The XBOX ONE will come packing some serious power with an 8 Core CPU, 8GB of system memory, a 500GB HDD, Blu-Ray drive, 802.11n WiFi (with WiFi Direct), HDMI in and out and USB 3.0. The controller has also been upgraded to increase comfort and responsiveness. The console will come with a built-in DVR to allow you the option to record your gaming highlights and post them to your social networks. XBOX LIVE is being hugely overhauled with the promise of 300,000 dedicated servers for lag-free, online gameplay. Microsoft promises that the XBOX ONE will have 15 exclusive game titles, eight of which are going to be brand new franchises.

XBOX ONE users will be able to use the console’s built-in Kinect to snap various applications to the side of the screen so that more than one application can be run at one time. Skype will now be integrated into XBOX LIVE using the new and improved Kinect’s HD camera and will allow users to be able to video call friends while doing an assortment of other tasks.

The overall presentation was weak in the sense that it didn’t really deliver what the gamers wanted to hear. Nonetheless, I am personally very excited about the XBOX ONE and hope to hear more details regarding price point, release date, and game library at E3.

One thing that comes to mind is the nostalgia factor. When I was a youngin’, I played the same games over and over in hopes of at least seeing the next level and gain that feeling of accomplishment. Those games were primarily “Ghouls & Ghosts”, “Rygar”, “Shining in the Darkness”, “D”, “The Immortal” and the “King’s Field” series which begot the Souls series. (Few know that). I played these games tirelessly, hoping to see those end credits which, in some cases, (Ghouls & Ghosts/The Immortal) never happened. But they were so endearing, and damned fun, that I kept coming back. They entertained and infuriated me at the same time. I would curse them for weeks but that wouldn’t stop me from picking that controller up and diving back in. This is one reason the Souls series works.

Gamers today forget the real challenge we faced as youths. Some games were meticulously carried out while others were just plain broken and suffered negligent programming. Regardless, it made the replay factor extremely high. We persevered through unfair difficulty, cheap AI and rotten programming to find an end path. Most games today hold your hand and give you more than a fair chance at seeing those end credits. So much so, that in a lot of cases, you can see multiple endings for getting your hand held more than once! Don’t get me wrong, I am not knocking contemporary games, I love a lot of them. I am just praising a mechanic that we haven’t seen in quite a while.

Okay, Elder Scrolls’ fanboys, back off before you even start. The Elder Scrolls series is no doubt among some of the most well thought out atmospheres we have ever traversed. But it’s “go-fetch” mechanic makes it a bit… lackluster. I loved Skyrim and Oblivion but, the Souls series never made you fetch a bunch of useless items for the inhabitants because they are a bunch of mindless, cowardly reprobates. Demon’s/Dark Souls’ stories were a lot more cryptic, there is no denying that. (which may be it’s one drawback to some) And its inhabitants are few and far between. You would get little out of anyone except for some cryptic message almost impossible to decipher and very little direction on where to go. I know this isn’t for everyone, but if you want to turn your imagination off and be told a story, you would be better off with something like the Uncharted series. (great games by the way!) No, the Souls series let’s the player unravel and decipher its cryptic lore and inhabitants. These people are not to be trusted, few will help and all are INSANE. Some will even show up later in different places and backstab you because they have gone mad. Rest assured, there is NOTHING safe in the Souls universe. So you could “learn the path” but that isn’t what we are dealing with here.

Would a timed battle system be more for you? Come on… The Souls series isn’t about learning the path, it is about SURVIVING it. You have to approach each battle with a different strategy. Anything could happen at any moment. CHEAP or OTHERWISE, this game brings a unique challenge. Not to mention, the world you journey through connects like no other you have seen! You start in one area and end up in the depths of another only to find out you just traveled what seemed like hundreds of miles and you just opened up a shortcut to your original starting point.

YOU WILL DIE …A LOT. You don’t like dying? Well, have you considered death as a learning experience to shape your gaming skill set? This is what it is about! Go headstrong into the fray, you will lose. Think about an attack plan? You still may fail! The important thing is, you get there in the end. When you do, wowie! the feeling of elation is unprecedented. You feel like you actually accomplished something. Even with the wiki’s, walkthroughs, character builds and tutorials, you will still need to rely on your noodle to get you out of these situations. Especially when you’re dealing with boss battles. The Souls series made me want to throw things, but I am a better gamer now with a unique skill set that is unmatched in certain situations.

As if the world of this series wasn’t brutal enough, you have to worry about OTHER PLAYERS. People can be called in to help you but they can also invade at any moment whether you are ready or not. They will find you and they will kill you. Concordantly, you can invade another player’s world or help them. There is no true MULTIPLAYER to speak of; you very rarely get the chance to call in your friends for help and if you do manage it, it’s a fragile system you are dealing with. Players can also leave messages on the ground to help or trick the poor sod who doesn’t pay attention. But the ruthless online of this series will drive you to breaking points… but there is always REVENGE!

Look, in a gaming world where EA, Square Enix, Capcom and other TITANS can’t even get their IP’s correct anymore, From Software has brought us two of the best games you probably aren’t playing for inane reasons. Don’t dissuade yourself because you don’t like to die. Understand that it is part of what the game is about. If you can play Final Fantasy, Dragon’s Dogma, Skyrim and Dragon Age, you can play the Souls series with no problem. It’s just not going to change your diaper for you every time you start crying. With Dark Souls II on the horizon and Demon’s Souls being offered FREE if you’re a PS+ member, you cannot go wrong. Quit the bellyaching and unjustified judgment and find Demon’s Souls or Dark Souls for $10.00. I will reimburse you with a swift slap in the mush if by the time you get 1/4 of the way through it, you aren’t hooked.

The Souls series is not for EVERYONE. It’s a unique game with some interesting throwbacks and very challenging gameplay. Its rewards are plenty and its punishments are brutal, but that’s the name of the game here… “PREPARE TO DIE”. Anyone who played the King’s Field series will not be a stranger to what is happening here. To those of you who didn’t, well, that is understandable due to their obscurity. And while they are certainly worth finding and playing, they won’t help you too much with these. They set the tone more than anything else. These will breathe new life into your gaming library and give you something worth fighting for! PRAISE THE SUN!

Cello Fortress is a unique mix of a live cello concert and a computer game. Up to four players from the audience play a twin-stick-shooter using game controllers. They attack cannons, which are controlled by the cellist.

Joost van Dongen, cellist and creator of Cello Fortress, explains the experience from the point of view of the cellist: “The challenge is to not only control the game in the right way, but also play good music while doing so. Just quickly skipping between the various attacks would result in horrible music, so I really need to think ahead a bit and make the music flow fluently from attack to attack. Add to this that it is all improvised, which means that I need to come up with the melodies while playing, and it becomes clear what a challenge this game is for the cellist. The result works brilliantly: playing, hearing and seeing Cello Fortress in action is quite a show!“

Cello Fortress is currently touring. In the meanwhile, the game is also still being developed and improved further.

About Joost van Dongen
Joost van Dongen is a Dutch indie game creator, who is making Cello Fortress in his spare time. Before working on Cello Fortress, he made the abstract racing game Proun, with its striking minimalistic art style. Proun was not only a hit among gamers and reviewers, but was also exhibited in several prestigious modern art museums. Joost has been a hobby cellist for over 20 years, and plays in the baroque orchestra Kunstorkest. In his daily life, Joost is lead programmer and co-founder of Ronimo Games, the game development studio behind the successful 2D MOBA Awesomenauts (Steam/Xbox360/PS3) and the award winning side-scrolling strategy game Swords & Soldiers (PS3/Wii/Steam/iOS/Android). When they were still students, Ronimo also made the original version of the colourful painting extravaganza De Blob. Cello Fortress, however, is a solo project that is being developed by Joost in the weekends and evenings. Want to know more about Joost’s adventures as a game developer? Read his blog for weekly bits of dev insight!

So what’s the problem? Well, nothing really. Unless of course you want to count redundancy… I played through Skyrim in its entirety. While it’s no doubt one of the finer looking games to come out in the past decade, I found myself a little on the fence with it. Now, bear in mind, I am only using Skyrim as an example. However, most of what encompasses the modern RPG gameplay are the “go fetch” missions. Where “someone or some thing” needs “someone or some thing” in order for you to advance in either the story, character customization or a side mission. These are fun and good except when they are not! I just don’t understand why these people/creatures constantly misplace everything they own or need. This style of playing quickly becomes boring when it makes up most of the hours you have painstakingly and meticulously devoted to your character. It makes the story appear a lot thinner and its inhabitants dumb and useless. Of course when the town bar maid misplaces her favorite ring in the bowels of the world map, who better than a heroic protag to come to her rescue? Or when your personal trainer in the arcane arts requires the scepter of his old mentor who has gone missing while researching old tomes in the ancient ruins, who should come to his aid other than a stout, young, agile hero? So that’s what we have become? Errand boys and girls to the incompetent inhabitants of our gorgeously thought out world?

Come on, where is the “mixing-it-up” factor? I explored all edges of the map in Skyrim. I traversed all the forests and chasms Dragon Age offered. I even went through Dragon Age II and explored the ONE dungeon they gave us OVER AND OVER AGAIN. But, since when did story become such an inane concept? Don’t give me an “item” or “tome” to go after, give me a REASON! Write the story! give me something that drives me to go there and defeat the beasties! Make me so angry that even fast-traveling will not satiate my vengeance quick enough! Make me so desperate that I cut everything and anything down who stands in my way to stop what is to unfold! Put some EMOTION behind my travels! I want to be invested in what I am doing! Sure, I don’t mind the odd trinket to locate but, the rinse and repeat factor gets supremely tiresome and it just bogs down the timing and everything that makes the game enjoyable in the first place.

Of course, I don’t mean to discredit Skyrim or its ilk, but, I put a lot of hours into Skyrim and ALL of its DLC. I can’t help but feel that story really took a back seat. It only took me a couple of days or three to get through the main story and everything else was “Go get …”, “Bring me…” or “Find …” I mean really, it gets a bit… silly. I really LIKED Skyrim. I really LIKED Dragon Age, I LOVED the Souls Series. Ironically enough it was because the story is slim and cryptic. But why were these successful for me? Because they got to the point and every moment was a calculative endurance test. While the Souls series lacked some of the deeper story elements, it doesn’t really stack up with what I am talking about. You can create the most beautiful world, score the most organic and striking soundtrack, have the most superb voice cast and of course, I will appreciate it with all of my jaw-dropping capabilities. But, the most wonderfully constructed film can lose its luster if the story suffers… “SUCKERPUNCH” anyone? It goes the same for video games.

I admit, I haven’t played EVERYTHING out there, but I have played a good range of things offered. Let’s take a few steps back with the “go-fetch” mechanic and look at what really drives us as players. We want to experience our games, feel emotion, feel attached. Sure, if I want mindless action, I can find a myriad of things out there to switch off all thought processes and just button mash. And that is great! But if I am to invest an absurd amount of time in my character’s nose placement and hair color, I want to be WOWIED! Remember when Aerith met her fate in Final Fantasy VII? remember how shocked you were? Remember how angry you felt to exact revenge? Remember how the gaming community searched high and low (even to this day) to see if we could bring her back? Well, it’s been a while since I have felt any of those things. I want it back.

Obviously waking up with a box locked on your head would be a horrible experience. And if you didn’t immediately think you were in the middle of a Saw film, then maybe you’d try Mr. Runner’s strategy. Mr. Runner 2 uses a similar level choosing system as games like Mario 64 where you jump through various paintings within a hallway that lead to each level. The hallway is also filled with various goodies that allow you to purchase power-ups, view game credits, and all sorts of other neat little Easter eggs.

So your job is to jump into paintings and beat each level within that painting. Each painting has a theme, whether it be a giant cat that chases you or an over-sized whale that empties its blow hole onto your head, (yes, that was meant to sound wrong) you never know what you might encounter. And that is just one of this game’s strengths. As Mr. Runner, your job is simple; either run fast, or slow down. Either way, you’re running. Several death traps will try to flatten you or drown you but you can avoid this early demise by either sprinting ahead or slowing down soon enough to dodge. In the heat of the moment, it can sometimes be difficult to decide whether to speed up or slow down, so you’re constantly on your toes.

My only real complaint is that sometimes when you’re trying to slow down, the controls feel somewhat sluggish and unresponsive. I think that this may have been done on purpose, however, to prevent the player from being able to stop entirely. However, it feels like you’re in a car with weak breaks. I can’t tell you how many times I died simply trying to stop. And when you die, you have to use a revive potion in order to pick up from where you left off. And if you run out of revive potions you can purchase them in the game’s store for 5,000 in-game gold; a hefty price to pay for death. In other words, don’t die! You’re better off taking your time through each level to ensure your safety.

The graphics and gameplay of Mr. Runner 2 are really what drive this game forward. The worlds are colorful, vibrant and full of energy. The gameplay keeps you guessing and alert at all times, creating quite an exciting platformer. There are dozens of unlockable and purchasable helmets and items to acquire to aid you in your endless running journey. Currently I am wearing the “Dumb Teen Killer” mask that closely resembles the Jason Vorhees hockey mask. Many quirky Easter eggs scattered throughout this game are what gives Mr. Runner 2 its charm. It’s definitely an easy purchase for only .99 cents. Don’t miss out.

In the story mode, you (nameless player 1/some prisoner) and your good friend Hatty Hattington are shipwrecked on a seemingly deserted island, or at least that’s how it looks at first glance. After searching the island, you and Hatty find yourself amidst the cats that inhabit the land. These cats just aren’t your typical feline companions though, they’re very tech-savvy cats who enjoy watching you in theater performances that are cruel and deadly. In the meantime, your pal Hatty has been gifted a classy looking gentleman’s top hat that has some strange possessing powers to it. The top hat’s powers makes Hatty work for the cats and even against you. With that said, I won’t spoil the ending, but your goal here is to survive all of the acts on stage and save Hatty from those ferocious cats.

The gameplay is definitely rage-inducing to say the least, but it’s well worth it. As frustrated as you get during times in this title, you’ll find yourself going back for some more torment. You can either go through it alone, or play co-op. The levels for single and co-op differ, so don’t expect a friend joining to make it easy. Each level consists of some fairly simple goals: collect at least three gems. This will only merit you a fairly low grade though. To achieve an A+ performance grade, you’ll need to collect all of the gems (usually max of 5-7), a ball of yarn (optional), all while making sure you complete the level in a timely fashion. Levels are made of various kinds of blocks that can be your friend or foe. These blocks can be sticky pink walls, ones that shoot you up and resemble square volcano rocks, some with buttons and many others you will discover. In addition, little adorable pigs will help you conquer spikes, bird like creatures with eat you up and spit you right out to reach a block, and cute little fluffy blocks will maneuver you to your destinations. You’ll also come across some less than kind elements that consist of blocks with deadly spikes or electrifying rays, cruel cats, and some sort of hideous four-legged animal that will devour you upon contact. Even the water is dangerous! Needless to say, you always want to proceed with caution no matter how simple a task may appear.

Besides your standard story mode, you’re also given some mini-games, for up to four players. “Ball Game” is a match where your task is to get the ball in the basket. “Challenge” is a game that brings you back to previous levels, allowing you to get the best time compared to other players. In “Color The Wind” your objective is to color more blocks than the opposing team. Other arena games include, Grab The Gold, Horse, King of the Hill, Muckle, and Soul. All offer great entertainment and will keep that controller in your hand for hours. Another mode is Time Attack, which explains itself.

One of the best options offered in the game is the Level Editor. This tool allows you to create your own stage for others to enjoy (or cringe upon) when uploaded to the community. You can make a level of any game type, or even make a little series for people to go through a few of yours in one sitting. I originally downloaded this game after hearing about it from PAX East 2013 and watching the trailer with high expectations, since I adored Castle Crashers so much. Luckily, I loved it to bits and I am currently going through a second playthrough, which I’m sure won’t be my last. This title was well worth the buy and well worth the frustrating moments it bestowed upon me. Regardless of the rage moments, this game is fun. The songs get stuck in your head for hours and it gives you an opportunity to either help your friends out, or leave them to fall into the spikes…oops!

“On Tuesday May 21^st, we’ll mark the beginning of a new generation of games, TV and entertainment. On that day, we’ll be holding a special press event on the XBOX campus and we invite you to join us via the live global stream that will be available on XBOX LIVE and XBOX.com. If you are in the US or Canada, you can also watch the broadcast on Spike TV.”

On that day, we’ll share our vision for Xbox, and give you a real taste of the future. Then, 19-days later at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, we’ll continue the conversation and showcase our full lineup of blockbuster games.”

Not much is known about the future of Xbox at the moment but there are many rumors about the console such as that it will be unable to play used games, will come with an updated Kinect Camera, and will require an internet connection at all times. None of these rumors have been confirmed, however, and the ‘always online’ feature may have been over exaggerated according to recent sources.

This event comes 19 days before E3, where according to XBOX LIVE programming director Larry Hryb, they will “continue the conversation” by showcasing all of their upcoming games.

This E3 is shaping up to be one of the most exciting events in gaming history with both next generation consoles making an appearance and Nintendo surprisingly holding no major conference of their own at all. Who knows what the future may bring…