Activision's DJ Hero: gaming's next phenomenon?
MTV News has learned the publishing giant Activision, responsible for the cash cow Guitar Hero series, is developing what it hopes will be the next big thing: DJ Hero.... read more
Interview: Will Wright (Spore Creator)
Will Wright’s Spore seemed destined for controversy. The game is, after all, about evolution. And we know that a significant chunk of the American public believes that a loving God created the heavens, earth and everything in between. Yet the game has shipped with nary a peep from detractors. The only cannonball fired in the game’s direction—a fairly whacked-out blog called Anti-Spore—turned out to be a hoax (and a Rickroll, to add insult to injury). Regardless, we were eager to speak with Wright and discuss the intriguing push and pull at work in a "God game" that’s goal is to... read more
Mega Man 9 (Wii)
No one in my generation who grew up playing video games needs to be reminded that the production qualities and technological muscle of contemporary video games have reached once-unimaginable levels. There was a time back in the halcyon 8-bit days of yore when too many Octarocks crawling around the screen in Legend of Zelda caused your game to lapse into a lurching slow-motion cadence until things cleared out a bit. You could practically hear Scotty’s muffled brogue coming from inside your NES console: “I’m givin’ her all she’s got, Cap’n.” And 'all she had' was enough. We were too busy... read more
Activision unveils Guitar Hero: World Tour line-up
For months now, Guitar Hero diehards have been hanging on... read more
Duke Nukem film in the works
If you remember the Duke Nukem series, then you've probably been playing video games for a long time. The last game in the series that wasn't just a mobile phone platformer came out in 2002, while the last time the series was a household name of sorts was more like 1996 (when Duke Nukem 3D came out). Since then, the series has languished while its next game, Duke Nukem Forever, has been in production purgatory for more than 10 years. In fact, the series has now won significantly more Vaporware Awards than it ever did for actual products, which is... read more
Unglued: The Casual-Gaming Olympics
Major League Gaming, or MLG, is a professional video gaming organization founded in 2002. Its tournaments draw the hardest of the hardcore out of their dank, Doritos-strewn warrens to compete for bushels of prize money, lucrative endorsement deals, and the envy of carbuncular, homophobic, Vitamin-D deficient fragsters across the world. (The hardcore gamers Paste queried for this article declined to comment, standing on the principle that magazines are “gay.”)... read more
Xbox 360 now cheapest console on the market
Microsoft recently announced it has lowered the prices of its Xbox 360 console, making it cheaper than Nintendo's market-leading Wii.... read more
New Buffy video game coming out in MMORPG form
Although it's no replacement for the show, Fox and the Multiverse Network may have found a new way for Buffy fans to obsess over their favorite universe. John Landau, producer and "Advisor to Multiverse," announced the game during his keynote speech at the Virtual World Conference and Expo.... read more
Sam Potts' Geek-Formation Flowchart
Mmm....Gandalf, Mountain Dew and Hot Pockets. Delicious.Mr. Potts, we salute you. In the vulcan manner, of course.**Click on the image to see a larger version ... read more
Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Conspiracy
Platform: PS3, Xbox 360Finally, a movie-inspired game that puts up a fightCall me the imperfect weapon. Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Conspiracy transforms players into a bulletproof Hollywood assassin. Taking cues from the Bourne films’ breathless editing, the game propels you through frantic gunfights, car chases and melees. But somehow I’m not up to the task. As Jason Bourne, I regularly find myself catching one hunk of lead too many, sprawling bloodied across the marble floor of the Zurich International Airport. I find myself mired in epic fistfights. Falling over and over to aggressive enemies I retreat into a safe but... read more
This Week on PasteMagazine.com: 9/1-9/5/08
Hey, party people. Hope the first week of September is treating you quite well. After a cookout-laden day off to start the week, PasteMagazine.com was back on the case in the name of Signs of Life in music, film and culture (Hey, that would be a nice tagline for a magazine!), and here's what we came up with, asterisk style: ... read more
NetHack: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Death
Our memory has grown a bit hazy lately with the glut of cookie-cutter, loot-based RPGs that have carved a wide swathe across the gaming landscape. For many, Diablo is the earliest incarnation of the dungeon crawler that readily comes to mind. Diablo, iconic as it may be, is forever indebted to a game that came nearly a decade before and set the gold standard for hack ’n’ slash RPGs, Nethack, a game that is simultaneously more complicated than any other game out there, yet almost small enough to fit on a single 3.5” diskette. As a representative of your deity,... read more
Smashing Pumpkins to release single via Guitar Hero
The Smashing Pumpkins will release their new single, “G.L.O.W.,” as part of the Guitar Hero: World Tour video game, before releasing it to the public.... read more
Myst
Platform: Nintendo DSDefinitive point-and-click, first-person adventure jumps from CD-ROM to DS—newly tiny, still impossibleAlthough Myst is an undisputed classic I’d never played, I approached this DS port cautiously. For every gamer who raves about its immersive mystery and austere storytelling, another laments its withering difficulty and austere storytelling. The player must discover the secrets (why are these two brothers trapped in, like, magic books?) of an eerily unpopulated island. It turns out Myst’s boosters and detractors are both kinda right. Wandering the island alone—trying to make sense of various bizarre objects and arcane clues—is a one-of-a-kind experience. But I found... read more
The Political Machine 2008
Platform: Windows XP and VistaI will stop at nothing when electioneeringI’ve cast a ballot in two presidential elections so far, and both times, my guy lost. Surely, I’m not the only luckless voter who’s spent the past eight years bemoaning democracy’s lack of a do-over option. Fortunately, fantasy trumps reality once again, thanks to The Political Machine 2008, a turn-based strategy game that puts players on the campaign trail in a quest for electoral dominance. ... read more
Watch the trailer for Midnight Club: Los Angeles
Bad drivers, car aficionados and the speed-obsessed alike, time to rejoice: your latest fix, Midnight Club: Los Angeles, is coming to stores in a few short weeks. The game’s developer, Rockstar San Diego (whose last title was the critically lauded Xbox 360 title from 2006, Table Tennis), has just debuted the latest trailer for the fourth installment of their popular high-octane racing franchise (for your viewing pleasure below). ... read more
Teenager leaves high school for Guitar Hero career
The band's gonna make it, Mom! I'm not going to be living in this basement forever!Guitar Hero may have the side effect of serving as a gateway drug to actual guitar playing, but everyone's favorite rock star simulator may soon be sapping the attendance rolls of high schools nationwide. Yes, in a sublime moment of life imitating art, one plucky teenager has decided to forgo the rest of his K-12 education to try his hand at the professional Guitar Hero circuit. ... read more
Watch the Tron sequel trailer
If Paste had existed back in the early '80s, it's probable that the P4ST3 51GN5 of L1F3 4 1982 would have featured a little movie about video games and virtual reality called Tron, starring a relatively unknown actor named Jeff Bridges. ... read more
Clueless, Pretty in Pink and Mean Girls go video game
[Above: A screenshot of Clueless]In a frillier round of movies being made into games, Legacy Interactive has announced it will make three nostalgic classics—Clueless, Pretty in Pink and Mean Girls—into video games for girls. The movies, all nine years apart, will borrow story elements and will be downloadable in December.... read more
Suda 51 and Shinji Mikami creating a game for EA
When Electronic Arts started out, it was one of the good guys of third-party game developers. Not only was the company into original IPs, heck, the word "arts" was even in its title to tell you exactly what the corporation was trying to do. During the past decade, though, what's now the world's second-largest developer has developed a bit of a reputation for squashing creativity in favor of tossing out another version of Madden every year and seeings its profits rise. ... read more
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