Video Games

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Star Trek: The Video Game (PS3) Review (or He’s Dead, Jim)

At this point, there is nothing I can say at add to the conversation about Star Trek: The Video Game. The consensus puts this games in with Aliens: Colonial Marines and The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct in a three-way race for the worst game of 2013. It’s a shame because I had high hopes for it considering that it was a Star Trek game developed by a pretty good Canadian developer.

Since nothing I can write will be a revelation when it comes to this game, I thought I’d take an in-depth look at everything good and bad in Star Trek and make it the most detailed review you can find of this game.

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1 Comment Posted on by Steve Murray Video Games

Poker Night 2 Review (or The Small Blind)

poker-night-2-box-artI’ve never been very good at poker. I’m sure most of that is as a result of inconsistent betting patterns that made it hard to manipulate people and not being able to maintain a poker face but I’m going to blame the cards. Fortunately, I only had the cards to blame in Telltale Games’ Poker Night 2.

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2 Comments Posted on by Steve Murray Columns, Video Games

Building the Perfect Star Trek Game

star-trek-picard-facepalmStar Trek: The Video Game by Digital Extremes seems to have launched as an unmitigated disaster. There are numerous bugs and glitches. The co-op AI appears to be somewhere between moronic and suicidal. If you’re playing on PC, online co-op doesn’t work. Basically, if you didn’t know that Paramount delayed release to promote with Star Trek: Into Darkness, you would swear it was rushed to co-promote it.

If the game’s failure wasn’t bad enough, the PR buzzwords Paramount and Digital Extremes threw out didn’t help either. They called it the most authentic Star Trek experience in a video game. While that might be true for the action-packed vision of Star Trek that J.J. Abrams is bringing to the screen, that’s not true of the Star Trek that damn near every Star Trek fan grew up with.

Despite the very shaky track record of licensed games, it is possible to make a great Star Trek game in the rebooted universe while staying true to Star Trek series and movies that we all know and love.

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3 Comments Posted on by Steve Murray Columns, Video Games

Canada is a Gaming Powerhouse

canadian-gamingOne thing that I’ve realized as working on our Canadian Gaming Week is that the Canadian gaming industry is currently in great shape. Sure, Vancouver could use a little bit of help and the once great BioWare has been on a down swing but to parrot a Don Cherry line about Canadian hockey, we are the best.

If you look at last week’s Canadian Videogame Awards, the nominees and winners lists look like most major year-end awards lists. Three of last year’s biggest triple-A games, the best-selling sports game in the world and two of the best reviewed indie games of 2012 were all developed on Canadian soil. Canadian gaming isn’t just a powerhouse but is thriving hotbed for the games industry.

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Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Video Games

Montreal’s gamesbymo Needs Your Help to Make A.N.N.E

anne-logoEvery once in a while on our sister site et geekera, we cover some of the more interesting offerings on Kickstarter. For Canadian Gaming Week, we thought that we would do a Kickstarter preview of our own.

Montreal indie studio gamesbymo is the one-man operation of developer Moise Breton. He’s taking to Kickstarter to get funding to complete work on his latest project called A.N.N.E.

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Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Video Games

Canadian PSN Users Can Get Freebies Thanks to a Class-Action Lawsuit

playstation-network-logoIf Canadian users on the PlayStation Network or with Qriocity or Sony Online Entertainment accounts thought they had gotten all the freebies they could out of Sony after the 2011 PSN hack, think again. A recently settled class-action lawsuit in Ontario means that Canadian PSN/SOE users can get some more free stuff from Sony.

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1 Comment Posted on by Steve Murray Columns, Video Games

Despite Its Faults, I Still Love Mass Effect

I couldn’t go the whole of Canadian Gaming Week here on the blog without writing one more Mass Effect column. The reason that I write so often and at such length about Mass Effect is that the series is what brought me back into proper gaming after years of spending my time in a rut of playing sports and music games.

I’ve written a lot about the game over the last year. I’ve dug into that terribly unsatisfying ending. I’ve decried the horrible DLC practices that saw parts of the game cut out to sell separately from the main game. I’ve even promoted the Indoctrination Theory which might be my greatest sin against the franchise and common sense.

And despite how disappointed I was in the ending of the trilogy, despite how angry I was at having to pay for an on-disc “DLC” that was locked out behind what was effectively a $10 paywall and despite the fact that I have to make the conscious choice to end my playthroughs at the Citadel DLC to get the ending the trilogy deserves, I still love Mass Effect.

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Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Video Games

Preview: Fez Comes to PC Next Week

fez-box-artNext Wednesday, the critically acclaimed indie platformer Fez will make its way from bring an Xbox 360 exclusive to multiplatform with a PC launch through Steam.

Fez is a Canadian developed game by Montreal-based Polytron Corporation. Gamers may have heard of the outspoken Phil Fish who was one half of the game’s two-man dev team. Fish and Fez were profiled in the popular documentary Indie Game: The Movie which also featured hits Super Meat Boy and Braid.

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1 Comment Posted on by Steve Murray Video Games

Papo & Yo Review: A Game in a Metaphor

papo-and-yo-bannerWhat make a video game a game? That’s a question that is being asked with increasing frequency. It’s also a question that one could ask about Papo & Yo. It’s a game with a story and a message hidden behind a metaphor but the actual “gameplay” is fairly thin. So does that mean it’s a game or a metaphor?

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Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Video Games

Help Vancouver’s Gaming Industry with The Indie Gala

indie-gala-logoDo you love video games and supporting small developers? The latest Indie Gala sale allows you to do both. While that’s not unusual for Indie Gala sales, what is unusual is the different way that you can support indie developer and the Vancouver gaming scene in particular.

This week’s Indie Gala is The Mass Effect Bundle. While Mass Effect isn’t exactly an indie production, the proceeds allocated to charity will help the indies. The Mass Effect Bundle supports the Launch Academy and the BC Member of Legislative Assembly campaign of Matt Toner.

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