Tuesday, October 15, 2013

News::Assassin's Creed 4 progression system and videos

GameSpace: "Being an assassin, you feel yourself almost invincible. On the one hand, it is very cool, but on the other - you don't have any challenge in the game. That's why the developers have decided to bring new Assassin's Creed 4 progression system that yesterday was detailed in the official Ubisoft's blog."



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373835/assassins-creed-4-progression-system-and-videos

News::Telkom Do Gaming: SteelSeries Rival Review

Telkom Do Gaming reviews the SteelSeries Rival mouse.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373812/telkom-do-gaming-steelseries-rival-review

News::Magicka Wizard Wars - Public alpha starts today

Get your team ready for 4 on 4 games within Magicka Wizard Wars as the public alpha is launching today! Paradox Interactive set the game to be released in 2014, but they've decided to release the public alpha via Steam Early Access today. Sign up for a invite or pre-purchase one of the packs on Steam.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373917/magicka-wizard-wars-public-alpha-starts-today

News::Strider returns to solo action at New York Comic Con 2013 (2D-X)

Strider is an oddball character. Not in terms of design, but in his historical importance. Striders ninja-tastic abilities and cool flapping scarf has the makings of a near-iconic video game character, but he hasnt appeared in a good Strider game since the PlayStations Strider 2. Its been a long time since Hiryu took to action in a game that bore his name Strider 2 was released in 1999 but hes slated to return to action in the simply named Strider. The Double Helix-developed Strider set to hit the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC in early 2014 serves as a series reboot with the familiar mecha and desolate locales in place. It looks good.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373926/strider-returns-to-solo-action-at-new-york-comic-con-2013-2d-x

News::The Wolf Among Us Ep 1 Review | Gaming With Scissors

Telltalle games recently scored a knock out hit with their Walking Dead game series. Hot on the heels of the ending of Walking Deads first season and DLC comes The Wolf Among Us.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373918/the-wolf-among-us-ep-1-review-gaming-with-scissors

News::The Next Angry Birds Game Looks Amazing. Yeah, I Wrote That.

News::Thief preview: We steal, shoot and lockpick our way through | Pocket-Lint

Thief is set to land on consoles in the first quarter of 2014, almost a full decade since the last title in the series surfaced. Pocket-lint got to play some sections of a pre-release version of the game on Xbox One to see whether it's been worth the wait.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373930/thief-preview-we-steal-shoot-and-lockpick-our-way-through-pocket-lint

News::The digital edition of classic fantasy board game Talisman is now on Steam early access.

News::Turtle Beach Z-Seven Headset Review | NowGamer

Adam - "Gaming headsets can be an overwhelming purchase: will it fit? Is it comfortable? Whats the sound quality like? Can I customise it? Is it easy to use?"



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373903/turtle-beach-z-seven-headset-review-nowgamer

News::Let's Play: Battle Worlds: Kronos

GodisaGeek: "Battle Worlds: Kronos started out as a labour of love from German developer King Art Games the guys behind The Book of Unwritten Tales but, as is often the case with Indie developers, they simply couldnt get the funding to put the game into full production. However, all that changed when people started realising the value of services such as Kickstarter and, at a later date, Steam Greenlight. Suddenly, games that otherwise wouldnt have seen the light of day were getting made, getting released and getting played. The dream of every developer that ever wrote a single line of code. Now, Im the first to admit that Im not very good at Strategy games, but after the support from the Kickstarter community, I decided I should dive in to the scary world of Kronos and give the game a go."



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373899/lets-play-battle-worlds-kronos

News::TPG Second Look: Papers, Please (TruePCGaming)

Steven Smith from TPG writes: "Papers, Please is not a game that I would describe as fun. It was a fairly miserable experience filled with sadness and regret as more than once I questioned my reasons for playing."



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373909/tpg-second-look-papers-please-truepcgaming

News::Respawn on Titanfall and breaking free of Call Of Duty’s ‘spawn-die-spawn-die loop’


Word spread fast. Titanfall was demoed at August’s Gamescom show and, by day two, players were queuing for up to eight hours for a single 15-minute game, because once you play it you want to tell people about it. Titanfall is a mechanised and rocket-propelled anecdote generator, a meme with an Xbox One controller, a six-on-six multiplayer shootout where every moment is worth recounting, from the time you racked up a 20-man killing streak fighting alongside your own AI-controlled mecha to the moment an enemy Titan gunned down your armoured suit and you ejected straight onto the killer’s hull. Titanfall’s systems seem purpose-built to make stories happen.


“There were three core mechanics we wanted,” explains producer Drew McCoy. “Mobility, survivability and scale. Once the Titans started to come in you naturally started to get this longer lifespan, and even if you get destroyed you can eject and keep living. A lot can happen in a single life.”


Living is easy in Titanfall. Certainly a shotgun to the chest will drop a Pilot in one hit, but Pilots are so mobile and the maps so large that there’s always a way out of any compromising shootout. Every Pilot has an anti-Titan weapon, a double jump, gravity-defying footwear, and a cloaking system that’s especially effective against a Titan’s optics when making a break across open ground. Rack up enough kills or just wait long enough and you’ll call in a customised Titan of your own, effectively wrapping your pilot in a tank costume and adding an extra life to your current spawn. Those are all the tools Titanfall needs to break free of the Call Of Duty spawn-die-spawn-die loop.



“It’s not boom-you’re-dead, boom-you’re-dead,” says McCoy. “Because you move so fast, it’s not about who [aims quickest]; it’s about who outmanoeuvres the other. I think it’s a response to the fact that we’re all getting older and our reaction times aren’t what they used to be. I want to hop into a game and not feel like every 14-year-old is going to dominate me. I want a fighting chance and I don’t want to feel I’m screwed if I didn’t get in on the first week.”


Such survivability should prohibit large bodycounts but Titanfall’s maps are target-rich environments, populated by dozens of AI soldiers run by Microsoft’s dedicated servers. All of them put up a decent enough fight to be trouble, but they’re thick and flimsy enough to be worth fewer points than a Pilot or Titan kill. “AI grunts keep that quick time-to-kill feedback loop,” says McCoy. “When you can kill three guys in eight seconds, that’s good – but when you’re on the other side of that, it’s not. If you run into a group of AI [units] you can take them out, and you still have that gameplay loop of doing things, achieving things, killing people.”


Respawn rejects the word ‘bot’ for its AI units, but like all bots, Titanfall’s grunts are terrible in concept – a legion of semi-coordinated goons – except here, they work so well that Titanfall wouldn’t be Titanfall without them. “They’re not bots,” says McCoy. “They’re not meant as a human replacement. They’re a different class of people. Pilots are these super-awesome soldiers that have the gear to do double jumps, the weapons to take down Titans, but the AI are the low-level guys that are always on the ground – they’re not double-jumping and they’re really weak, but the purpose they serve design-wise is multifaceted. They show new players where to go. And once they start fighting, they’re usually fighting other AI because all the experienced players are fighting on walls and rooftops. New players start getting kills on AI, when usually in multiplayer games they’re getting completely whacked.”



Mobility, survivability and scale are Respawn’s buzzwords but players leaving EA’s booth at Gamescom were more inclined to mention how the game feels. Titanfall doesn’t play like other modern shooters; when asked for influences McCoy mentions Quake, Tribes, Doom and Street Fighter. “Tribes for motion,” he says, “Doom and Street Fighter for Titan combat. I loved rocket-jumping, learning routes in Unreal Tournament team maps, the grapple in Tribes: Vengeance; I loved figuring out what the physics was like and how I could use it to my advantage. I think a lot of games have narrowed things down to your reaction times – who can pull the trigger faster? – and we want to open it up a bit.


“Doom is actually where some of the Titan combat came from. That dance you did, strafing back-and-forth with rocket launchers; you felt like you could actually evade their fire. Titans can fire a slow [missile barrage] by holding the trigger, and that’s actually a fighting game inspiration. Like in Street Fighter, if you throw a fireball you can force your opponent to jump over them and do another move to take them out.”


This is zoning in an FPS. While Pilots zip around with their sticky boots and jetpacks, Titans play a slower, more tactical game of move and counter-move. “Maybe you’re really good at moving around the level, timing your Vortex to block their fire then dashing at a Titan, reading your opponent’s tells. It feels like a fighting game,” says McCoy.


It feels different and new, the way Modern Warfare felt in 2007 and no major console shooter has felt since. Our story goes like this: we spawn and rush forward, moving ahead of the AI grunts and breaking off from our five teammates to climb the tower in the centre of the Angel City map. This is a mission torn from the campaign, a plot-driven deathmatch where the enemies are real players, and from that vantage point we can pick off grunts two or three at a time while firing on Pilots still too attached to the ground beneath their feet.



It’s enough to call in our first Titan, deployed in front of the tower where we hand control over to the AI and set it to Guard mode, halting the Pilots trying to scale our high spot. When one finally makes it onto the roof with a shotgun it’s time to bail, leaping straight into the waiting Titan and rampaging across the map, gunning down enemy Pilots right up to the point when they’re forced to evacuate from the map on their last remaining spawn for a massive XP bonus. Ten minutes, one spawn. It’s possible in Titanfall.


“It’s [those stories] that matter,” says McCoy, when asked about the buzz from the show. “Who cares what rendering features we have or dynamic audio generation? Who cares? Did you have fun? Did you know what you were doing? Did you learn something new? That’s what matters. We’re never going to be telling you, ‘We have this many levels, this many guns and this is our player count’. Numbers aren’t something we care about. We just want everyone to have fun. Our game designers went nuts, like, ‘What do we want?’ And the answer was: ‘We want everything!’”


Titanfall will be released early next year on Xbox 360, PC, Xbox One.


The post Respawn on Titanfall and breaking free of Call Of Duty’s ‘spawn-die-spawn-die loop’ appeared first on Edge Online.






via Edge Online http://www.edge-online.com/features/respawn-on-titanfall-and-breaking-free-of-call-of-dutys-spawn-die-spawn-die-loop/

News::War Thunder Pixel Judge Interview

PJ: "Just you and your plane. Its the most basic of setups yet also the one that truly tells you who you are. Above the ground, there is only one person you can truly trust and that is yourself. It is your skill, your determination and your choices that matter. Be an eagle, a bird of prey, graceful yet deadly, soaring high aloft in the skies, constantly observing, judging and then, with deadly precision, you strike. Talking to Pavel Kulikov at Eurogamer Expo, Producer and the man behind Oculus Rift support for War Thunder, Pixel Judge delves deeper into the title; discuss the future of this upcoming title and the challenges on the way."



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373879/war-thunder-pixel-judge-interview

News::League of Legends (LoL) Trading Card Game Is on the Way

Hours ago, Marc Merrill's twitter account was hacked and plenty of a LoL trading card game screenshots were leaked out by the hacker on twitter according to ReignofGaming. The hacker called them "images of LoL Supremacy". The hacker's tweets on Marc Merrill's account have been deleted. But you can still check them below.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373134/league-of-legends-lol-trading-card-game-is-on-the-way

News::Goodbye Deponia Preview | Laser Lemming

"Only five months after the release of the well received The Night of the Rabbit, Daedelic Entertainment are ending the year with a bang. Goodbye Deponiathe much anticipated finale in the Deponia trilogyis just around the corner. A trilogy which only began last year! Due to the unrelenting pace of Daedelic Entertainment, I have been unable to keep up with the Deponia series, which means that Goodbye Deponia has been Hello Deponia for me." - Writes Tom Towers.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373830/goodbye-deponia-preview-laser-lemming

News::Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag Gets a New Story Trailer

Ubisoft just released a new story trailer for Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, that is going to bring the saga to the age of piracy and swashbuckling.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373790/assassins-creed-iv-black-flag-gets-a-new-story-trailer

News::Metro Last Light: Final Chapter Released

Deep Silver and 4A Games today released the Chronicles Pack for Metro: Last Light. This final piece of add-on content is rolling out worldwide on Steam, the Xbox Live online entertainment network and the PlayStation Network from today.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373884/metro-last-light-final-chapter-released

News::Mass Effect 4 won't relate to Shepard 'whatsoever'

The game that Bioware doesn't want you to call Mass Effect 4 is starting to take shape, and it appears as if Shepard will not be a part of it "whatsoever," according to lead writer Mac Walters. Talking to Complex, it's clear that Bioware doesn't want the next Mass Effect game to feel like a spin-off, "without the Shepard character or the Shepard specific companions."


Walters also calls the Mass Effect 3 ending a "lesson learned," even though he is satisfied with how it turned out, and noting that there was nothing they could change once they committed to it. Either way, I'm completely cool with focusing on a new protagonist for the next iteration of Mass Effect, since Shepard has clearly ran his/her course.


Mass Effect 4 [Complex via Eurogamer]


Mass Effect 4 won't relate to Shepard 'whatsoever' screenshot






via destructoid http://www.destructoid.com/mass-effect-4-won-t-relate-to-shepard-whatsoever--263594.phtml

News::F1 2013 Review | CalmDownTom

Classic mode does just enough to keep this years F1 game fresh



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373880/f1-2013-review-calmdowntom

News::RockPaperShotgun- Guacamelee: Gold Edition Review

RPS:Guacamelee: Gold Edition has been out since before the stars were born, so its really about time we let you know Wot One Of Us Thinks. The 2D, side-scrolling Metroidvania is a cut above the rest, a shining example of the form. And also a damned good example of how boss fights can really spoil things. Heres wot I think:



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373876/rockpapershotgun-guacamelee-gold-edition-review

News::Need For Speed: Rivals - PC Specs Revealed - Requires 30GB HDD, Recommends 64bit OS

Electronic Arts has revealed the official PC specs for its upcoming racer, Need For Speed: Rivals.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373877/need-for-speed-rivals-pc-specs-revealed-requires-30gb-hdd-recommends-64bit-os

News::David Hayter joins star-studded Long Dark cast


Psh, who needs Metal Gear Solid V , right?


Long time voice of Snake and general righteous hombre David Hayter is joining the cast of the upcoming survival sim The Long Dark , which I fawned over when its Kickstarter first went up. It sounds so good, like an even more surreal version of The Grey.


Hayter will be joining the voice of Mass Effect's Commander Shepard, Jennifer Hale. Elias Toufexis, Adam Jensen in Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mark Meer, voice of MaleShep in Mass Effect are also involved. It's a heck of a cast for an indie game.


There isn't much time left on the Kickstarter, if you want to get in on the ground floor, but The Long Dark thankfully eclipsed its modest $200,000 goal. If you're still upset at Konami and Kojima, maybe back Hayter's newest venture. It looks great.


David Hayter joins star-studded Long Dark cast screenshot


Read more...



via destructoid http://www.destructoid.com/david-hayter-joins-star-studded-long-dark-cast-263575.phtml

News::Danganronpa: The Animation Makes a Mess of a Great Game

News::Yaiba Ninja Gaiden Z Unleashes the Zombies at NY Comic-Con | gamrReview Preview

gamrReview's Xavier Girffiths: "Overall, it was a short but sweet taste of this more stylized entry in the Ninja Gaiden series. The developers (a collaboration between Team Ninja and Comcepts Keiji Inafune) and publishers seem quite confident that the addition of zombies and a simplified play style will attract new fans to the series."



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373736/yaiba-ninja-gaiden-z-unleashes-the-zombies-at-ny-comic-con-gamrreview-preview

News::Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft brings card strategy to the masses

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is accessible yet brutal at the same time. VG247s card noob Dave Cook plays the beta and interviews Blizzard on how it nailed such a fine balance.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373776/hearthstone-heroes-of-warcraft-brings-card-strategy-to-the-masses

News::MStar Online Review: a rhythm game drenched in K-Pop | Gamesinasia

Love it or hate it, K-Pop is a popular music genre that isnt going anywhere any time soon.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373756/mstar-online-review-a-rhythm-game-drenched-in-k-pop-gamesinasia

News::Hand-crafted charm The Inner World review [Gaming Trend]

Atlas Burke: "If youre trying to figure out what it is that makes The Inner World so satisfying, youre really not going to be able to pick any one thing. The story, graphics, and gameplay are all okay, but its the sum of the parts that synthesizes The Inner World into the charming gem that it is."



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373746/hand-crafted-charm-the-inner-world-review-gaming-trend

News::Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z - Outbreak video shows latest build gameplay outside lingerie shop

Tecmo Koei, Team Ninja, Comcept and Spark Unlimiteds third-person hack n slash extravaganza gets a new Outbreak video, wherein Team Ninja leader Yosuke Hayashi and Comcept CEO Keiji Inafune talk about the development of Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z while also showcasing bits of fast-paced gameplay outside a lingerie shop from the latest build of the upcoming multiplatform title.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373771/yaiba-ninja-gaiden-z-outbreak-video-shows-latest-build-gameplay-outside-lingerie-shop

News::Watch The First 20 Minutes Of The Wolf Among Us [Commentary]

A let's play from eGamer South Africa of the first 20 minutes of The Wolf Among Us, Telltale Games' new adventure.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373833/watch-the-first-20-minutes-of-the-wolf-among-us-commentary

News::Deadly Premonition gets 352-page companion app for iPad

Deadly Premonition received a companion iBooks app for iPad this week, Rising Star Games announced. Priced at $9.99, the Deadly Premonition: The Director's Cut The Official Visual Companion is 352 pages long with over a hundred "interactive elements." The book offers players the chance to peek into the creative notebook of director Hidetaka Suehiro (also known as Swery65) to learn more about the development of this odd cult favorite.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373843/deadly-premonition-gets-352-page-companion-app-for-ipad

News::Batman: Arkham Origins - Art Director Interview

The Art Director behind Batman: Arkham Origins talks about mastering the look of the series.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373870/batman-arkham-origins-art-director-interview

News::Ex-Blizzard Developer Auctions StarCraft II Original Art, Kerrigan Bust Statue and other Goodies

An ex-Blizzard developer reached out to Blizzplanet to inform about the sale of a Sideshow Collectibles StarCraft II Kerrigan Bust Statue and three original art pieces by Blizzard artists Glenn Rane, Jack Luke Mancini, and Brian Huang. Several BlizzCon 2010 and 2011 exclusive items can be acquired directly from the ex-developer. These include World of Warcraft companion pet cards: Murkablo, and Deathy; a 2-year employee service exclusive stein, a Kwurky Green Egg Murloc Plush, a StarCraft II/Blizzard exclusive chips set, employee shirts, the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and Diablo III Collector's Edition and other goodies.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373829/ex-blizzard-developer-auctions-starcraft-ii-original-art-kerrigan-bust-statue-and-other-goodies

News::Free-To-Play CRYENGINE-powered "Warface" gets a new teaser trailer

In order to celebrate the game's upcoming launch, Crytek has released a new teaser trailer for Warface.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373841/free-to-play-cryengine-powered-warface-gets-a-new-teaser-trailer

News::Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag Preview Interview

Ubisoft lead game designer Tim Browne discusses Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag in this exclusive interview.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373505/assassins-creed-4-black-flag-preview-interview

News::On The Last Of Us and videogames’ apparent ‘Citizen Kane moment’


You can imagine how thrilled I was at the prospect of getting my hands on what everyone on the Internet was assuring me was videogames’ ‘Citizen Kane moment’. Although I ridiculed that cliché several years ago, I now understand – having done slightly more scholarly research – that the phrase ‘Citizen Kane moment’ is in fact wonderfully apt. Because before Citizen Kane was released in 1941, it is now clear to me, literally no good films had ever been made.


Movies such as Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925), Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (1935), Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936), or Jean Renoir’s La Règle Du Jeu (1939) were basically clunky trash with low-res textures, the equivalent of 1990s-era ‘interactive storytelling’ on CD-ROM. Citizen Kane, bouncing heftily on to the scene like an enormous and perfect water balloon, caused all observers to breathe a sigh of relief – at last, here was a film director who knew what the hell he was doing. Citizen Kane was the equivalent of… well, apparently, of The Last Of Us.


Imagine my surprise, then, when The Last Of Us turned out to be – well, very much like other videogames. Here is a guy with a beard, sitting on a sofa. His daughter gives him a nice watch for his birthday. He is grumpy and not very grateful. Then the zombie apocalypse breaks out. I cause some avatars to rotate and move forwards a bit, and I find myself being encouraged to press certain buttons in response to symbols flashed on the screen, so that the predestined narrative can play out as intended. Yes, there are QTEs – apparently, no amount of merciless ridicule can dilute their authoritarian popularity among videogame designers who fancy themselves cinematic auteurs. Like I said, it’s a videogame.


Anyway, eventually my daughter dies, because the game wouldn’t let me even try to run away from the guy who shot us, and we fast-forward 20 years. Now my beard and hair are a bit grey. After some tutorials on how to use the totally unexplained aural superpower I have somehow acquired – I can ‘see’ zombies and humans through walls by listening carefully – I find myself in some prettily decrepit venues, randomly murdering a lot of men.



If I’d paid more attention to the dialogue I might know exactly why I am murdering all these men; in any case, murdering them I am. Like I said, it’s a videogame.


I’m not saying it’s not fun to be introduced to all these new ways of murdering men. I can murder them with bullets, of course, but they don’t hand out bullets like candy around here. I can also murder them by sneaking up behind them and pressing a button in response to an onscreen symbolic prompt, and then pressing another one to strangle them until they are dead. I can even bash them with planks or stab them with shivs. If I get into a one-on-one fistfight, I can just keep mashing the action button until the bearded fellow – with whom I don’t for a moment identify – smashes my enemy’s skull open on the handy corner of an iron box. At one point my partner minces and dances right past a guard, no more than a foot from his nose. He doesn’t notice her at all. Like I said, it’s a videogame.


I try to open a door. ‘NEED KEY’ appears on the screen in red text. I guess I’ll have to look for a key, not exactly a revolutionary mission in interactive entertainment. I go happily in search of the mandated item.


Oh, look, here’s a broken-down truck full of crates. I wonder what’s in the crates? Could be food, could be weapons. No doubt something useful. I try to look inside the crates. I can’t. Like I said, it’s a videogame.


At length, The Last Of Us does furnish some wonderfully tense setpieces of stealth and hurried weapon-building improvisation, and it has a rare heft and thunk – one of the most convincing illusions yet of heavy (and not ridiculously acrobatic) flesh moving around through hard, solid environments. Mechanically, though, it is hardly without obvious inspiration, playing somewhat like a mash-up of Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid and Arkham City. Like I said, it’s a videogame.



The Last Of Us does represent the consolidation of some kind of advance, at least, in that now an ‘adult’ or ‘mature’ videogame is no longer one that features scantily clad women whose obsessively coded breast physics take up 90 per cent of available clock cycles. Instead, people praising The Last Of Us for its ‘adult’ or ‘mature’ qualities seem to take those terms to imply something relentlessly humourless and grim, a sub-Cormac McCarthy trudge through the bleak post-apocalypse.


Personally, I found all the blades of grass far more affecting – as a beautifully silent symbol of life’s indomitability – than the much-bruited subtlety of the relationship between Bearded Grump and his daughter-substitute. Maybe, indeed, the aspiration to seamlessly downbeat bleakness represents only a slightly later stage of adolescence than bug-eyed breast fixation. Still, progress is progress. And, like I said, it’s a videogame.


The post On The Last Of Us and videogames’ apparent ‘Citizen Kane moment’ appeared first on Edge Online.






via Edge Online http://www.edge-online.com/features/on-the-last-of-us-and-videogames-apparent-citizen-kane-moment/

News::Assassin's Creed 4 Pirates Preview Interview

Ubisoft's Sophie Colson previews the new mobile game spin-off Assassin's Creed Pirates in this exclusive interview.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373497/assassins-creed-4-pirates-preview-interview

News::StarCraft 2 Pros compete at the Red Bull Battlegrounds

Watching competitive gaming or eSports either online or in person can be a treat but nothing fills the excitement level like watching top pros go head to head in StarCraft 2. In November the fine folks at Red Bull will host the Red Bull Battlegrounds tournament pitting 8 top StarCraft 2 pros against each other for a grand prize of $50,000. The stakes are high and the excitement level even higher! Red Bull Battlegrounds will kick-off November 23 & 24 2013 tickets are available now to attend the event in person which will be held at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373479/starcraft-2-pros-compete-at-the-red-bull-battlegrounds

News::ADG Exclusive Disney Infinity Jack Skellington Gameplay Preview

ADG shows you exclusive gameplay of Jack Skellington.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373090/adg-exclusive-disney-infinity-jack-skellington-gameplay-preview

News::The Perils of Man: Branding for Creative Space

The production of a videogame is a process that is often misunderstood. Film and television have become so ingrained into society that we can watch making-of videos with full size sets and rigging, actors repeating scenes over-and-over and computer wizardry in action for special effects and yet still be swept up in the will to suspend disbelief for hours at a time. Videogames arent so transparent. We might occasionally get a behind-the-scenes look at an Assassins Creed motion-capture set or commentary from the voice actors of a new Mass Effect space opera, but these are the elite. More often than not the more interesting stories come from those titles which you may not think twice about.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373081/the-perils-of-man-branding-for-creative-space

News::New Metro: Last Light Screenshot suggests incoming Chronicles Pack

Deep Silver and 4A Games have issued a singular ingame image from Metro: Last Light, indicating that the promised Chronicles Pack, containing story-based DLC adding to the Metro universe, will be arriving soon.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373766/new-metro-last-light-screenshot-suggests-incoming-chronicles-pack

News::Shadow Warrior - Beavers Review

Italian webcomic Beavers.it wrote:"Imagine a romantic bay on the mountain, a snow-covered landscape, a fireplace, a bottle of wine and a skin d'orso on the floor. Now add Duke Nukem and Painkiller boats in carnal passion after watching a marathon of souls.AND nine months after..."



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373815/shadow-warrior-beavers-review

News::Adventure Time Steam pre-order bonus: Peppermint Butler

Still deciding which console deserves your Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I DON’T KNOW! pre-order? Aside from the 3DS-exclusive collector's edition, platform choices seemed a wash. Just pick wherever you have the most friends to join in the co-op fray.


However, a press release throws a wrench into that simple plan. It seems those who pre-order the new Adventure Time on Steam will also received a playable Peppermint Butler, available for download at launch free of cost. Peppermint Butler will otherwise be available as a $2 purchase.


Does this change your purchasing decisions? I love Peppermint Butler, but I think the game has a large enough cast to choose from that I might still stick with getting this on PS3 for easier local co-op. Or 3DS for portability and a cheaper price.


Adventure Time Steam pre-order bonus: Peppermint Butler screenshot






via destructoid http://www.destructoid.com/adventure-time-steam-pre-order-bonus-peppermint-butler-263579.phtml

News::Servant X Service Is Your Average Sitcom in Anime Form

News::Gas Guzzlers Extreme Review (Strategy Informer)

From Strategyinformer.com: "As David Jaffe might lament over a few shots of whisky, vehicular combat games just aint what they used to be. Its a genre that died a premature but entirely expected death a long, long time ago, having used up all its charm in a series of knock-offs of a formula that - lets be realistic here - was a little bit of a novelty in the first place. Somewhere back around the dawn of the Playstation 2 lies verdant enthusiasm for all things CARNAGE and ROADKILL, but there are few big publishers willing to test if it can be rekindled".



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News::I wish this Mario Kart movie was real


What happens when you apply the over-the-top seriousness from that Need for Speed movie trailer to Mario Kart? Magic. Thanks, GamesRadar.


I wish this Mario Kart movie was real screenshot






via destructoid http://www.destructoid.com/i-wish-this-mario-kart-movie-was-real-263583.phtml

News::From BioShock Infinite to Gone Home: the story of The Fullbright Company


Nobody makes videogames in Portland, Oregon. Knowing Portland, that seems almost inexplicable: the popular stereotype of the liberal, artistic city is that it embraces any and all kinds of creative enterprise, from music and filmmaking to the weird and hyper-specific, like bagpipe-playing unicyclists and vegan tattoo parlours. But if you want to make videogames for a living, Portland is not the city for you.


So thought Steve Gaynor, who went to college there from 2004 to 2005. Gaynor wanted to work in game development, but there were no studios or publishers in Portland, nor did he have the experience to strike out on his own. After graduation, he moved south to the San Francisco Bay Area, a technology and videogame industry epicentre. The decision paid off. In 2008, he was among the first people hired by 2K Marin to design levels for the sequel to BioShock, the landmark shooter designed by Ken Levine and Boston-based Irrational Games, whose body of work Gaynor credits as a major inspiration. After BioShock 2, Gaynor was made lead designer of Minerva’s Den – a short, standalone BioShock game released as DLC.


On the strength of Minerva’s Den, Gaynor was offered a level design job with Irrational, where Levine was working on his own BioShock follow-up, the massively ambitious BioShock Infinite. At the end of 2010, Gaynor moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to join the team.


“Infinite was a really cool project,” Gaynor says, “and a really ambitious project, but it was also a big, giant, enormous production, that was just super huge – bigger than anybody could really wrap their head around. When you’re working on a project that big, and when you’re working with 150 other people…” He pauses.


“You can only really be responsible for the one little piece of the project you’ve been assigned. You can kind of care about the whole game, if you want to, but you only get to have any impact on the thing that is your little piece of the game. And coming from Minerva’s Den, where it was 12 full-time content developers on that project, and a much smaller scope of work – a project where everybody could be totally invested in every part of it, where you could see every bit of it together – going from that kind of intimate development experience to Infinite was… in a lot of ways a step backwards, in the ways that I cared about.”



“Infinite was… in a lot of ways a step backwards, in the ways that I cared about.” – The Fullbright Company’s Steve Gaynor.



With another year left in Infinite’s development, Gaynor left Irrational. Infinite was neither the project for him, he knew, nor was Cambridge the city. “It’s the biggest, most prestigious college town in the country,” Gaynor says of the home of Harvard and MIT, “but it’s still a college town. I’d spent enough of my life living in college towns, surrounded by college students.” There was only one place Gaynor really wanted to live. He’d lived in Portland before, his wife was from there, they had married there, and many of their friends and family lived in the area. “We knew it was where we wanted to end up, so we weren’t going to put it off any more,” he says. “We didn’t want to keep chasing jobs around the country. [We] wanted to be back in Portland.”


In the seven years since Gaynor had lived in Portland, the city hadn’t developed much more of a videogame industry. “There were a fair amount of working Portland game developers,” he says – mainly in outsourcing, educational and mobile development – “but it didn’t feel like there was a super-solid framework for the people who were doing that work here.


“If I wanted to keep making games, it would have to be something that I got started on my own – whether it was contracting stuff, which I did a very small amount of, or starting an indie studio.” He reached out to two of his Minerva’s Den teammates: programmer Johnnemann Nordhagen and artist and researcher Karla Zimonja. Both still working at 2K Marin, they agreed to move to Portland to found a new studio with Gaynor.


The Fullbright Company, as they named it, decided not to seek outside funding. This would keep the studio independent, and the business side relatively simple, but it also meant the team would be living off their savings until they released a game. To save money, they moved in together, renting a house in the northeast of the city and setting up office in the basement. “We’re really lucky to be in it,” Gaynor says, “because when you go out as four adults and want to rent a house together and none of you has a job, that’s hard.” The house they found, coincidentally, was owned by a game developer whose Portland studio had just closed. “When we showed up, we were like, ‘We want to start an indie game studio in your basement.’ I think that’s pretty much the only reason we [got the] house.”



Gone Home is set in The Fullbright Company’s home town.



Gaynor pitched a few ideas for a game that would reflect the team’s design strengths while being achievable within their financial constraints. “It didn’t take too long for us to get to the point of saying, ‘What if it was just you and no other people, no other characters, you in a single environment and you can explore and find stuff in the environment to reconstruct the story of what happened there, and that’s the whole game? That’s the core of the experience, that’s the entire experience, as opposed to it being the sideshow on top of the shooter game’.”


Fullbright’s debut would be Gone Home, a ‘story exploration’ videogame that casts players in the role of a young woman returning from a year abroad to her family’s home (in Portland, naturally). The house is abandoned and, through exploration, players piece together the reasons why. The story centres on the younger daughter and her sexual coming-of-age; thematically, it’s a far cry from BioShock’s stories of supermen who fight gene-splicing monsters by firing bees and crows from their hands.


With development on the game underway, Gaynor settled back into Portland life. “[Portland] has a very independent spirit – people are supported in doing the things they want to do here. People who are doing stuff here are connected to the community and are kind of iconoclastic, so it’s a really great environment for people who want to do something out of the ordinary. Part of that is because the cost of living is really low, compared with Seattle or San Francisco. In Seattle there’s Microsoft and in San Francisco there’s Apple and Google, and these companies can employ enormous numbers of people that they can pay enormous amounts of money, so the cost of living goes way up. But in Portland we don’t have any of that. Nobody has any money.” He laughs. “It’s nice.”


Being part of a small, independent team meant getting involved in more aspects of commercial game development than the team was used to. For example, with Gone Home’s mid-’90s Portland setting, it was important to the team to license appropriate music for the soundtrack – riot grrrl bands of the period like Bikini Kill and Heavens To Betsy. But without a legal department to assist them with rights and clearances – as they’d had on the BioShock series – Gaynor spent hours on the phone with labels and licensing agencies, trying to persuade them not only to work within the studio’s limited budget, but that the game itself was artistically worthwhile. The artists themselves had to be convinced of the latter, which is how Zimonja found herself making a personal entreaty to Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill, touting Gone Home’s feminist themes, and sending Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker an alpha of the game for her evaluation.



Tucker, at least, signed off on the usage. To showcase Gone Home’s selection of licensed riot grrrl songs, Fullbright released a soundtrack trailer for the game. Soon after, the organiser of Grrrl Front Fest, a local riot grrrl festival, emailed Gaynor to say she’d seen the trailer, had heard that Fullbright was local, and wondered if the team wanted to show Gone Home at their festival. “We were like, yeah! We would totally show our game at this riot grrrl fest that’s sponsored by Planned Parenthood,” Gaynor says. “[A] totally weird place to show a videogame, generally.”


The day of the festival, Fullbright brought a computer to Grrrl Front Fest, which was held in a bar, and set up in the back room. “We had our game in the corner and people would be like, ‘What? What is this?’” says Karla Zimonja. “[But] we had a reasonable amount of people playing. We had a couple of the bands… five 17- or 18-year-old girls, they all crowded around the monitor, and one of them was driving and the others were yelling, ‘Go in there!’ ‘No! There’s going to be a ghost!’ and ordering her around and yelling; they were all so excited about it.”


The singer of one of the bands returned to Gone Home in between sets, and eventually played through the whole thing. “What we [had] wanted to do for a long time,” says Gaynor, “was find a local band that was making music… and have the music in the game as this fictional garage band. [That singer told us] ‘Yeah, I like this game!’ And we were like, ‘Can we [use] your music in it?’ ‘Yeah!’”


Although Portland might have lacked a specific game development infrastructure, there was an abundance of general creative infrastructure and support in place – and as development on Gone Home progressed, the team discovered ways to make that work for them.



“There were other situations,” says Gaynor, “where we needed to get buttons made, and T-shirts made, and we went online, searched for ‘buttons’ and got some lapel pins made with [our] logo on them. They were fine, but it took a little while and the colours weren’t great, and we found out after handing them out that they fell apart easily. We were like, why the hell did we use some web service for that? There have to be so many people in Portland that would make buttons for us. And we could go to them and take the art to them, get a sample made and make sure that they were actually high quality.”


That, Gaynor says, was a turning point for The Fullbright Company. There was, of course, a person in Portland who would make badges for them: a local woman with a hefty zine collection who pressed them by hand. The team found a voice talent agency in the basement of a teashop. The game’s basic sound effects were recorded in a local furniture store. “That kind of stuff has really worked out for us: [working] with people that are here in town, that we can meet in person.” As Fullbright embraced its home city, it went international. Gone Home appeared at game shows in the UK and at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco; the latter appearance led to a lead story on The New York Times website. The studio hired its first new employee, 3D artist Kate Craig. And in August, 20 months after Gaynor returned to Portland, Gone Home was released.


“I’m really glad we’ve been able to make this,” Gaynor says. “It’s cool being part of a big commercial project that millions and millions and millions of people are going to play… [but] Gone Home was a thing that never would have existed if the three of us didn’t decide to make a change and commit to doing something on our own. I’m really proud of the fact that we brought something into existence that never would have happened if it weren’t for us.”


The Fullbright Company will remain in Portland. But just being in Portland, Gaynor hopes, is only the beginning of the story. “My biggest ambition is to establish a games industry in Portland. To establish a sustainable ecosystem of people that are making games and are self-sufficient at it. That’s the way that these things go, traditionally, if you look at game development scenes in different cities. If you look at Austin, Origin was there, and people were brought to Austin for Origin and then split off to found their own things. I hope I’ve gone out and gathered up enough that I can bring enough back here to get a fire started that will sustain itself in the long term.”


Zimonja tells a story about a friend of the team to whom they gave a Gone Home T-shirt. That friend was wearing the T-shirt in downtown Portland one day, when a stranger ran up to him and exclaimed, “Oh my god! Are you Steve?!”


“That wouldn’t happen anywhere else!” Zimonja says. “That’s preposterous.”


The post From BioShock Infinite to Gone Home: the story of The Fullbright Company appeared first on Edge Online.






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News::Steam Week-long Sale Games Revealed

Hardcore Gamer: Steam's week-long game sales can be a great way to catch up on games you might've missed out on over the past few years. The sale's biggest releases include ARES: Extinction Agenda for $2.50 instead of $10, or you can get the Complete Edition for 50 cents more and get an OST and some bonus suits.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373584/steam-week-long-sale-games-revealed

News::Watch this documentary about pro gaming in South Korea

Gamesinasia: If youre anything like me, youve got hearty helpings of gaming to get through this weekend. But everybody has to take a break from gaming every now and then, and what better to do while youre relaxing than watch a little film about people who are way, way better than you?



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373751/watch-this-documentary-about-pro-gaming-in-south-korea

News::Guild Wars 2 Skills Balance Livestream

ArenaNet, developers of the fastest selling Western MMORPG game in history, today announced a brand new livestream event for the critically acclaimed, Guild Wars 2. Beginning today at noon PST / 15:00 EST, the developers will be walking players through the upcoming changes planned in the next aimed, most notably those aimed towards balancing the skills and changing the way many abilities will work.



via N4G: pc news feed http://n4g.com/news/1373439/guild-wars-2-skills-balance-livestream

News::Mitsuyoshi and Kaida team up for PiNEd

Sega's Takenobu Mitsuyoshi, the man who's legendary vocal chords gave us the world anthem of Daytona USA, has teamed up with none other than Breath of Fire and Okami composer Akari Kaida for a new joint venture. The duo will be releasing albums and performing live shows under the new stage name "PiNEd"


Coming October 27, the team will release its first mini-album at the Japanese media event M3, titled Colored. The album will contain seven brand new tracks (both vocal and instrumental) co-written by the two composers.


Is there any dream team of videogame composers you'd like to see come together for an experiment such as this?


Mitsuyoshi and Kaida team up for PiNEd screenshot






via destructoid http://www.destructoid.com/mitsuyoshi-and-kaida-team-up-for-pined-263526.phtml