Top Ten New Video Games for E3 2012
It is Serendipity in a vial and magic in a nutshell and just the sort of experience that one only rarely ever has but thinks about constantly; when luck suddenly arrives, like when one discovers an old movie thought to be a classic by everyone else -- but not to you -- because having only just discovered it, its newness transcends the moment-to-moment discovery of artistically flavored visions that find a solid perch in that one spot in your brain that encompasses the realm that spans the conscious spaces to the subconscious and all of the brief in-be-twe-ens!
The Unfinished Swan feels like an Unfinished Thought that hovers right in that place between thinking it and thought it -- and at the same time feels like an experience that belongs somewhere in your folder of text and adventure games on your old PC that you hardly ever use anymore, and yet The Unfinished Swan is not a PC game at all, at all, it is a PlayStation 3 exclusive title, and in the end you realize that it is the sort of game that would absolutely require you to rush down to the store and purchase a PS3 if you do not already own one... Just to play it ...
Because you have discovered for the first time that you can see the forest through the trees and the realization that you can only get here from here.
07 -- Injustice: Gods Among UsPublisher: Warner Bros. Interactive
Developer: NetherRealm Studios
Platform: Xbox 360 / PS3 / Wii U
Release Date: TBA 2013
Imagine for a moment a fighting game that involves heroes and villains from the DC Universe fighting each other... Now imagine that the world is full of characters from the DC Universe -- characters like Batman, Harley Quinn, Superman, The Flash, Wonder Woman, and Solomon Grundy to name just a few, and each of them are playable characters who fall into two basic categories: those endowed with special -- super -- powers, and those who use gadgets.
Now imagine that some tough questions were being asked of you: like what if our greatest heroes became our greatest threat?
Set in a world where the lines between good and evil are blurred comes Injustice: Gods Among Us; a bold fighting game created by the same team that gave birth to what is arguably the definitive but massively violent fighting game franchise Mortal Kombat, and that now means to unveil a new arena and alternate reality featuring a large cast of your favorite DC Comics icons who feel compelled to fight on a visceral level -- heroes and villains engaging in epic battles on a massive scale.
Now picture in your mind a deep, original story that compliments this fighting action but that pits many of the great heroes and villains from the DC universe against each other -- then ponder what might happen if these previously good beacons of justice found themselves alone in the dark, standing at the crossroads looking into the abyss -- and as they do so the calm words of Friedrich Nietzsche speak to them: "Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you..."
And as they look with eyes-wide-open into that abyss they heed not those words, and in that momentary failure they not only lose their true north and their sense of self, but their very allegiances, and the good turn bad, the bad turn good, and the world is upside down and sideways!
06 -- Defiance
Publisher: SyFy Network
Developer: Trion Worlds
Platform: Xbox 360 / PC / PS3 / MMO
Release Date: TBA April 2013
It has been suggested that Defiance may very well turn into the first fusion of a TV Show and a Video Game, what is both a TV show brought to gamers by the SyFy Channel, and a video game brought to viewers by Trion Worlds studios, the game and the show will not simply influence each other but will, as their audience and player base grows, increasingly begin to depend more and more upon each other, as at the start of the season for the TV show some players' characters will appear on the show as extras, while the actions of some of the characters on the show will influence the events in the game...
Designed and deployed as an open-world shooter-MMOG-fusion, we are told that Defiance will begin by serving as a companion to the show on Syfy, which presents in both as a future Earth in which the players and the viewers -- humans and aliens -- live together in an environment that has been transformed by decades of conflict.
The game combines the intense action of a 'AAA' console shooter, with the persistence, scale, and customization of an MMO, while its TV counterpart weaves the rich tapestry of the world into a series with the scope, characters, and drama of a classic Sci-Fi epic. Because they exist in a single universe, the show and the game will influence each other and evolve together over time, with actions in both mediums driving the overall story of Defiance, which makes this not only an interesting premise but an interesting piece of entertainment both passively and actively.
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