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Joystiq Discussion: Do you have a gaming tattoo?
Alright guys, I may not get another chance to tell you this, so here goes: I've decided to get a video game-themed tattoo. I already have nine tattoos and plans for a 10th, but this design easily trumps them all. It's a collection of characters and icons that represent games I either respect for advancing the medium or games that I personally love. There are 27 characters/objects representing 26 franchises (Note: Design not final, will definitely change some things and probably add more if I can). Can you spot them all? Check out the image after the break and leave your answers in the comments! And hey, while you're there, why not tell us what you think of video game tattoos, show off your own ink, or submit more design ideas!
Joystiq Discussions: Final Fantasy Type-0 HD and the deliceous typo
Everyone makes mistakes. Chances are that in the process of writing this I've misspelled a word, mucked up my punctuation or grammar, at least once. Language is a tricky beast, make no mistake! The beauty of publishing on the Internet, though, is that typos can be repaired the moment they're spotted. If you print something and send it out into the world, especially on a physical product that stands to sell hundreds of thousands of copies, there's no fixing that sucker. So you'd think Square-Enix's production team would at some point in the proofing process catch a juicy one like "inlcudes" on the cover of Final Fantasy Type-0 HD. On the one hand, mistakes like these indicate a level of disinterest. "Oh, who cares what the cover says! No one's going to pay attention," say the phantom production managers in the diehard fan's brain. Than again, it's fun! I personally love a good wacky game package, though. A certain Resident Evil for Nintendo 3DS will never, ever leave my library thanks to its hilarious spine. Sometimes the flubs aren't even typos. Okami on Wii had star Amaterasu on the cover, but it also had an IGN watermark on it. Capcom didn't even use its own art to make that cover! Do you dig having these oddities in your library? Take the poll, discuss in the comments. Those sweet typos, yay or nay? [Images: Square-Enix]
Joystiq Discussion: Will you get a New Nintendo 3DS?
When asked during Nintendo's October 2014 investor question and answer session why the New Nintendo 3DS wouldn't release outside of Japan in time for the holidays, company president Satoru Iwata was blunt. "The overseas markets are different from the Japanese market in both their stages of popularization of Nintendo 3DS and their market characteristics," said Iwata. "Nintendo 3DS is still at an earlier stage of popularization in these two markets." In other words: We haven't sold enough of the old ones. Maybe if enough people buy the old ones for Christmas, we'll give you the fancy new jazz with its improved screen, its extra shoulder buttons, amiibo support, and that extra analog nub. Just two weeks into 2015, Nintendo confirmed that the New Nintendo 3DS XL will come to the United States and Europe in February. It will cost a cool $199. Of course, that's if you already have an AC adapter to actually power the thing. New Nintendo 3DS XL-whether the red, black, or Majora's Mask edition-doesn't come with a power cord, which is $10 on its own. That's an expensive upgrade for a machine that Nintendo believed wasn't selling enough in the West already, and even more so for existing owners lusting after the new toy. The upgrade is demonstrable, though. For my part, the lure of portable Xenoblade is enough to convince me to take the plunge. I love Monolith Soft RPGs, though, and their game is currently the only New 3DS exclusive announced. If it enough for you to get the New 3DS? Take the poll, discuss in the comments. Will you buy a New Nintendo 3DS? [Images: Nintendo]
Joystiq Discussion: When is it time to reboot?
Deeply excited about replaying Devil May Cry 4 and DmC: Devil May Cry on PlayStation 4, I embarked on a quest to finally fill a gaping hole in my gaming experience this week. Playing Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening for the first time elicited some distinct thoughts. First, this game lives up to its reputation. Not quite as amazing as descendants like Bayonetta 2, but its combo-driven action and melodramatic weirdness hold up marvelously. Second: Why did Devil May Cry need a reboot at all? Make no mistake, I thought DmC was one of the best games made in 2013, but it's not like there was some complex story preventing people from getting into the series. Dante, no matter what the most vocal dissenters may say, is no more ridiculously designed in DmC than in Devil May Cry 3. He's still an absurd fop-goth prone to not wearing shirts and stabbing people. As far as I can tell, all the reboot did was alienate fans by telling them something they loved needed to change but little actually did. Then again, some reboots just work. One of my favorite games of 2014 was Wolfenstein: The New Order, a game that found unexpectedly rich soil in a series barely on life support, sustained only on nostalgia. There's the difference, though. Wolfenstein needed to change in order to be relevant in today's gaming landscape, a very different scenario than with DmC. When do you reboot? When a series isn't relevant? When a story becomes too dense? Never? Take the poll, discuss in the comments. To reboot or not to reboot?[Images: Capcom]
Joystiq Discussion: How do you tackle your gaming back log?
January is when the sheer scale of it hits you, when you stare into the inky abyss of your Steam library and wonder: when the hell am I going to play all of these games? Every time the sale starts, the back log grows. Five measly bucks for a copy of Tomb Raider: The Definitive Edition! Who cares that I'm smack dab in the middle of three different RPGs? I can't let that pass me by! So the backlog swells, piling more and more games onto the proverbial, sometimes actual, stack. Recently I took stock of my own considerable back log, counting up all the vintage cartridges, discs, recent releases that went on sale, and downloads I'd amassed but never actually fired up to play. Turned out there were 27 games that I'd simply never turned on. In January, I'm trying to tackle them one at a time. Pokemon Y and Silent Hill: Book of Memories are first up! Once I've knocked them down, I'll move on to two more. It's not a perfect system, though. There are plenty of ways to tackle the back log. Do you take it slow? Do you not even bother and just let the back log grow? Or do you manage to keep up, finishing everything as you go. Take the poll, discuss below. How do you tackle your gaming back log? [Images: Nintendo]
Joystiq Discussion: How do you like your Best of the Year list?
How do you evaluate Tetris and Metroid in the same breath? Does that even make sense? One's about manipulating space using a small collection of simple shapes while the other's about exploring an alien world as an increasingly dangerous bounty hunter. Yet they're both video games. They're electronic works of art defined by how the audience touches and prods them. Deeply different yet similar at their most basic levels. This is the central conundrum that always arises at the end of the year. When looking back and determining what was the very best amongst 2014's video games, it's hard to compare certain works. Does a game like Assassin's Creed: Unity, made by hundreds of people, get compared to something like Shovel Knight which was made by just a handful of creators? Do you even count things like Simogo's The Sailor's Dream? It's tricky. Yet when you're talking about the very best, maybe it doesn't matter that things are so different. These are the games that excelled; end of story. The question then: how do you like your Best of the Year? Do you like everything lumped together, a free-for-all to spotlight the things that were the greatest no matter what? Or should the Best of the Year be broken into smaller categories so as to make sure that every game is on equal footing against similar works? Take the poll, discuss in the comments. How do you like your Best of the Year list? [Images: Nintendo]
Joystiq Discussion: Do you pre-order games?
Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Assassin's Creed: Unity. Driveclub. What do these games share? All of them hit consoles this fall in semi-functional states. Halo's matchmaking is still busted, Assassin's Creed is still working to iron out kinks, and Driveclub's many social features, the very things that distinguish it from other driving games, took weeks to properly work at all. As Joystiq's Richard Mitchell put it in his recent editorial, we're paying for broken games. One reason that the big budget gaming industry is able to sell incomplete products as part of its business model is the pre-order ecosystem. The "insidious psychology" of wanting the latest thing first, as Richard puts it, is taken advantage of by the publishers producing the most expensive games in the world and people end up buying broken goods as a result. A solution to the problem: Stop pre-ordering. Problem is, sometimes pre-ordering games is the only way to reliably get your hands on them. Limited run items like the retail PS4 version of Retro City Rampage sold out before the game was released. Obviously an international release like Assassin's Creed: Unity isn't going to suffer from the same shortage issues, but some physical releases by larger publishers are rare all the same, particularly limited editions. The question: Do you pre-order games? Do you do it regularly or only in special circumstances? Take the poll and discuss in the comments. Do you pre-order games? [Images: Ubisoft]
One Final Fantasy X PS4, please! When do you re-purchase a game?
A common lament circled around the Joystiq crew this week, echoing from staffer to staffer like a particularly winsome bird call: "Great! Now I'm going to buy Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster again!" Roughly one year after Square-Enix brought Yoshinori Kitase's freaky love-and-water-basketball story to PlayStation 3 and PS Vita, the package is making the jump to PlayStation 4. Sure it's got "system exclusive" features, but realistically this is the exact same package that came out in 2013. Excusing the thorough and comely graphical makeover, they're also pretty much the exact same games some of us already have for our perfectly functional PlayStation 2s. This impulse is all part of the plan, of course. Game makers want games on as many platforms as possible to maximize their potential audience, but they also know that their most devoted fans will repeatedly return to the well. Square-Enix happens to be notorious for re-releasing and remaking its games - Final Fantasy IV has been re-released nine times since first coming out not counting digital re-releases of that SNES original - but they're hardly alone in the practice. The question is: Why do we do it? Sometimes a remaster or re-release represents a significant upgrade or a move to portability, a la The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. Other times, though, it's just the same game on a different machine. Let's pick this one apart together. Take our poll and discuss in the comments. When do you re-purchase a game?[Images: Square-Enix]
All of the Lights: Many curious uses for the PS4 light bar
Sony is no stranger to idiosyncratic hardware design. Nintendo and Sega put analog sticks on their controllers in the '90s? Sony adds on an extra stick and redefines console controllers. Touch screens are de rigueur? Sony slaps a touch surface on the front and back of PS Vita. The PlayStation 4 is a sleek piece of modern consumer tech design, but even it's got its quirks. Case in point: the Dualshock 4 light bar. Every PS4 controller looks like KITT from Knight Rider, with a giant oblate spheroid of light pulsing on the front. Not just good for running down the battery, the light bar actually performs some unusual functions in a variety of games. Below the break is a taster's choice selection of memorable light bar uses from the PlayStation 4's first year of games. After browsing that, take our poll and discuss the light bar's career in the comments. What do you think of the Dualshock 4 light bar? [Images: Sony]
Joystiq Discussion: Will you get a new console this fall?
One year later and the current crop of gaming machines are looking a whole heck of a lot different than they did in the fall of 2013. Mealy launch exclusives like Knack, Ryse and Nintendoland are distant memories. Now the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Wii U are cooking with gas. Sony's got heaters like Infamous: Second Son, Xbox One's got freaks like D4 alongside bruisers like Forza Horizon 2, and Wii U has heavyweights like Mario Kart 8 and weirdoes like Bayonetta 2 backing it up. The question now is: Is that enough? If you haven't taken the plunge yet, have any of the new machines sufficiently convinced you? Are you considering adding a second new console to your living room domain? Or have you walked away from the console world for good? Take the poll then take to the comments to discuss. Will you get a new console this fall? [Images: Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft]
Joystiq Discussion: All aboard Nintendo's Amiibo train?
Just a little more than a month to go before patient Wii U owners will finally get a Super Smash Bros. to call their own. November 21st will bring more than just HD Smash into your home, though. Nintendo will also roll out its Amiibo that day, the teensy near-field communication equipped figurines that let you summon up helpers in the game. Slam that little Princess Peach on your Wii U tablet controller, and she'll show up in Smash smacking fools around on your behalf. Here's the thing, though. Those Amiibo are $13 a pop, which is mighty expensive for toys with such limited use in the game. There isn't even a bundle option for anyone interested in collecting. It would be one thing if there was a clear picture of future functionality, but Nintendo's tight lipped about any long-term plans for the toys. Nintendo says Mario Kart 8 will support Amiibo, but still hasn't said how or when. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker will use them as well, but even though that game's out in December, it's unknown Amiibo functionality won't be available in 2015. Why would people buy up these toys when they have no idea why they should? Are they cool enough as collectibles on their own? Will you pick up that Kid Icarus one for no reason other than it's rad? Take our poll after the break and discuss your Amiibo plans in the comments below.
Joystiq Discussion: How much would you pay for EA Access?
From aggressive downloadable content campaigns to Online Passes, EA has never shied away from trying new ways to make cash with games. Following the success of programs like PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live Games With Gold, EA is embracing the subscription gaming model with EA Access on Xbox One. For $30 per year or $5 a month, Xbox One owners can access a buffet of full games like EA Sports UFC and Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare gratis. EA also says it has "no plans" to remove games from the service, so provided you maintain your subscription, the games will stay in your library just like they do on PS Plus. Even when paying for Xbox Live Gold on top of EA Access, there's readily apparent value. Intrepid Redditor Hidesquadron1 broke down the value of paying for a year of XBL Gold and EA Access and his math found that the annual $90 cost of both equated to roughly $672 in goods and services. Many players, however, may not value the things offered by these packages. Collectors and archivists, for example, may not want to pay to maintain access to Dragon Age: Inquisition forever even if they may want to sample other titles. For that player, the perceived cost of EA Access is more than just an annual fee. The question then: How much would you pay for EA Access? Is it a bargain? Would you pay more? Or do you not want to pay anything for this type of subscription? Take the poll and discuss in the comments. How much would you pay for EA Access? [Images: Electronic Arts/Moby Games]
Joystiq Discussion: Pray or spray the Xeno away in Alien Isolation?
"You can get through the entire game without killing someone," said Gary Napper, lead designer of Alien: Isolation, in a new interview with GamesTM. "It's something that was, not so much a challenge, but something I felt was what the character would do. We're talking about a member of the Ripley family-they're not like characters in games that gun down civilians because they're in the way to get to the switch." Napper's got a good point. Ellen Ripley wasn't a stone cold killer in Alien, she was a trucker who fought to survive. Dishonored, Thief, The Last of Us; plenty of modern blockbusters give the option to avoid the old ultra violence, but only the option. Alien: Isolation, meanwhile, emphasizes flight far over flight.Do we really want that, though? Alien's a spectacular work of suspense, but it's a movie, not a game. Its pacing is controlled, free of a player's wild whims. Maybe the xenomorph is always best as a moving, splattering, screeching gun target. Maybe not! We've got plenty of that already. Indeed, Sega already funded Aliens: Colonial Marines. The question, then: How do you want to play your Alien game? Flame thrower first, ask questions later? Or do you just want to get the hell out of dodge with a minimum loss of life? Discuss.
Joystiq Discussion: Drakengard 3 asks, shalt thou always kill?
Scroobius Pip wasn't talking about video games in his song "Thou Shalt Always Kill," but it certainly seems like a prime directive when you pick up a controller. Booker DeWitt grinds Columbian policemen's faces right off while Lara Croft takes a pan species approach to slaughter, doing in tigers and mercenaries with equal efficiency. No wonder! Violence is exciting. Conflict and destruction are immediate ways to affect a player, to bridge the gap between digital and material worlds. Sometimes, though, the extremity and frequency of violence in games can disconnect you from the action. After shooting the 900th enemy in BioShock Infinite or Tomb Raider, Booker and Lara start to feel insane. Drakengard 3, this week's most unusual release, attempts to mitigate violence-born cognitive dissonance. "[When] we were working on the original Drakengard that I thought about the meaning of 'killing,'" explains director Yoko Taro in a new interview, "I was looking at a lot of games back then, and I saw these messages like 'You've defeated 100 enemies!' or 'Eradicated 100 enemy soldiers!' in an almost gloating manner. But when I thought about it in an extremely calm state of mind, it hit me that gloating about killing a hundred people is strange. I mean, you're a serial killer if you killed a hundred people. It just struck me as insane. That's why I decided to have the army of the protagonist in Drakengard be one where everyone's insane, to create this twisted organization where everyone's wrong and unjust. I wanted to weave a tale about these twisted people." That's just one solution, though. Another approach is to ignore it entirely. Wolfenstein: The New Order is full of great characters, but none of them ever bat an eye at B.J. Blazkowicz killing literally thousands of people. The question then is this: Do you want violent games to justify your actions? Do you want a shooter or hack-and-slash to make you question the morality of killing? Or do those moral stakes not matter, at least not in every game? Take the poll, discuss in the comments. Do you want violent games to justify your actions? [Images: Square-Enix]
Joystiq Discussion: Will you buy the Kinect-free Xbox One?
Back when I was plotting a Sega Saturn purchase back in the long, long ago, I came up with an easy method for determining whether or not to purchase a gaming machine. The rule: if there are eight games either available or coming out on that machine that I really badly want to play, it's worth saving up the cash for that box. Panzer Dragoon Saga and Burning Rangers were on the way, alongside arcade-perfect Capcom games like Dungeons & Dragons Collection and X-Men vs. Street Fighter, not to mention NiGHTs; the Saturn was a perfect fit. By and large, the formula still works, but with fewer and fewer console exclusives out in the wild, other considerations need to come to the fore. In 2014, the choice between PlayStation 4 and Xbox One was ultimately easy for me even though the vast majority of games on the horizon for both weren't exclusives. One box was $100 cheaper and didn't come with an alienating, mandatory camera. That was it. Eight months later, Microsoft's bringing price parity to the party. Now the race really is about exclusives. Xbox One has some perky ones on the horizon. D4 brings the pedigree of Deadly Premonition with it, and that's mighty tempting. That's just one perspective, though. What about you? Are you going to take the plunge on Xbox One now that it's down to $400? Will you get Xbox One now that it's Kinect-free and $400? [Images: Microsoft]
Joystiq Discussion: How do you like your Nintendo?
Nintendo isn't in peak condition. The 3DS recovered from its debut slump back in 2011, but the Wii U hasn't found a sizeable audience. As the House of Mario announced on Wednesday, it's sold just over 6 million Wii Us since the console hit in November 2012, significantly less than the PlayStation 4 managed to sell in just five months. Even with Super Smash Bros Wii U and Mario Kart 8 on the way, Nintendo only expects to sell 3.6 million Wii Us by the end of fiscal year 2015. Maybe that's not such a bad thing. Market defining sales of the Nintendo DS and Wii as well as the popularity of mascots like Mario may have skewed the world's expectations of Nintendo. Not just in terms of the scale its business, but as a creative force. Machines remembered as mighty hosts for genius games like the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube sold roughly 33 million and 22 million consoles apiece over their entire lifetimes, just a fraction of the 101 million-selling Wii. Both had scant few third party exclusives, but they did have an arsenal of spectacular Nintendo-made games, games far weirder and arguably more lovable than the bland exclusives like Wii Party and Wii Fit that fueled Wii's ascendance. Working on a smaller scale and as an underdog, Nintendo gave us Animal Crossing, Wind Waker, Super Smash Bros, Doshin the Giant, and many more. Maybe, just maybe, Nintendo is at its best when it's not in peak condition, when it's smaller. Little Mac rather than Mike Tyson, if you will. The question, then: How do you like your Nintendo? Do you want the market giants of the Wii and DS era, raking in cash like never before and pumping out massive family hits like Wii Sports Resort? Or do you want the scrappy weirdos that came up with WarioWare the same year they reported their first ever fiscal loss? Take the poll, talk in the comments. How do you prefer your Nintendo? [Images: Nintendo]
Joystiq Discussion: When and why do you pay to skip ahead?
Joystiq's own Xav de Matos recently presented the crew with an all-too-familiar scenario: "My sister plays Candy Crush and couldn't beat a level," Xav told us, lamenting what today's youth has come to. "She paid real money to skip the stage. I told her she was the problem and yelled at her on everyone's behalf." But there was no consensus amongst the staff! Some thought paying to skip challenges in games was the worst sort of design. Others thought that paying to skip chunks, whether in light games like Candy Crush Saga or heavier fare like Professor Layton, should come with penalties, such as perhaps blocking you from playing some content later on. Some even argued that plunking down cold hard cash for progress should get you other bonuses, like unlocking other cheats, to justify the cost. As it is with the entire gaming world, we're still trying to figure out how paying to play without needing to do the play part should work in quality game design - if it should work at all. As we're wont to do, we're asking you to weigh in on the subject as well. Share your thoughts on paying for progress by answering these questions in the comments: 1) Why would you pay to skip parts of a game? 2) How should paying to skip affect the rest of the game, i.e. added penalties or bonuses? 3) What encourages you not to skip content? Bonus: DId anyone out there pay to skip the boss pictured above? How did you do it? [Image: Square-Enix via Game Informer]
Joystiq Discussion: Should there be more female enemies in games?
The Last of Us, Joystiq's very favorite game of 2013, is a mean game about mean people finding reasons to survive when the world's gone to hell. Joel and Ellie, the heroes of The Last of Us, dole out the harshness regularly to all sorts of bad people that are a lot meaner than them. Strange thing about the "hunters" in the game's post-apocalyptic world; they're all men. Plenty of female zombies, but no hunters. Pretty weird that the only people willing to kill other people for food and supplies are men. Women have to eat too. Stranger still is the fact that lady hunters were apparently supposed to be in The Last of Us. Naughty Dog's artists designed them, as seen in the art book, but they never made it into the game. Then again, maybe it's not so strange. In a world of video games about fighting, shooting, surviving, and killing, female enemies are out there, as in BioShock Infinite, but they aren't common. Tomb Raider, another entry in our Best of 2013 list, also pits you against hordes of human enemies, the sinister Scavengers, and every single one of them carries around a Y chromosome. No women shipwrecked on Yamatai have killer fighting skills, only Lara? Our question for you: is this a problem? Does it bother you that women are as under-represented as enemies as they are heroes in video games? We ask these questions and more below. We also invite you to elaborate on your answers in the comments section. %Poll-86544% %Poll-86553% %Poll-86547% %Poll-86556% %Poll-86550%
