What is surprising is I was expecting a lot more news coverage on the Mana Bar opening this last weekend. Unfortunately most of the news sites are already too busy with news of God Of War 3 being released, or Final Fantasy 13 or PAX East which is coming up. Well whatever is in the news this is definitely not out there enough so we here at Campus Gamers have collected what we found to spread the news.

Unfortunately Campus Gamers is located in Canada and is too small to send someone out to experience the grand opening of the Mana Bar, but we still found out what is happening.
Today was the second day of the Mana Bar being open. For those who don’t know what the Mana Bar is, it is the world first video-game bar. The concept of drinking and playing games just goes hand-in-hand, but no one has done it before. Some concerns do come up wondering about managing expensive electronic equipment around drunks and will women actually come out to an event like this. Both these are questions that the Mana Bar has been dealing with, along with other questions on how to keep the bar exciting. As the current information collected from their Facebook and Twitter page, they are handling the situation well.
The first day of the bar being open they had an incredible turn out, with an extensive line outside of the venue. The managers of the bar actually brought out free pizza for the crowd to show their appreciation for everyone who came out.

For more information you can visit their website http://www.manabar.com.au/

I just found out about the MomoCon that happens in Alanta Gorgia Tech every year. I was reading my RSS feeds from Kotaku and I was appealed by an atricle describing Cosplay happening at Georgia Tech University in Alanta Georgia. I continue to read the article and check out some of these cosplay photos, which I have to say some are really good.

So I continued to explore the history of this event. For five years now the Alanta Georgia University’s Anime Club has been producing this cosplay event. At first it was strongly focused on Anime Cosplay but then grew into more gaming as gaming culture has also grown. What is really interesting is how big the event has grown they have keept it a free event.

The club works tightly with the University and Club Alumni, and they continue to produce a free convention for the fans in the area. This year they had a cap of attendances of 7,000 guests and I do hope they got close to that.

I will be keeping an eye out for MomoCon and maybe have some insights from the event in the future.

Gamers Outreach Foundation is a not-for-profit video-game organization based out of Saline Michigan. The organization started off as a rocky start in 2007, when the founders we’re actually just high school students. The founder, Zach Wigal, wanted to organize a Halo 2 contest at his local school. The unfortunate thing was Halo had a M rating and his high school mainly consisted of children under 18 years old. Now we all know a lot of kids under 18 do play Halo 2, but the parent-teacher committee at the school did not want the school to partake in this. Because of this the student couldn’t host their event.

The students still wanted to host an event, so with the focus of it being a charity fundraiser they held a public event. They took on the very positive charity focus of Gamers Outreach Foundation and hosted the Halo 2 Tournament along side with a local LAN Party. Their Halo 2 tournament had over 500 spectators and participants and raised $4,000 for Autism Society of America.

In May the Gamers Outreach Foundation will be hosting their 3rd Gamers for Giving event. They have a Facebook event page which already has over 500 people attending and another 1,000 maybes with still another month and a half away from the event. Campus Gamers will be attending this event, and report on the amazing ways these gamers are giving back to their charity.

For more information about this organization you can visit these sites:

Website
Event Webpage
Facebook Fan Page
Facebook Event Page
Wikipedia
Twitter Page

During the Game Developers Conference today in San Francisco a development studio Seven47 announced their new product, a new guitar that will forever change the rhythm gaming industry. Essentially they released a new controller used for videogames that is an actual guitar. Engadget has the press release of the product.

Many new sites had different things to say about the product, how it is good or it will fail. One that stood out particularly for me was the criticism by Joystick. The author, Andrew Yoon, was very blunt to say how he believed there was no apparent value of a new guitar game. With the giants of Guitar Hero and Rock Band to compete with there is very little a new competitor can offer to the market. The author went on future stating the equipment was too large compared to the other equipment being offered by Guitar Hero or Rock band. He also stated that if they didn’t offer drums and microphone equipment it would be a step backwards (which may not be the case according to an article by engadget).

The truth is this piece of equipment is not supposed to be a toy guitar, it is supposed to be closer to a real guitar. This new piece of equipment is supposed to emulate a guitar much better than any of the other products so far. With equipment using 6 strings instead of buttons, the user can learn to play chord and do much more than learn rhythm and timing being offered in other rhythm games so far. Also this guitar tool can be plugged into an amp and the user can jam with other guitar players (this is not going to be as good as a Gibson guitar, but a good learning guitar). Essentially this toy is a stepping stone for people who want to take their joy of the rhythm game to the next level, and learn an instrument.

I personally didn’t like rhythm games because I felt they took people away from actually learning to play music. It gave people an opportunity to pretend they were a rock star but never really learn the beauty of creating music. This tool will give people who are scared to learn a musical instrument a chance to become an artist with simple learning games. Supposedly the game is tooled in a way that after you beat the game in the hardest difficulty that you will actually be able to play the songs.
At this time very little is known about the actual game but supposedly the game will have a story different than any other. From the article written by the Xbox team, they state the story will involve a revolution where music is used as a weapon. At this time it will be a while before the game will be released so little information is known. As for graphics, the graphics of the game are sub-par, being compared to PS2 or Game Cube graphics. This is Seven47 first game created, and they are a guitar company moving into the gaming industry.

This is an excellent step forward to give gamer a chance to become actually musical artist. As more information becomes available about Seven47 new product, we’ll be following the story.

I was expecting this day to have much fanfare and excitement.  Here I am just 18 hours away from having a copy of Final Fantasy 13 in my hands and I’m so pumped up but I look around and everybody is all ‘meh’. 

From what I’ve read and heard about this game, Final Fantasy XIII is structured more like Final Fantasy 6, in that it leads you along a certain path in the story, then opens things up for you for the 2nd half of the game.  I’m excited by this comparison.  Final Fantasy 6 is one of the greatest games of all time and comparing anything to 6 is an honour. 

From the early reviews of the game, everybody is saying that these are the best graphics on the PS3 yet.  With games like Metal Gear Solid 4, Killzone 2, Uncharted 2, and God Of War 3, that’s hefty praise and I’m excited to play the game on my nice HD TV with the lights off and the high-tech speakers doing their thing ;p.

One thing that concerns me about this game, going into it knowing that there’s no towns (apparently) scares me a bit, I love towns and cities and stuff, I can relax in towns, I don’t have to be on the edge all the time.  I also don’t like the fact that I can only control one character at a time, but I’m sure these things will be just fine. 

The only thing I can think of as to why people are not that excited is the early reviews of the game.  They’ve been fairly weak for a Final Fantasy release.  I don’t think this means that it’s a bad game, but rather, the competition has risen to incredible heights.  Companies like BioWare and Naughty Dog and Electronic Arts are raising the level of excellence in teh video game industry and Square-Enix sort of needs to have a fire lit under their asses again.  Maybe the somewhat poor reception that Final Fantasy XIII is getting will wake up the head honcho’s of Square-Enix.

I’m expecting this game to give me my Final Fantasy fix until Versus XIII.  I don’t think that it will be my all time favourite Final Fantasy game, but I think it will definetely compete for top 5 and that’s all I can ask for.  In the past year, I’ve played Final Fantasy: Dissidia, Final Fantasy 4: The After Years and now I’m blessed with Final Fantasy XIII.  If you’re a Final Fantasy fan, you really can’t complain that you’re not getting your fair share of Final Fantasy!  And there’s still Agito XIII, Versus XIII (which look AMAZING btw) and Final Fantasy 14 to look forward to, not to mention a possible FF7 Remake or post-Advent Children game with Genesis perhaps?  And who knows, maybe a Final Fantasy 5 or 6 DS remake too.  Final Fantasy 15 news is probably around the corner as well…so much FF!

 

Yes it is true, scattered all over the internet Valve announced that a second portal will be released. This new Portal will be a full fledge game, which compared to it’s predecessor was a 2 hour puzzle game. Much information is coming out an spreading across the net like how this new Portal will also be multiplayer. MTV Multiplayer Blog has the full story on the Co-op of the new portal game.

The possibility of a co-op multiplayer Portal brings on a lot of possibilities. We all know Valve revolutionized the First Person genre with their release of Half-Life and they currently have some of the best multiplayer games available with the Team Fortress and Left 4 Dead series. The concept of a co-op portal game where two players shoot portals and solve puzzles could be profound.

Well looks like Valve was far too excited to announce this news that they couldn’t wait until the 9th for the Game Developers Conference. Well maybe they wanted to shine a bit brighter than everyone else, or maybe they were too excited. Another piece of new released is the Valve announcement of crossing over to the Mac. The image below has a Team Fortress parody of the IPod ads that clearly states that Valve is going to the Mac. For more information you can see the MTV Multiplayer Blog

The possibility of the next Portal being available for Mac users is an excellent idea. From experience most Mac users are more artsy and puzzle focused. This would be a great way to expand the market into a more casual market and convert them into more dedicated hardcore gamers. Portal was a great game to show that FPS could be more than just guns blowing things up and hopefully the way Valve is going we’ll see Portal open the mind of our fellow artist friends and have a bit more gaming coming in from there.

Deviant Artist – Daniel Velez

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the UWGamers Fight On! event. It was quite a pleasure to attend with lots of friendly faces. This was University of Waterloo’s first fighting game event of the season. Fortunately with the support of Pownz gaming center and the excellent management of Robert Black the event was a success.

I arrived a bit late myself so I couldn’t enter the tournament, but by the sounds of it the school had a hefty turn out. There was a total number 34 of competitors were that spanned both Waterloo & Laurier Univeristy. Actually word of this event did reach out to the local gaming community and the school also had entrants from as far as Mississauga and Hamilton. Including spectators and passer byers the event was hosting well into 70-80 people.
The tournament had an array of competitors, with people sporting with fighters like Ryu, Abel and Balrog. Actually a lot of non-standard charcters did make it to the scene with Vega, Cammy, Rose and Rufus being some of the best players at the tournament. Each entrant paid a $5 entry fee, and $4 of that was entered into the prize pool. There was a total prize pool of $136 divided amongst the top 3 contenders.

The top player was Peter, a university of Waterloo student, playing with Abel walked away with $95.20 cold hard cash. Next up was Wilson who was playing with Ryu and Balrog, who was awarded $27.20. And in third place Calvin was awarded $13.20, who was playing with Ryu and Sagat. For complete list of competitors and the their ranking can be found on the Shoryuken Forums

Pownz gaming center supplied all the equipment for the tournament, which included 4 LCD TVs, 4 X-Boxes, Arcade Sticks and Speakers. The Pownz gaming center CEO actually attend the event and participated as Vega, one of the best Vega players I’ve seen if I can say so myself. On the side he met a greeted a number of the spectators making sure everyone was comfortable and promoted Pownz next gaming event, which is an entry event for the ESports Championships.

As a spectator of the event, and this being one of the first fighting events, it was a little intimidating at first. Fortunately for me I was greeted by a friend as soon as I walked in, the runner up of the tournament Wilson. Socializing at a gaming event is something different since most people are watching the game and staring at screens, but fortunately UWGamers has a very friendly crew that was nice to meet. A few friendly face and a couple pretty girls did make me feel welcome, but I really came to play the games. The UWGamers had a number of casual gaming booths scattered around the tournament for easy pick-up and play. Spectators were given the option of playing Soul Caliber 4, Tatsunoko vs Capcom, Melty Blood and Super Street Fighter 4 HD remix. People at the event were always welcoming to allow new people to play and give a few pointers.

This was Robert Black’s first gaming tournament event. With the success of the event we here at Campus Gamers hope that he host many more in the future. Thank you Robert Black and UWGamers for hosting an excellent event.

Laura Croft and the Tomb Raider series is one of the most lucrative gaming series in the industry. The beautiful female heroine has been in our games, movies and comics. In 2006 the Guinness Book of World Records recognized her as the “Most Successful Human Videogame Heroine”.

The series hasn’t announced a new title since 2008’s release of Tomb Raider Underworld. Today Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics announced their plans of the new Laura Croft game. Not much has been released other than the logo above, which surprisingly doesn’t keep the Tomb Raider name. It is believed that more information will be announced at this year’s Game Developers Conference held on March 9th.

Word has been that the female character has been redesigned to be a more empowering character to draw in more female gamers. Laura Croft is a brilliant and sexy character in video-games, but she has been given the title of eye candy being one of the first most recognizable female characters. At this time videogames have the impression of being a boys club but with current market trends the industry is hoping to have more girls enjoying this form of entertainment. It will be exciting to see how Laura Croft has been redesigned to appeal to the female audience.

The trailer for Halo:Reach was released today, and now you get a chance to see some of the game play of the latest addition of the Halo Series.

Now in the trailer you do get to see for a glimps that Jet Packs will be avaliable. This is totally Awesome, because Jet Packs will add a new addition to game play. A recent critic by Zero Punctuation explains how awesome Jet Packs in shooting games can be. Now he is critiquing Dark Void, which the game unfortunately didn’t do that well in his opinion, but the Jet Packs are awesome. This new addition to game play will bring lots of hope to awesome adventures in the next Halo installment.

Havcee you been considering going to design school and acquire the skills to be in the gaming industry.  Princeton Review ranked the top 50 schools to go to for the skills.  Princeton review is more commonly known to analysis which school is the best party school, but here they are stretching out to review the best design school. 

The listing is:
1. University of Southern California, Interactive Media Division
2. DigiPen Institute of Technology
3. Drexel University, RePlay (Digital Media & Computer Science)
4. Becker College, Game Design and Game Programming
5. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences
6. The Art Institute of Vancouver, Game Art & Design/Visual & Games Programming
7. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Interactive Media and Game Development (IMGD)
8. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab

For the remaining 42 schools you can go to Pinceton Review Site