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Serving the douche: When usability trumps character
Oh, I have a partner in this game? Wonderful! You take this, and this, and this, oh I might need this, but take this…. Partners in video games have it rough. They’ve been shafted ever since the palette-swapped Luigi. From glorified attaché cases to obedient lap dogs, the secondary character has struggled to define their ...
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After Pressing Start: Prince of Persia Sands of Time
One of my favorite things about Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is the ability to rewind time. It’s immensely enjoyable to undo your small mistakes rather than having to restart a level or reload a saved game. It’s a mechanic that is so useful that I’m seriously astounded that every single game hasn’t been including ...
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After Pressing Start: Prince of Persia 2
The original Prince of Persia games (Brøderbond) came out way back in the day when software came on floppy discs. Hey kids, do you even know what a floppy disc is? It’s the kind of disc cavemen used to install CavePaint on their wood burning, wheel powered computers. Also, they installed Prince of Persia.
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Why Shadow of the Colossus is Overrated
Warning: This opinion piece contains detailed narrative spoilers but few mechanical spoilers for Shadow of the Colossus, ICO, Prince of Persia (2008) and God of War. To celebrate the release of The ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection, I thought I would proclaim this: Shadow of the Colossus is overrated. Before I detail my ...
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Mercenaries should all wear Ponytails
I hope Tom forgives me for pushing this Just Gamers post down, but I couldn’t resist commenting about something I’ve noticed in Metroid: Other M. Initially, I wanted to save the comment for some future review, but frankly, who knows when I’m ever going to put my hands on that game . If there is ...
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Video game movie director hates video games
Let’s get this out of the way: I am not a licensed movie physician, or even a video game doctor. Usually, I’m about as much of an idiot as can be. I’m about as intelligent as a stick of gum. But apparently I know more than Jerry Bruckheimer, action movie master, about making movies! Rule ...
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In Praise of Being Praised
It all began in the confessionary. Graham was telling us how he almost stopped playing videogames forever (I don’t think he would though) when we started debating about how to algebraically measure a game. It eventually came down to issues related to in-game grinding, which led to issues related to grinding for achievement points. I ...
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Alan Wake Sells Under 200k In US
Ruh-Roh, Shaggy. This can’t be good for the folks over at Remedy, who have said they are “betting the farm on [Alan Wake] and if this isn’t a success we’ll be selling hotdogs in Helsinki. Really.” Of course, Alan Wake isn’t the only title cowering in fear behind the shadows of Red Dead Redemption and ...
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The Friday Post: Time to Do the Ham Song!
Hit it, Bachelor Bob Bachelor! Now that that’s out of the way, I bet you want some ham. Not just ham, but bacon, chicken smothered in cheese, and a nice, vibrant wine, perhaps from Spain. How was your week, gentle reader? I bet it had a certain amount of E3 involved. I know mine did. ...
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Dying and Lucifel in El Shaddai
Just yesterday, when speaking of El Shaddai I was drawing comparisons to Prince of Persia, and today Game Informer has validated my suspicions. Though having a predominant focus on combat, there’s definitely a platforming element to this game–that much we could have taken from the trailer alone. This, however, isn’t necessarily where the comparison can ...
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Less Is More
Remember the trailer we posted for El Shaddai? Now, at the time, I couldn’t exactly tell what was gameplay and what was a cinematic. Now, I realize why: there was no HUD that cried out “THIS IS GAMEPLAY FOOTAGE,” and so I had no way of discerning what was what. In doing so, El Shaddai ...
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Character Focus: May's Feature
So, here at Nightmare Mode we have something we’d like to call our ‘monthly feature,’ where we pick a subject or theme, and all participating writers and contributors submit an entry. In May, we picked ‘favorite video game character.’ Read on past the jump to see what we wrote about Flint, Prince North, Morrigan and ...
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Future Games Roundup: May 2010
So it’s May. How did that happen? In an effort to help you plan out your May, we here at Nightmare Mode will now lay out exactly what games you could consider owning in this lovely month. And it’s shaping up to be quite a month. You will notice that game companies have learned nothing ...
