Review: Saints Row IV – This is How We Do It

Shortly after I'd finished Saints Row: The Third, the 4^th installment had been announced. After the overload of comical violence, memorable characters, and gang-related mayhem I'd just been exposed to, I was left pondering one thing about the sequel. “How do you get bigger and more bombastic than Saints Row 3? Where do we go from here?”

Three Ideas, One Half-Assed Title

Tonight, since I was unable to really pick between the ideas I had come up with, you're going to get three bite-sized pieces for the price of one, which is, well, free. The first is a follow up to an earlier piece on what developers can do to interest me in next-gen. The second is a bit more in the epic saga of Microsoft trying to bury themselves with the upcoming console generation. The third is a bit on the Katamari franchise, the rise and fall thereof, and why it was so important.

The Closed Reality of Open World Games

As I was playing Saints Row The Third earlier, I was roaming around, unarmed, looking for collectibles. I walked down a little alley, with no notoriety, towards some sort of factory, and suddenly was taking fire from police. I found it odd, because nothing had been mentioned about restricted areas in the game, and, though I've gotten used to taking fire from rival gang members unprovoked, this was the first time the police had taken the initiative on such an occasion.

STOP THE PRESSES - EA to Release 6 - 8 New IPs

For a while now, I've considered Activision President and CEO Bobby Kotick to be the face of everything wrong with the video game industry.  The man who claimed that "if it was left to me, I'd raise prices even further" and coined the term annualizable, Kotick stood (and frankly still stands) for everything I've come to hate about major publishers.  Activision drove the Guitar Hero franchise into the GROUND, delivering sequel after sequel even long after fans had stopped caring.  They continue to bombard us with a new Call of Duty every fucking year, and they'll only pick up an IP that they feel can be "exploited every year on every platform".

So when Ubisoft's VP of Sales and Marketing, Tony Key, made a statement to near similar effect, I ran through the gauntlet of emotions.  First, I was outraged that yet another major publisher had joined the Annualizable Axis of Evil.  Then I was saddened by having to expect a Watch_Dogs 2 in 2014.  Ultimately, I was rather in awe of Key's courage for being vocal about exactly what every other major publisher was already doing: spamming us with yearly sequels guaranteed to make a quick buck.

Now imagine my surprise when I read this quote today from EA Games Executive Vice President Patrick Soderlund:

"We have six to eight completely new IPs in the works. The day we stop making new IP is when we go onto life support. We need to incubate new ideas and push creative boundaries."

 Wait... What?  EA is trying to push forward new IPs?  Can it really be true?  Well... sort of.  In the same interview with MCV, Soderlund also stated, "We are working on a new Mirror’s Edge game, and although that’s not a new IP, it is a revival done in a new way. We are developing Star Wars Battlefront, which to us is a new IP, even though it isn’t technically."

Assuming that Mirror's Edge and Battlefront are two of the IPs EA considers "new", that still leaves roughly four to six new ideas up in the air.  The real question that should be on everybody's mind is "are these new IPs already doomed to be beaten with the same annual stick as the rest of the corral?

Source: MCV

10 Titles, One Post: Quickie Reviews #1

A quick update before we begin: We have not forgotten, nor abandoned, our attempts at a podcast. It will be coming back, and soon. Current plan is for the week of September 16th, though that's not a hard deadline.

Tonight, I'm going to review some games I've played that just didn't conjure up enough in me to validate a full piece. Some are good, others are not, but all shall be judged.

Second Opinion: Divekick

Mike talked about quite a few changes or, more accurately, updates to the operation of Zero Tolerance.  Tonight, I plan to exemplify a couple of those.  Obviously, this will be the first "Second Opinion" piece done here.  Additionally, I'll be breaking Divekick down and commenting on some very particular areas, and giving it an overall letter grade at the end.  Let's begin.

From Here on Out

There's a learning curve involved with this kind of thing, and I'd like to think we've learned a lot over the past three months or so here at Zero Tolerance. With that said, there's going to be some changes coming down the pipeline. A little more structure is needed, and we think that maybe we've found a way to add it, without adding any extra bullshit.