Sean Bean is not the star of Civilization VI. But he is one of the highlights.
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Sunday, October 23, 2016
News:: Imagining The Nintendo Switch In Different Colors [Update: And Themes]
The Nintendo Switch shown in the console’s debut trailer is grey. This being Nintendo, though, you can be sure that other shades and variations will be coming.
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News:: Do you have any stories of retail hell?
We've all been there. After all, for us to play games, we have to buy them from other people. These days, buying games digitally is an incredible convenience that allows us to buy games from the comfort of our own home and limiting our time spent interacting with a wide range of undesirable personalities.
How is it that retail can bring out the worst in people in order to produce such out there stories? Some websites even aggregate the best of the best (worst of the worst?) for our enjoyment, like People of Walmart and The Consumerist.
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News:: Retailer Tries Charging People To Demo PlayStation VR
Some GAME stores in the UK are charging people to try the PlayStation VR. Not to buy it. Just to try it.
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News:: The Week In Games: Say Hello To My Little Friend
Step aside Pokémon, there’s a new kid in town, and he’s got a big ass sword. A creature collecting game set in the Final Fantasy multiverse? Sign. Me. Up.
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News:: Rage Disco is about a cyborg archaeologist, an ancient party, and a missing jacket
Stop me if you've heard this one before: An Indiana Jones-like cyborg discovers an eternal nightclub party and gobbles up copious amounts of liquor and pills on his way to finding his missing jacket.
Oh, wait. No. No, you probably actually haven't heard that one before. I'll continue.
One of the weirder games at Poznan Game Arena is Rage Disco from developer Suicide Penguin. It's a floor by floor trek through an ancient tomb that just so happens to be a dance club. Zombies or spirits or ancient dwellers or whatever they are keep the party thumping, forever dancing along to the bassy soundtrack.
Rage Disco seems to be mostly a score-chasing affair, as all the martinis and beers and pills on the floor constantly add to a point total. The pills also alter how the game plays. Speed pills temporarily increase movement, and glitch pills make everything go kind of crazy.
Apart from shooting for points, the challenge lies within the fact that the party-goers might accidentally hurt the cyborg archaeologist protagonist. Being that he wants to preserve his findings, he's completely pacifist. All he'll do is use shields and roll out of the way.
Navigation is a constant question mark as Rage Disco not only randomly generates all floors, but re-generates them while you're still on them. Backtracking doesn't really exist because it'll always be different. Nothing's a given in Rage Disco.
After traversing three floors, we came to a boss that employed the well-known video game mechanic of "make him charge at you, miss, and crash into something." That wasn't tough, but the surroundings were also trying to hurt us. It's a constant assault on the senses, something you could probably expect from an ever-going party.
Admittedly, Rage Disco is rough right now. There are bugs, the jumping feels weird, and the visuals suffer from blending together. Suicide Penguin readily admitted that it needs plenty of polish. But it's also interesting enough of a premise that it seems worth talking about. Rage Disco is set for an eventual PC release, but it could easily make the leap to consoles too. Then we'll see who's up to party forever.
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News:: A Brief Look At Nintendo's Obession With Putting Handheld Gaming On Your TV
By all accounts, the Nintendo Switch looks like the sort of portable-console hybrid that many were speculating about ever since initial rumors about the new hardware first started to circulate. It’s weird to think of Nintendo moving forward without releasing a new, strictly stationary console. For many of us, the first time we ever played any video game was on the NES or SNES, so much so that it seemed perfectly normal to say “I’m playing Nintendo.”
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News:: Husk is a Polish take on Silent Hill, and I'm fascinated
Like most video game horror fans, I'm legally obligated to brag to you about how big of a horror fan I am. There was a time in my life where I was inspired by Chris's Survival Horror Quest and systematically began tracking down and playing every single creepy game I could find, regardless of whether it was on an obscure system or a difficult-to-find mod. Silent Hill has long been one of my favorite series, and while at the Poznan Game Area in Poland this weekend, I found a new game to look forward to: UndeadScout and IMGN.PRO's Husk.
I played for a good twenty minutes while one of the developers explained what I was seeing. Husk is a first-person survival horror set in the American town of Shivercliff. Playing as Matthew Palmer, a man who can't find his family after a train crash, I slowly approached Shivercliff and couldn't stop thinking of Silent Hill and Alan Wake as the encroaching forests beckoned me forth. Like most horror games, it began slowly and it took awhile for me to reach the town, but there was already a sinister air about me despite nothing threatening happening.
Once I was in the town proper, I found a flashlight in a gas station, having to do a small item manipulation puzzle similar to Amnesia. It wasn't long after that I was creeping through alleyways, trying to avoid a not-so-shambling corpse monster that wanted nothing more than to see me dead. I soon found a melee weapon and was told by the developer not to get too brave and that this would only stun the creature, and that I needed to run.
After successfully escaping, I found a few more puzzles that required me to find keycards or read messages to discover the whereabouts of a key necessary to progress. I was in my element, turning toward old survival horror habits, reading and exploring everything. None of the puzzles thus far were exceptionally challenging, but I was enjoying the variety that I had encountered even in this brief section of the game: stealth, puzzles, item manipulation, and exploring all brought me back to those teenage years that I had so cherished.
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News:: Battlefield 1 Zeppelin Refuses To Go Quietly Into The Night
A video uploaded earlier today to Imgur shows a Zeppelin from the latest Battlefield glitching after it’s hit by a plane and transforming into a glorious, flaming tornado of death.
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News:: Agony might be the goriest puzzle game ever
One of the booths at Poznan Game Arena caught our eye quicker than most. It's a relatively unassuming space -- most of the booths in the indie area are -- with a banner or two with some artwork. But, it's the name in plain black and white that immediately sparked my attention: Agony.
Agony is a game that first hit our radar in August. Jed wrote about a trailer, just a quick blurb about a ten-minute video. Apart from the premise (you're a tormented soul trying to escape hell), we didn't know much about Agony. After going hands-on with it for a little bit, there's still plenty of mystery.
It starts quick. After a falling sequence, we immediately set off to explore. There's an alternate vision mode where it's possible to see which demons can be possessed. The particularly intimidating ones were red, an indication that we weren't ready to encounter them. Some less gruesome-looking souls were green, meaning that we were on their level.
Each demon in hell has a different function. One of those green ones that we saw had a torch; one of the red ones had magic projectiles. The crux of Agony seems to be trying to find the correct demon to progress through to the next section. It's very much a puzzle game in that sense. Just because everything looks like it wants to kill you doesn't mean the entirety of Agony will be spent defending yourself. In fact, it seems like there's no semblance of combat or anything like that.
There's still danger, though. Before long, we died because we didn't possess a soul fast enough. The reason for that is because we took every opportunity to dillydally and check out every little detail. It's easy to do in Agony. The visuals and presentation are simply fascinating. Everything is made up of viscera and nightmares -- the likes of human guts and teeth as the building blocks for walls and doorframes. The game's running on Unreal 4, a fact that I was mostly certain of before I ever asked the question. Agony just looks that good.
Actually, it looks so good that developer Madmind Studio kind of expects to be denied classification in certain countries. "This might be the goriest video game ever right now," we were told. "We'll probably have some problems in Japan, Australia, and Germany."
We had a taste of Agony but it's not enough. There's a lot more to unwrap, a lot that wasn't present in the demo. I want to take a deeper dive into the mechanics. I want to learn more about the story. But, I mostly just want to spend more time in this depiction of hell. It's a terrifying and amazing thing. Luckily, we shouldn't have to wait too long, as it's eyeing a release within a year on PC, PS4, and Xbox One -- in whatever countries will allow it, that is.
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News:: Ready At Dawn talks The Order: 1886 and the future for the series
The only things I remember about The Order: 1886 are that it features a naked guy and the collector's edition dropped to $60 really damn fast. Most people were pretty harsh on the game at launch; common criticisms were that the game felt more like a movie and that it ended without any sense of closure. Cliffhanger endings tend to do that to otherwise decent games (and films).
The developer behind the game, Ready at Dawn (God of War: Chains of Olympus, Daxter), has recently done an interview with Game Informer. Creative director Ru Weerasuriya stated, "there are legs to this IP, definitely."
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News:: Awesome Games Done Quick's 2017 schedule has me excited again
Just under three months to go until you have to put your backlogs on hold for a week to watch a cavalcade of insane and informative speed-runs. The next event will be held from January 8 through January 15, and with the schedule now finalized we can start looking ahead.
If you're not aware, AGDQ (Awesome Games Done Quick) is the largest speed-running event in the world and is held biannually (Summer Games Done Quick in early July). Many of the best speed-runners gather in a hotel to do a week-long marathon of nothing but speed-run after speed-run. The best part is that's all for charity, raising well over $1 million per event in recent years for the Prevent Cancer Foundation and for Médecins Sans Frontières during SGDQ.
I find myself saying this every time it rolls around, but there's so many games I'm excited to see utterly destroyed. Just to name a few, I want to see Metal Gear Solid 2, Resident Evil Zero, Hitman: Blood Money, and Super Monkey Ball 2. Super Monkey Ball speed-runs are always some of the most jaw-dropping considering how difficult those are. Even for more tame runs, a lot of the intrigue is hearing about how the games' logic and coding works and then how the speed-runners unravel it.
A popular, though perhaps not majority, opinion is that the runs have become more strict in recent years, not allowing as much shenanigans as in the past. While that is an understandable and legitimate complaint, I still find the event fun. After reading about Chris Carter's visit, I want to go myself now more than ever. The only game I've ever done a "speed-run" in was Oblivion, by stacking paintbrushes outside the final boss encounter.
There is debate over whether runs are better with or without glitches, but it's not such a simple dichotomy. There is a balance. Sword lunging in Halo 2 is a glitch, but most would accept that more than just activating the credits like in early Pokémon games. The one and perhaps fatal flaw of these speed-runs is that once you've seen a game for a given category run once, there's really no point in watching again unless the route or time has been significantly improved. It helps that so many new games are coming out all the time!
AGDQ 2017 Schedule [Games Done Quick]
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News:: Long Lost SNES Rayman Game Discovered After 24 Years
When Michel Ancel isn’t teasing fans with concept art for a Beyond Good & Evil sequel that was announced eight years ago, he’s apparently searching for a long lost build of Rayman for the SNES. His efforts seem to have paid off earlier today when he discovered an EPROM (erasable programmable read-only memory) of the ancient, never released game.
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News:: Big Risks Don't Pay Off In Last Night's League Semifinals
It turns out Josh “Jatt” Leesman was right when he trolled the League of Legends World Championship audience with his prediction for the semifinal series between Samsung Galaxy and H2K Gaming.
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News:: Big Risks Don't Pay Off In Last Night's League Semifinals
It turns out Josh “Jatt” Leesman was right when he trolled the League of Legends World Championship audience with his prediction for the semifinal series between Samsung Galaxy and H2K Gaming.
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News:: Check out AlphaDeus' Songs for Gamers DLC Pack 01
[AlphaDeus is back for another round of community member covers! He's probably also still in the process of DLC Pack 2, his next community project. So you probably still have time to get a request in. My song is called ninjaneering by the way. ~Strider]
Hello, friends! I'm excited to share what most of you have probably been hearing about lately (in the quick posts mostly).
Songs for Gamers DLC Pack 01 (album art by Tom Davies)
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News:: Ben Heck's PlayStation 4 Slim teardown
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News:: Destiny Player Destroys Latest Raid Boss All By Himself
Early Saturday morning, a Destiny player and YouTuber by the name of ScaRdrow accomplished the nearly unimaginable: he soloed the final boss in Wrath of the Machine and lived to tell the tale.
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News:: Subtlety be damned, Badass Hero is what I want from an action-platformer
I was well-aware that nuance wouldn't be this game's strong suit when I booked an appointment with Awesome Game Studio to see Badass Hero. It takes a certain kind of wildly confident team to settle on names that are so incredibly blunt. Points for bravado, I guess. Points for accuracy too, because, as much as we've seen, Badass Hero features a badass hero and it definitely seems like it could be an awesome game.
Badass Hero deals in a sort of brash fantasy that's found on the pages of a comic book. The titular badass works his way across three issues, each screen serving as a single frame in the book. There's all sorts of mystic powers at play, but our protagonist seems as if he's content to use good old-fashioned guns and explosives to brute his way through most of the game's perils.
Most of our demo was spent in a jungle level fighting skeletons but that's only part of the overarching theme. Apparently, the broader concept is that there are Neo-Nazis with nefarious plans that we're trying to take down. Talking with founder Marcin Draszczuk, the founder of the Polish studio, he said "Yeah, we don't really like Nazis. More than most."
As Draszczuk gave me the basics of Badass Hero, Zack sat down next to me and beat two bosses before I finished the tutorial. What a dang wunderkind. Maybe it was just that mouse and keyboard advantage. Sure, let's call it that.
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News:: Sunday's Best Deals: Kindle Biographies, Alfred Hitchcock, PS4 Media Remote
Kindle biographies, the ultimate Alfred Hitchcock collection, and a gorgeous Shun knife lead off Sunday’s best deals.
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News:: Sunday Comics: You're Fired
Welcome to Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon.
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News:: Die for Valhalla is Castle Crashers by way of Valykrie Profile
At the Poznan Game Arena, Brett and I had a chance to play Monster Couch's Die for Valhalla, a four-player couch co-op game that immediately reminded us of Castle Crashers. After a twenty minute play session, we saw that there was more depth to the game than that obvious comparison.
Each player begins as a Valkyrie, a soul tasked with both populating Valhalla with more valiant souls and fighting against a mysterious evil in the world. While playing as the Valkyrie, you utilize an ethereal spear to fight enemies like zombies and Giants. If you see a grave, you can possess that dead soldier and use them as more capable combatants than your spirit form.
Graves have different headstones on them that demarcate what type of weapon you will use when inhabiting their bodies. Brett found himself using a sword and shield most of the time, while I used either a bow or dual tomahawks. Each weapon type changed the rhythm of combat in a significant manner and allowed for different attacks. For example, the bow could be charged for heavy shots and required more dodging (and had some of the most satisfying archery noises I've ever heard) and the sword and shield could be used to parry attacks.
This sort of variety is present throughout Die for Valhalla. Instead of the button-mashy combat that usually is associated with co-op brawlers such as this one, there was always something new to try here. There are stunning attacks that lead to better team play, combos to do, a stamina meter for dodging and special attacks, and the constant need to find new bodies to possess. If you survive for a while as the same body, you do gain more glory (experience) that lets you become stronger and purchase new abilities, like the power to possess barrels and bushes as opposed to only corpses. There are also stat increases that persist through playthroughs.
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News:: Today’s selection of articles from Kotaku’s reader run community: Pumpkin Spice Latte Peeps Are Not
Today’s selection of articles from Kotaku’s reader run community: Pumpkin Spice Latte Peeps Are Not My Friends, Spice Up Regret • Quick Notes On Games Played In September: Starbound (PC), XCOM2 (PC), The Witness (PS4), Grand Kingdom (PS4) • What Makes A Favorite Game, And Music Memories
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News:: PREPARE TO FRIENDSHIP: Dtoid's Master Gaming Contact List
It's entirely possible I have run out of community members to list! That said, the List will still continue being updated for those of you with List fetishes. -Panda]
[It is my pride and joy that people make friends for life on this site, easily the best thing I have accomplished in my ten years here! I hear it time and time again, and it never gets old. Thanks for making the Dtoid Community so special -Niero]
Good morning/afternoon/evening my friends/robots/Gardevoir
It has recently been made aware to me that, just perhaps, you all enjoy video games. It might even be said that you... like to game with others? Now now, don't be that way, I don't mean to lump you into some sort of box. You're all just such lovely folks, it pains me to watch you, struggling in vain to connect with each other, striving to engage in...
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