Features
Feature: InsaneBear’s 2011 Game of the Year
Another year, another reflective diary entry on how many social opportunities I sacrificed for video games…wait, that’s not right! No: this is a celebration of what has probably been the best year of games since 2007. So let’s get down to business and start with the InsaneBear tradition of looking back on the previous year’s games and re-evaluating our opinions in hindsight.
Author: Cody
Feature: Top 15 games to play over the holidays
First off: no Mario games. We all love Nintendo’s main man, but I could list off the good plumber’s titles ’til the cows come home, and I don’t have any cows…so that might go on for a while. Also, all entries come from this generation of consoles, because frankly, my entire list would consist of GoldenEye otherwise. So with that said, how can you get your gaming fix this holiday season with all manner of trash talking siblings, rambunctious cousins, and overly curious aunts and uncles scurrying around the house?
Author: CodyFeature: Pitching K.I.A.
Concept Art - Muted realsim that progressively gives way to colorful stylization as the action gets hotter.
Introduction: K.I.A. is a Tactical Modern Military First-Person Shooter that seeks to explore the human cost of war through a morally ambiguous narrative and gameplay mechanics that reflect your character’s emotional state in varying degrees of exaggeration. Stepping into the boots of Private Jose Hernandez, you’ll undertake an odyssey of war that spares no women, children, or refugees. Along the way you’ll bond ever closer with your squad-mates over conversations of home, risky favors, and nerve-rattling combat. The eleven soldiers who fight by your side hail from varying backgrounds, but every one of them will come to be considered family to Pvt. Hernandez over the course of a harrowing global conflict. But can the men of Charlie squad save you from yourself?
Author: CodyFeatures: What makes a good side quest?
Some side quests introduce us to party members' family members in the hardest fight of the game. Fun!
So with the recent releases of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Batman: Arkham City, I thought it’d be appropriate to have a discussion on side quests–specifically, what separates the good from the bad? I think we can all agree that when side quests are done well, they unquestionably contribute to a vastly better game experience. In fact, side quests often turn out to be more memorable than main quests for me personally. But why is that?
Author: CodyFeature: Pitching Slayer
Concept Art - That's about right.
Introduction: Slayer takes all the action, drama, and comedy of Joss Whedon’s beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer and puts it into a choice-driven Action-RPG set ten years after the destruction of Sunnydale. You play as one of the many potential Slayers who was awoken in the events of the series finale, and with none other than Giles as your personal Watcher, you must assemble your very own Scooby Gang to combat Buffy herself. An unidentified big bad has sired the most powerful Slayer the world has ever known and together they’re working to undo all the good that’s been done. You’ll encounter Angel, Spike, Willow and the rest along the way, but ultimately, only you can stop the vampire slayer turned vampire.
Author: CodyFeature: Top 10 mini-games
Shenmue - The game where the mini-games are the game, man.
Before venturing any further into what will surely be dubbed an inadequate list by the lot of you, I’d first like to try to define just what a mini-game is. For starters, despite what the internet seems to think, it’s not Call of Duty‘s Nazi Zombies mode; that’s a full-fledged feature. It’d be like calling Gears of War‘s Horde mode a mini game. No, mini-games need to differentiate themselves from the core gameplay in some way. But they also need to realistically exist within the context of and feel authentic to the game-world, which rules out randomly misplaced distractions like Project Gotham Racing 2‘s Geometry Wars. Lastly, a mini-game needs to be something that can be returned to again and again regardless of where you are in the game’s story. In other words, it has to exist outside of one or two quests. Oh, and I’m ruling out mini-games from mini-game compilations in this list; sorry WarioWare and Mario Party. Following this definition, I give you ten of the best mini-games in a vast landscape of mundane wood chopping and mediocre button-mashing.
Author: CodyFeature: Pitching Tag
Concept Art - The starkly clean world of Mirror's Edge tainted by a renaissance of graffiti.
After a bit of a hiatus, circumstances have allowed for the return of InsaneBear’s “Pitching” feature, in which I conjure up a basic game concept and present it for my faithful readers to critique and compare against the current gaming landscape. What’s good or bad about this game? Which of its elements would you like to see in other games? These questions and more are an important part of “Pitching” that will allow us to create a meaningful dialogue on conventions of game design. Of course, the feature’s return is subject to reader response; so let us know if you’d like to see more like this or if you’d rather stick with InsaneBear’s traditional features!
Author: CodyFeature: 5 ways to make Kinect cool
Not listed: the ability to monitor your conversations and tailer advertising based on the findings.
We’re just about a month away from the Kinect’s first birthday, and I think it’s fair to say that everybody is disappointed with this robotic little child. Perhaps Microsoft just set the bar too high by making the thing look like Wall-E’s face. But if Dance Central and Fruit Ninja are the cream of the crop, I have to lean toward a lack of quality games being the real culprit here. So how can Microsoft right the ship and salvage motion controls from the dreaded realm of fads?
Author: CodyFeature: 10 things Peter Molyneux will say about Fable 4
Stop me if you’ve read this one before. No, really! There’s a good possibility that you have. But after reading that list, I couldn’t help but feel like I could do a better one. It doesn’t even mention any mentally unstable bears for crying out loud! So let’s travel into an alternate alternate future and hear what Mr. Molyneux, notorious for his grandiose promises, has to say about the inevitable continuation of the Fable series.
Author: CodyFeature: Video games’ 15 all-time best opening levels
Pretty memorable first level, right?
So, as I was researching this list, I was filled with a desperate urge to replay (or play) every one of these games. That’s what a great opening level will do for you. No sitting through boring tutorials, no unnecessary exposition; just cut right to the heart of the game and never look back. Now due to the nature of this list, open-world games are severely lacking here (but not completely absent!). And whether it’s because game design has gotten better over the years or because “you just had to be there” to fully appreciate a game’s innovations, this list is largely populated by modern titles (sorry, Super Mario 64). Now I’ll acknowledge the irony of this mundane intro and let you get to that list!
Author: Cody
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