Intro: War? – System of a Down

Outro: War Pigs – The Dresden Dolls (cover)

Spoiler talk: 07:28 – 23:59

Intro: Stop: Before It’s Too Late and We’ve Destroyed It All – Atreyu

Outro: All for a Woman – The Airborne Toxic Event

Spoiler Section: 03:42 – 20:48

Intro: Battle Ready – Otep

Outro: Beautiful Loser – Bob Seger

Spoiler Section: 03:00 – 11:21

Intro: Batman: Arkham City Main Theme – Nick Arundel

Outro: A Slow Parade – A. A. Bondy

Spoilers at 32:07 – 55:10

Final Thoughts at 59:04

Allow me to throw something out there and get it out of the way. NBA 2K12 is a basketball simulation game, emphasis on “simulation.” NBA Jam this is not. Think Gran Turismo as opposed to Burnout. That’s not to say that you can’t pick up the game and have some fun, but those that are interested in getting the most out of what NBA 2K12 has to offer should know that it will take some practice. Some may find this intimidating, and some may even consider this a bad thing with the potential to alienate casual players. However, the game is what it is, and hats off to the developers for going out of their way to make the most authentic basketball game possible instead of the most cash-grabbing and accessible-to-everyone game possible because those who put in the time with this game are going to find a lot to love.

While NBA 2K12 does have a handful of modes in which you can perfect your dunk face, there are two that are the clear stand-outs: My Player and NBA’s Greatest. My Player returns with a ton of emphasis on all the ins-and-outs of becoming the next big thing in the NBA. Starting with the Rookie Showcase game, you’re then taken immediately into the draft process, including pre-draft interviews with prospective teams. After draft day, you’ll start working your way up the team ladder, earning minutes, becoming a starter, gaining popularity and working towards a championship, as well as bigger paychecks. All the while, you’re able to participate in post-game interviews, earn endorsements and customize pretty much anything you’d want to with your player.

This is the closest thing to a basketball-based RPG that one could ask for. Things like the interviews may not sound that intriguing, but when you get to make decisions about whether or your player comes off like a true-blue team player or a smart-assed loose cannon who thinks he’s the greatest thing to ever set foot on the hardwood, it really adds that much more of a connection between you and him. The numerous in-game objectives also keep every game interesting. Whether it’s trying to score a certain number of points or keeping your match-up under a certain shooting percentage, the objectives go a long way in making you work hard to really get a feel for the way the game plays and for the way solid basketball is played. This is especially true in the early games when your minutes per game are quite limited.

The depth and engaging play offered in My Player would have been enough to stand on its own. But the insane thing is that there’s more even more to this game. NBA 2K11 received a lot of praise for featuring Michael Jordan and giving players the ability to relive some the most memorable games in his illustrious career. NBA 2K12 takes it one step further with NBA’s Greatest by expanding the experience from one legendary player to fifteen of the greatest NBA players of all time. The game has you fill the shoes of players like Magic Johnson, Wilt Chamberlain, Scottie Pippen and, once again, Michael Jordan for one game each.

Initially, I was concerned that the mode would lack the same feeling of depth since I was only getting one game per player instead of the ten we got last year with Jordan. However, an interesting thing happens while playing this mode: It becomes apparent that the depth is there, it’s just not where I expected it. Rather than giving you the history and highlights of a single player, the game treats you to a history of the entire league itself. The attention to detail here is staggering. From changes in camera placement and video filters to the hairstyles and uniforms, there is a definite sense of how the game of basketball has evolved over the past few decades, both stylistically and as a form of entertainment media. There is absolutely nothing lost or short-changed with the addition of all the extra players here. And the commentary provided for the games in this mode are a great listen themselves. Ranging from personal anecdotes to comparisons to today’s players, I’d never been more attentive to sports commentary before in any other game. NBA’s Greatest is a mode that other sports games should try and take a cue from if they’re really serious about taking their franchises into new territory. If they came up with something half as good, they’d already have a great addition to their games.

For gamers who haven’t exhausted themselves already on the amount of content offered in the modes above, the game does boast other features such as Move support for PlayStation 3 owners and a mode called The Association. The Association allows you and 29 friends to start and manage your own 30 team league, which sounds like a lot of fun if I had 29 friends that all owned NBA 2K12.

As I mentioned previously, this game is a simulation, and as such will take some getting used to. If you think you’re going to spring down the court and two-handed reverse jam every possession, you will be extremely disappointed. The gameplay is still as smooth as ever and has seen some additions to make things even more realistic. Things like shot variety and post play have been expanded to give players more options than ever. However, this is where the game does stumble a bit. Different shot types or actions are all based on different control mechanics and it can get to be a bit much. That wouldn’t be so bad if the game offered more feedback to the player so that they can correct themselves. Even the games practice drills, which are designed to help you get the hang of things, offer little direction in helping you perfect the execution of certain moves.

The other noticeable misstep comes from a bit of unevenness in the game’s reality that tarnishes the actual realism the game strives for. For example, I repeatedly did fantastically in shooting drills, however stepping out onto the court saw me missing numerous layups and uncontested “gimme” shots. It’s understandable that the player is expected to master mechanics, but there is something to be said for mechanics getting in the way of realism here. When you can play as Michael Jordan and miss wide-open layups because you may have flicked the Shot Stick slightly wrong, then the mechanic is hindering the realism. Obviously, this is something that players will get better at with practice, but as is, it can be couch-cushion-punching levels of frustrating at the start. Deep breaths and some patience will easily get committed players past some of these little blemishes.

Visual Concepts and 2K Sports could have easily ridden high on the success of last year’s game. With EA struggling to even get a basketball game out these days, the door was wide open for the opportunity to “take a year off” in terms of innovation and improvements. Luckily, that isn’t at all what has happened here. Offering about two times the amount of content as most sports games, as well as gameplay that continues to set the bar for the genre, NBA 2K12 has once again shown why the 2K series has EA scrambling. Anyone looking for a great sports experience and even those that have NBA 2K11 need to BUY IT.

PROS:

• Tons of content
• My Player mode plays like an incredibly engaging NBA RPG
• NBA’s Greatest gives you the History 101 course on the league
• Gameplay is still the best around

CONS:

• The learning curve can be steep at times
• The game could offer more feedback to help the player perfect the controls
• Sometimes the mechanics get in the way of reality

Final Verdict: Buy It

Remember five minutes ago when Netflix said they were going to be splitting their DVD-by-mail service off from their video streaming service? Sure, you remember; it was going to be Qwikster and have its very own website, away from the one convenient location that you already went to all things Netflix related. Well apparently everyone except Netflix thought that was a terrible idea, and because of that, Netflix will  no longer be launching Qwikster and the DVD-by-mail portion of its business as its own entity.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings had this to say over on the Netflix Blog:

It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.

While this is good news for movie fans, there is a hidden negative side for game fans. The original Qwikster announcement came with the news that Netflix would be getting into the game rental market as well. However, a Netflix spokesperson has told the NY Times that these plans are not completely set in stone. Let’s hope they get it together, otherwise that will just leave competitor Gamefly to continue business as usual with week-long turnaround times for games.

Are you happy to hear that Qwikster is no more? Do you think Netflix will continue its plans to get into gaming?

SPOILER WARNING: Story spoilers are discussed from 25:51 until 42:28.

Intro: The End - The Doors

Outro: The Gears - Dethklok

Here’s a mystery for Detective Cole Phelps: What does a developer do after spending nearly a decade creating a game for Rockstar, releasing it and having pretty solid success with it? They close the doors and shut down, obviously. Team Bondi, the development studio behind L.A. Noire, filed papers yesterday with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to have a liquidator help settle all their debts so that they could close up shop.

Despite what we here at 4PC thought of the game, Team Bondi did find success with L.A. Noire and its new MotionScan facial capture technology. However the studio had indeed found itself the center of a fair amount of negative attention when workers complained of not being compensated for all the time spent completing the game during crunch-time. Rockstar had also parted with the studio over all the controversy.

It’s a shame that a studio that clearly had some interesting ideas for steering gaming in new directions won’t get the opportunity to refine them.

Source: NextGen

It’s no big secret that most of us here at 4PC are fans of all things Apple, and thanks to Steve Jobs’ drive and passion to produce technology and devices that allow anyone to do incredible things with them, our video game website, a thing we are passionate about, can exist and be shared with others. Even now, I write this post using an iMac. We’re able to bring you podcasts and distribute them on iTunes. All of this is possible because of the man we lost today, and we are incredibly grateful to him for it.

So stop and think for a moment, the next time you load a digital copy of a movie onto your computer, the next time you’re walking around with thousands of songs in your pocket, or the next time you stop to look something up on your iPhone and realize that you’re basically holding a computer in the palm of your hand; stop and crack a smile for Steve Jobs. Despite the fact that he has left us too soon, it’s safe to say that his presence will be felt for many years to come.

The above image is taken from Apple’s website, along with the message below.

]]> http://fourplayercoop.com/news/2011/10/05/steve-jobs-has-died/feed/ 0 http://fourplayercoop.com/features/2011/09/29/nba-2k12-devs-dish-some-details/ http://fourplayercoop.com/features/2011/09/29/nba-2k12-devs-dish-some-details/#comments Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:33:09 +0000 Aaron Leach http://fourplayercoop.com/?p=16259

Where do you go when your previous sports entry sells millions of copies and garners unanimous critical praise from both fans and critics alike? This was the question that 2K Sports and Visual Concepts, the development team that delivered last year’s wildly popular and hugely successful NBA 2K11, had to consider when getting started on the annual follow-up, NBA 2K12. According to producer Erick Boenisch and senior gameplay designer Mike Wang, you can still go way up.

We had the opportunity to be on a call with Boenisch and Wang, and they had a lot to say regarding the adjustments they made in order to make NBA 2K12 feel like a worthy successor, and a legitimate new entry into the series, rather than just the sort of incremental, barely noticeable upgrade that some annual franchises try to get away with. While they managed to highlight many of the game’s new features, the general vibe of the call was pretty clear: Authenticity. All the little changes and tweaks are hopefully going to add up to big gains in providing players with the most authentic NBA experience possible.

With just how well NBA 2K11 was received, it was indeed quite impressive to hear the staggering amount of improvements the development team sought to make with this year’s entry. From an upgraded My Player Mode that has a focus on the energy and hype of making it in the NBA while also providing the most expansive off-court experience to date to the bigger NBA’s Greatest Mode that Boenisch says is basically “retelling the history of the NBA through this mode,” NBA 2K12 should have a lot to offer fans that didn’t think they could possibly do better than last year.

But rather than just tell you about it, I encourage you to listen to the call, embedded below, yourself. That way you can hear, straight from the horse’s mouth, all the latest details on things as big as altering sections of the My Player Mode as well as all the tiny details like the tech behind the new “shot compositing” system which will help deliver thousands of unique shot animations. Hearing these guys talk about details like how the game changes camera placement based on the real-life camera positions of the various arenas should be more than enough to convince you that the work definitely went into this game. From gameplay changes to reasons why NBA 2K12 is “lockout proof,” all the answers are just a click away.

NBA 2K12 gives a dunk face to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, PSP and PlayStation 2 on October 4th.

NBA 2K12 Developer Call