding, it could look new to a lot of people and potentially get finished.

Lastly, my opinion is that Sony might be giving up the copyright to kinda say, "We don't want this anymore," meaning it could possibly go to multiple systems in the next generation of consoles. For the longest time, Team Ico has had there games exclusively on Sony consoles. With Sony dropping the trademark, we could be seeing "The Last Guardian" on the Next-box or possibly even the Wii U.

All of these are just theories and wishes mainly. The thing that is true is that we all have to hope this game is not dead.

Source: NeoGaf