Gadgets and Video Games

The creators of Final Fantasy XIII have been notoriously tight-lipped about the Fabula Nova Crystallis trilogy, a series comprised of FFXIII , Final Fantasy Versus XIII and the PSP-exclusive Final Fantasy Agito XIII . During a GDC panel titled “The Crystal Mythos,” director Motomu Toriyama gave a few scant details about the other two branches of the trilogy, and the few similarities connecting the entries in the franchise’s 13th series.

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GDC: Toriyama explains the themes of the Fabula Nova Crystallis trilogy

Plenty of attention has been lavished on one nontraditional Japanese RPG this week — but Sega sneaked out another one alongside Final Fantasy XIII . Luckily, enough reviewers remembered that Yakuza 3 exists to provide a decent swath of reviews. While it’s certain to be the best game this week about playing fictional arcade shooters, singing karaoke with dates from hostess clubs and hitting gangsters with street signs, how did Kazuma Kiryu’s latest saga fare under more common rubrics? IGN ( 8.5 /10 ): “You’re getting this intense story about Japan’s seedy underbelly that’s set in an open world where you can take all sorts of side quests, but as you do so, random battles are popping up, you’re earning experience points so you can level up your moves, and you can take stuff from your extensive inventory list and craft new weapons and armor.

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Metareview: Yakuza 3

Sony Worldwide Studios VP Scott Rohde had the onerous task of introducing the first PlayStation Move games at Sony’s GDC press conference last night. We caught up with the executive after the show to talk about Sony’s plans for exploiting motion control and if hardcore gamers should be concerned about the future of the PS3 games library. Our complete interview with Rohde follows: It’s obviously going to take internal resources to develop games for PlayStation Move

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Interview: Sony’s Scott Rohde on PlayStation Move

The last time we were in control of Sam Fisher — aka the X10 demo — he was sneaking, shooting and (neck) snapping his way through a mansion in Malta, tracking down the man he believed had information about his daughter Sarah’s killer. Recently, I played through a new section of Splinter Cell: Conviction , which picked up right where the previous demo abruptly ended — with a a team of Third Echelon forces breaking up Sam’s one-man operation. Forced to surrender, Sam’s put on a plane and “brought home” for questioning about a plot to bring down Washington, DC with an EMP attack

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Hands-on: Splinter Cell: Conviction

Good morning, dear reader! You’ve got a lot to catch up on: “PlayStation Move” is official name of motion controller We touched it: PlayStation Move from every angle Gallery: PlayStation Move (Joystiq’s Photos) That’s it, you ask? Oh, no — wait till you see what we’ve lined up for you after the break! Continue reading PlayStation Move: the everything you need to know post PlayStation Move: the everything you need to know post originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds .

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PlayStation Move: the everything you need to know post

Sweet Shiva, the Final Fantasy XIII reviews are all over the place . What has been clear over the past couple years is that the Japanese RPG has been going through some seriously violent flux. The genre is trying to find a new path, and even as Japanese developers seem to search for a balance that’ll please several markets, they’re freaking out western reviewers and audiences, who have a certain expectation going into these games — a fault of fans, as much as decades of ingrained convention by those developers

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Metareview: Final Fantasy XIII

You want some hard truth? Here it is: We have such a deep and abiding love for the Ace Attorney series that we almost certainly wouldn’t be able to critique Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth objectively. Perhaps Capcom didn’t send it our way solely because nabbing a good review from us would be almost too easy, a proverbial fish-in-a-barrel situation. Less enamored critics have been pretty kind to the game, as you can see in some of the review snippets below. Not pictured is GamePro’s 3.5 star review , omitted both for being unrepresentative of the game’s average score and for being written by someone clearly incapable of experiencing joy

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Metareview: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

You want some hard truth? Here it is: We have such a deep and abiding love for the Ace Attorney series that we almost certainly wouldn’t be able to critique Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth objectively. Perhaps Capcom didn’t send it our way solely because nabbing a good review from us would be almost too easy, a proverbial fish-in-a-barrel situation. Less enamored critics have been pretty kind to the game, as you can see in some of the review snippets below

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Metareview: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we’re giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. To kick things off we’re, unsurprisingly, turning to one of our favorite indie developers: Dan Marshall of Zombie Cow Studios . How did you get started?

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The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Zombie Cow Studios

If a batch of positive reviews has yet to sway you towards picking up Darksiders , THQ and developer Vigil Games are hoping to change that by means of a demo planned to hit Xbox Live and PlayStation Network on February 25. Not just any demo, mind you, but one its publisher claims will ” take approximately 90 minutes to complete for the average player.” That claim is backed up by the fact that it will include the entire first dungeon — which is home to two bosses — from the retail release. Vigil general manager David Adams explains in the demo’s announcement that the dev “really wanted to give gamers a true idea of the variety of gameplay that the game offers,” adding, “rather than just making a standard 20-minute demo version of the first few levels, we decided to give away this massive level and reveal the true essence of the game.” Here’s what we want you to do. Bookmark this post, then, once the demo hits, come back here and leave a comment letting us know how long it took you to complete.

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‘Extensive’ 90-min Darksiders demo on XBL, PSN Feb. 25