The evening Inbox wants more games in the style of Die Hard Trilogy, as one reader imagines Star Wars: X-Wing on Oculus Rift.
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Demand less
I am probably alone here but the inclusion of retro courses in Mario Kart 8 is a huge disappointment.
I was very happy that many of the SNES tracks were on the excellent Game Boy Advance game as I was able to catch up on what I missed. (Mario Kart: Super Circuit is my favourite of the series). Since then I have played every Mario Kart.
Sadly by the time I reached Mario Kart 7 I had become tired of playing the same tracks and was frankly disgusted that half the tracks were remakes. It felt like paying full price for only half a game and the same now looks true for Mario Kart 8.
PazJohnMitch
GC: The retro courses have been a staple of the series for more than a decade now, in fact they started with Super Circuit. Mario Kart games always have the same number of new tracks and the retro ones are in addition to those, not instead of them.
One more for luck
I’m assuming the Amazon Fire TV is aimed at non-gamers and people who aren’t that into technology in general.
I have, plugged into my TV a laptop, Wii, Xbox 360, and a Blu-ray player. All these can stream media from some or all of the services the Amazon Fire can. Also my TV is a smart TV so it can do streaming anyway. Including my iPhone I can watch LoveFilm (or Amazon Instant as it’s now called) through five different devices.
I really don’t see anyone currently with an ounce of connectivity needing an extra set-top box. If Amazon are aiming solely at people who don’t currently own any Internet-enabled devices surely they’re looking at a fairly small market.
Maybe I’m missing something but it looks a bit like another Ouya to me.
@PjDonnelli
Slow news
I’m in Japan at the moment and have happened upon a pretty major scoop. The trouble is I can’t say anything about it because the source is a good friend of mine who works on translation projects for various media, including video games. But everyone should be very excited indeed… in a couple of years or so. Sorry for the non-news.
clive-sensei (PSN ID/NN ID)/evilsee (Steam ID)
PS: It’s not Shenmue III.
GC: A couple of years? Can’t he translate faster?
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Imperfect variety
I was just reading an interesting article in Edge about the making of Die Hard Trilogy and unsurprisingly it was a fairly scattershot development like the game itself. However, my overriding memory of the game is that it was great fun, with three very different games in one package.
Why has there not been a game like it since (not including the awful sequel by a different developer)? I would rather see imperfect variety as opposed to perfect repetition, but maybe I’m looking at it all through rose-tinted glasses.
Anyway, finally started playing Point Blank and Time Crisis again after purchasing an old CRT TV a while back and they are as good as I remembered, unfortunately my aim is not.
Keef25
Like being there
Have the contributors who have been writing to Inbox this week about more games with historical settings played L.A. Noire? It’s as close as anyone will get get to walking around 40s Los Angeles
The in-game atmosphere feels bang on for the time period, it’s like playing L.A. Confidential or The Big Sleep.
I’m all for more games set in interesting historical periods and I wonder why it’s such an underused concept. Also, on the subject of Assassin’s Creed why have Ubisoft been so reluctant to visit feudal Japan? Who wouldn’t buy an Assassin’s Creed game with ninjas and samurai? Also Lone Wolf and Cub downloadable content anyone? Inbox magic?
Mitchell
GC: We wouldn’t be interested unless they did something about the series’ awful swordfighting.
Second front
I see the calls are growing for Nintendo to bring back the Advance Wars series for its current consoles. The games haven’t changed much since its NES beginnings, so perhaps now’s the time for a shake up. Perhaps the dual screen set up could be used to display the battlefield in the air, separate from the ground.
It would affect the balance of the game mechanics, and would complicate things a bit. Right now, things are kept simple, but it is a tad strange to have infantry and tanks blocking the movement of planes!
ttfp saylow (gamertag)
GC: A very similar system is in Advance Wars: Dual Strike, although it was a bit of a bodge.
Keep it secret
After what is a great deal of cerebral mastication on my part, (yeah, I went there.) I believe I can now provide, from a writer’s perspective, why that ending to Mass Effect 3 sucked so very, very hard.
The Star Child, as has been noted came out of nowhere with no established precedent for it. So why do it? I feel, that somewhere in-between games 2 and 3, there was a panic. ‘Oh my stars,’ they did say like a bunch of Southern Belles. ‘Why I do declare that people will wanna know where those nasty old Reapers came from. Why, they may even demand of us, dear Prudence!’ Now, it turned out not to be much of an explanation after all, but still the attempt was made. And I think that was the fatal error.
Was I curious to learn how the Reapers came to be? Of course I was. But that does not mean you should give your audience answers every time. Sometimes an unsolved mystery is more powerful. And attempting to explain the Reapers robbed them of their mystique, their power to frighten us.
Because when you met your first Reaper way back in Mass Effect 1, Sovereign was so effective as he was so beyond our comprehension. Trying to tell us a half-baked origin story turned the great into something ordinary. Someone shoot me through a mass relay if I’m wrong.
DMR
All too easy
As someone who has been gaming since 1977 (well it was before an Atari 2600) and proud to say an avid fan of GameCentral since day one Digitiser days (by far the best gaming site around – kudos much to you) when the idea of a 3D Oculus Rift style gaming experience aligned with Star Wars: X-Wing was suggested (I think it was TIE Fighter but you get my drift), honestly for the first time a gaming concept made a little bit of wee came out.
My life will be complete.
greg-12345 (PSN ID)
GC: Disney has the cheap and nasty looking Star Wars: Attack Squadrons on the way but the most advanced Oculus Rift game so far is still EVE: Valkyrie – which is a space combat simulator very much in the style of the old LucasArts games.
Catch up on every previous Games Inbox here
XIII-2
Just seen an advert on Sky for XIII, and yes, it’s the comic book first person shooter XIII from the PlayStation 2/Xbox era. I’m hoping that the series is a success and prompts Ubisoft to look at a sequel as I always rather liked XIII and was disappointed that I never got to see the end, to be left with the cliffhanger ending like that with no resolution, I still feel short-changed to this day… I need to know who I am and who killed the president!
I would like for any sequel to retain the same style, XIII was certainly unique in its take on a comic book game. Not content with cel-shaded graphics but also extending to the visible ‘rat-a-tat-a-tat’ of automatic gunfire, the ‘tap-taps’ of footsteps to denote an enemy was close, and additional comic frames to show an enemy fall as you headshot them or throw a knife at them from afar.
Am I alone in this hope? I know the game got a mixed reception, but there must be a perceived audience for the tale if a TV show was green-lit. Any other GCers looking forward to the show and want a sequel?
Murton76 (PSN ID)
Inbox also-rans
Just wondering if GC got the MEGAne DRIVE pun SEGA were making in their April’s Fool gag? For the uninitiated, ‘megane’ is Japanese for ‘glasses.’ I did six weeks of Japanese once, and that’s about the only vocabulary I remember!
Wildean
GC: We have to admit we didn’t, no. We know a little bit of polite introduction and various kinds of thank yous, but that’s about it.
That Amazon advert with Gary Busey is the oddest thing I have seen in a very long time. What!? Just what?!
half_empty80 (PSN ID)
RE: Wesker123. M.A.S.K.? They’ve already had three games (on the Commodore 64 admittedly)! Whereas I’m still waiting for one measly Visionaries game.
Martin Smith
I was playing XCOM: Enemy Within on the Xbox 360. I only had one save. I hit a bug where an invisible enemy keeps attacking me. But I can’t for the life of me find it. Alas, I’m about 25 hours in and I’m not going to restart the game. Damn you XCOM bug!
Mr Annoyed
A Helghast takes a break to catch his breath back… a helgasp.
Robert Deak Niro
This week’s Hot Topic
The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Cranston, who asks what you would like your favourite franchise to be like in the next gen.
With long-running series such as Assassin’s Creed and Batman: Arkham announcing their first next gen-only iterations we want to know what you hope to see from new entries in existing series. Obviously better graphics, but what specific new features and elements do you want from sequels appearing on the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Wii U?
Are you exciting about those games that have already been announced and are things panning out the way you expected before the new consoles launched? How likely do you think it is that your ideal version of the game will turn out that way, and if it doesn’t do you think that will be because of technical limitations or marketing concerns?
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