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.
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.
I’ve been busy this week so today’s set of links might be a little shorter than usual. Hopefully, it’s a case of the decrease in quantity is made up for with an increase in quality. Anyhow, let’s start with Alessandra Ambrosio.
One of the all-time greatest hockey players, Gordie Howe, turned 85 this past Sunday. While he’s just as spry as any 85-year-old. The problem is the toll the game seems to have taken on his mind. (Detroit Free Press)
Disney is a massive corporation. Not many companies would have been able to afford to buy LucasFilm, after all. However, it’s not the Mouse but the Mothership, ESPN, that brings in the biggest dollars. (The Economist)
How does the NRA protect the right to bear arms? Not through meaningful discourse or the use of facts. Solely though scaremongering. (TPM)
Every year, I like to play the unique role of outside insider / prognosticator / comedian with my annual ridiculous predictions series of posts. This time out, I’m making my ridiculous predictions for the NHL Trade Deadline. After all, when experts and reporters talk about deals at the trade deadline, they always think that teams will make deals that make sense for all involved. In reality, the NHL doesn’t work that way. Players have no-trade clauses in their contracts and some GMs have no sense whatsoever. So let’s take a fun look at this year’s NHL trade deadline.
It’s time to once again take a look back at the past month here on the blog with Lowdown Monthly. Considering the amount of content we’ve pushed out over the 31 days in March, I thought now would be a good time to bring it back. So here’s our look back at our favourite and the most popular posts of March. Continue reading
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.
You know, there aren’t many (maybe any) songs about Easter. What if Sir Paul McCartney did an Easter song? Would he do Wonderful Easter Time as the logical follow-up to Wonderful Christmastime? Anyway, let’s kick off this not even slightly Easter themed post with Irina Shayk.
Writer Jay Caspian Kang looks back at last year’s shooting at Oikos University and examines the effect that it had on various parties involved. (New York Times)
Nick D’Alosio just made $30 million by selling a story summarizing app to Yahoo. His Summly app condenses articles down to four “need-to-know” lines using a licensed algorithm to do so. Not only is the app apparently not that good, D’Alosio’s reputation in the tech community isn’t that great. (Gawker)
Meagan Marie is a community manager for Crystal Dynamics. She’s one of the seemingly few women working in a video games industry that’s often fairly regarded as sexist or misogynistic. When she wrote about some of the moronic and misogynistic things one so-called member of the gaming media said at PAX East, she heard from the rather unsavoury corners of the interweb. But she’s absolutely right in what she says and all gamers should read her blog post about it. (Meagan Marie)
There won’t be much to do over the weekend since it’s the Easter holidays. If you’re not too religious, go out and check out some movies including GI Joe: Retaliation. No it’s not about finding out whether they kill off Channing Tatum or not, it’s about checking out Adrianne Palicki as Lady Jaye.
After the jump, two versions of Iron Man 3 will be released, some stuff on World War Z, a few movie trailers to check out, a UFC champ is taking his acting chops to the big screen and watch Wong Fu’s latest tackle on relationships… more specifically past relationships. Continue reading
Inspired by the Globe and Mail’s caption writing person, we waste our time writing funny picture captions for some of the more interesting photos we come across when blogging. So here are some of the best pictures from the past week with a funny (-ish) caption. Continue reading
As part of their Mass Effect retrospective panel at PAX East, BioWare released an infographic detailing the decisions made by players. They didn’t reveal stats like completion rate or which ending was chosen (for obvious reasons) but they did detail the most popular classes, FemShep vs. BroShep, paragon vs. renegade, the favourite squadmates and even total single player play time across the community.
The Lowdown 