Last week, Sony invited a group of us media folk down to Los Angeles to get our hands on some of their biggest games for 2013. You may have already read my thoughts on Killzone: Mercenary, God of War: Ascension, and The Last of Us. Though my opinion of the three of them varied quite dramatically, the one thing they all shared was a common bloodlust. During my time with the three games, I probably killed roughly one thousand people, creatures, and gods. I performed headshots, tore bodies in half, and smashed faces in using a brick. By the time I was done, I wanted to drop my controller, lay down on a bowling alley lane and resign with the words "I'm finished," like Daniel Day Lewis at the end of There Will Be Blood. But I'm glad I didn't because Sony showcased a fourth game that washed the slate clean and made me feel like I did back when I was a child; that time when we all fell in love with this medium in the first place.
Tearaway is Media Molecule's upcoming Vita adventure singularly built around the concept of paper. While that may sound strange at first, I honestly can't remember the last time I played a game that so faithfully stuck to a central theme across every facet of the experience. Your hero is on a mission to deliver an unknown message that's contained within an envelope -- the very same envelope that acts as his or her head. The entire world is composed of paper -- flower petals curl like ribbons, paper towel tubes act as hallways, and a bit of glue allows you to walk on walls. It's like an elementary school art class became sentient overnight and decided to see what it could make of itself. The mere act of traversing the world brought back wildly fond memories of wandering the front yard of Princess Peach's castle in Super Mario 64 -- it's a type of genuine, uncynical exploration that you don't see very often in 2013.
1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF FEBRUARY 4 | HUMOR IN GAMES
Missing Mascots 2: More Gaming Superstars Who Went AWOL
Cover Story: We take a look at another round of iconic characters that dropped out of sight.
F
ame is as fleeting as ever in the game industry. Much like any up-and-coming media star, a game character is never far from an abrupt decline, whether it's brought about by a string of lousy titles, a company's collapse, or an inexplicable disappearance.
Our previous Missing Mascots feature profiled the lost icons of several game publishers, and now we return, perhaps with a slightly looser definition of "mascot." All of these characters were important to their respective companies, and all of them had a shot at making it big. Some of them even did that before their time at the top ended. And where did they go from there?
If pop culture has taught us anything, it's that space can be a pretty lonely place. Like Ellen Ripley before him, Dead Space's Isaac Clark had to endure two full games of solitary terror in order to arrive at where he is today. To give the guy a break, EA and Visceral Games decided to expand the third installment in the series by allowing a second player to assume the role of John Carver, and officer in the Earth Defense Force with a bit of a troubled past. Together, the two of them journey from the familiarity of decrepit spaceships to the unfamiliar hell of Tau Volantis, a frozen planet that holds the key to saving humanity. With this newfound importance placed on cooperative play, we decided that it would be best for 1UP editors Jose Otero and Marty Sliva to team up and review Dead Space 3 together.
Marty Sliva: Before we delve into Dead Space 3, I feel like we should first state our history with the series. How versed are you with the prior games?
You might not know it, but Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time was released today. It's a PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita exclusive that you can pick up right this very second, although you could be forgiven for not realizing it -- and not just because Dead Space 3 is the week's biggest release.
Thives in Time is the series' first entry not to be developed by Sucker Punch Productions, which is now better known for its work on Infamous. When the game was revealed back at E3 2011, Sucker Punch's name was conspicuously absent from the trailer. In its place was that of Sanzaru Games, a relatively new developer whose credits included The Sly Collection and a port of Secret Agent Clank, the former of which helped put it in a position to make what amounts to Sly 4.
1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF FEBRUARY 4 | HUMOR IN GAMES
A Eulogy for TimeSplitters
Cover Story: Looking back at one of the few shooters that was actually in on the joke.
I
t was December 2008, and an eight-day power outage caused by a brutal ice storm had finally driven me from my apartment. After spending over a week sitting under blankets in my hat and coat, playing Etrian Odyssey in the dark and watching Christmas movies on a scratchy, battery-powered television, getting to surf the internet at my parents' house felt like a godsend. Of course, I immediately discovered the news that UK game developer, Free Radical, had gone into receivership. TimeSplitters 4 was effectively cancelled, and the TimeSplitters series as a whole seemed to be done for. For a few minutes I really wished I'd just frozen to death in my apartment, my life ending in a blissful state of ignorance.
Of course having then-recently released the critically panned PS3 exclusive FPS Haze, Free Radical wasn't exactly riding high in public esteem at the time of its demise. Comments sections across the internet reacted to the story largely with disinterest. "Who cares if another third-rate FPS developer goes under?" some of the more sensitively minded comment makers asked. But what these folks didn't realize, blinded as they were by the recent negativity directed at Haze, was that TimeSplitters was really something special. It was a legitimately funny FPS.
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