Would be controversial as hell and I just can't fathom anyone being able to get that on to store shelves here. Have to admit it in a morbid way, it would be a blast playing from the killers perspective. Scouting your victims, creating a signature, and trying to cover your tracks. Could even mix an element of playing as the police officer into it. Could download other users crimes and see if you can figure it out.

I said this probably about 6 months ago to my brothers. It's only a matter of time before someone has the guts to make a game where you are the serial killer. Sick and twisted but people would no doubt buy it.

I could see the first shot at this being something like a Dexter-type game where the serial killer is a vigilante which leaves it morally ambiguous rather than it be a person purely stalking innocent people.

Final Fantasy XIV beta signups are now available if anyone wants to give it a spin.......

FFXIV Online Beta Signup

Those pansy GTA games are somewhat close, but not quite there yet.

I've got a gameplay design for a detective game which has AI serial killers. The problem is, people would be expecting an exciting shoot out every couple of minutes (ala GTA) but to really make an intellectually mysterious detective game it actually is about investigation and putting clues together. I don't think the market would be very big for it.

I'm not talking about railroad detective games either, where you are basically point and clicked through a planned out series of gameplay elements with some sort of puzzle/mini-game design until you reach the end of the plot. I was thinking of inverted GTA open world, except the missions themselves are procedurally generated, and the artificial intelligence is on a 'mission' and you as the detective need to detect and defeat it under the condition of ambiguous information.

Need an assist from some 360 parents/gamers. Got an 8-9 year old boy that just got a 360. He's had a PS2 before now, so all 360 games would be new for him. Any suggestions on some games in the library that I could pick up that would be good for him? I looked through all my multiplatform games in my library and quickly realized that all the games I think are good are mostly rated Mature. :) So I'm not exactly sure what's available for the kids on 360. Thanks in advance.

Most of the games in my library are rated M as well, but I enjoyed the Lego Star Wars games. There's also the Indiana Jones and Batman titles, and those seem to be pretty kid-friendly.

Have you tried any of the Lego games?

edit : What Dataking said.

I think most of the E10+ (or whatever it is) games are Lego/Sports/Disney movie type games. I've never played any of the movie game, but I can't imagine they are the greatest although, sure you could find them pretty cheaply.

What does he play on the PS2?

hxxp://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/familycentral.htm

I'd start here.

Also, Peggle, that game rocks, he might like that.

I know he plays some 'Teen' games as well. Just wanted something other than Mature.

Most of mine are M too, but Ghostbusters was pretty tame and is rated T. (only non-M, non-sports, non-rock band type game I've bought recently that I can comment on)

Yeah, that's a good one. Forgot about that.

Might be a good opportunity to introduce him to games like Ticket To Ride and Carcassone.

Mini Ninjas is great!

FWIW, my 11 y/o suggested Civ Rev as an "age appropriate" title if he's got the patience for it.

Walkthrough video of ModNation Racers with the developer. Really looking forward to this game. Beta feedback has been outstanding.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/...er-mat-thomas/

Not sure what your thoughts on a game like that are, but I actually think it's really good for kids. Gets the mind going as well as any math class.

I downloaded the Dante's Inferno demo. Ugh. The scuttlebutt about it being a God of War clone were dead on. It felt like a cheap rip-off of Kronos. I love the idea of converting literature to a game, but this is going to stop some other people from trying it, methinks.

I know it's 2010 now, but hey.

EA Sports to Bring new NBA Jam Exclusively to Wii January 4, 2010

Filed under: News — hattrick @ 10:16 pm

According to sources at ESPN, EA Sports has acquired the rights to NBA Jam, and will be bringing a new version exclusively to the Wii. Here is what ESPN writer Jon Robinson has to say:

“Sources confirmed to ESPN that the new title is actually one of the all-time classics coming back to consoles as EA Sports has acquired the rights from the NBA to deliver an updated version of “NBA Jam” that will ship to retail exclusively for the Wii.”

I guess we will find out more when EA Sports makes the official announcement at the end of the month.
For the full article from Mr. Robinson, click here.

Ok, I'm interested. And hopefully better than Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff

SI

Please, please, please make this a good game EA. I want to dunk from the foul line with the high flying twosome of Howard and Carter.

Like sterlingice said, having another failed update of a classic arcade sports game from my youth would be rough. Damn TSB:K was a letdown. Whoever developed that game made some unbelievably poor decisions.

The problem with NBA Jam "exclusively on Wii" is that it means they're going to try to jam poorly conceived motion controls onto it.

And that will fail.

I'm good with it, although frankly most of the things my son plays I can find some value in.

Is DJ Hero a big time bust? Cause every store I go into seems to have like a thousand copies of it lying around.

Yep, agreed.

Penny Arcade had a comment on Activision's Q4 offerings that I think hits the mark pretty squarely.

Instead of creating a good game and then setting the price, they started with the price - "$120!" - and then tried to work backwards from there. With DJ Hero, they run into the additional obstacle of creating a "Hero" game that is not intuitively accessible. Just about anybody can pick up a pair of drumsticks, a plastic guitar, or, hell, a microphone, and figure out in pretty short order which end is up.

A turntable is another matter. If you do not already have an interest in being a DJ, you are probably either going to ignore the game entirely, or fiddle with it for five minutes and lose interest. And if you paid $120, you're going to be pissed enough that the franchise will have negative cachet with you from then on.

They're going to have to take a bath on DJ Hero in order to build any kind of market share for the DJ extension of the brand going forward, and they probably should have planned for that bath in the first place. It isn't as if the core Hero brand, Call of Duty franchise, and World of Warcraft franchise aren't making them buckets of bank in the first place.

+2. This is going to end BADLY.

That's possible. I'm hoping for multiple control schemes, one using the classic controller. It's also possible to have good motion controls, EA's Wii games have had some failures and successes in that regard.

Any motion control scheme they have won't be the only control scheme. They will make sure you can play it with a regular controller.

Funny story. Father in law is a general practice doctor. An 82 year old lady who is a family friend came with chest pain over the weekend. When they enquired about what she did over the weekend, she mentioned that her great grandson had received a Wii over the holidays and she played Wii bowling for THREE HOURS straight on Saturday. Thankfully, the pain was nothing more than a chest muscle strain and a recommendation to never play Wii Bowling more than one game at a time without taking a break.

There's a good chance they'll badly screw it up because, hell, they're EA. Easily my first thought on the matter.


Tiger Woods for the Wii is supposed to be the best ever on any system because they actually got the controls right. There's a slim but non-zero chance they could get this to work. But it's slim.

SI

Think it is time to rename the thread to 2010 or should we simply start a new one?

This thread is sooooooo last year.

Wish granted: The 2010 Video Games Thread.

Both Grand Slam Tennis and Tiger Woods 10 (which used Wii Motion Plus) were good, Tiger 10 was much better than the previous Wii golf games.

Too be honest I was mainly interested to see who would be the first to quickly post a new thread. You won Kodos!

I was kind of surprised that it took 5 days to do so since this thread stays so active on here.

Happy New Year!

I felt like this once, but it was four hours straight, and it was real bowling. I consider that my highlight for 2009.