Amnesia: The Dark Descent was one of my favorite games of last year.  Beyond being loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft’s The Outsider, which is a story I love, it creates a sense of dread and psychoemotional oppression that is very rare in the horror video game today.  I find it extremely compelling that Frictional Games’ core design philosophy seems to eschew all modern horror tropes (such as, for instance, weaponry)  in order to take players to a much darker, and in some ways, more cerebrally primal, place.  They craft survival horror games in the truest sense, which is somewhat of an anomaly these days.  So I was very happy to come across this multi-part article on their development blog, in which several of the artists involved on the Amnesia project discuss the process of conceptualizing and designing the antagonistic entities in the game.  It is quite specific and includes a lot of intriguing details.  For those of you who are interested in the creative process of designing games, it should prove special.

The internet is buzzing about what appears to be a worldwide outage of Sony’s Playstation Network. Error codes are popping up when attempting to sign-in and, in some cases, offline games such as Heavy Rain, are completely unplayable. Sony has responded via Twitter, reporting they are “looking into it” and hope to have a solution to the problem sometime soon.

Popular theories report the problem may be linked to a Y2K-esque problem with the PS3 firmware’s internal clock. We’ll be sure to update when a fix comes through.

[UPDATE: More than twelve hours after the errors began, Sony still has yet to release a fix. A post on the Playstation Blog by Patrick Seybold, Sony's director of Corporate Communications, even suggests that PS3 owners do not turn on their systems! Apparently, the problem is only occurring on older "non-slim" PS3s.]

[UPDATE]  3/1/2010 at 7:30PM EST – Sony has yet to issue an official confirmation but multiple reports indicate the internal clock bug, otherwise known as PS3 Error 8001050F, has been resolved as PS3s around the globe are now working properly. The news comes almost a full 24-hours after initial errors were being reported. Is this the end of, what the internet is calling, the APOCALYPS3? Only time will tell.

image courtesy of GameFaqs

The 8th annual Character Battle is in full swing over on GAMEFAQS. Every day, characters from beloved video game franchises are going head-to-head in the daily poll to see who reigns supreme in the hearts and minds of gamers everywhere. Who will be this year’s winner? Previous victors include Link from the Legend of Zelda series and Cloud from Final Fantasy VII. No big surprises there, but never underestimate the power of the GAMEFAQS audience. In 2007, L-Block, of Tetris fame, stunned voters by triumphing over what many considered shoe-ins for the crown. Who will be this year’s winner? It’s still too early to call. Head on over to GameFAQs to vote on today’s battle and stay tuned to see who wins. Don’t forget, there’s money to be had. Before any battle begins, visitors are encouraged to create a bracket, predicting the outcome of the voting process. First place will receive a $500 online gift certificate.

Have a favorite video game character? List it in the comments below!

It’s estimated that the vast majority of video gamers purchase their video games from GameStop/EBGames, while Amazon.com ranks a distant 3rd. Ever more recently, Wal-Mart has begun to cut into the share due its high-volume discounts on video games. While this has been detrimental for the video game giant GameStop, it may not be as bad as it truly seems. Like everything else in Wal-Mart, video games are now discounted more than usual. Just recently as of last week, we saw Black Friday sales on video games, with an estimated 10-20% off the retail price. While these are amazing deals, you must remember that Wal-Mart only carries the new game releases, and obviously doesn’t have the vast selection and other services offered by GameStop.

Just a few days ago, GameStop’s stock price took a small tumble due to Wal-Mart’s recent announcement to discount video games and give out $50 gift cards to anyone who purchases a Nintendo Wii. While we may never know if the correleation is exact, we do know that on average, GameStop’s sales have been way up for Q3 and for Q4 projections. As affluent readers in the GameShack community, we all should know by now that the video game market isn’t recession proof, and that us gamers will continue to spend the little money we do have, on video games.

In response to our original question, and not to stray too much off topic, let’s discuss on where you should by your video games. Of course if you’re looking to get the hottest new game releases, your best bet will always be to pre-order it from GameStop or Amazon.com. Let us say one thing as we have a lot of experience with this, if you pre-order a game from GameStop, you are treated like gold. Not only do you get a call, a text message and can get access to cool extras and the game itself earlier than everyone else, it’s well worth the $5 to put down to reserve the game as you will have one on hold for you. As with most new game releases, and if the game is hot enough, GameStop will sell out almost instantly, rendering the game unbuyable for the next few weeks until the next shipment arrives. Even then, you will be bewildered with lackadaisical customer service representatives who can’t check the computer inventory, may be lying to you, or simply don’t want to tell you when the next shipment is arriving. The world will truly never know or understand this process; Very similar but not as worse as the Verizon representatives, who would be dismembered if they spoke about a pre-release of a product. If a new phone was comming out tomorrow and everyone in the world knew about it, and you asked a Verzion representative about it, their response would be, “Sir I am sorry but we have no idea when this new item is coming out.” Simply ludicrious but yes this is the capitalist world we live in, and yes, GameStop employees also want to get their hands on hot new game release titles.

In regards to Amazon.com, we have found conflicting results on pre-orders. For several games, and even during our purchase of the PS3 Slim, we have to admit to that we pre-ordered it from both Amazon.com and GameStop. As aforementioned, GameStop treated us like gold. We got both a text message and a phone call that morning letting us know the PS3 Slim was in stock and ready for pickup. We then canceled our Amazon.com order as it didn’t even ship yet and headed straight to GameStop. The representatives there were even jealous of us, as he ‘jokingly’ claimed we were one of the few people in New York who had their hands on a PS3 Slim that morning, as the GameStop in Manhattan only received 5 units in on launch day. Some little kid in the store even offered us an additional $100 for it, but just wasn’t enough to break the bank.

Onto another story, as we desparately wanted to buy the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Prestige Edition, which GameStop sold out of relatively quickly, we were able to order it Amazon.com without a problem, with $10 street date shipping – simply unbelievable. As we stated before, it’s kind of hit or miss with Amazon.com. Most of the time Amazon.com themselves are shipping the game or console which is good, and unless you choose an express shipping method, it could be a while until you get the game. Of course this only applies to new product releases of any kind. If you are ordering an everyday normal item, do yourself and us a favor and ALWAYS chose Free Super Saver Shipping. It’s sometimes even FASTER than express mail services, and still boggles the imagination on how it always arrives much much earlier than the estimated date given. Do we smell a shipping fee scam? Or is it just great customer service?

Of course besides the big video game store giants, one can also revert to eBay. However, one must always be a little bit careful who they are ordering from, but with some computer literacy the average video gamer should be perfectly fine. Please just make sure the person has a decent feedback score, we’d suggest at least a score of 50 with at least a 98% rating, of course you could always go a little less. We’ve been checking out the prices on eBay and we must say that it probably has begun to rival the rest of the video game market. You can find the same hot, new game release titles, that sell for $59.99 + tax in the stores, for around $55 on eBay including shipping and taxes. Not an enormous savings, but for those not eager to get the game on the release day and can wait a few days, this can be a good savings. Remember, if you ‘annualize’ this, for every 10 games you buy on eBay at this discount, thats an 11th game for free.

With all this said and our epic stories and travels of our video game purchases, we can help devise a few easy rules into video game shopping! (Fun! Fun!)

1. If you desperately want a video game on release day, do yourself a favor and pre-order it
2. If you didn’t or weren’t able to pre-order, take your chances and physically go to Wal-Mart, GameStop or any other retailter. DO NOT CALL, you will just hear lies!!
3. If you can wait to play the game, take the advantage of savings that a website like eBay can offer you
4. If you are serious gamer, do yourself a favor and get an EBGames/GameStop EDGE card. This will give you additional discounts on trading in and buying used games. It usually pays for itself with a purchase or two, plus you get a free Game Informer Subscription, all for $15.
5. Of course we can’t get into the legalities of video game emulation and ROM-making and disc-burning and console-modding, so please stay away from this. Companies like Microsoft have begun to debug modded consoles

Enough said. Will any of this even matter in the future? Did anything we just say matter towards the future evolution of the video game market? The Download Revolution has begun. GameStop, gamers, Amazon.com, ROM dealers and pirates alike, get ready for the future of the video game market to change. Maybe in 2,3,4,5 or 10 years possibly, we truly see everything going completely digital at some point, either through downloading local video game content, or streaming content via a service such as OnLive. In any case don’t put too much stake in the current day video game giants, as the bigger they are, the faster they will burn. Blockbuster anyone? Not sure where the rest of you live but in our suburban New York area, the 3 local Blockbusters are currently in liquidation, thanks to Netflix.

December 1st – Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel

December 1st – Avatar: The Game

December 1st – Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil Zero

December 1st – Storybook Workshop

December 1st – TV Storybook Bundle

December 3rd – Space Station Tycoon

December 3rd - World Party Games

December 3rd – Yoga

December 8th – Playmobil: Circus

December 8th – Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

December 16th – Garfield Gets Real

December 22nd – Guitar Hero: Van Halen

December 22nd – Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight

December 26th – Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers

December 2009 – Night Sky

December 1st – MX vs. ATV Reflex

December 1st – James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game

December 1st – Rogue Warrior

December 8th – The Saboteur

December 22nd – Guitar Hero: Van Halen

December – Dragon Age: Origins – Return to Ostagar

December – Revenge of the Wounded Dragons

December 1st – MX vs. ATV Reflex

December 1st – James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game

December 2nd – Call of Duty Classic

December 8th – The Saboteur

December 16th – Alien Breed Evolution

December 22nd – Guitar Hero: Van Halen

December 31st – Venetica

December – Dragon Age: Origins – Return to Ostagar

For starters, the intro of the game is both very cute and appropriate. We start by some singing and dancing for Princess Peach’s birthday party, full with gifts and the entire Mario crew. New to this game are some new Toad characters, in a couple different colors, another cute little addition. Of course to start the action of the story and plot, the antihero Bowser happens to be planted inside Princess Peach’s birthday cake, ready to strike and take her away. The candles of the cake quickly poof into his henchman, who all quickly grab Ms. Peach and run away with her. Mario, Luigi and of course Toad then desperately chase her in an attempt to save the day once again.

Gameplay wise, Super Mario Bros Wii is almost identical to Super Mario Bros 3. With many worlds to explore, each complete with lots of levels, any Mario player will know where to start. The Worlds are set up in the same way, 1-1 means World 1 Level 1 and so on. In each world you will also have to battle one of Bowser’s henchman in each of the castles. There is also a castle midway in each of the world’s in which you start your battle with the appropriate henchman.

There has been some debate on the fact that this game is in 2D, even in the year 2009. However, we must say that we are overly happy with this game and the features. The difficulty is nothing but easy. You definetly will die plenty of times as you traverse the world of Super Mario Bros Wii. Besides falling in the occassional hole or pipe, you may also lose some lives and powerups to the notorious henchman including the Hammerhead Men, Koopas, those damn spiky-fish and of course Bowser should you be lucky enough to reach him.

Some notable differences in this new and updated version of the Super Mario franchise add some fun and enjoyment, and truly increase the replay value of the game. Unlike the older Marios, in Super Mario Bros Wii, you are able to travel back into past worlds to obtain any coins, secrets or other easter eggs you may have missed. Several powerups in the game have also been added, like the penguin suit and ice-power. We don’t want to give too much away and spoil the fun little surprises at hand, so please be sure to pick up a copy as soon as you can.

Even more so, the multiplayer experience here is unrivaled when compared to Mario’s of the past. As most of you probably remember, Mario and Luigi were required to take turns in each level, going one at time. Now you can play up to 4 players at once on a single screen. While it may get a little crowded to jump and move around, it surely makes the game that much more fun and competitive. The multiplayer levels outside the campaign are pretty fun in general, but they can often get annoying and nuisance-like. As long as you aren’t taking it to seriously (and hopefully you aren’t taking Mario too seriously in your life) then you should have plenty of enjoyment for this game and all the features that it offers.

Controls wise you should feel pretty at ease with the simplicity Super Mario offers. Essentially there are only 2 buttons to use besides the conventional directional pads. One new unique feature is the use of the Nintendo Wii’s motion control. By shaking your controller up and down (as often noted on the screen during the game) you can perform higher jumps and spins with certain power-ups, and as well bring yourself back to life when dying.

Long-time Mario fans will definetly be satisfied and happy with this game. There are many of the same normal Mario elements involved – airships, Yoshi, Koopas, Bowser, the same cast and crew as always, and you even still get a 1UP when you reach 100 coins. Just make sure you try and collect the 8 red coins and 3 big coins on every level which will definetly prove to be tough to accomplish. While the music has also been improved with several more upbeats tones, the original Mario theme remains a constant calling throughout the game. Another cute addition that you are sure to notice while playing is some of your enemies dancing to the music during certain beats. This definetlly made us chuckle and remember back to the good old days when the original Mario was release almost 20 years ago now.

In conclusions almost every gamer on every level will be satisfied with this game. It is both fun and easy to play, while offering a challenging environment and game for even the most enthusiastic Mario fans. The replay value here is high, and you will be sure to smile with all the little easter eggs and unique Mario moments you will remember to love. Although in 2D, the graphics and music score will still provide a much-needed enjoyable experience for Nintendo and Mario fans. This game will surely remain on top of our lists for this holiday season as it has been well produced, well though out, and well worth its’ cost.

The Video Game industry is one of those unique industries that hasn’t been following the standard rules. While the economy has been both shrinking and not performing well, mainly attributed to the over-hedging and over-betting and overly-grown national debt our government has incurred, there seems to have been a strong light that has been keeping American strong. The entertainment industry is truly a gem of the American culture. While other nations from across the globe have continued to compete with our education systems, health-care systems, and financial systems, our entertainment industry remains one that will probably be unrivaled for its’ eternity.

As a strong argument for all this, the numbers and math speak for themselves. With less money in their pockets to spend, consumers are sure to take less vacations, go out for less dinners, and probably save more than usual. The consumers marginal propensity to consume has declined overall, although growth has been seen across the entertainment industry ranging from music to movies to books to video games. Why may this be so? As more people are staying home during the weekends (for the aforementioned reasons) they are definitely more inclined to sit him and cook dinner, watch a movie, and play some video games with some friends and family. The creation of the Nintendo Wii, plenty of hot new release titles, and a tenacious amount of online gaming have quickly allowed itself to flourish.

In recent news, several of the big video game companies are reporting healthy profits. Just this morning, GameStop has announced that it’s Q3 profit has increased 12%.

Sales rose 8.2 percent to $1.83 billion — beating analysts’ estimate of $1.73 billion — from $1.7 billion a year ago.

Those games include Electronic Arts’ “Madden NFL 10,” Microsoft’s “Halo 3: ODST,” Warner Home Video Games’ “Batman: Arkham Asylum,” 2K Sports’ “NBA 2K10″ and Nintendo’s “Wii Sports Resort.”

GameStop CEO Daniel DeMatteo said Activision’s “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″ sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide in its first 72 hours of release.

As we all could have expected, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has done phenomenal during the past two weeks since its’ release. Earning an astounding $310 million dollars its first week of launch, this puts it at a record for any form of entertainment. Yes folks, you heard right. A video game, not a movie, song or book has earned more than Call of Duty has during its opening week. Of course some of this may be attributed to the rampant selling of the Prestige Edition of the game, which included lots of cool extra and of course the Night Vision goggle, as this sold for $150 compared to the normal $59 for the game itself.

What’s obvious is that video games will remain a strong factor in the entertainment sector of our economy. As the years go on, many more advancements and unique concepts will be introduced, with better graphics, faster speeds and crisper sound. However, we are close to the approaching the apex of some of these elements. Our technological advancements can only go so far as our human abilities. The human eyes can only see so well, and the human ears can only hear so clear – with advancements in high-definition and Dolby Digital Surround Sound, video gaming has come a long way from its’ start. The 3 companies that compromise the triopoly of the video game market are all seeing strong results in sales. Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are sure to see excessive returns in the future, of course only if they keep it up with the latest game titles, online play, and interactivity.

November 3rd – Band Hero

November 3rd – DJ Hero

November 3rd – Dragon Age: Origins

November 3rd – LEGO Rock Band

November 3rd – Pro Evolution Soccer 2010

November 3rd – Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

November 10th – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

November 10th – Chaotic: Shadow Warriors

Novermber 10th: Dragon Ball: Raging Blast

November 10th: Samurai Shodown: Edge of Destiny

November 17th – Assassin’s Creed II

November 17th – Karaoke Revolution

November 17th – Left 4 Dead 2

November 17th – Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues

November 17th – Planet 51

November 17th – Scene It? Bright Lights! Big Screen!

November 17th – Tony Hawk: Ride

November 24th – Avatar: The Game

November 29th – Winter Sports 2010

November – Jurassic: Lost Island