Smashing

Nintendo is bringing back the "Nintendo Switch Holiday Experience" this year to select malls around the nation. Along with the chance to check out some hot Switch exclusives, you'll also be able to play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roughly one month before everyone else!

The other demos included at the mall kiosks will be Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Overcooked 2, Super Mario Party, Nintendo LABO, Just Dance 2019 and Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee. The tour will begin on November 10 and run from 4:00 pm to 9:00 pm on Monday through Thurs??day, 3:00 pm to 9:00 pm ?on Friday, 10:00 am to 9:00 pm on Saturday and 10:00 am to 6:00 pm on Sunday.

The locations are as follows:

• Mall of Georgia in Buford, Georgia
• Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Illinois
• Memorial City Mall in Houston, Texas*
• Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, California
• The Florida Mall in Orlando, Florida
• Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota
• Queens Center in Elmhurst, New York
• King of Prussia Mall in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania
• Arrowhead Towne Center in Glendale, Arizona
• Westfield Valley Fair in Santa Clara, California
• Tysons Corner Center in Tysons Corner, Virginia

*The?? Nintendo Switch Holiday Experience at the Memorial City Mall in Houston will start on Nov. 1??1.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Demo Coming ??To Select Shopping Centers Starti??ng November 10 [Siliconera]

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Or do both, I'm not your father

If your time isn't being devoured by Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's "Blackout" beta this weekend, then why not spend a little time with The Division? Ubisoft will be hosting a free weekend on all platforms (PC, PS4, Xbox One)?? for you to sink your teeth into. Just like the various other free weekends, all progress made will carry into the full game should you choose to buy it. If you've already participated in the free trial version, you can actually resume your progre??ss.

As a reminder, you'll need PS Plus or Xbox Live Gold to play if you're on consoles. For PC players, this free weekend will be exclusively available through the Uplay client (the game was actually free last weekend on Steam). You ca??n play from now until September 16 and some discounts will be available for console players. The title will be 70% off until September 20 for Xbox One and September 25 for PS4.

The Division is free to play this? weekend on PC, PS4 and Xbox One [VG 24/7]

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Me and Sombra didn't make the cut this year

Blizzard have announced that the Grand Finals for the Overwatch League 2018 has sold out, thus will see every seat in the New Yo?rk Barclay's Arena occupied by a bum. (A literal bum).

The t??ickets went on sale May 18 and closed last week, having shifted some 20,000 seats for the online-shooter's big day, making it t??he most successful e-sports event to be held at the arena, which is home to the NBA's Brooklyn Nets.

"We knew the Overwatch League had amazing, enthusiastic fans, but this is something else," said Commissioner Nat Nanzer. "We’re incredibly excited ?to play to a packed house at ??home of the world’s premier sports and entertainment arenas."

The two top teams in the league will face off in the finals on the weekend of July 27-28. If you want to check out the payload-avoiding action, the whole event will be streamed live on the official Overwatch Twitch channel, and also on MLG and the Overwatch League app.

It's a good start for the OWL's inaugural finals, although there is still some way to go before it comes close to other competitive scenes, such as League of Legends which, last year, sold out 80,000 seats in less than two minutes. Regardless, It is sure to be a big day for Blizzard, Overwatch and the entire community. As an aside, can you imagine how much fucking dollar they're going t?o rake in on the merchandise front? It'll be astronomical.

The Overwatch League Grand Finals t?akes place July 27-28?? in New York City.

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Maybe this is the time he finally bests Spider-Man

Shocker is no stranger to Spider-Man video games. Here's a list of every game he has appeared in, often as a low-level early boss. It's not surprising that he'll also be in Insomniac's upcoming Spider-Man.

This morning?, Insomniac gave us our first look at Shocker. Judging by the money raining down around him, he's probably robbing a bank semi-inefficiently. 

Is he shocked or just mad? We can't tell. #SpiderManPS4 Out Sept 7th! #SpiderMan pic.twitter.com/PuOhdHRLM5

— Insomniac Games (@insomniacgames) April 30, 2018

Spider-Man releases exclusively on PlayStation 4 on September 7. In other superhero news, I will never see Avengers and I think Venom looks neat. Actually, what we really need is a new Maximum Carnage game. I w??ill not apologize for this opinion.

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We all did the Odyssey!

Last week, before Super Mario Odyssey launched, Nintendo concluded a nation wide tour in promotion of the game at its New York City store. Rich and I were in attendance, but we ?had no idea what to?? expect. We figured this was going to be some stuffy, stuck up presentation with a typical demo and people guiding us through the game. That couldn't be further from the truth.

Leave it to Nintendo to throw a launch eve??nt where you could possibly dance with a guy i??n a Mario costume while munching on Honey Bunches of Oats and doing jump rope in Rockefeller Plaza. It was certainly a spectacle and definitely worth the trip into the city.

While Rich and I didn't have a real game plan for recording footage (or even the thought of introducing ourselves on film), there is plenty of joy to be had in watching us get soundly trounced by a little girl in jump rope. We also got a quick glance at the museum inside of Nintendo NYC and a close up of the bombed-out Game Boy fro?m the Gulf War.

If Nintendo does another event in the future, I'd recommend making the trip. I had previously gone to an Animal Crossing: New Leaf event and it was ??similarly filled with childli?ke joy.

The post Nintendo’s Super Mario Odyssey launch event was really special appeared first on Destructoid.

Let's bring out the saxophone

Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt Season 2 may have ended last week, but its conflict isn't over. As we wait for a sequel to get announced, Anime NYC, New York City's latest anime convention, is holding two ?events that involve giant robots and jazz.

The first one is a screening of Gundam Thunderbolt: Bandit Flower, the anime's second movie compilation, which is perfect for those who missed out on GundamInfo's limited stream. Also, it's an excuse fo?r us to rewatch the main cast's battles during the events a??fter the One Year War.

Other than that, you'll get to hear Gundam Thunderbolt's music in a live concert, and Naruyoshi Kikuchi (Cowboy Bebop's Saxophone Music, Lupin the Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine's Music) is leading the show. ??Since you don't have to pay extra for these events, it look??s like we're in for a sweet deal.

Anime NYC will run from November 17 through 19, with both Gundam events happening during the con's final day. All in all, this is a great follow-up to Gundam Versus' Western release, since the units from Gundam Thunderbolt Season 1 a??re in it. Most importantly, it acts as a great reminder that mecha anime and jazz music go well together.

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That's a big neighborhood

Insomniac's take on the Big Apple will indeed be big -- at least when compared to the studio's previous works. The PS4-exclusive Spider-Man will be Insomniac's largest game i????n terms of map size.

Actually, it dwarfs the developer's most recent open-world game multiple times over. Answering a fan on Twitter, Insomniac says that Spider-Man is "several times larger" than Sunset Overdrive. There isn't any real specificity to?? that statement, just the nebulous notion that the playable space is significant.

Truthfully, that's the only way Insomniac could really go with Spider-Man. With Sunset Overdrive, the developer had the freedom to create a city that complemented the gameplay. With New York City, everything needs to feel more authentic. There ne??eds to be a wealth of landmarks and the crushing density that comes with being at the center of a major metropolis.

Making a believably big city is essential for an open-world Spider-Man&nb??sp;game. Without drawing too many conclusions from a single tweet, it seems like Insomniac understands this.

@insomniacgames [Twitter]

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No division over that

Players were a bit worried when Ubisoft announced that the studio responsible for The Division would be working on an upcoming Avatar game in anticipation of that film's perpetually delayed sequel. Did this mean that Ubisoft had dropped further support for their apocalyptic third-person shooter and any plans for a sequel? Well, you have nothing (less?) to fear as the company has unveiled its plans for a "Year Two" of The Division that includes free expansions.

The first expansion, coming sometime this summer, is centered around an "event system that drives players to activities that feature modifiers, leaderboards, and unique vanity items that will only be available through these activities." Doesn't sound too substantial, but you will be granted the ability to create specific load-outs for missions (crazy to think it wasn't already in the game). Ubisoft is also adding "feats," something akin to Destiny's triumph system.

The second expansion is too far off, but it will be more "content-focused" than the first. While no new story missions are being added, it sounds like the team is aiming to make it feel more robust than the first addition. Their reasoning for the lack of story missions is pretty lame, however. "We can’t really deliver story missions that will fit into the RPG aspects of the game in a simple way. So we’re not going to be doing the classic main mission type of thing, but narrative content is something that we are definitely looking at," states the official blog.

Along with all of this planned content comes a celebration event for the first year of The Division. Players who log? in from today (March 9) until March 16th will be given 200 premium credits and a "celebratory emote." From March 9th until the 11th, all high value targets will have a double value multiplier applied to them and on the 11th, field proficiency caches will have the same thing.

I suppose you shouldn't look a gift horse?? in the mouth, but full campaign based expansions would have been nice.

The Division Celebrates Annivers??ary, Free Year 2 Content ??Plans Revealed [Ubiblog]

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You can't see me

Even with the Switch launching in roughly nine days and with a public preview event still scheduled for two cities, Nintendo is going to be demoing the Switch in ??a few more places wi?th some twists.

This time, they are bringing a mock living room to three entirely different locations to simulate how people can play the console. John Cena is also going to be at the California event, hopefully stumbling into the room and holding up the title?? belt, along with some YouTubers. The details are below:

• The Desert – Invite only
  Feb. 23, 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. PT
  Blue Cloud Movie Ranch
  20019 Blue Cloud Rd.
  Santa Clarita, CA 91390

• Aspen – Open to the public
  Feb. 27, 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. MT
  Snowmass Village
  45 Village Square
  Snowmass Village, CO 81615

• New York – Open to the public
  March 3, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. ET
  Flatiron Plaza
  Broadway between 23^rd and 24^th St.
  New York, NY 10010

I like how New York is apparently a different environment. H??ow is it outside today? Very New York like. That event will have some costumed people walking around as Mario and Luigi, which does sound super fun.

Honestly, though, I don't think I'd be playi?ng ??my Switch in any of these locations. If I were in Aspen, wouldn't I be skiing? If I were in the desert, I'd be doing my best to find help or increase my chances of survival, not playing a Switch. If I were in New York City, I wouldn't show any signs of having technology on me so that I don't get mugged.

Switch and Play with Nintendo Switch in Unexpected Places across the ?? U.S. [Business Wire]

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Neo coming to New York

It seems like yesterday's reports for a pre-Tokyo Game Show PlayStation 4 Neo reveal were accurate. Today Sony announced the ??September 7 "Pl??ayStation Meeting," inviting select media to New York City to talk, "about the PlayStation business."

The 2013 PlayStation 4 reveal event in NYC was also called the "PlayStation Meeting," and it's likely that the company is holding the event to debut the souped up PlayStation 4 codenamed Neo.

Unless it's a Vita Duo, or something. I also assume the company will have more to show than Microsoft did with souped up Xbox One Project Scorpio at E3. The latter is coming in late 2017, while the Xbox One ?S ?just released as well.

PlayS??tation Meeting wi??ll take place September 7 at 3PM EST in Times Square.

PlayStation just announced a September event, where?? it will likely unveil the PlayStation 4 successor [Business Insider]

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Formerly the Nintendo World Store

After a month-long renovation, Nintendo's flagship store in Rockefeller Center is open to the public again with a fresh look and a new name. It's now simply Nintendo NY. Mario and Luigi ditched the princesses to help with the?? ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this morning.

We'll undoubtedly have someone on staff make the trip out to stock up on plush toys (Chris? Holmes? Patrick?), but for now, we can get a sense of the store from these opening-day pictures. It's not the same as being there in person, I know, but at least we're well-rested.

The post Nintendo’s redesigned New York store looks fancy appeared first on Destructoid.

Sonic Youth and Swans on the soundtrack? Win!

Aside from videogames, music is my other big passion in life, whether it's just listening to it, going to gigs or reading about various bands or periods in music history. So when I got a message from the developers of No Wave, a short ?point-and-click adventure set in New York music scene of the very early 1980s, I was immediately intrigued. A game with early Sonic Youth, Swans, and The Boys Next Door on the soundtrack?? Yes please!

No Wave was created for the recent Game Dev Party game jam and it's a short adventure game that follows Jim as he descends into the wild and dangerous New York mus??ic scene. In truth, Jim is more of a danger to himself than anyone else is. Really, would you keep taking the pills that the bouncer is handing out after what happened the night before? 

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This weekend in NY

Are you going to be at New York Comic-Con? I always go, but this is the first year I'll miss i?n a very long time. I??'m totally bummed. Have fun for me!

I'd recommend that you head over to Capcom's booth on the show floor this weekend. They'll have Strider playable for the first time. It looks great, but I had some concerns when I played it in Tokyo last month. Let m??e know what you think. 

Also, Dustforce was just recently announced for consoles, so Capcom will ??be bringing that to show off during NYCC. 

Finally, games like DuckTales: Remastered and Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate will be ??there for fa?ns. A MonHun photo op/charging station will be available, too. ;

Again, have fun for me!

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New games, new art, and free beer?

[Snake and Spider-Man by Reyyy]

The good people at Attract Mode have not one, but two big gallery shows for you to have. The first is No Quarter 2013, which opens this Friday at NYU's Game Center at  the Tisch School of the Arts, 721 Broadway on the 9th floor. So what's going to be there? Well for starters, there will be gallery art based on games like Nidhogg and Deep Sea on display,  and brand new games by the likes of Sophie Houlden (Swift * Stitch, Leaper) and Bennett Foddy (QWOP, Winner Vs. Loser) for the playing. The event is being sponsored? by the Brooklyn Brewery, so there will also be beer. It's free and open?? to the public but you may want to RSVP. 

The second show is planned for less than a week later in Toronto. Comics Vs. Games 2 features all new games-based artwork from Natasha Allegri (Adventure Time) Zac Gorman (Magical Game Time) Lindsay Collins (Cat Girl Without Salad) and many more. The show opens on Thursday, May 9th at 7pm at #100–862 Richmond St W. It's the start of a larger event from Bento Miso called Bit Bazaar, featuring exhibitions by Drinkbox, Christine Love, and tons of other beloved videogame types. Why not make a whole weekend of it? It's like PAX Canada, except it wont cost you 20-50 ?hamburgers worth of your hard earned cash to attend.

It's ?classy fun times for people that want th??e good stuff. 

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At the Toys"R"Us in Times Square

If you find yourself in New York City on February 5, you can join in on a community event for Skylanders Giants, held at the Times Square Toys"R"Us.

Basically, you'll have a chance to get a free Ninjini figure before launch, and nab a Starter Pack for ??$25, as well as take advantage of a buy two get one free sale. While the first two perks only sound reasonable for the biggest o??f fans, eBay sellers will probably be really interested in that last bit.

Evidently there's meet and greet??s too for kids. An Activision promotion and lots of kids packed into the same place -- sounds like a g?reat day to head to Times Square, right?

WHEN: 

Tuesday, February 5. Activities and giveaway??s begin pro?mptly 4pm. Toys"R"Us Times Square will be open during normal business hours (10am - 10pm)

WHERE: 

1514 Broadway at 44th StreetNew York, NY

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Hang out with Reggie

When midnight hits on November 18, fans lined up at the Nintendo World Stor??e in New York City will be among the first to get their hands on the Wii U. They'll also get the chance to hang with Nintendo President and COO, Reggie Fils-Amie. I bet he ??gets crazy in the late hour. He'll also hand out the first Wii U.

At this event, Nintendo will also sell Ne??w York-themed t-shirts, with proceeds going to the?? American Red Cross to support Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

The launch event st??arts at 6 p.m. on November 17 at Nintendo World, 10 Rockefeller Plaza. 

See you there?

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He's already in line at New York's Nintendo World Store

I'm sure you've all heard of Isaiah-Triforce Johnson by now. He's the founder of the competitive gaming organization Empire Arcadia, but you would most likely recognize him as the black dude with the Power Glove who seemingly always manages to be first in line to purchase any new Nintendo doodad -- he was the first man in America to officially buy the Wii as well as the 3DS.

Now Triforce plans on being the first person on the planet to purchase a Wii U at retail. The first unit will be sold at the Nintendo World Store in New York, so to be certain no one gets the jump on him, he's already queued up. For your information, today is October 22, and the Wii U ??won't launch ??until November 18. That's an insane level of dedication.

He's been hassled by the cops in the past for "loitering," but they've?? never been able to prevent ??him for completing his mission!

Also, "Isaiah-Triforce Johnson" is his actual legal nam?e. Wow.

At Least One P?erson Is Already Waiting ??In Line For The Wii U [Kotaku]

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Back in August, an "Art of the Assassin" exhibition was held in Los Angeles, which our very own Chad Concelmo attended. Ubisoft has announ?ced that the next stop on the traveling show's nationwide tour is at The Hole in New York City, where the exhibition will debut on October ??10, conveniently timed just a day before New York Comic Con opens. What a startling coincidence!

If there's one thing I find it pretty much impossible to criticize about Assassin's Creed, it's the art. The games are beautiful, the designs are beautiful. I would go check this o?ut if I happened to be in the city.

The post Assassin’s Creed art show arrives in NYC October 10 appeared first on Destructoid.

EA Sports put the Madden cover to a vote once again this year, and as of last week, the fans had whittled down a bracket of 64 NFL players to just two: Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam "Ace Boogie" Newton (the No. 1 seed) and Detroit Lions wide receiver Calvin "Megatron" Johnson (the No. 6 seed). In an episode of ESPN's SportsNation broadcast live from New York City's Times Square yesterday evening, hosts Colin Cowherd and ?Michelle Beadle revealed that Johnson beat out Newton for the coveted cover spot.

The marketing partnership between ESPN and EA Sports, now in its second year, proved even more fruitful this time around. Fans cast over 19.6 million votes, a 54% jump from the 12.7 million tallies for the Madden NFL 12 campaign. The final face-off was a close one: Johnson defeated Newton by a margin of 52% to 48%. Along the way, he took down teammate Matthew St?afford, No. 11 seed Dwayne Bowe, No. 3 seed Arian Foster, No. 2 seed Rob Gronkowski, and No. 1 seed Aaron Rodgers.

A clearly disappointed Newton was nonetheless gracious in defeat, giving "big ups to Megatron." As for Johnson, EA Sports personnel whisked him away after the SportsNation broadcast to don his full Lions uniform and game-day equipment for a photoshoot in Times Square. One of the images taken yesterday will become the final box art for Madden NFL 13, whic??h launches for Xbox 360, Play?Station 3, PlayStation Vita, and Wii on August 28, 2012.

Check out the gallery below for 17 photos from the event, captured by yours truly. Are you guys happy to see Megatron on the Madden 13 cover? If not, whom would you have picked?

Madden '13 Cover - SportsNation [ESPN]

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Major League Gaming (or MLG for short) is hosting its first-ever Winter StarCraft II event this weekend, February 24-26 in New York City. The event will feature 32 StarCraft players from across the world, including Nestea, Idra, MarineKing, Artist, and Leenock, winner of MLG Providence.

Viewers can tune in via Pay-Per-View in HD at a price of $20 for the entire weekend; if you’re an MLG Gold member, you can knock off $5. Demo streams can be viewed on MLG’s site and passes can be purchased here.

Locations for MLG events this year are still TBD, h??owever dates have been set for June 8-10, August 24-26, and November 2-4?, 2012. Here’s hoping that there’s one near me!

For more information on the event and players, visit MLG’s website.

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The American videogame industry, and the majority of the people writing critically about it, has coalesced largely on the West Coast. But the New York scene has been ascendant in recent years, and the growing number of critical voices on this side of the country spurred longtime videogame critic Harold Goldberg, author of All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture, to start a local group for those critics.

That group, the New York Videogame Critics Circle, held its first-ever awards show last night, hopefully the first of many, in conjunction with the NYU Game Center at the school's Cantor Film Center. I was pleased to a??ttend the classy affair, joining many New York-area colleagues from some ?of your and my favorite publications as well as representatives from the developers and publishers behind the nominated games.

I had the honor of presenting -- along with new Kotaku recruit Tina Amini -- the "A Train Award" for Best Mobile/iOS Game, which went to Superbrothers and Capybara Games' Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. (I should not??e that, as one of the Critics Circle's newest members, I did not vote on any of the aw??ards given out last night.)

Bastion narrator Logan Cunningham hosted the show, and attendees were treated to live performances of two songs from the game's terrific original soundtrack by Ashley Barrett and audio director Darren Korb. You can watch the second performance above; it's the song "Setting Sail, Coming Home," which plays at a pivotal point in the game's final stage. (Thanks to Russ Frushtick of Vox Games for the recording.)

It was a wonderful evening, a??nd I look forward to playing all the great games that will be nominated for next year's show. Here's the full li?st of winners:

Manhattan Award for Most NY-Centric Game
Crysis 2

Battery Park Award for Best Handheld Game
Super Mario 3D Land

Tin Pan Alley Award for Best Music in a Game
Bastion

A Train Award for Best Mobile/iOS Game
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP

Herman Melville Award for Best Writing in a Game
Portal 2

Off-Broadway Award for Best Indie Game
Bastion

Statue of Liberty Award for Best Open-World Game
Saints Row: The Third

Great White Way Award for Best Overall Acting in a Game
Portal 2

Algonquin Roundtable Award for Best Book
All Your Base Are Belong to Us by Harold Goldberg

Mad Men Award for Best Videogame Commercial
Long Live Play – Michael

Big Apple Award for Best Game
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The post ?Recap: 1st A??nnual NY Videogame Critics Circle Awards appeared first on Destructoid.

Square Enix has a whole bunch of fun stuff lined up? for this week's New York Comic-Con, set to go down at the Javits Center in Midtown Manhattan from Oct. 13-16. They're bringing lots of game?s, hosting fun events, and throwing a party with us! 

At their booth you can expect to find Final Fantasy XIII-2, Heroes of Ruin, Dead Island, Deus Ex (upcoming "The Missing Link" DLC), and Wakfu.

As for events, I'm looking forward to the “East Meets West: Art Direction for a Worldwide Audience,” which will feature art from both Deus Ex and Final Fantasy XIII-2, and will include the art directors from both games. There's also a Tomb Raider art signing, a Heroes of Ruin poster giveaway and the last of the Word to your Moogle world tour events.

Finally, there's a cool party that I hope you'll come out to. Square Enix is ?te??aming with Destructoid and our friends at Machinima to throw a party to celebrate the January 31 launch of Final Fantasy XIII-2. Attendees of the event at Tonic Bar (727 7^th Ave., Times Square) will be treated to drinks and swag as well as the chance to win prizes at a Final Fantasy trivia contest. That goes down on Friday, October 14, from ??8-10p.m. Come hang out with us!

New York Comic Con attendees are invited to join “East Meets West: Art Direction for a Worldwide Audience” on Friday, Oct. 14 from 10:45 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. for an exclusive ?panel presenting concept and finished art from FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 and DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION. Moderated by industry consultant and former Newsweek senior writer, N’Gai Croal, the panel will include an in-depth discussion between Isamu Kamikokuryo, art director of FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 and Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, art director of DEUS EX: HUMAN RE??VOLUTION.

Friday, Oct. 14, (2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.): Fans can participate in TOMB RAIDER’s 15th anniversary celebration by attending an exclusive signing session featuring urban contemporary artist Camilla d’Errico. Attendees can stop by the Square Enix booth to receive a free 5x7 art print and autograph featuring d’Errico’s unique interpretation of?? TOMB RAIDER, a franchise that has sold over 35 million copies worldwide as of Oct. 2011.

Thursday-Sunday, Oct. 13-16 (all day): The FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 “Word to Your Moogle” tour embarks on its third and last sto??p at New York Comic Con, where fans can enter to win event-exclusive prizes. The leaderboard and official contest rules can be found at www.wordtoyourmoogle.com. The contest will run every day during show hours at the Square Enix booth.

Saturday and Sunday Oct. 15-16 (11 a.m. and 2 p.m.): HEROES OF RUIN fans can re??ceive a free poster signed by Adi Granov, the cover artist for HEROES OF RUIN, whose most notable works include the Iron Man: Extremis series and the Iron Man films. With the poster, you’ll also be entered into ??a raffle to win a free Nintendo 3DS™ at the end of the day, Friday through Sunday!

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It's been a long day. I thought I'd take a bre??ak and relax this evening as tomorrow is going to be a really busy day at New York Comic-Con. Plus, big plans tonight: I'm going to have a beer and some tacos and watch Hu?lu in my boxer shorts.

Tonight I'm letting my newly ado??pted Derpy Moogle (Thanks, Square Enix!) assume control of reporting duties. H??e'll show you what the show floor was like on preview night. If you're wondering why his eyes are XXX'd out, it probably has something to do with overdosing on Hi-Chew and energy drinks. 

Enjoy Moogle's tour in our gallery below.

Kupo!

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Capcom is coming to New York Comic-Con this week. They have four panels, a bunch of games, and a strange event that features producers Yoshinori Ono (Street ??Fighter) and Katzuhiro Harad??a (Tekken) in football garb. What?

SFXT BOWL MMXI! Street Fighter X Tekken fans will get to cheer on Yoshinori Ono and Katzuhiro Harada as they don full football gear, and draft fans from the crowd to join them in a series of football challenges on a custom indoor SFXT football field. Cheerleaders will lead the crowds, says Capcom. This strange event goes down on Saturday, October 15, level 1- Exhibit Hall 1B, Noon -?? 1pm. I'll definitely be there.

Capcom will also have most of their 2011/2012 game line-up at their booth, so expect to see Dragon’s Dogma, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, Resident Evil Revelations, Street Fighter X Tekken, Asura’s Wrath, Dead Rising 2 Off The Record, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and Street Fighter IV: Volt. At that same booth you'll also find tournaments, giveaways, prod??ucer visits and the Capcom store?. ;

Hit the jum??p for det?ails on the four panels Capcom has lined up for the show. 

• STREET FIGHTER – Legendary Street Fighter producer, Yoshinori Ono will provide the latest update on the highly anticipated fighting game Street Fighter X Tekken - the ultimate fighting game team up! Come hear, firsthand, just what is in store for your favorite Street Fighter and Tekken characters in this explosive genre defining game. Street Fighter fans are encouraged to come in costume as Capcom deems Friday to be "Street Fighter Day!" Some lucky fans may be called onstage to demonstrate their mad fighting skills firsthand to win awesome prizes! Followed by a Q&A session plus some special surprises! Friday, October 14, 5:15 – 6:16pm in the American Airlines Theater 1A06

• Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 – The wait's almost over as the much anticipated follow up to last year's monster fighting hit is only a month from launch. Come to this panel to hear the latest news about this legendary fighting game franchise straight from producer Ryota Niitsuma. Get an exclusive behind-the-scenes peek as well as a chance to come onstage to showcase your fighting skills against each other for fantastic prizes. Followed by a Q&A session. Saturday, Oct 15, 2:45 – 3:45 pm in the American Airlines Theater 1A06

• Resident Evil – Share in the joy of Resident Evil! 2011 marks the 15th anniversary of the legendary video game franchise that gave fear a face and horror a home. Capcom declares Saturday to be "Resident Evil Day," so please come dressed as your favorite classic and new RE characters! Come find out the latest information about the newest entries to the Resident Evil franchise: the brutal truth behind Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City with producer, Rey Jimenez, Resident Evil Revelations for the Nintendo 3DS, the gorgeous re-imagining of Resident Evil 4 HD and Resident Evil CODE:  Veronica X HD, plus some surprises! Followed by a Q&A session. Saturday, October 15, 6:15 – 7:15pm in the MTV Theater 1A10

• World of Capcom – Capcom continues to entertain its fans with the best games in the industry. Fans won't want to miss this opportunity to learn firsthand about Capcom's newest hit properties, Dragon's Dogma and Asura's Wrath, as well as the latest on the just released Dead Rising 2 Off The Record Executive Producer, Jason Leigh. Followed by a Q&A session. Sunday, Oct 16, 12:15 – 1:15pm in the American Airlines Theater 1A06

The post Capcom plans to go nuts at New York Comic-Con appeared first on Destructoid.

Ubisoft sent us an email to tell us what they'll have lined up for this week's New York Comic-Con. First, the obligatory title? list:

• The Adventures of Tintin
• Assassin's Creed: Revelations
• The Black Eyed Peas Experience
• Just Dance 3
• Might and Magic Heroes VI
• Rayman Origins
• Shoot Many Robots

Rayman Origins! Gimme!

There's also going to be some booth freebies going out over the weekend, so consider this your heads up. For those that pre-order games there, you could get a free t-shirt (Revelations and Rayman Origins), an exclusive Black Eyed Peas signed poster, or a free Just Dance 3 branded neon wrist watch.

Multiplayer tournaments will also be held once a day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at?? 2:00 p.m. See you there?

The post Ubisoft is coming to New Yo?rk Comic-Con with games appeared first on Destructoid.

It looks like Nintendo is bringing every big title from their 2011 Holiday line-up to New York Comic-Con next week. They say that gamers there will get a chance to play The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword as well as Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7.  Also expect special activities to celebrate the upcoming release of Pokemon Rumble Blast, which arrives Oct. 24, and Professor Layton and the Last Specter, which launches Oct. 17.

Nintendo has also lined up some events for?? NYCC. There will be a Pokémon Gaming Lounge, open from on Oct. 15 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., located at Stage37 at 508 West 37th Street (one block from the Javits Center), and it will be open to the public. There you'll find a Pokemon photo booth, oversized Poke??mon AR Markers, and even Pikachu appearances.

Finally, On Oct. 14, Nintendo will host an exclusive screening of Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva, t?he animated film. This is open to all NYCC a??ttendees.

Hit the jump to see the full list of games you'll find?? at Nintendo's NYCC booth. 

Nintendo 3DS

Super Mario 3D Land
Mario Kart 7
The Legend of Zelda™: Ocarina of Time™ 3D
Star Fox 64™ 3D
Tetris®: Axis
Pokémon Rumble Blast
Shinobi™ by SEGA®
Sonic Generations™ by SEGA

Wii

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Fortune Street™
Kirby’s Return to Dream Land™
Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure&?trade; by Activision Publishing I?nc.

Nintendo DS

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker™ 2
Professor Layton and the Last Specter

The post Nintendo to bring tons of games to?? New York Comic-Con appeared first on Destructoid.

Going to New York Comic-Con? See you there?

If you're a Mass Effect fan, you'll want to get your hands on this NYCC exclusive. A special edition of Mass Effect: Invasion #1, the first installment in a series of ME comic books based on Mass Effect 2, will be available at the event. The special edition of Mass Effect: Invasion #1 features brand new cover art designed by the Mass Effect team and signed exclusively by Mass Effect Lead Writer, Mac Walters. The speci??al edition will be available in a limited run, so you can only get it from October 13–?16.

For everyone else, Mass Effect: Invasion #1 will be available at comic book retailer??s starting October 19, 2011.

The post NYCC Mass Effect exclusive: Invasion #1 ?comic book appeared first on Destructoid.

[Update: Capcom's detailed the place and times now -- the event will take place at the Eyebeam Art and Technology? Center (540 West 21st Street) between 6:00PM and 10:00PM! Have fun, New York City!]

If you're in New York City, and you don't completely and irrationally hate Capcom over the Mega Man Legends 3 stuff, keep reading.

On August 18, the publisher is coming to town with its hot fighting game 'wares for its New York Fight Club. It's promising that Street Fighter x Tekken, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and Street Fighter III 3rd Strike Online Edition will all be on hand. Presumably playable!

More information, including time and location, are coming? soon. But this is just a warning shot, so mark your calendars accordingly. New York Dtoiders, mount up!

New York City! A Fight Club is Coming August 18th [Capcom Unity]

The post Capcom bringing Fight Club to NYC on August 18 appeared first on Destructoid.

The fifth Blip Festival is finally upon us: the annual-except-for-2010 chiptune music extravaganza begins tonight, May 19, and runs through Saturday, May 21. The festival is a collaboration between 8bitpeoples and The Tank, and it's taking place at Eyebeam, which is located in a notoriously u?n-public-transit-friendly part of Chelse??a. (This is the first ?time? since 2007 that the event will be at Eyebeam, which is special for me in particular: Blipfest 2007 was where I first met some Destructoid editors, and got started on the road to becoming one myself!)

Three-day passes have been sold out for a while now, but you can still buy single-day tickets online or at the door (as long as they're still selling them, of course). Performers include: Dtoid New York's own Zen Albatross, minusbaby, Anamanaguchi (the band who did the soundtrack for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game), Starscream, Nullsleep, Bubblyfish, and Bit Shifter. As always, the chip music will be accompanied by visuals to enhance the trance factor of the experience. The show kicks off ??at 8 PM each evening and runs past midnight.

But the fun doesn't end there! Every night, you can head to the Babycastles arcade in Brooklyn for an afterparty -- featuring videogames, Indian food, and live music/DJs -- that goes all the way until 4:30 AM. Tonight's "Anti-Sleep Aftershow" is being thrown by the good folks at Motherboard.TV and Kill Screen.

Dtoid New York will be in attendance, so come to the show and hang out with folks like me, East Coast Community Manager power-glove, and erstwhile Destructoid Art Director Topher Cantler. We hope to see you there! (Send a PM to Dtoid New York to let us know you're coming.) Head on over to the show's official website for more information.

The post Join us at Blipfest 2011 this weekend! appeared first on Destructoid.

“I love these things, but I also know that there’s something weird, and kind of bizarre, and strange about them -- like, there’s something really dumb about them. [...] We love them, and, kind of, hate them at ?the same time.”

That was the way that Frank Lantz, Interim Director of the Game Center at New York University, characterized the attitude toward videogames displayed on Old Man Murray, the videogame criticism website that Valve Software writers Erik Wolpaw and Chet Faliszek once ran. The setting was a cozy theater in the basement of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where, last Thursday evening, Wolpaw mused for nearly ninety minutes on a wide-ranging variety of topics -- including the design of Portal and Portal 2, the development process at Valve, and the nature of story in ??videogames -- without getting pretentious.

Well, maybe just once.

I encourage you to check out the full lecture, which can be viewed in its entirety here. But if you can’t spare the time, I’ve broken out the salient points for you below. (I mean, the recap is still p??retty long, but even then, it probably won??’t take you an hour and a half to read.)

[Editor’s note: Regrettably, I have yet to play Portal 2 myself. However, that’s good news for you if you’re in the same boat, since it means that this article is spoiler-free! -Samit]

Symbolic suspended animation: Wolpaw began by playing through the opening of Portal 2. The game begins in what appears to be a small hotel room; after a brief interaction with a (non-GLaDOS) computerized voice, you go back to sleep -- or rather, re-??enter suspended animation. Valve originally thought of providing a gameplay sequence representing the state itself: “Aperture makes this [relaxation chamber] that’s supposed to store you forever, but it’s actually this, just, real-time simulation of you pacing back and forth in a shitty hotel room. It was just going to be the worst thing ever.” The segment didn’t work out, so the developers merely stuck Chell in a container that was literally a hotel room.

Bringing on Stephen Merchant to play Wheatley, the Personality Sphere: Wolpaw and his co-writer, Jay Pinkerton, had been watching a lot of British comedy shows when they began working on the Portal 2 script. The list of shows included Extras, which was co-created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. But Merchant actually wasn’t Valve’s first choice for Wheatley; the writers initially went after Richard Ayoade, perhaps best known for his role in The IT Crowd, because of his “nasally” and “annoyi?ng” voice. “This was when we were kind of imagining Wheatley?? as being a little more hectoring,” explained Wolpaw.

But Ayoade’s involvement fell through due to scheduling conflicts, and at that point, “We kinda started writing in Stephen Merchant’s voice,” without any real hope that he would be interested in coming on, since Wolpaw “just assumed he was rich” from co-creating the original British version of The Office. To Wolpaw’s delight, Merchant said y??es: “I’m really, really happy with the way this turned out in the sense that it’s a very natural-sounding performance.” Wolp??aw cited, among other qualities, Merchant’s “awesome ability to, kind of, make things that are written down sound like they’re just, sort of, off-the-cuff.”

The Portal sequel that might have been: For the first six months of its development, Portal 2 didn’t even have portals in it. Valve had devised a different puzzle mechanic, dubbed “F-Stop,” that was “pretty promising.” (Wolpaw wouldn’t go into any detail on F-Stop, since the studio may use it in a future game.) Not only was the game’s core mechanic different, but it had a separate story altogether. The F-Stop version of Portal 2 “took place i??n the ’50s -- GLaDOS wasn’t in it, Chell wasn’t in it. It was [Aperture Science founder] Cave Johnson, and it was the story of him getting put into a computer and then realizing he’s made a huge mistake.”

As it turned out, the game’s playtesters kept asking about GLaDOS and the portal gun. “People may have enjoyed the puzzles to varying degrees, but [essentia??lly] to a person, they didn’t want a clean slate,” said Wolpaw. So th??e team decided to bring Chell and portals back, but set the sequel in the future.

Just how do you go about making a sequel to Portal, anyway?: The original Portal was “pretty much one long training arc getting you to understand how portals worked,” and every bit of the game was designed with that goal in mind. But Valve refused to discard the training aspect of the game for its sequel, since, “If you made a list of things going in -- constraints -- [one] is that we didn’t want to just sell this, or design it, for people who had played Portal 1.” That might be why some folks are feeling that Portal 2 is easier than Portal, but Wolpaw also po?inted out that with perfect hindsight, the team was? able to refine elements of the original game and improve the overall puzzle design.

If Aperture Science is decrepit, why are the elevators in better shape?: There was “no story reason” for the “cooler-looking” elevators in Portal 2 -- they’re just a?? product of a bigger team, sai??d Wolpaw.

Science-fiction influences: When pressed about the science-fiction works that influence his writing, Wolpaw said that his father had been a “huge science-fiction fan” -- his home contained bookshelves filled with issues of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Galaxy Science Fiction. He admitted that he didn’t do as much reading of them as he did browsing -- “I looked at the covers a lot,” he told us -- but mentioned Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown, and Robert Sheckley (who has a Half-Life 2: Episode Two character named after him) as authors whose writing he enjo?yed.

Who looks at those testchamber signs?: One of the keys to Valve’s iterative design process is the extensive playtesting that the company undertakes for each of its games. It reveals a lot about player tendencies, and Wolpaw shared an interesting tidbit with us regarding the signs at the start of each testchamber. Valve brings in gamers as well as non-gamers for playtesting, and noticed that people who are well-versed in the language of videogames “tend to just dive in,” breezing right by the signs, because they “have this intuitive sense that the designer is go??ing to make it so that you don’t have to read that sign [...] as anything but flavor text.”

On the other hand, “People who don’t play games, almost to a person, would come and look at every sign to try and extract [information] -- like you would in real life. You expect that ‘there’s going to be information I need on this sign.’” The diagrams and symbols don’t necessarily help me to figure out the puzzles, but I glance at them anyway, just because they’re fun to look at. That’s just me, thou?gh.

The “Valve Cabal”: The folks at Valve succeed in spit??e of, or perhaps because of, their unorthodox studio organization. Rather, there isn’t a typical organizational arrangement at all. “It’s this weird, sort of, flat management structure; kinda communal; there’s no real hierarchy,” Wolpaw began. When asked to discuss it, he spoke haltingly, saying he was stammering because “I’ve tried to explain to my wife how it works, and I haven’t been able to, and she doesn’t believe that it should work.”

He finally found some words, saying that “everybody, kind of, pitches in, ??and order sort of emerges from that chaos.” Here, he reiterated the importance of playtesting, explaining that the process is tremendously humbli??ng. “It’s hard to keep defending some idea when you see it fail repeatedly,” he said, noting that “it’s sort of liberating” because “people just get very used to not feeling like, ‘I’ve got to cling to this idea because this idea is my idea and I’m worthless if this doesn’t go.’ Most of the ideas don’t pan out.” Of course, if you can force yourself to discard everything but the very best, and you have extremely high standards for yourself, you’re probably going to do pretty well.

Another tough test for the team is a body at the studio called “Overwatch.” It’s not an Orwellian overseer, per se; Wolpaw explained it as “people who aren’t working on the product, but who are, sort of, trusted people in terms of just their product focus -- like, what does a Valve game look like?” The Overwatch folks play the game and provide “brutally honest” feedback. They only mention issues, not solutions, and there’s no skating by them. Often, Overwatch will point out something that you “kind of had in the back of your head, that you think this might be a problem, but, &l??squo;Maybe we’ll sneak it by Overwatch,’ and then it doesn’t really work that way.”

Cutscenes are a cop-out, in most cases: Valve is renowned for making games that rarely, if ever, take you out of the first-person perspective. “We have this feeling, I think, internally -- I don’t know that we say it that much -- that doing the cutscenes is kinda like admitting defeat,” said Wolpaw. He quickly acknowledged that he plays and enjoys “a million games” that have cutscenes, such as Red Dead Redemption, Saints Row (“great”), and God Hand (“best game ever”). Portal 2 itself ends with a cutscene, ??but only because “it wasn’t going to look as good if we did it live, and it was go??ing to require a level load.” Sometimes, said Wolpaw, it’s okay to sacrifice the narrative in the interest of “[making] it look really good.”

“So here’s something pretentious” about adventure games: Wolpaw isn’t a big fan of traditional adventure games. After playing many of them in his youth, he realized that he “liked the writing -- they tend to be funny -??- but the puzzles were never very good, and there was a huge disconnect, just mechanically [between the gameplay and writing].” (He then joked that he “liked to tell Tim [Schafer] that all the time” during his tenure at Schafer’s studio, Double Fine, “with all the crappy games he made.”)

But Wolpaw’s sole pretentious comment, in his view, came when he characterized Portal as something that “seems like [...] kind of an adventure game: you’re not shooting people in the face; it requires thinking, but the puzzles are very logical; and it’s got a storyline through it.” In fact, Valve was surprised that more developers didn’t try to ape Portal after it became a runaway critical and commercial hit in 2007. “We thought, ‘This is it -- floodgates are open. Man, when Portal 2 comes out, we’re going to be competing against 17,000 other games that are like it.’ And then nothing really happened.” Even in the context of the recent renaissance of old-?school adventure games, Wolpaw suggested that “maybe something along these lines” is the way to go for adventure-game developers who want to grow their audience.

Choose Your Own Adventure books -- in a game: Wolpaw may not enjoy adventure games, but he does think that Choose Your Own Adventure books are “cool.” After mentioning the “like, five thousand books in [The Elder Scrolls IV] Oblivion,” he bestowed his “big idea” upon us: “What if they were Choose Your Own Adventure books? Like, you’d open it, and it was a Choose Your Own Adventure book? And it’d be fun -- it’d be, like, a fun 15-minute break from adventuring.” That might just get me to play an Elder Scrolls game.

Which came first, the puzzle or the space?: The world of Portal is purposefully abstract, Wolpaw explained, since Valve’s designers come up with a batch of puzzles tha??t are then inserted into the game. “You can design the space almost exactly like you want for the puzzle; [the space] doesn’t have to represent anything real. So [...] usually the puzzle will come first, a??nd you can conform the space to it.”

On Chell, and silent protagonists in general: “I don’t know that it’s specifically a Valve thing, but it’s a thing,” said Wolpaw of silent protagonists in videogames. Chell remains silent for a number of reasons. “I mean, for all you know, Chell [...] might actually have brain damage,” Wolpaw began, as the audience broke out into laughter. Indeed, comedy was a major impetus for having a silent protagonist in Portal. After explaining the two major types of comedy -- the straight man in a crazy world, and the crazy man in a straight world -- Wolpaw described Portal as the quintessential “world gone mad with the straight man, and the straigh??t man is you.”

In addition, it just sav??es time if Chell doesn’t speak, and it also serves the comedic timing better, according to Wolpaw. “I think you may want to know her backstory; you may want to hear her say things; but I guarantee, if she had to say her straight-man lines at the expense of half of the other dialogue, it would suck. And Jay and I would be miserable, and everybody’d be miserable.” Finally, Wolpaw doesn’t believe that people are particularly invested in Chell’s character, because she doesn’t have much of a personality. Instead, “We always assume she could talk and she simply just chooses not to, because the robots are all being dicks, and why give them the satisfaction of saying anything to them?”

For GLaDOS, how cruel is too cruel?: GLaDOS spends a lot of time cracking wise at Chell’s expense, and Wolpaw explained that because Chell is essentially a cipher for the player, the jokes only work if they’re “relatively absurd.” That’s why she taunts Chell about being adopted -- “I mean, nobody really thinks that adopted people are lesser than anybody else” -- and about her weight, “because clearly, Chell is not fat; I think [GLaDOS] even admits that at some point, later in the game.” An audience member suggested that GLaDOS belittles Chell like?? an overbearing?? mother would criticize her child, and that’s something that Wolpaw has experience with. “I was a fat kid my whole life,” said the now-svelte writer, “and I had this kind of passive-aggressive grandmother who was always needling me about it.”

Originally, Portal 2’s script called for an even harsher GLaDOS. According to the feedback from playtesters, she “was just too vicious and mean, and people were kind of getting ground down by just how awful she was being to you.” Even Ellen McLain, the computer’s voice, expressed reservations in the voice-over studio about some of the content. “I don&rsquo??;t know what we were thinking,” said Wolpaw.

A missed opportunity: Someone asked if Valve had cut anything particularly good from Portal 2, and after racking his brain, Wolpaw recalled that they had come up with a “Morgan Freeman, kind of, sphere,” but ended up not using it. No, seriously. “Like, you find him in this little ten-by-ten room, and he’s, like, the wisest guy about this ten-by-ten space. Doesn’t know anything about anything [else] -- is just blown away by the shit that’s five feet outside the ten-by-ten space -- but has a lot of advice that all, kind of, relates to things that were in the ten-by-ten space.” I wish I’d thought to ask if they had actually gotten Freeman to lend hi??s voice to the sphere.

Did Portal really need a story?: You’d think that the brilliantly designed puzzles alone would be enough to keep people enthralled, but Valve’s rigorous playtesting revealed otherwise. At some point, the players became “fatigued” during the original Portal -- “they were enjoying it, but even at the length it was, a quarter of the way through, they were like, ‘There’s nothing pulling me through this. It’s kind of fun, but it’s sterile and it’s sort of dry, and I’m just sort of done.’” So the story -- as sparse as it was -- was key in keeping players engaged. “Just ha??ving the voice [of GLaDOS], kind of, just saying something mildly amusing at the end and beginning of the levels was enough,” said Wolpaw.

--------

Again, if you’re interested in hearing more about this stuff, a video of the full session is available online.

The post Recap: Valve’s Erik Wolpaw speaks at NYU Game Center appeared first on Destructoid.