Video Games

1 Comment Posted on April 23, 2013April 18, 2013 by Steve Murray Video Games

Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves Review (or Cold Blooded Action)

For Canadian Gaming week, we’re looking at reviewing three games. Two will be indie efforts and one will be published by a major studio. We start our Canadian Gaming Week reviews, with the indies. It’s a recently released game from new Quebec-based developer that touches on early Canadian culture and throws it into a game that hits three different genres.

I’ve never been interested in tower defence games but I’m willing to give one a try if it’s from a Canadian developer so rookie dev Artiface Studio was able to take my $15 based on my Canadian pride. By the end, I’d say that Artiface’s Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves certainly earned it.

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Leave a comment Posted on April 22, 2013April 18, 2013 by Steve Murray Video Games

Is There Anything Jennifer Hale Can’t Do?

If you’ve play a video game anytime over the last 15 years or watched an animated TV show or movie over the last 20, you’re more than likely to have heard Jennifer Hale’s voice. The Canadian voice actress is one of the preeminent voice-over talents in the business today. She was even named “the most prolific videogame voice actor (female)” by Guinness World Records. I think that award might have to do with the 140+ games she’s been in during her career. In the last month alone, you could have heard her in Gods of War: Ascension, BioShock Infinite and Injustice: Gods Among Us.

Not only is Hale a video game voice actress, her voice has also appeared in over 60 TV series and over 25 movies.

Since this week is Canadian Gaming Week, I felt it was only appropriate to pay tribute to one of Canada’s greatest contributors to gaming and the queen of video game voices, Jennifer Hale.

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1 Comment Posted on April 22, 2013April 21, 2013 by Steve Murray Video Games

2013 Canadian Videogame Awards Winners

This past Saturday was the fourth annual Canadian Videogame Awards which celebrated the best of the Canadian video game industry for 2012. Having previewed and predicted this year’s awards, we kick off Canadian Gaming Week on The Lowdown Blog by bringing you the winners of the 2013 CVAs.

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1 Comment Posted on April 19, 2013April 14, 2013 by Steve Murray Video Games

2013 Canadian Videogame Awards Nominations And Predictions

Next week is going to be Canadian Gaming Week here on the blog. We’ll be looking at London, Ontario’s Digital Extremes’ Star Trek: The Video Game. The plan is also to put up reviews of Canadian indie games Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves and Papo & Yo in addition to a column or two.

First up, this weekend is the 2013 Canadian Videogame Awards which celebrates the best the Canadian gaming industry developed and released in 2012 as determined by a committee of developer executives and a couple of programmers. As we are wont to do with big awards shows, we have the nominees and predictions.
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2 Comments Posted on April 16, 2013April 17, 2013 by Steve Murray Columns, Video Games

Forget the Silver Screen, Put Mass Effect on TV

Hollywood and the video games industry don’t have a very good track record of adapting the other’s work. A quick look at the movie adaptation of video games shows a track record of consistent critical flops with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within scoring the highest Tomato Meter score of 43%. Video games based on movies and TV shows haven’t fared much better as good licensed games are more the exception than the rule.

As the week’s go by, I hear more and more about the planned Mass Effect movie. It’s not just Hollywood’s terrible track record in turning video games into a live-action dramatic presentation that worries me. It’s that Mass Effect can’t be turned into a movie without removing its soul.

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6 Comments Posted on April 12, 2013April 10, 2013 by Steve Murray Columns, Video Games

Console Wars: A Battle No One is Trying to Win

One console has a sharing feature that nobody wanted and unveiled with a slightly underwhelming line-up. Another console is strongly rumoured to mandate a permanent connection to the internet to play games and is likely to prevent playing used games. The third console is so underpowered that some third-party publishers have abandoned it less than six months after release.

For as excited as everybody was about this generations console wars, it sure seems to be shaping up to be a race to the bottom and a case of not survival of the fittest but survival of the least weak.

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1 Comment Posted on April 9, 2013April 11, 2013 by Steve Murray Video Games

Injustice: Gods Among Us Demo Impressions

It seems exceedingly rare that a developer or publisher releases a demo of an anticipated upcoming game. Fortunately, we got one for NetherRealms upcoming DC Comics fighting game Injustice: Gods Among Us. The game has been hyping the debate between comic book fans as to whether Superman or Batman would win in a fight but is there more to this game than that?

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Leave a comment Posted on April 5, 2013April 1, 2013 by Steve Murray Video Games

Retro/Grade (PC) Review (or Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey Insanity)

What happens when you mix an arcade style shoot-’em-up with a rhythm game and then do it all backwards? You get the delightful (and difficult) Retro/Grade. Originally released as an indie game on the PlayStation 3, Retro/Grade has made the jump to PC.

Rhythm games and shoot-em-ups have been done before so the base genres are well represented in gaming. However, they’ve never been done like this.

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5 Comments Posted on April 4, 2013April 1, 2013 by Steve Murray Columns, Video Games

Can We Still Trust The Gaming Press?

The ongoing concern of gamers over whether they can trust the journalists who write news and reviews has been at a near boiling point for the last year or so. There was the battle between gamers and the press over Mass Effect 3’s ending. Journalists at the Games Media Awards were encouraged to tweet about Trion’s upcoming Defiance with a reward of a PS3 being available for one lucky winner. Then there are the regular accusations of good or bad reviews for certain games being bought by publishers.

What brought this issue to a head for me was the recent revelation in a GameTrailers interview that Hideki Kojima had run his marketing plan by Geoff Keighley some two years ago at Comic Con. While it’s okay to play along with Moby Dick Studios and The Phantom Pain, what Keighley did and what the rest of the press did is different. It’s one thing for outlets without inside information to connect the dots to give us the likely scoop. It’s another for Keighley to withhold information when he knew the real story of Moby Dick Studios and The Phantom Pain and hype a fake interview on his show that was just a marketing sham.

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Leave a comment Posted on April 1, 2013March 30, 2013 by Steve Murray Video Games

SimCity to Add DLC and Microtransactions

Much to no one’s surprise an EA game is going to be getting DLC and microtransactions. Reports suggest that Maxis is currently working on a new DLC for SimCity and is trying to integrate microtransactions into the game. Despite the changing of the guard in the CEO’s office, it’s business as usual for EA.

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