Originally appeared on FeedYourConsole.
I had stayed away from most of the promotional materials for ModNation Racers before playing it at the PlayStation media event event at Mini-Indy Go Karts; I really had no idea what to expect when I picked up the controller and played a few rounds with Dillon from CultureGET. Before I get into the thick of it, I should let you all know that racing games aren’t my cup of tea. I played a lot of Mario Kart with my brother as a kid, but since then I’ve moved on to other genres.

On the surface, the racing plays just like a furry-free, cars-only Diddy Kong Racing: the tracks have multiple paths and shortcuts and are littered with power ups and traps. The 3-level powerup system is also borrowed from DKR: you hit an item box, and you’re given a random level 1 item. Hitting up to 2 more item boxes without using the item will increase it’s power.

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Originally appeared on Feed Your Console.

This is big news for those of us who have specifically avoided the garish white Nintendo Wii because it totally clashed with the rest of our entertainment set up. After a Gamestop employee snapped a picture of a promo poster announcing the black Wii bundle a few days ago, Nintendo of America has finally dropped the bomb on us: They’re going to paint it, black.

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How good a deal you ask? How about a free conference pass worth $700?

GDC Canada has announced that they will be offering free passes to the Vancouver conference to those who have been laid off from their games industry job in the past 12 months. Potential devs who want to take advantage of it can’t be currently employed, and must present a Record of Employment at the show to be eligible.

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After years of campaigning the government, the UK games industry has finally received tax breaks from the government. For those of you new to the tax game, countries like Canada have been giving huge tax incentives to gaming companies, which has spurred huge growth but made it difficult for companies in the UK to compete. The UK has always had tax breaks for the film industry (as is common in many countries), and lobbyists for game development support were quick to point out this double standard.

This budget will be effective until March 2011. Hopefully the UK government will see that supporting such a growing industry will help manage their massive debt and continue the program for a long time.

…And now for something completely different! Cadet 227 is an indie game designed with the blind and visually impaired in mind. It has no visuals, only audio. Pop on some headphones and listen to the trailer (it works better if you close your eyes when listening). It’s not obvious how the game will play out in terms of mechanics, but it definitely shows some promise with the immersive audio work.

If you’re interested, you can show support for this project on Kickstarter and keep up with the one-man dev team at Shen Games. Cadet 227 is due to be released this Summer.

As a side note, this is exactly the kind of stuff I was thinking of doing as my main area of study for grad school.

No doubt you have been inundated with news of the Wii HD and Monkey Island: the sequel: the remake, but let’s be honest with ourselves: the only true news is that this is a totally sweet photoshop of a highway sign leading into Hoboken, NJ. No, nobody cares about the New Sam & Max season making it’s way to PS3, the winners of the Game Developer’s Choice Awards, or that Gabe Newell (head honcho at Valve) got a Portal-themed BSOD during hispresentation. I am in serious doubt if anyone gives two shakes of a wiimote about the Indie game rant session, the new Deus Ex 3 trailer or Steamworks being integrated with Unreal Engine 3.

This image is so much more awesome.

Full image: imgur
via: The Tanooki

For those of you interested in getting into the game industry, I have some good and bad news: The good news is that positions are opening up left and right. The bad news is that they’re going to be filled by someone more qualified than you, sorry.

According to Develop’s Salary Survey, nearly 30% of industry workers will be changing jobs in 2010. If you look 2-3 years into the future, over 70% of employees will have changed jobs at least once.

Why the shakeup? The biggest reasons are that employees are looking for a new challenge (26%), or they’re looking for a bigger paycheque (20%).

The focus on recruiting for big studios is obvious: Ubisoft hired someone to hype their new Toronto studio opportunities, even though everyone in Toronto already emailed their resumes the day it was announced.

Check out Develop’s survey here.

I’ve played through Assassin’s Creed I and II with my fiancée Ashley, and we both agree that the second is (pun intended) hundreds of years ahead of the first.

The first thing to mention is the characters: In Assassin’s Creed II, Ezio (the player character) grows and meets many characters, some of which we became very attached to. A missed QuickTime event prompt caused Ezio to decline a hug from a very let-down Leonardo Da Vinci. It’s interesting that we felt terrible about that for the rest of the evening, yet we didn’t care about stabbing some minstrel that was in our way.

As developed as the characters are, Assassin’s Creed II’s best character is Renaissance Italy. The world is so strong and believable that one feels right inside a condensed version of Venice or Florence. Even if Assassin’s Creed II doesn’t have the graphics of Uncharted 2, we still had a wow moment the first time we climbed a tower and saw how huge the city was. Free running over the rooftops is a blast; especially if you have guards trailing you.

When free running, we would sometimes expect a platform where there was none, and we would have a long fall from the rooftops. My fiancée plays games a lot and never feels motion sickness or any such experience but, when she falls off the roofs in ACII, she feels like she’s on a roller coaster.

Another thing we really liked besides the world was how dissimilar in pace and structure ACII was to ACI. The first outing in the series places the player in an assembly line of killing; the objectives became tedious and repetitive soon into the game. Assassin’s Creed II has a huge amount of variation to keep things fresh. Side quests, armor and weapon upgrades, collectibles, cryptic messages to decode, assassin’s tombs (all-platforming sections), and refurbishing Ezio’s uncle’s villa kept us busy when we needed a break from knife-facing. The problem was deciding when to take a break.

Due to the open-world nature of Assassin’s Creed II, it’s difficult to assign turns and decide what  the next move will be. It’s not a strike against the design or execution by any means, it’s simply that a game with so many directions to go doesn’t lend itself to a group playthrough.

Assassin’s Creed II is a solid game and I would recommend it to couples for controller-passing playthroughs. If you do play it, I would advise you play it during the day because you may miss some of the complex storyline if you happen to fall asleep while your significant other is still playing.

I played through all of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves with my fiancée Ashley, and we had a blast. Uncharted 2 was also the first competitive online multiplayer game that has ever caught her attention, so if you’re the only online multiplayer gamer in the relationship, this game may be your gateway drug.

As you all probably know, playing through single player games as a couple can be tricky. Having to take turns, and deciding when or where to pass the controller, usually takes away from the experience but, in Uncharted 2, it worked out perfectly.

Uncharted 2 is divided up into two major gameplay types: platforming and combat. Lucky for us, Ashley much prefers the platforming, and I like the combat and platforming equally. Going through the first half of the game, we were working in complete sync: Gunshot? Controller passed. Combat music over? Controller passed. Neither of us felt that the other was getting a larger share of play time until the second half of the game. Avoiding spoilers, the game becomes quite action-oriented, and platforming takes a serious back seat (read: the trunk). Even if the Designated Platformer in your relationship has nothing to do in the second half of the game, they won’t be overly upset because the presentation in Uncharted 2 is absolutely amazing.

Uncharted 2 is graphically beautiful. We hadn’t had such a big “wow” factor since we first upgraded to this console generation. The environments are gorgeous; sometimes you’ll be climbing up a mountain and take half a minute just to look at the expansive horizon that Naughty Dog created. On the topic of production values: the soundtrack, script, and voice acting are just as great as the graphics, and the game has an impressive lead. Nathan Drake is funny, charming and, unlike most game characters, believably human.

It’s very possible for players to generally feel a sort of kinship with Drake, because he is not the untouchable superhero that most game characters are made out to be. Nathan Drake gets beaten up so much throughout the progress of the game, it could have been retitled Uncharted 2: Nathan Drake Has a Series of Bad Days. We can relate to Drake; it makes him so much more human knowing he might just lose. We also liked how Drake would often jeer at enemies and shout PG-13 profanities when grenades would land near him, which were good for a laugh in tense situations.

Uncharted 2 has a great (online) multiplayer mode that we both agree is 1) lots of fun 2) boils down to grenade kills and punching people in the face. Although most of the weapons made it into the multiplayer mode, the game can be played fairly effectively via melee combat or 1-shot sneak kills. It may not please the hardcore crowd, but the multiplayer is definitely fun.

Both multiplayer and single player  modes have a “cash” incentive that allow you to purchase concept art, behind the scenes movies, game tweaks, multiplayer bonuses, and player reskins for both modes. The cash incentive is great, since there are some pretty awesome top-level skins for both multiplayer and single player.

Uncharted 2 is not without flaws, and the lack of local co-op is a huge one. Throughout most of single player, you’re paired with an AI ally who will assist you up ladders, help solve puzzles, or engage in combat. The game would have been great had it featured jump in/out split-screen co-op for single player. Ashley and I had a great time playing through Resident Evil 5, frantically yelling at each other to watch a door or pass an herb or ohmygodlookouttheresachainsawguybehindyou. Having this kind of experience in the world of Uncharted would have been beyond amazing.

Outside of the lack of local multiplayer, other qualms we’ve had withUncharted 2 are largely around its length. Uncharted 2’s single player campaign falls a bit on the short side, clocking in at about 10-11 hours for us. Most games we prefer to be over and done with in about 15 hours, but the fact we’re taking issue with the length is a testament to how fun the game is and how well everything was presented.

As far as controller-passing single player games go, Uncharted 2 is probably the best we’ve experienced, despite the lack of local multiplayer. We would absolutely recommend it to anyone looking for a fantastic PS3 game to play solo or with their significant other.

You may remember the big EA Spouse shakeup that happened back in 2004, but evidently Rockstar games didn’t hear about it, or didn’t care. For those of you who are foggy on the topic, EA Spouse was a user on Livejournal who wrote a short essay about the poor working conditions and unpaid overtime at EA. After the media got a hold of it, EA found themselves at the business end of a class action lawsuit that lost them about $15 million.

A similar situation is unfolding now with Rockstar. A post on Gamasutra by a user named “Rockstar Spouse” called for working conditions to improve, for overtime to be paid, for benefits to be reinstated, and for crunch times to be only a sometimes food. The post has over 140 comments and over 300 direct retweets from their website. The blogs picked up the story and ran with it, while the rest of the industry held their breath for the next move whether it be Rockstar or the employees or their significant others.

Rockstar responded, and in true Rockstar fashion. The company posted a series of desktop wallpapers on their website titled “The Eye”, as a reference to a comment made by a former employee comparing Rockstar New York to “The Eye of Sauron”:

The source went on to compare Rockstar NYC to the Eye of Sauron when dealing with their studios. Teams would apparently work on a title for close to two years, but because of other priorities, like a major “GTA” release, for example, upper management wouldn’t focus on other titles until the major project was done.

The most recent volley came from Rockstar in the form of a paragraph buried in a post on their corporate blog – the Newswire:

As for the stories spreading around the internet, yes we have noticed them.  Unfortunately, this is a case of people taking the opinions of a few anonymous posters on message boards as fact. No business is ever perfect, but Rockstar Games is a tight knit team made up of around 900 supremely talented and motivated professionals, many of whom have worked here for a very long time.  We’re saddened if any former members of any studio did not find their time here enjoyable or creatively fulfilling and wish them well with finding an environment more suitable to their temperaments and needs, but the vast majority of our company are focused solely on delivering cutting edge interactive entertainment.  We’ve always cared passionately about the people working here, and have always tried to maintain a supportive creative environment.  There is simply no way Rockstar could continue to produce such large scale, high quality games without this.  That being said, making great games is very challenging, which is why we have and will continue to try to keep hold of some of the best talent in the industry and support them in every way we can.

While the last sentence seems to be a bit on the humble or apologetic side, it’s certain that this will be eventually settled in a way quantifiable by dollar signs.