Posts By Jesse Miller
Atlus decides to extend the suffering.
In a surprise announcement today Atlus indicated that they would be providing online support for the 2009 PS3 hit, Demon’s Souls, into 2012. With the impending release of the game’s spiritual successor Dark Souls, many had speculated that online support of the original would end sometime within the coming weeks.
What happens when you add a little RPG to the Dynasty Warriors formula?
Trinity: Souls of Zill O’ll is exactly the kind of game that you would expect from the makers of the Dynasty Warriors franchise – no more, no less. It’s unfortunate that I can’t simply end my review right here because there isn’t much else to say about the game beyond that opening sentence. Unfortunately the powers that be at PixlBit have requested that I elaborate on exactly what that opening statement means, and while that may seem unreasonable I am nothing if not a good sport.
What happened to "Nintendo Hard?"
I broke two controllers while playing Mega Man II as a kid. Specifically, I broke two NES controllers playing Heat Man’s level in Mega Man II. Even more specifically, I broke two NES controllers while doing the “Hell Blocks” portion of Heat Man’s level in Mega Man II. That particular stage summed up perfectly what the words Nintendo Hard really meant to me. You needed patience, quickness and the ability to predict the future. It also didn’t hurt to have a couple of extra controllers lying around the house, you know, just in case.
Can a co-op based Ratchet and Clank game deliver? We take a spin on the online beta to find out.
I’ve been enjoying the Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One online beta since it was released to the public earlier this week. I have to admit that when I heard that that the next Ratchet and Clank game, a favorite series of mine, was going to be a co-op focused affair I was skeptical. It’s easy to see how the game mechanics would fit into a frantic multiplayer experience, but will that be enough to support an entire game?
Just try to resist the latest from Insomniac Games
There is a sense of finality with Resistance 3. It’s not that it feels like nothing more can be done with the universe -- quite the contrary, especially with Burning Skies being developed for the Vita -- but there’s a feeling that Insomniac Games is ready to hand over the reins of the franchise to someone else. It would be a shame if that were the case, because Resistance 3 feels like the game that Insomniac has been trying to make since the start.
A franchise worth sinking your teeth into
Welcome to PixlBit’s inaugural edition of Missing in Action, a biweekly series that takes a look into the games and franchises of days gone by with an eye for bringing forgotten gems back from the dead.
A bloody good time.
Usually the thought of having to write up a BloodRayne review would induce crippling migraines and the erratic uttering of various four letter words that I can’t type here for obvious reasons; so bad have the previous installments been. But in this particular case I must admit I was intrigued and even a bit excited to get my hands on this particular title. Why you ask? Well because this game was made by WayForward Technologies, the California based developer responsible for bringing Contra back to its roots with Contra 4 on the Nintendo DS.
The end of mankind has never been so fun.
When I originally learned that Insomniac Games, the minds behind Spyro the Dragon and the Ratchet and Clank series were planning a new IP for the launch of the PlayStation 3, I was pretty excited. When they revealed that it was going to be a gritty first person shooter my excitement waned a bit as skepticism started to take over. You see, it was the beginning of the FPS wave that would soon flood the market. It made sense that Sony was getting in on the action with the Killzone series, but I was surprised that the guys at Insomniac were heading down a path that had been travelled down so many times that it was more like a super highway. I wanted something more original than what looked like was coming. Sony only added pressure by marketing the game as their “killer app” – that must-have title that was supposed to push systems out the door and into the living rooms of nerds like myself.
The Battle Within
Psychiatrist Carl Jung, a contemporary and friend of the more famous Sigmund Freud, believed that the unconscious human psyche manifests itself through different roles to the individual. These unconscious manifestations, more commonly known as archetypes, are a universal condition that is an innate part of human existence. While numerous archetypes have been identified, there are main archetypes present in every human mind: The Self, the Persona, the Anima/Animus and the Shadow.
Traversing the uncanny valley
It was in the late 1970s that Masahiro Mori first observed what was later termed the uncanny valley. Through his work in robotics he noted that the human emotional response to his machinations would become more positive as they became more human in appearance and mannerism. This general upward trend in positive emotional response would continue until the robot achieved a level of near human realism, at which point the human reaction would drop off to the point of revulsion. The human reaction would remain in this uncanny valley and would only rise again once there was no discernable difference between the robot and a living, breathing human being.
