It just makes zero sense to charge more for a game rental than full ownership, yet this issue litters PS Now in its current form. Dead Island: Riptide? $24.99 for a 90-day rental on PS Now, but only $21.20 to buy your own disc on Amazon (opens in new tab). Darksiders 2? Same price for a rental, compared to $18.86 (opens in new tab) for a physical copy. Even Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition is edged out when it comes to cost. A 90-day rental for $22.90 is a weird price in and of itself, and that’s also undercut at $20.98 by Amazon (opens in new tab) for the whole shebang. This forces the consumer to choose between hunting down a physical copy for cheaper, or paying more for instant, time-limited access.

Those are the most egregious price disparities, but there are some decent values here. Alone in the Dark: Inferno will cost you just $4.99 for a 90-day rental, while buying it Amazon (opens in new tab) will run you around $40. As long as you can finish a game within 90 days, a rental like this is a great value. And this doesn’t just apply to full-price retail releases; downloadable games like Bloodrayne: Betrayal and Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 are just $3.99 for a week-long rental (plenty of time to finish either) versus $9.99 for full purchases.

Thing is, several titles are priced so unwisely that just springing an extra few bucks will get you the full game. Killzone 3 is $14.99 for a 90-day rental, and just $18.99 on Amazon. (opens in new tab) Twisted Metal has the same rental price, and only $15.80 online (opens in new tab). This slight price difference is enough to sway many away from a rental.

This pricing disparity must be overcome because, simply put, there are better ways for PS Now to function. Is the answer a subscription model? That could work–a flat, monthly fee for unlimited rentals, like Gamefly’s model, can sate even the hungriest Sony fanboy. And a flat subscription fee would make the value of individual rentals irrelevant. An all-encompassing price versus standalone rentals is just a smarter way for gamers to spend their hard-earned money. It’s a value proposition that appeals to both thrifty gamers and hardcore fans.

But whose responsibility is it to keep these prices fair and balanced? Who has to decide among individual rentals, subscriptions, or deepening the catalogue? Sony. PS Now isn’t something you look at and think, “Look at all those Way Forward games” or, “Wow, Square Enix titles!” This is a Sony PlayStation venture. Sony is a used car salesman here, and only the worst salesman in the world would charge more for a rental car than a brand new car of the same model.

In its current (and yes, still beta) form, PlayStation Now just doesn’t seem like all that great of a deal. It’s Sony’s responsibility to remedy this by simply offering reasonable, competitive prices across the board. Otherwise, PlayStation Now might never get off the ground–and that would be awful news in an age when digital downloads are so much more convenient than physical media.

The post Why inconsistent pricing is Playstation Nows biggest hurdle appeared first on Game News.

All gamers are carnivores and savages. Oh sure, some of us rarely eat meat in real life, but when we’re in a game, the thing we most want to see is our enemies turned into meat, the more rare and bloody the better. There’s something almost primal about seeing your foe turned inside out – you didn’t just win. You ripped them asunder. And there is satisfaction there. So which game this year looks best poised to satisfy our not-at-all-unhealthy bloodlust?

The Nominees

Rage
Capable of delivering some of the most eye-wateringly detailed graphics on the planet, Rage nonetheless keeps the gore quotient realistic and grounded. However, this creates one of those “less is more” situations – when you see the spray after unloading a shotgun shell into a mutant’s stomach, or watch as an expertly-thrown wingblade cleanly pops an enemy’s head off his body, you feel like a true master assassin. Preview

Dead Island
Zombies come apart more easily than not-yet-undead beings, and nowhere is that more evident than in this open world splatterfest. But the appeal here isn’t just that you can chop your foes into giblets. It’s the creative ways in which you can do it. Taking a cue from the Dead Rising series, Dead Island enables you to combine things like a hatchet and dynamite, which results in the ultimate sticky grenade when thrown.Preview

Prototype 2
Another open world game, but in this one you are a living bioweapon capable of incredible acts of destruction. Your body is capable of sprouting massive tendrils of living flesh, your arms can turn into blades six feet long, and nearly everything you see, be it monster, machine, human or some combination of the three, needs to be hacked into pieces. And if that wasn’t enough, you can consume people – literally – to take on their appearance.Preview

Rise of Nightmares
There’s no sense beating around the bush: Rise of Nightmares is not the prettiest game on this list. But it makes up for its lack of graphical detail by using Kinect to forge the most tangible connection between the player’s motions and what’s happening onscreen. It doesn’t quite come through in video, but here’s the point: It’s one thing to twiddle a controller stick to hack at a zombified face with an axe. But when you’re making the actual motion to press a chainsaw into a brain-eating ghoul and watching it rip through their rotting torso, it feels just a little bit more empowering. Preview

BloodRayne Betrayal
It may be the sole 2D representative on this list, but that doesn’t mean BloodRayne Betrayal is even remotely shy about letting massive gouts of crimson burst from every freshly-skewered enemy. The physiology of it all is questionable – we’re literally not sure how a creature of that size could contain that much blood. But it sure looks and feels good.Preview

Gears of War 3
A late entry, Gears of War 3 almost missed this list – as much as we love chainsawing friends, we’ve been doing that for years. But then we saw the E3 demo, in which a giant sea creature was attacking our heroes. Their solution? Blast it in the face until an eye bursts open, leaving the remnants dangling from its socket until the other one got blown out as well. This bodes well to us.Preview

And the winner
is%26hellip;

Prototype 2
Truthfully, this one wasn’t even close. Prototype 2 delivers theblood and guts in more different ways than you could imagine. It’s not just that your arms become blades. It’s not just that you’re practically made of gore, sprouting giant meat tentacles all the time. It’s not just that you can stabbing some poor bastard in the neck with your arm-dagger, which will make 40-foot tendrils shoot out of his body, grab everything withing range, then retract and explode. It’s all that and more. You can see this particular hell at around the 1:06 mark in the video below, but you should really just watch the whole thing. We have a winner.Preview

The Nominees

Rage
Capable of delivering some of the most eye-wateringly detailed graphics on the planet, Rage nonetheless keeps the gore quotient realistic and grounded. However, this creates one of those “less is more” situations – when you see the spray after unloading a shotgun shell into a mutant’s stomach, or watch as an expertly-thrown wingblade cleanly pops an enemy’s head off his body, you feel like a true master assassin. Preview

Dead Island
Zombies come apart more easily than not-yet-undead beings, and nowhere is that more evident than in this open world splatterfest. But the appeal here isn’t just that you can chop your foes into giblets. It’s the creative ways in which you can do it. Taking a cue from the Dead Rising series, Dead Island enables you to combine things like a hatchet and dynamite, which results in the ultimate sticky grenade when thrown.Preview

Prototype 2
Another open world game, but in this one you are a living bioweapon capable of incredible acts of destruction. Your body is capable of sprouting massive tendrils of living flesh, your arms can turn into blades six feet long, and nearly everything you see, be it monster, machine, human or some combination of the three, needs to be hacked into pieces. And if that wasn’t enough, you can consume people – literally – to take on their appearance.Preview

Rise of Nightmares
There’s no sense beating around the bush: Rise of Nightmares is not the prettiest game on this list. But it makes up for its lack of graphical detail by using Kinect to forge the most tangible connection between the player’s motions and what’s happening onscreen. It doesn’t quite come through in video, but here’s the point: It’s one thing to twiddle a controller stick to hack at a zombified face with an axe. But when you’re making the actual motion to press a chainsaw into a brain-eating ghoul and watching it rip through their rotting torso, it feels just a little bit more empowering. Preview

BloodRayne Betrayal
It may be the sole 2D representative on this list, but that doesn’t mean BloodRayne Betrayal is even remotely shy about letting massive gouts of crimson burst from every freshly-skewered enemy. The physiology of it all is questionable – we’re literally not sure how a creature of that size could contain that much blood. But it sure looks and feels good.Preview

Gears of War 3
A late entry, Gears of War 3 almost missed this list – as much as we love chainsawing friends, we’ve been doing that for years. But then we saw the E3 demo, in which a giant sea creature was attacking our heroes. Their solution? Blast it in the face until an eye bursts open, leaving the remnants dangling from its socket until the other one got blown out as well. This bodes well to us.Preview

And the winner
is%26hellip;

Prototype 2
Truthfully, this one wasn’t even close. Prototype 2 delivers theblood and guts in more different ways than you could imagine. It’s not just that your arms become blades. It’s not just that you’re practically made of gore, sprouting giant meat tentacles all the time. It’s not just that you can stabbing some poor bastard in the neck with your arm-dagger, which will make 40-foot tendrils shoot out of his body, grab everything withing range, then retract and explode. It’s all that and more. You can see this particular hell at around the 1:06 mark in the video below, but you should really just watch the whole thing. We have a winner.Preview

The post GamesRadar E3 2011 Awards: Most Satisfying Gore appeared first on Game News.

Hey, videogames are a visual medium. Therefore, graphics are part of the package. How large a part they play is one of those things gamers will argue about for hours, withlots ofphrases like”graphics whore”, “frames per second”, “gameplay first”, and “realism vs art” thrown about. We say don’t overcomplicate things – we like pretty pictures, plain and simple. The question is, which one did we find the prettiest?

The Nominees:

Rayman Origins
Gorgeous hand-drawn visuals make this one of those games you simply have to see in motion to believe. Stupidly lushhigh-res backgrounds burst with vibrant color as impossibly fluid characters jump, stomp, and fly through the world with the grace of Olympic figure skaters.Preview

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron
Designed by the lead artist on Okami, the look of El Shaddai seems almost like a stained-glass window come to life. But more important than the technology is the art design. Dream-like architecture andsweeping vistas are everywhere, and we’ve yet to see a level in which something, be it clouds or water or whatever, wasn’t moving. The world of El Shaddai might not look like anything on Earth, but you can’t say it doesn’t look alive.Preview

Far Cry 3
We love good art design, but sometimes it’s a game’s sheer technological prowess that blows us away. Look closely at the screenshot above. You almost don’t noticethe motion blur, the depth of field, the density of the jungle foliage or the way the dappled sunlighthits that vegetation.Why? Because you’re distracted by the fact that Far Cry 3 is so realistic, you can actually see the crazy in this lunatic’s eyes. This is why some folks buy $600 video cards – and why we don’t blame them for it.Preview

Bastion
The product of a dev team so small they could all ride to work together in a single SUV, Bastionis a labor of love. Andbecause whoever’s in chargeof the “making the graphics” part of that love uses every color in the spectrum and turns the brightness up to neon, wefind ourselves captivated. The more you see Bastion, especially in motion, the more breathtaking it is.Preview

Rage
Don’t let Rage’s bleak setting and muted color palette fool you. It’s actually glorious in motion, moving at a silky smooth pace even on consoles. And you don’t even notice a first how very solid all the textures look and how well lit the whole world seems to be. The game world in Rage may be sickly and struggling, but the game engine itself is alive and roaring.Preview

BloodRayne Betrayal
Another game that still screens simply can’t do justice, Betrayal somehow makes the title vampiress seem even more lithe and agile than before – probably something about the 4000 frames of animation the devs have given her. As a result, the entire game flows along as fluidly as the blood that seems to pour onto the screen every time Rayne sees another living creature. She’s feisty.Preview

And the winner
is…

June 20, 2011

The Nominees:

Rayman Origins
Gorgeous hand-drawn visuals make this one of those games you simply have to see in motion to believe. Stupidly lushhigh-res backgrounds burst with vibrant color as impossibly fluid characters jump, stomp, and fly through the world with the grace of Olympic figure skaters.Preview

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron
Designed by the lead artist on Okami, the look of El Shaddai seems almost like a stained-glass window come to life. But more important than the technology is the art design. Dream-like architecture andsweeping vistas are everywhere, and we’ve yet to see a level in which something, be it clouds or water or whatever, wasn’t moving. The world of El Shaddai might not look like anything on Earth, but you can’t say it doesn’t look alive.Preview

Far Cry 3
We love good art design, but sometimes it’s a game’s sheer technological prowess that blows us away. Look closely at the screenshot above. You almost don’t noticethe motion blur, the depth of field, the density of the jungle foliage or the way the dappled sunlighthits that vegetation.Why? Because you’re distracted by the fact that Far Cry 3 is so realistic, you can actually see the crazy in this lunatic’s eyes. This is why some folks buy $600 video cards – and why we don’t blame them for it.Preview

Bastion
The product of a dev team so small they could all ride to work together in a single SUV, Bastionis a labor of love. Andbecause whoever’s in chargeof the “making the graphics” part of that love uses every color in the spectrum and turns the brightness up to neon, wefind ourselves captivated. The more you see Bastion, especially in motion, the more breathtaking it is.Preview

Rage
Don’t let Rage’s bleak setting and muted color palette fool you. It’s actually glorious in motion, moving at a silky smooth pace even on consoles. And you don’t even notice a first how very solid all the textures look and how well lit the whole world seems to be. The game world in Rage may be sickly and struggling, but the game engine itself is alive and roaring.Preview

BloodRayne Betrayal
Another game that still screens simply can’t do justice, Betrayal somehow makes the title vampiress seem even more lithe and agile than before – probably something about the 4000 frames of animation the devs have given her. As a result, the entire game flows along as fluidly as the blood that seems to pour onto the screen every time Rayne sees another living creature. She’s feisty.Preview

And the winner
is…

June 20, 2011

The post GamesRadar E3 2011 Awards: Most Graphics appeared first on Game News.