Video Games

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The Game Awards Trailer Roundup

The Game Awards were last week. As expected, with the exception of a pretty significant #FucKonami moment, the majority of the interest in the TGAs were focused on new trailers and game premieres that make The Game Awards the show that we know and don’t really love. It’s basically a light, condensed version of E3.

Anyway, there were 11 new trailers shown during last night’s three-hour The Game Awards show and apparently only Best Shooter wasn’t mentioned during the show, Games for Change’s winner was the only mention of that category and most of The Witcher 3’s awards were mentioned when it picked up Game of the Year. So that’s probably an improvement. And there four new game reveals that we have for you as well. Telltale Games and Xbox had five trailers between them on the night so if you’re a fan of them, there’s lots for you here.

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Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Video Games

The Game Awards 2015 Nominations And Predictions

the-game-awards-2015-headerSure, The Game Awards aren’t nearly as terrible as the old VGAs / VGX that used to be on Spike TV and now that it’s solely streamed, it’s easier to ignore. However, Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards is still the only real North American live year-end video game awards show on the block.

So as I am wont to do and since we don’t do a big year-end awards list of our own, I think it’s only right to evaluate the decisions of the big names in garme jurnalizm think are 2015’s best games with our regular look at the nominees for The Game Awards and predictions of who will win.

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2 Comments Posted on by Steve Murray Video Games

Kotaku, The Blacklist and What’s Left of Games Journalism

fallout-4-please-stand-byIt’s not an uncommon occurrence for a gaming news outlet to be blacklisted by a publisher. You can hear Jim Sterling talk about blacklisted regularly on The Jimquisition. Destructoid was blacklisted by Konami. At one time or another, EGM was reportedly blacklisted by numerous companies including Sony, Midway and Ubisoft. Jeff Gerstmann infamously lost his job at GameSpot over a poor review of Kane & Lynch that resulted in Eidos Interactive threatening to pull ads from the site.

The latest publication to take their blacklisting public is Kotaku. Editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo took to the site to reveal that the company had been cut off by the PR branches of both Ubisoft and Bethesda. While some in games media are standing up for Kotaku, those content consumers that Kotaku are supposed to be producing content for aren’t on their side. When you’re as divisive as Kotaku, there isn’t much sympathy for the devil.

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1 Comment Posted on by Steve Murray Video Games

Ori and the Blind Forest Review: Games as Art

ori-and-the-blind-forest-wallpaperHow long does it normally take to figure out if a game is any good? It’s not a topic I’ve ever given much thought to until I started writing this review. Ori and the Blind Forest makes a very strong first impression with an opening scene that is guaranteed to make you cry in the first ten minutes of the game. It doesn’t take you long to realize you’re playing one of the best games of 2015.

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1 Comment Posted on by Steve Murray Video Games

Franchise Hockey Manager 2 Review: Shattering Shanahan

franchise-hockey-manager-2-bannerWhen I was in university, the one game that we played religiously was the latest EA Sports NHL games. Sure, it’s not the best investment of money because the games are largely the same year-to-year but we still all loved playing (and trash-talking). Being a fan of Football Manager, I also gave Sega’s hockey management sim Eastside Hockey Manager a try but was a broke college student so I was limited to the free trial. That and you could cheat your way to the Memorial Cup by literally buying players from other junior teams so where’s the fun in that.

Now, there’s a new player in the sports management sim genre. Out of the Park Developments, who also make the popular Out of the Park series of baseball sims, is getting into the world of hockey with Franchise Hockey Manager. How have they handled the transition from grass and bats and chewing tobacco to ice and skates and stitches on the bench?

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Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Video Games

WRC 5 Review: Dirty Rally

wrc5-headerOne of our unanticipated annual traditions on et geekera is the review of some annual sports franchises in the fall. In the next little bit, we’ll review Football Manager 2016 (the third entry we’ve reviewed in our under three years of existence) and Franchise Hockey Manager 2 will be the latest addition to the lineup of sport reviews. But the one I’ve been doing the longest between etg and The Lowdown is WRC. After a year’s hiatus, the World Rally Championship game is back. While much has changed, a lot still stays the same.

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1 Comment Posted on by Steve Murray Video Games

Tales from the Borderlands – Episode Five Review: End of the Road

tales-from-the-borderlands-episode-five-headerIt took them a while but Telltale has finally completed the Tales from the Borderlands series just as they got Minecraft: Story Mode off the ground. It’s fitting that one of Telltale’s game spin-offs ends as another begins. From what I understand of Minecraft: Story Mode (review coming soon), it’s apparently designed to appeal mostly to kids which is how I would peg the stereotypical audience of Minecraft proper.

I look at Tales from the Borderlands in a similar way. No, it’s not a kids’ game but it is a game designed to appeal to the audience of the proper game that it’s based on. In its final episode, though, Tales from the Borderlands finally clicks in the way we’ve gotten used to from Telltale Games.

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Life is Strange – Episode Five Review: Time of Your Life

life-is-strange-episode-five-headerIt’s so seldom that I play a game that really moves me. Sure, there are plenty of games that I play that I think are really good or have their poignant moments but I can’t remember the last time I played a game that stuck with me quite the way that Life is Strange has. I came into it expecting to be underwhelmed but Dontnod exceeded all of my expectations and made the best episodic point-and-click adventure game on the market.

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Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Video Games

Star Wars: Battlefront Beta Impressions: Pray I Alter It Further

star-wars-battlefront-headerSo we have a new Star Wars trailer and many, many people have tickets to an early showing of The Force Awakens. Exactly a month before the earliest showings of Episode VII, the next chapter in the Star Wars video game franchise will hit shelves.

Both the announcement of J.J. Abrams as director of Episode VII and the appointment of Electronic Arts as the publisher of Star Wars games were met with excitement. While EA did cause a bit of trepidation, the appointment of DICE, BioWare and Visceral, three of EA’s top guns, to develop the games got gamers excited. First up for EA and LucasFilm is DICE with their take on Battlefront. The early results aren’t exactly awe-inspiring.

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Leave a comment Posted on by Steve Murray Announcements, Video Games

Lowdown / et geekera Tales from the Borderlands Giveaway

Our sister site, et geekera, has managed to get an extra code for Tales from the Borderlands. Since I already have one, there’s only one logical thing to do: Give it away!

We’re running the contest through gleam.io which will randomly draw one winner from the entries. You can earn up to five entries into our contest. The giveaway starts now and closes at 11:59 PM EST on October 31st. We’ll contact the winner with the code on November 1st.

Click here to enter our giveaway.

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