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Killzone 3: The Glorious Fruits of Our Land

March 9, 2011April 1, 2011 Wesley Fok Dear Game Diary, Guerrilla Gardening, Killzone 3, PS3, PSN, review, Sony1 Comment

The standard review approach for Killzone 2, Guerilla Games’ showcase PS3-exclusive first-person shooter, focused on judging its merits in comparison to landmark Xbox 360 shooters like Call of Duty and Halo. The latter comparison was especially enticing—clash of the console-exclusive titans! Take that approach to its logical conclusion and you end up with the majority opinion about the game: graphically impressive and plenty of fun, but occasionally marred by poor design decisions…

IGDA Toronto holding GDC Round-Up

March 9, 2011September 26, 2012 Doug Groves event, Game Developers Conference, Gamercamp, GDC, GDC 2011, Hand Eye Society, IGDA, IGDA Toronto0 comment

Next Monday, the Toronto chapter of the International Game Developer Association (IGDA) will be holding a round-up of the 2011 GDC event, which wrapped up this past week. The round-up will be held at Metro Hall, with a get together afterwards across the street at the Elephant & Castle.

Angry Birds everywhere

March 7, 2011September 26, 2012 Doug Groves 3DS, Angry Birds, facebook, Microsoft, mobile gaming, Nintendo, Rovio, Wii0 comment

It seems that Rovio’s fowl flinging game is aiming to be completely ubiquitous this year. The smash hit that took the iPhone by storm has since been ported to Android and a board game will be appearing soon on Windows Phone 7, Xbox LIVE arcade, and Nintendo’s Wii and 3DS. Beyond that, they are launching a Facebook version of the game in the coming weeks as well. The Finnish company has even announced a somewhat bizare deal with deal with Microsoft for Bing to be the ‘official decision engine‘ for…

Spike & Mike’s Sick and Twisted hits Cineplex

March 6, 2011September 26, 2012 Doug Groves Animation Festival, Cineplex, screening, Sick and Twisted, Spike & Mike1 Comment

If you like animation, but haven’t heard of Spike & Mike, I’d be surprised. Their Festival of Animation has been running in various formats since the mid 1970’s, and has introduced animation fans to a number of artists that later went on to bigger things, such as Mike Judge, who’s “Frog Baseball” featured an early version of Beavis & Butthead, Bill Plympton (a personal favourite), Trey Parker and Matt Stone and many others. In short, Spike and Mike know good animation, and love sharing it. In the past, the touring…

Bulletstorm review – FPS meets arcade fun

February 25, 2011September 26, 2012 Doug Groves Arcade, Bulletstorm, EA, epic games, FPS, PC gaming, People Can Fly, PS3, PSN, review, Xbox 360, Xbox Live3 Comments

Bulletstorm is a breath of fresh air for FPS games. The Duty Calls parody ad, complete with in-game cries of “boring” was a statement on the state of modern shooters, as if each were as serious a look at war as Platoon, Band of Brothers or Generation Kill. Of course, this Tom Clancyesque style of fiction has as much in common with reality as Plan B’s magical super subs, but that’s another story. Eschewing the gritty ‘realism’ of modern shooters for over the top science fiction is only the beginning,…

Minecraft: The Story of Mojang

February 23, 2011September 26, 2012 Doug Groves Kickstarter, Minecraft, Minecraft The Story of Mojang, PC gaming2 Comments

When Markus “Notch” Persson first launched Minecraft, I don’t think he expected to see the indie game grow as popular as it did. Not only has the game well surprassed 1,000,000 copies sold at this point, but it’s getting its own movie. 2 Player Productions, the people behind Reformat the Planet, have launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise the funds to make Minecraft: The Story of Mojang, and with a month to go have already raised almost a third of the $150,000 budget.

Zune HD coming to Canada

February 21, 2011September 26, 2012 Doug Groves Hardware, Microsoft, portable media player, x10, Zune HD2 Comments

Microsoft’s Zune HD portable media player, formerly only available in the US and UK, will be coming to Canada in the near future. Although first released in 2009, the hardware has never been available here. It’s curious that Microsoft would choose 2011 to bring their media player here, since they’ve been focusing on Windows Phone for their mobility solution as of late, including integrating many of the Zune features into their new phone platform. While the Zune software on PCs and the Xbox allows for both movie and TV rentals and purchases, it’s been noticably absent of music options here.

Singularity: Equilibrium

February 21, 2011September 26, 2012 Wesley Fok Activision, FPS, PC gaming, PS3, Raven Software, Singularity, Xbox 3604 Comments

Spoiler warning:This post reveals substantial portions of the plot, including the ending. In the wake of nearly every popular cultural phenomenon arrives a flood of imitators. Their reasons for existing aren’t always obvious, however; some imitators are obvious cash-ins, yes, and others are little more than tributes to the original. But some retreads have higher aspirations—inspired by, but not direct copies of. Maybe it’s an attempt to tell the same basic story in a different way, or tweak parts of the formula to make it more appealing to a certain…

Hydrophobia: Annals of bad encounter design

February 15, 2011March 28, 2011 Wesley Fok Dark Energy Digital, Hydrophobia, third-person shooter, XBLA, Xbox 3600 comment

Hydrophobia was maybe a bad choice of game to play right after Dead Space 2, because despite their many differences I can’t help but compare aspects between the two. There’s no way a budget XBLA game made by a relatively small developer is going to compete with a big-budget sequel with the might of EA’s vast resources behind it, but luckily for Hydrophobia most of its problems are ones of polish…

Netflix on Boxee Box – Happy Valentine’s Day

February 14, 2011September 26, 2012 Doug Groves Boxee Box, media player, Netflix, Software, streaming video, update3 Comments

It’s no secret that there are Boxee Box fans here at RGB. The coolest looking little media player has proven itself to be a very flexible workhorse. Today, Boxee CEO Avner Ronen posted that the newest update has started rolling out, and with it, the long-awaited Netflix compatibility for both the US and Canada.

SOCOM 4 Preview – I traveled 4000km to play it

February 11, 2011September 26, 2012 David Doel David Doel, Great Canadian Gamer, preview, PS3, SOCOM 4, SOCOM preview, Sony, video, Zipper Interactive22 Comments

Recently Zipper Interactive invited me, as a fan of their SOCOM franchise, down to their studio in Redmond, Washington to check out the upcoming SOCOM 4 – releasing on PS3 April 19th. After having a few days to digest the entire event and what I had played I have come away with a very positive outlook on how this game will turn out. I’m in the unique situation of being one of those people who have sunk over a thousand hours into the SOCOM franchise since the original released in…

LittleBigPlanet 2 review: It’s a whole lotta fun

February 10, 2011September 26, 2012 Deborah Chantson LBP 2, LBP2, LittleBigPlanet 2, PS3, PSN, review, Sackboy1 Comment

Well, here I am, finally writing the review of LittleBigPlanet 2. And the delay in my writing is actually attributed to having so much fun in playing the game, that there just aren’t enough hours in the day. ANYWAY, I have to admit that I wasn’t as jazzed about what I saw at the media launch party on the tester screens. I played a top-down view rodent racing derby type level and then got physically stuck before passing the controller to someone else. Oh … but then to have the…