Category: News (Page 82 of 108)

      Interview: Dante’s Inferno Senior Product Manager Phil Marineau

      February 5, 2010 /

      Dante plummets to Hell.As you surely know, Dante’s Inferno launches next Tuesday on the PS3 and Xbox 360. The fiery slasher is highly anticipated and has already received very solid reviews. I got the chance to talk with EA’s Phil Marineau, the Senior Product Manager on Dante’s Inferno, to talk about development, the game’s place in the action/adventure genre, and the upcoming Super Bowl ad for the game.

      Fearless Gamer: Obviously the game’s based on Dante’s Inferno so why that poem, why that source material?

      Phil Marineau: Well, ever since our executive producer read the poem – and he’s somewhat of a literary buff – if you go online and you go on Google and you type in Dante’s Inferno and you search images everyone throughout history who’s read the poem has been inspired by it. The image you see the most is the cone, the cone image, where someone’s sort of drawing Hell. And it gave us the idea that, you know what, this sets up perfectly for a level-based video game. You start at the top, on the surface, you fight through nine levels of Hell, and at the end you have the ultimate boss battle with the ultimate bad guy, Lucifer.

      As we were going around pitching it internally people were like, “Yeah, I totally get it.”

      FG: So what makes Visceral and EA’s vision of hell different from what we’ve seen. There are a lot of games out there that take the hell concept, what makes this different?
      Continue reading »

      Development, EA, News, PS3, Xbox 360

      LoL: Gragas buff is on the way

      February 4, 2010 /

      Gragas the Rabblerouser.If you’ve played any games as Gragas you’ve probably felt pretty underwhelmed. I know I have. Generally, I like to give a new toon a chance to shine, but Gragas really can’t, and it comes down to his lack of internal synergy.

      I realize that sounds like something from a Six Sigma retreat on 30 Rock so I’ll try to clarify. Gragas suffers because his skills are a weird mix of AP and physical damage. While some at Riot contend that he does best with a health/physica DPS build, the player community is frustrated with where that puts his AP scaling skills, most notably Barrel Roll and his ultimate.

      Luckily, Riot has seen the light. Gragas will soon be receiving a buff per red posts on the forums. I’ll be interested to see how much, though. As it stands I think he’s fine for the early game, but he really suffers mid to late. Buff him the wrong way and suddenly he’s too big early and starts to feel just right late.

      For what they got wrong with Gragas, they got completely right with Pantheon. I am completely in love with that Spartan bastard.

      league of legends, News, PC, Strategy

      Guitar Hero gets a new boss

      February 3, 2010 /

      Guitar hero logo.The Guitar Hero division at Activision has made some changes to its executive tier. Former CEO Dan Rosensweig left the company to hook up with Chegg.com, a site that allows users to rent textbooks. The site recently broke $160 million in investor funding.

      Activision’s former COO David Haddad will be taking up the mantle on the struggling franchise. There had been some speculation as to whether or not Rosensweig was fired due to the franchises suffering sales. Activision denies those rumors, claiming that the move was completely voluntary for all parties.

      Whatever the case, we can hopefully expect some changes from a genre of games that has been reluctant to innovate.

      Activision, News

      LoL patch day: Servers are live

      February 2, 2010 /

      Gragas the Rabble Rouser.If you’ve been anxiously logging in every twenty minutes to check the servers you can stop your wait. Everything’s back up and running with the reported changes in place. As of this writing the store isn’t functioning, so I haven’t been able to pick up Pantheon just yet.

      I am looking forward to a lot of the changes, though. As a Gangplank player I was glad to see the change to Parrrley in that it now applies Grog Soaked Wound. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve crit someone to a sliver of health just to watch him run off. There is a strange bug in his attack animation wherein every few attacks he points his gun at the target and it clicks as though you’ve tried to fire Parrrley and it didn’t go off.

      I will miss that 10% extra crit damage from my runes, though it’s not a terrible nerf. I’m looking forward to giving it a go on Pantheon. I’ve got a feeling that Heartseeker Strike will be a crazy opener most people won’t expect for a few days.

      And then there’s Gragas. I’ve not played him yet so I don’t have much to say other than this: he’s HUGE. His skills seem to be balanced just about right for a tank – nice control with just enough damage to overbalance a fight. I’ll have to experiment with some builds later in the day.

      Development, league of legends, News

      Walmart and Best Buy give up on trade-ins

      February 2, 2010 /

      E-play kiosk in Best Buy.It seems like it was just yesterday that Best Buy and Walmart tried to horn in on Gamestop’s used game profits. As it turns out that little endeavor wasn’t so successful; both stores will be closing used game operations within the month.

      In case you don’t recall, it wasn’t actually Walmart or Best Buy handling the used game operations. Both companies outsourced the work to E-play. E-play suspended operations on Monday and will remove its kiosks from the select locations of both retailers within the next three weeks. Neither retailer has plans to branch out with its own system.

      It’s a little surprising that things would fall apart so quickly but I never really expected either store to make money. Most of the used game junkies I know have a certain rapport with their local Gamestop employees, who manage to keep the words “we don’t get paid on commission” out of every conversation.

      Source: Industry Gamers

      News

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