If there was a theme to apply to 2014, it was one of disappointment.

A lot of super-hyped games hit the market this year, and they weren’t confined to a single developer, platform or genre. There have been so many disappointments this year, in fact, that Video Producer Mitchell Saltzman had to sit down and rank a top 5 list. That means there are disappointments that didn’t even make the list.

Check out Mitchell’s video below, and let us know what titles didn’t meet your expectations in the comments below. And don’t forget to subscribe to the GameFront YouTube Channel and drop a comment and a like on the video.

The post Mitchell’s Top 5 Most Disappointing Games of 2014 (VIDEO) appeared first on GameFront.

In an announcement on the official Xbox website, the company confirmed that the game will launch with three distinct editions: Standard, Limited and Limited Collector’s.

The Standard release will cost $59.99 and include the game and an “exclusive poster” with pre-orders. The Limited edition, will cost $99.99 and come with digital content “to enhance Spartan combat, as well as exclusive items “wrapped in a uniquely designed steel book.” The Limited Collector’s edition, meanwhile, will cost $249.99 and include “everything in the Limited Edition” along with “additional content” such as a “commemorative numbered statue designed by 343 Industries.”

While revealing a special collector’s edition is far from surprising, we could imagine some gamers being a put off by how vague the announcement is about the “additional content” that will be packaged in the Limited Collector’s edition. Granted, the post does say that “more details” will be shared about the promised “at a later date,” but it still strikes us as a bit odd that Microsoft and 343 would even bother announcing a $250 collector’s edition when they don’t even have a picture to showcase what you’re paying for. Halo 5: Guardians, itself, is currently slated to release for Xbox One in Fall 2015.

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While the 2014’s shopping season has come to an end, Microsoft, in a news posting to the official Xbox website, has confirmed that it will be making a popular Xbox One bundle available at major retailers until January 3rd, 2015. The bundle in question includes a copy of Assassin’s Creed: Unity and only costs $349. This, of course, is $50 cheaper than the standard Xbox One without any game. Gamers interested in taking advantage of the bundle can look for it at “Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, Microsoft Stores, Target, Toys ‘R Us and Walmart.”

That Microsoft would extend the availability of the bundle is far from surprising. The Xbox One, after months of being beaten by Sony’s PlayStation 4, captured the top hardware sales spot in November based largely off of the popularity of this discounted bundle. While we still don’t know how well the Xbox One sold in December, it’d be reasonable to predict that the bundle continued to sell strongly. Making it available into January, even just for a few days, could, in turn, potentially give it another sales bump that could help it snag the top spot for the first month of 2015. Time will have to tell, of course, if that winds up being the case.

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Perhaps nothing is more important or more easily forgotten than the impact of music on the experience of playing a video game. It’s often music and sound design that make an interactive experience truly memorable.

Game soundtracks are something special to behold — they’re longer, more involved and more diverse than, say, film soundtracks, because in an interactive experience, they usually have a whole lot more responsibility. They’re the anchor that keeps you emotionally tied to a scene, or the catalyst to get your heart pumping as the stakes rocket through the roof.

Below, we’ve put together a list of some of our favorite soundtracks of the year (in no particular order) that offer some of gaming’s best, most interesting and most diverse music. But it’s in no way complete, so feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments below.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Let’s start with something we might consider standard: With an epic BioWare fantasy RPG comes an epic BioWare fantasy RPG soundtrack. Dragon Age: Inquisition’s music is appropriately epic, with sweeping marches and battle themes balanced against more introspective, violin-heavy pieces. This is a soundtrack to be paired with high adventure in a massive world, and composer Trevor Morris nails that feeling with every track. It’s also enormous, clocking in at more than 90 minutes of music.

The good news is, if you have the Digital Deluxe version of DA:I, you’ve got the soundtrack, too. Hit up the official website here for more info or to purchase a copy.

Far Cry 4

Like the Far Cry 3 soundtrack before it, Far Cry 4‘s music has a lot of jobs to fulfill. It has to convey the atmosphere of the Himalayan country of Kyrat, and it has to provide a backdrop for high-octane moments to which you can shoot dudes. Composer Cliff Martinez gets the former with haunting vocal tracks and mixes of instruments meant to give a reverent, almost mystical feel, capturing spaces like Kyrat’s temples and ancient landscapes. And then the album moves into helpings of high-beats-per-minute ass-kicking, chucking in things like a bit of dubstep and heavy percussion, and moves through all the moods Far Cry 4’s vast and diverse setting can create.

Catch the Far Cry 4 Original Game Soundtrack on Amazon and iTunes.

Gods Will Be Watching

The high-tech future is at the center of Gods Will Be Watching, telling a story that encompasses space travel, hostage situations, horrific torture and alien planets. The soundtrack, then, has to be suitably science-fictiony, and Spanish composer Fingersplit meets that requirement by leaning on a dark collection of synth sounds and percussion. The computer-generated sound always swings away toward worried, mournful tracks even as they infuse energy in the proceedings with fast-paced rhythms and melodies.

Gods Will Be Watching is a combination of slower, more ambient songs and rising intensity, and as a soundtrack it works just as well away from the rest of the game as coupled with it. Snag it from Fingersplit’s Bandcamp page.

The Banner Saga

Stoic’s tragic Viking saga of traveling across deadly country requires a very particular sound, and the studio looked to Grammy nominated composer Austin Wintory to create it. Vocal work on The Banner Saga comes from the likes of artists such as Peter Hollens and Youtube sensation Malukah, while the soundtrack’s lyrical stylings draw from Norse proverbs and poetry.

The result is one of the more unique and specific game soundtracks possibly ever created, perfectly channeling the Viking mythos at the game’s heart. Snag The Banner Saga from album’s Bandcamp page.

Civilization: Beyond Earth

Another album falling into the “sweeping epic” category is that of Civilization: Beyond Earth, which has the burden of channeling the feeling of starting and growing a colony on another world — literally the next step in the saga of humanity. Beyond Earth alternates between high orchestral tracks that convey the enormity of space, and ambient tracks that perfectly capture a feeling of exploring the unknown.

The spiffy thing about Civilization: Beyond Earth’s soundtrack is that it’s free with the game on Steam — just check the “Local Files” for the MP3s to start listening. It’s also available for purchase on iTunes and Amazon.

No More Room in Hell Original Soundtrack Vol. 1

No More Room in Hell might sound on paper a bit lighthearted and goofy — various characters somewhat recognizable from popular culture fight their way through zombie hordes in a multiplayer shooter in which cooperation is king. But the soundtrack created by Garrett “ThoughT” Lindquist is much more thoughtful, and sorrowful, than that premise might first suggest.

The album manages to give that sense of some emotional resonance at the end of the world — something not all zombie games or their soundtracks can really attain — while also hitting on those key elements of quickening beats to go with quickening hearts as the action rises. Check out No More Room in Hell Original Soundtrack Vol. 1 on the album’s Bandcamp page.

The Sailor’s Dream

Music is a big part of the experience of iOS title The Sailor’s Dream, with many of the secrets of the game hidden within the lyrics of songs that are only unlocked by playing on certain days. Though The Sailor’s Dream subject matter is mysterious and occasionally dark, Simogo’s title is filled with lighthearted songs that build on the childhood dreams that make up game’s premise. It balances instrumental offerings with tracks sung by vocalist Stephanie Hladowski, and offers one of the more lighthearted soundtracks of the year.

You can find all sorts of methods to buy The Sailor’s Dream on the soundtrack’s official website.

It’s worth noting that there are probably a few soundtracks out there that deserve to be on this list. One worthy honorable mention that I haven’t had a chance to properly enjoy is Killer Instinct: Season One, which throws together a hearty mix of diverse tracks, but also doesn’t skimp on the dubstep and other action game staples. Find it over at Amazon.com.

And of course, we’re always in the market for more great game music. Leave your favorites in the comments below!

Phil Hornshaw is senior editor at GameFront. Find more of his work here, and follow him and Game Front on Twitter: @philhornshaw and @gamefrontcom.

The post 7 Great Game Soundtracks from 2014 appeared first on GameFront.

The trailer, originally put out by the developer earlier this month, is entitled “Imagine” and delivers a three minute showcase of the game focusing primarily on all of the many options it will offer players when it’s finally completed.

While the trailer made a point of trying to emphasize the openness of the game’s universe, it’s perhaps worth noting that a lot what was shown involved a lot of straightforward (but shiny) looking FPS and space simulation combat. Granted, the trailer was also clearly trying to be somewhat cinematic, something that’d arguably be a bit harder to do with footage of spaceships peacefully hauling cargo through the stars.

Regardless, the footage itself was nice looking, giving us the definite impression that Chris Roberts and Cloud Imperium aren’t wasting the piles of money that crowdfunders have thrown at the game. Time will have to tell, of course, how it all turns out, but these kinds of trailers definitely help to keep us interested in its progress.

The post Star Citizen In-Engine Trailer Asks Gamers to “Imagine” appeared first on GameFront.

Capcom could be readying an HD remaster of Resident Evil Zero.

While the company hasn’t offered any sort of official announcement confirming plans to re-release a high definition version of the game, enterprising Resident Evil fans recently noticed something interesting that the company’s Japanese website. According to a posting at NeoGAF, the site recently added a preview image showcasing a PS4 menu theme gamers will receive if they pre-order the Resident Evil HD remaster. Included in the preview image is a game icon that appears to be for Resident Evil Zero, potentially suggesting something might be in the works involving that title.

Zero, of course, was originally released as a GameCube exclusive back in 2002. It would later receive a port to the Wii that would, sadly, only be released in Japan. The game itself served as a prequel to the original Resident Evil and received a somewhat mixed reception from fans of the franchise. We’ve reached out to Capcom to see if we can learn more.

The post Resident Evil Zero May Get HD Re-Release appeared first on GameFront.

Croteam has taken an interesting approach to punishing those who pirate The Talos Principle: trapping them in an in-game elevator.

The Croatian developer isn’t suing pirates or tracking their IP addresses. Instead, it’s content to watch (and probably enjoy) the forum posts about players being stuck in an elevator.

It looks like the forum post referenced above has been deleted (probably by the person who initially posted it).

Novel approaches to punishing pirates are becoming more and more common. Back in 2009, Rocksteady slipped one into Batman: Arkham Asylum’s PC version, making Batman’s glide ability into more of a “plummet” ability. More recently, Ubisoft deliberately omitted a field of view slider in Far Cry 4, adding it in a launch-day patch, and watching the complaints roll in.

These sorts of approaches don’t last long, as pirates typically update their cracked versions to fix the issue once it’s known. Still, they represent what might be a company’s best chance to turn a pirate into a paying customer: annoyance. When it’s more convenient and more rewarding for someone to buy a game than to pirate it, you have a chance to make a sale. As long as you don’t ruin it with server issues or overly onerous DRM, that is.

Piracy is an issues that developers for all platforms have to deal with. I’m glad to see some PC developers trying new ways to do it.

The post The Talos Principle Traps Pirates in an Elevator appeared first on GameFront.

The game, Richard Garriott’s first, joined GOG’s catalog earlier this week as an early Christmas gift on December 24th. Rather than charging for it however, the digital distribution site is offering it to registered customers as a free download. It will be the fourth game from Richard Garriott to be added to the site, joining other titles like Ultima IV, Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire and Ultima Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams.

Originally released in 1980, Akalabeth follows the efforts of a lone hero to prove their worth to the enigmatic Lord British. This quest primarily involves killing a series of increasingly powerful monsters while avoiding hazards such as starvation and death. Gamers interested in giving the game a try can grab it here.

The post Richard Garriott’s Akalabeth Joins GOG as Free Game appeared first on GameFront.

Achieve greatness in the Gat Out of Hell add-on for Saints Row 4 as the Saints go up against Satan in his new home turf. When the forces of darkness appear, it’s up to some familiar series heroes to bring the King of Lies down for good — and there are plenty of achievements to go along with all that.

There’s nothing hidden here, publisher Deep Silver and Volition are putting out the complete list of challenges, extras, and references below. Earn achievements by upgrading some of the new super-powers or grabbing killer demonic guns. There’s even a jab at Assassin’s Creed with the “Saints’ Creed” achievement, requiring your hero to climb to the highest sail of a certain pirate ship.

Warning: Content spoilers ahead.

Go back to the digital recreation of Steelport and save the human race with our Saints Row 4 video guide, or uncover tons of crazy weapons, cheat codes, and Easter egg areas with GameFront’s list of Saints Row 4 cheats.

…Double-Hockey-Sticks (200 points):
Conquer all of New Hades with 100% City Take Over

…My Dear Watson (20 points)
Choose a new element for all of your Supernatural Powers

Are You Crazy? (10 points)
Get a Comet into the Ultor lobby

Barn Burner (10 points)
Find 75 Barnstorming Diversion locations

Cluster Luck (10 points)
Collect at least five Soul Clusters without touching the ground

Double Trouble (20 points)
Play Saints Row: Gat out of Hell Co-op for 3 hours

Epic Flight Quest (20 points)
Fly from the roof of Snowball’s Chance to Sinterpol HQ’s roof, without landing

Extra Crispy (10 points)
Die in the lava

Fallen Angel (10 points)
Get your first Supernatural Powers

Fell from Heaven (50 points)
Purchase 113 Supernatural Power Upgrades

Fly, You Fools (50 points)
Fly for 250,000 meters

Footprints in the Sand (10 points)
Kill 150 Demons with the Stomp Supernatural Power

Get Stoned (10 points)
Stonify and Shatter Kill 100 Demons with the Stone Blast Supernatural Power

Gnarly Wave (10 points)
Car surf on a Comet while it explodes

Hazardous Dukes (20 points)
Kill 25 Arch Dukes

H-E… (20 points)
Complete all open world gameplay in two districts of the city of New Hades

Hell Buoy (10 points)
Have five Imps attached to you at one time

Imp-fanticide (10 points)
Kill 50 of your own summoned Imps

Let’s Bounce (10 points)
In Torment Fraud, hit 5 vehicles in a row without touching the ground

Level One Demon (10 points)
Buy your first Upgrade from the Upgrade Store

Nailed It (10 points)
Get 100 kills with the God’s Hammer

Out of the Frying Pan (10 points)
Knock a vehicle into the lava

Oxymoronic (10 points)
Kill 100 Demons using the Coldfire Aura Supernatural Power

Plague of Gat (20 points)
Kill 1000 Demons with any combination of Supernatural Powers

Purple Demons (10 points)
Have minions kill 100 Demons with the Summon Supernatural Power

Put Up Your Dukes (20 points)
Kill an Arch Duke with a melee attack

Raise the Roof (10 points)
Smack into the ceiling 10 times while wall running

Saints’ Creed (10 points)
Stand on the tallest mast of the ‘Queen Anne’s Revenge’

Satan Punchers (50 points)
Beat the game

Seraphim and Cherubim (20 points)
Play for at least 2 hours as Gat and 2 hours as Kinzie

Shooting Star (10 points)
Fly for 500 meters while on fire

Shut Your Eyes (10 points)
Get 250 kills with the Essence of Wrath

Sloth Love Chunk (10 points)
Get 250 kills with the Essence of Sloth

Soft Shoe (10 points)
Stay in contact with the lava for 10 seconds without dying

Soul Drain (20 points)
Find 100% of all Soul Clusters

Soul in One (20 points)
Find 100 Soul Clusters

Terminal Hog (10 points)
Take down an Extraction Facility while on a motorcycle

The Book of More, Man (50 points)
Find 64 Tomes

The Devil’s Dues (20 points)
Upgrade one weapon to the max

The King of Hell (50 points)
Complete ALL of the Challenges

The Seven Deadly Weapons (50 points)
Kill 25 Demons with each of the Seven Deadly Weapons

The Wings of Angels (10 points)
Be airborne during Supernatural Jumps or Flight for a combined 10 minutes of gameplay

Top Gunner (10 points)
Shoot down a Spire missile with a blast while hovering

Transcontinental (10 points)
Fly continuously for 60 seconds

Twenty-Twenty Vision (20 points)
Spend over 20 hours in Hell

Saints Row 4: How to Find the Salem Broomstick Vehicle [Video]
Saints Row 4: How to Find the Dildo Bat [Secret Weapon]
Saints Row 4: Secret Developer Room Easter Egg
Saints Row 4: Cheat Codes
Saints Row 4: Text Adventures Locations Guide
Saints Row 4: Audio Logs Locations Guide
Saints Row 4: Romance Options Guide
Saints Row 4: Unlockable Costumes
Saints Row 4: Easter Eggs & References

The post Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell – Complete Achievements List appeared first on GameFront.

And looking back, there sure seemed to be a lot of those during the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox console generation. Psychonauts and Anachronox are two fondly remembered favorites of mine, but sales were never enough for sequels. Second Sight had great ideas and a fantastic twist ending, but only saw mediocre sales. Killer 7 was always destined to be an obscure cult classic, despite putting Suda51 on ther map. The list goes on and on – I’m sure you can insert your own favorites from the era that never got the “attention” they deserved.

That’s pretty odd when you think about it. To be sure, as long as people have developed games there have been hidden gems and misunderstood classics. Yet within the span of a few years, several inspirational games were released that apparently, never went anywhere. What exactly was it about that era that made it so special?

The Escapist’s own Yahtzee described the PS2 era as a gaming “sweet spot”, where technology was advanced enough for advanced graphics but simple enough to enough to allow for experimentation. The result was a massive boom of unique games that our young gaming culture embraced wholeheartedly. Many gamers had their first experiences with games in this era, especially as consoles became the norm for many living rooms. It’s also a point when gaming started “growing up”, dealing with more mature topics and deeper themes. (Not that games didn’t before, but Nintendo usually dominated that market with cartoonish 16-bit graphics that children ended up playing anyway.)

The sheer variety of games coming from Triple-A publishers was immense, covering everything from platformers, to shooters and survival horror. Obviously, not everything published during this generation was good, but even poorly-made titles had personality that set them apart from peers. It’s not surprising that many of today’s gamers are hugely nostalgic for this period; your average game store had something for almost everyone.

So if things were so good, why didn’t we get a Beyond Good & Evil trilogy? Why did we never see Raz grow up in Psychonauts sequels to become the world’s best psychic agent? Just why did no one play these games?

There’s no one simple answer to that, but I suspect it’s not that people didn’t play it; it just found its audience too late. Remember, this was back before players could take advantage of Steam wishlists and recommendations to help them instantly find every game worth playing. Every title was competing for real-estate on brick and mortar gaming shelves. It’s easy to imagine a few games slipping through the cracks only to be rediscovered in discount bins and used games sales.

But a bigger question might be why the period of “Great Games Nobody Played” came to an end. It’s not like the days have gotten longer and gamers suddenly have more time to uncover and play every great game released each year. Perhaps it’s because we’re simply remembering an era with rose-colored glasses, but I suspect it might be because of where we buy our games today: Digital storefronts like Steam, GOG.com, and Origin (after its rocky start).

As internet connections and digital gaming platforms improve, new IPs can be marketed directly to niche audiences without having to compete with established franchises. On top of that digital curation means games can stay on the “shelves” indefinitely. Add in the recent fixture of massive discount events and it’s much easier for small gems or under-appreciated titles to get thrust back into the limelight and find an audience.

And while there’s definitely something to be said for the charm and thrill of uncovering an unexpected treasure in some sad looking discount bin, the fact of the matter is that the distribution methods of the modern day have given people better tools to discover and access critically acclaimed titles that, not long ago, might have been out of reach if your local game store didn’t have it in stock. Think of it this way: You can buy Beyond Good & Evil right now from GOG, Steam, or pick up the HD remaster from PSN or Xbox Live. Who can honestly still say this is a game nobody’s played?

The post Reflecting on Games That Nobody Played appeared first on GameFront.

Take a trip through the indie gems of yester-year with the GameFront crew on the latest complete video walkthrough. This time the team tackles To the Moon for an emotional journey through a dying man’s memories.

Enjoy the critically-acclaimed story and check out each individual part in the sections below. For even more heart-breaking games, browse our Last of Us walkthrough or it’s Left Behind DLC and don’t forget to bring some tissues.

The post To the Moon Video Walkthrough appeared first on GameFront.

Well, that’s about it for 2014, folks, and in our last podcast of the year, we run down the last bits of business: the GameFront Game of the Year list.

Our democratically chosen best picks for the year aren’t the only thing on the docket, however. We also talk about the state of Nintendo, which is talking about the new console it’s working on (and what it might take for that machine to be successful). And of course, we’ve still got Destiny on the brain, with a few of our best ideas for how to fix Bungie’s not-quite-MMO shooter in 2015 (at least a few of which are serious).

You can find everything we discuss in the links below. You’ll also want to subscribe to the GameFront YouTube Channel and the GameFront Twitch Channel for more coverage of Destiny and lots of other stuff, as well as all our other daily streaming shows, guides, and whatnot.

Feel free to hit us up with any questions, comments, concerns, suggestions and hate mail at podcast@gamefront.com.

This week’s podcast team is:

Ron Whitaker, Managing Editor | Follow him on Twitter!
Mitchell Saltzman, Video Producer | Follow him on Twitter!
Phil Hornshaw, Senior Editor | Follow him on Twitter

And here’s everything we discuss on the podcast:

The Destiny Diaries – Episode 10: How to Fix Destiny in 2015

Destiny: The Dark Below DLC Review: Crota’s Grind

Miyamoto: Nintendo “Working On” Next Console

GameFront’s Game of the Year 2014

GameFront Staff’s Top Games of 2014

The post GF Podcast 53: All About Nintendo, GOTY and 2014′s End appeared first on GameFront.

PlayStation Network and Xbox Live were down for much of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but it looks like they were resuscitated by the actions of Kim Dotcom, founder of encrypted internet storage service Mega.

PSN and Xbox Live have been intermittently unavailable throughout the Christmas holiday, and while you might think that’s it’s just a crush of people activating and playing the new consoles they got for Christmas, a group of hackers is claiming credit for the downtime. The group that calls itself “Lizard Squad” has been tweeting throughout the last three days, claiming to have downed both the networks through Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. A DDoS attack in its most basic form consists of flooding an internet server with traffic, overwhelming its capacity and making it unavailable to legitimate users. The group has been taunting the companies on Twitter, and claiming that they’ll allow the services to come back up if they get a certain number of re-tweets or favorites.

That is, until late yesterday, when Kim Dotcom got involved. The New Zealand entrepreneur apparently offered free lifetime premium accounts to every member of Lizard Squad if they’d call off the attacks.

That deal seems to have coerced the hackers to cease their attacks, if this tweet from Lizard Squad is any evidence.

As of the time of this post, I was able to confirm that both networks are operating (at least for me).

The disappointing thing about this deal isn’t that the attacks were stopped. It’s that in order to do so, someone had to step in and reward the hackers for their illegal actions. While this certainly fixes the issue for now, what happens the next time someone decides they want to take down the online console services, or maybe just decides they want free Mega accounts? It’s not the best precedent to set, in all honesty.

Additionally, we have only these tweets to confirm the information, so we’re taking it all with a grain of salt.

Still, at least console owners can finally play online. That’s definitely a good thing.

The post Kim Dotcom Apparently Saved Christmas Gaming from Hackers appeared first on GameFront.

In the beginning was the pixel. While there may have been another, earlier beginning that involved a command line (and in fact, there was), it is with the pixel that the history of video games begins. For what is a game, if not a relationship between player and pixel, a dynamic interactive loop in which the decisions and actions of the former influence the subsequent actions of the latter, which in turn inspire yet more decisions and actions?

The early games were pure gameplay. The player was not concerned with why the space invaders were inexorably marching downward towards the planet he defended with his lone gun, nor did he inquire why his reinforcements were doled out parsimoniously, so that instead of doubling or even trebling his firepower, he was forced to defend Earth with but a single cannon. The player never learned why the alien invaders greedily increased their speed the lower they descended, or why the spaceships periodically flew past the battle without joining in or even stopping to watch the fireworks.

And they were cruel, harsh, unforgiving. Entire parties were butchered to a man in the Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, their unrecovered, unresurrected corpses left lying there as a warning to future adventurers. Bold fighters and clever mages starved to death in the wilds of Akalabeth, their courage and cunning availing them nothing in the absence of food. There was no stopping, no pausing, no saving, no respite in Pac-Man, in Donkey Kong, in Demon Attack.

But as technology improved, games began to become longer, more detailed, and gradually, more complex. It soon became necessary to pause and save games for the player to have any chance at playing through them, first periodically, then at specific “save points,” and finally, at will.

In terms of game design, this period may have marked the high point of design complexity and average difficulty; it’s probably not an accident that a list of the most difficult games routinely includes games from the late ’80s to the early ’90s; while the 2011-vintage Demon Souls is often mentioned, that is only because most games these days are considerably easier than Castlevania, Battletoads, and Ninja Gaiden.

After they stop laughing in disbelief at the crudity of the graphics of earlier games, many young gamers are astonished by both the difficulty and the richness of the games from those eras. And it is clear from a child-rearing experiment that Andy Baio, the founder of the XOXO conference, conducted with his son, that gamers developed different skills in the past than they do today.

In an article entitled “Playing With My Son” (https://medium.com/message/playing-with-my-son-e5226ff0a7c3), the proud father noted: “This approach to widely surveying classic games clearly had an impact on him, and influenced the games that he likes now. Like seemingly every kid his age, he loves Minecraft. No surprises there. But he also loves brutally difficult games that challenge gamers 2-3 times his age, and he’s frighteningly good at them…. Eliot’s early exposure to games with limited graphics inoculated him from the flashy, hyper-realistic graphics found in today’s AAA games. He can appreciate retro graphics on its own terms, and focus on the gameplay.”

Was it simply an increased focus that is responsible for today’s games being, as I see it, simpler and dumbed-down in comparison with the games of the past?

In this case, I think the correlation is not indicative of causality. Even if a much higher percentage of much larger budgets are devoted to graphics than in years past, there is no reason to believe that designers are being starved of either time or resources.

There are more responsible culprits for the simplification, which I suggest include the following factors:

• Branding
• Aging and expansion of the player base
• Touch and mobile technology
• Narrative

In my opinion, the reason branding is an increasingly problematic issue in game design is that the finance people inside and outside the publishers have very little interest in how the game actually plays. It is the brand into which they are investing, and even if the brand was originally established on the basis of superior gameplay, they are not interested in the gameplay aspects and do not wish to devote the necessary time required to develop and test it properly.

As long as a sufficiently marketable brand is present, any level of gameplay is considered sufficient. Only if there is no notable brand with which to sell the game does the question of gameplay seriously enter the picture. This is why most gameplay advances tend to come from unbranded and lesser-branded games.

The post Video Games: The Intersection of Story and Simplicity appeared first on GameFront.

In my brief time as an Elite: Dangerous starship commander, I’ve seen and done a great many things. I’ve tracked down elusive resources and rushed them to space stations to meet a deadline. I’ve frame-shifted out of normal space mere seconds before enemy fire would have cut through my hull. I’ve gone hunting through space for rebel transmissions and black boxes, only to stumble across a funeral procession.

Elite: Dangerous is special because this all happened without a story campaign connecting each event. Just like previous Elite games, Dangerous drops your spaceship into a lone corner of the galaxy and lets you find your own way in a sandbox universe. At no point will a superior officer to give you a command, and you’ll never see a mission objective directing you somewhere you never planned to go already. The closest thing to assistance you’ll get is when the ship’s computer reminds you to lower your landing gear during docking.

Elite: Dangerous and its old-school sensibilities can be hard to adjust to, and it could have featured some limited narrative to provide context to players. But you can’t deny that its space sim gameplay is just as engaging today as when Elite introduced the concept in 1984.

If you’ve been longing for space sims with modern graphics, or just want to see why everybody’s fussing about them, Elite: Dangerous is a welcome return of the classic franchise.

Elite: Dangerous
Platform: PC
Developer: Frontier Developments
Publisher: Frontier Developments
Release Date: Dec. 16, 2014
MSRP: $59.99
Available: Elite: Dangerous Store

If you loved the original Elite, or the open-universe space sims it inspired, rest assured that Dangerous will absolutely suck you in. In fact, Dangerous feels more like a next-gen remake than a true sequel, refining and perfecting the classic gameplay within a shiny new graphics engine.

The biggest difference is that players must log into a multiplayer server instead of working from a local save file, but that shouldn’t discourage you too much. Elite is still the exact same single-player experience it always was, even if you spot a few more humans from time to time.

The post Elite: Dangerous Review – The Great Sandbox In The Sky appeared first on GameFront.