The OXM Blog

Naughty but niche: how Namco Bandai beat the mainstream - 360 

Joe Skrebels ponders Japan's latest success story

Dark Souls has been a success, weirdly. Few would have predicted that the follow-up to a niche, PS3 exclusive action-RPG so hard that it made the collective gaming hive mind weep with masochistic joy would capture the imagination of so many. But capture that hivemind it has, ensnaring a cool 1.19 million people in Europe and North America alone according to the companys most recent sales report. 5 comments

Why I never want to play Bayonetta 2 - 360 

The sunny side of the recent Sega cancellation rumour

If theres a quality which defines Platinum Games success, a single magic word which underwrites the Osaka-based independents cosmos of triumphs, that quality is surely inconsistency. Founded by three of Japans most distinguished creators, Platinum is a master of the wondrously broken. Though graceful visions, its games are rife with colossal tonal, stylistic and mechanical shifts. Just look at Okami, a heavenly Zelda clone which somehow finds room for smut jokes and thumb-wrenching calligraphy. Or Godhand, a realistically proportioned brawler in which massive arcade fruit and treasure chests splurge from the pockets of pummelled corpses. 7 comments

Why Black Ops 2 is the most exciting Call of Duty yet - 360 

Mike's seen it and he can barely contain himself

Confession time. Last year, as November approached, I wasnt at all excited for Modern Warfare 3. Dont get me wrong, I all but knew it would be a good game, but excitement is a different thing. Novelty is excitements bosom buddy and, great as it is, theres very little thats new or different in Infinity Wards most recent effort. Its just Call of Duty executed really well. 20 comments

Do publishers give too much away before release? - 360 

Poll: are games being drip-fed to death?

Lets start this one off with a culinary metaphor, because developers absolutely love culinary metaphors. Todays unwilling special guest/verbal crash test dummy? Tim Willits, creative director at id Software. He reckons comparing Rages suite of multiplayer functions to the average online FPS is like comparing steak to a McDonalds meal. 18 comments

How our obsession with bugs leads to blander games - 360 

Consistency is nice, but wouldn't you prefer more content?

High Metacritic scores correlate with high sales figures, and most publishers chase better scores the only way they reliably can, by spending more money. An extra six months in development can bump a Metacritic score up into the next sales bracket. If youve already invested 20 million dollars into the development and marketing of your product, the pressure to get things right becomes substantial, while the relative weight of extra costs isnt as big. Wed like to claim that those ruthless economists are wrong about all this, but the fact of the matter is that it works. Metacritic might not drive the sales directly, but its a useful gauge. 10 comments

Xbox 720: 11 next gen controllers theyll never make - 360 

Log follows up on Ed and Matt's next gen Xbox controller pieces

Edwin and Matt have had their say about how we should be controlling the next generation of Xbox. Matt plumps for the status quo, like a hopeless man plumping the cushion that he wants to sit on until he dies. Edwin hopes for something, anything, with the detail-free optimism of a religious man. It looks like its down to me to come up with some solutions. 10 comments

Why I hope Xbox 720 drops the Xbox 360 pad - 360 

Sometimes you need to throw the baby out with the bathwater

Theres a lot of vintage Peter Molyneux doing the rounds right now, thanks to a spate of interviews before and after the Fable designers decision to quit Microsoft in March. Heres a chunk from the Soundbytes section in the latest issue of Edge, plucked (I suspect) from a Game Developer Conference interview, in which the Molynaut takes issue with samey design. Every single controller-based game I pick up now demands that I strap my left hand around the controller, my thumb to the thumbstick, he declared, adding later: every experience on Xbox is the same. 32 comments

Why is Skyrims magic so boring? An amateur wizard ponders - 360 

Games do magic a lot. But they don't always do it well.

In videogames, magic is the sword with which I flay back the shades of ignorance, the rod with which I bend all Nature to my will. In real life, its my third most successful ice-breaker at parties. (Number two is telling that joke I know about the monkey and the Scotch egg. Number one, of course, is letting on that Im a videogames journalist.) 14 comments

The classiest videogame sex scenes - 360 

The classiest blog post you'll ever read

The following few hundred words is either going to be the very first game designers Kama Sutra, or a fearful ray of light on the fuming recesses of my psyche. Or both. Whatever happens, there will be videos of naked people exploring each others nakedness. Not safe for work? Quite possibly. 4 comments

Why all the best hardcore games are casual games - 360 

"Casualification"? Give me a break

You know what I really, really hate about casual gamers? They have no idea theyre casual gamers. The only ones who seem conscious of this seismic existential category are people like you and I, the red-blooded hardcore. Hah! Stupid casuals. Just look at them all - grannies with iPhones and men in white pyjamas and single female lawyers, ambling around down there without a care in the world, oblivious to their own criminal want of taste. 4 comments