Gaming in Twenty Ten & VG MOY 09

 I predict: there will be three major impacts on the world of gaming that will happen in the year 2o1o. Also I'll quickly pinpoint my Videogame Moment Of The Year 2oo9. [...]
(show me)(don't show me)

1) Project Natal
Don't get me wrong - I'm not hyping that "project", console or add-on, or whatever it will be in the end. Hell, I don't even know if it will be working as they say it will be, because I haven't seen anything other than a "target-render-like" video or two, the type with a high "big promises"/"actual footage" ratio. Oh yeah, and the mini-games - yaaaaaay \(-.-' )/. All I'm saying is that it will change the way games will be played. Probably not for hardcore gamers. My guess is that it will be just a gimmick for them ("us" actually), if developers try to implement it into their games "by force", like the Sixaxis functionality of the PlayStation 3™. But for the casual market - it will probably be a big hit, if you ask me.

2) OnLive
OnLive is said to deliver high definition videogaming for multiple platforms, with high internet bandwidth, including playable-demo- and spectating-mode-features among many other things (also playing the actual full length game, of course), all in one box, via the use of Cloud computing. Now, naturally, I don't know if this said "project" will turn out to be as profitable as the makers wish it to be, but even if OnLive fails to fulfill its promises, I think that a competitor might come along and succeed with its own product that makes less promises - for example it may have all the same features but standard definition or whatever. What I think though is that Cloud computing itself will have an impact on the gaming world. Probably not a very big one but still noticable.

3) 3D Gaming
Okay, maybe I'm a little bit early on this one but since James Cameron has pushed "the new" 3D into cinema with his movie "Avatar" (not to be confused with the other Avatar movie, the one that I'm actually excited for), a newer version of 3D that's supposed to not cause headaches like the "3D era" in the eighties and nineties did, I'll just go for it regarding the gaming world. So far there may have been nothing more than a few news articles pointing out the possibility of 3D on ThisGen's PS3 but I think there will be a lot more news articles to read about this topic in 2o1o. In fact, there will probably be so many news articles that a lot of videogame journalists and developers might already believe in it long before 3D will actually hit the homes of us gamers.

there's even a vid

Source: PS3 Maven.com

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-) The Videogame Moment Of The Year 2oo9 is an easy one. There could have been a chance for Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2™, with its addictive multiplayer mode - even though it didn't grip me in the first play hours - but as this one is a sequel I actually saw it coming. No, no. This year belongs to someone else.

Normally I'm a collector gamer type. I like to explore environments and discover secrets, secrets that other gamers might pass by unknowingly. Especially when there's a built-in checklist in the game I'm all the more gonna catch 'em all. This was the case for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves™ as well, of course. (I tried hard and I think it's safe to say now that there are no spoilers within the next paragraphs). Its hidden treasures demanded my full attention. When I brought the game over to my brother - that was before I finished the single player campaign on my playthrough - I experienced once again that he's not this kind of gamer, not at all. He "rushed" through the chapters in a pace that probably is to be deemed more appropriate for this game than my pace is, picking up a few of the treasures very occasionally.

Later that week I picked up the controller and continued where I left off. That was in Chapter 16 "Where Am I?". I played just the way that I usually do. I climbed every rooftop, every ledge, rock and cliff (in the later chapters), I stopped and turned the camera, looked in almost every possible direction and searched for that pulse raising sparkle in the grass, snow and mud, close by and also in the distance, a sparkle that always reveals the position of the well placed treasures. The goal for me is always to try and find as many collectables in a game, already during the first playthrough, so that I get rewarded with a high percentage in the game results screen, or a list with many filled or checked lines, an inventory with many filled item slots or anything of this sort, which satisfies the needs of the hunter buried deep within my psyche.

But at some point in this game, your temporary "safe camp" gets assaulted and you will be confronted with a big load of action. There are still a few treasures hidden in this part of the game, and I managed to grab one or two, but the action gets so tense, the enemies keep coming and the "enemy types" shift from "infantry" to "vehicular" ... I looked less and less for treasures and just advanced to the next thrilling scripted event, only to be pleased with an awesome car chase, one that I've never seen in this form before. When the game returned to a more calm moment in the beginning of the next chapter, where you have to (or rather have the option to) advance stealthily which normally goes neatly hand in hand with my already described treasure hunt, something had changed in me.

I did try to progress with stealth and search for treasures at first but when that didn't work out so well, I noticed that I played the game more like my brother did. I did not make this decision, actively, but I just played it different. Time flew by and soon I was desperately trying to complete the challenging final chapter. What an impressive act! The game was so overwhelmingly thrilling in its action-packed sequences, so appropriately calm in its pacing when it served the rhythm of the gameplay, so stunningly beautiful in its environments, so astoundingly convincing in its voice acting and motion capturing that the game literally dragged me *out* of my gaming routine and *into* its compelling narrative and gameplay experience. This year's videogame moment of the year is the point where I realized that I had so much fun playing Uncharted 2 although I played it entirely different than I'm used to.
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