Posts tagged e3-2012 
Wink If You've Seen the Future
You're reading Reaction Time, a weekly column that claims to examine recent events, games and trends in the industry, but is really just looking for an excuse to use the word "zeitgeist." It debuts on Fridays in Engadget's digital magazine, Distro. E3 is always on the verge of devolving into a ...
Confusion of war in Medal of Honor: Warfighter's multiplayer
War can be a confusing beast to tame. My time with Medal of Honor: Warfighter during E3 2012 featured as much bombastic action as expected from a war-based shooter, but it also featured another bit of confusion. I was confused as to why I would only get to play one match, but had to watch a 15 ...
Warren Spector: 'Ultraviolence' in games going too far
Epic Mickey producer Warren Spector had only a limited view of E3 from within meeting rooms, but he still saw plenty of gruesome violence. "The ultraviolence has to stop," Spector told GI.biz. "We have to stop loving it. I just don't believe in the effects argument at all, but I do believe that we ...
Japan's fastest-growing game publisher isn't who you'd think
Sony's PlayStation Vita may still be brand new, and Nintendo's Wii U has yet to even hit store shelves, but Japanese developer/publisher/social platform GREE doesn't need a new console. Or any console, for that matter. Its platform is virtual, and its growth strategy is extremely aggressive. "We're ...
Orgarhythm combines rhythm and strategy into one weird game
Pikmin 3 might have been the best-known crowd-control strategy game at E3, but it wasn't the most memorable. That distinction goes to Orgarhythm, a Vita game demonstrated to me during a meeting with publisher XSEED. Orgarhythm mashes up two of the least mashuppable genres imaginable: rhythm game ...
Ranking Japanese RPG publishers after E3 2012
This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs has to offer. As I was going through my E3 schedule, ...
The testimony of Damon Baird in Gears of War: Judgment
Memory is a fickle thing. You may think one thing, but the reality of the situation in question could be entirely different. Was that thing there? What even was that thing? In Gears of War Judgment, Lt. Damon Baird is on trial for disobeying COG orders – being a military outfit, they're kind ...
Bullet Run is free-to-play, and worth the price
How much do you want from free-to-play games? It's tough to talk about free-to-play games critically as a writer, because they upend the traditional rules about what video games are "worth," for lack of a better term. A traditional console game, at $60, is a fairly serious investment these days, ...
Wii U designed to allow free-to-play games
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is notoriously less than jazzed about free-to-play games, but the Wii U's online architecture will be set up to support them, just in case someone else feels like doing that. "We have designed the system from a technical standpoint to allow developers to freely take ...
Lost Planet 3 and the dichotomy of man and machine
There's an interesting clash of play styles I discovered during my preview session of Lost Planet 3. When within his rig – a giant biped mech armed with a huge drill and claw – protagonist Jim is nearly invincible, try as you might to get to the soft, fleshy core of this hulking ...
