Mark Johnson is the developer of Ultima Ratio Regum, an ANSI 4X roguelike in which the use of procedural generation extends beyond the creation of landscapes and dungeons to also dynamically create cultures, practices, social norms, rituals, beliefs, concepts, and myths. This is the first in a four part series examining what generating this kind of social detail can bring to games.>
Not that I’m saying Quake is not suitable for 21st century play – quite the opposite. It’s just that enormous and beautiful mod campaign Arcane Dimensions applies some of the design values we are accustomed to from later, flashier games to the ancient Quake structure. From flow to geometry to sheer size, it’s taking Quake to places id possibly could not have imagined when they first made it, and wrestling the engine into brand new shapes without actually losing its essential Quakeiness.
Because that’s the thing: playing Arcane Dimensions makes Quake once again feel like it felt when I first played it.
During one decade in the late eighteenth century, one gang was reportedly responsible for around 80% of bank robberies in America. That gang was led by George Leonidas Leslie, an architect and a criminal genius. He utilised his knowledge of buildings and their secret ways to break them down piece by piece, building scale models of targets, and replicas of their safes and vaults, planning for years. Like many master burglars, he could look at an exterior and understand the interior it hid.
Designing a game like Dishonored 2 [official site] requires some of those same skills.
Depending on to what extent you accept ‘Bethesda’ as official, of course. This isn’t id’s work, and it’s definitely not Quake-era id’s work, but it is the work of neo-id’s stablemates Machine Games – they of the improbably good Wolfenstein: The New Order. (And who, according to its credits, pitched in to some extent with this year’s even more improbably good DOOM). They’ve just unexpectedly release a new Quake episode in honour of the dear old man’n’monster-shooter’s 20th birthday. It’s pretty good, too. … [visit site to read more]
Resolution. Anti-aliasing. Crisp text. “Image quality.” The bugbears of virtual reality in 2016.
All of this matters not in Quake. Perfect square pixels, no shading or soft shadows. Almost wordless. It is ideally-suited to VR, in theory. In practice? Best VR time ever, so far.
Twenty years ago today, id Software released Quake. Following a multiplayer test that gave the world a first glimpse of the studio s new, cutting edge 3d engine, the full game arrived on June 22, 1996. Its bizarre mash-up of medieval architecture and crunchy, industrial weaponry didn t run through the sequels, which have focused on both singleplayer and multiplayer combat, and there hasn’t been anything else quite like it in the two decades since release.
Arena-based Quake is set for a revival with the recently announced Quake Champions, but here, we remember the original. Happy twentieth, Quake.>
Skyrim doesn’t feel old enough to have a shiny new edition with enhanced bells and whistles, but that’s exactly what’s coming on October 28th. It’ll be released on current-gen consoles as well as PC, and if you own either the Legendary Edition of the original, or the base game plus all DLC bought separately, you’ll receive a free upgrade to the new hotness. You can see it below.
Bethesda’s E3 showcase wrapped up this evening (LA time) and I was there, in an enormous hangar, as new things were announced (Prey! Quake!) and more details of the games we’ve already played or heard about were released. The pick of the crop was Dishonored 2 [official site], which had that rarest of things: an E3 showing that involved an actual dev walkthrough of a mission and the new character abilities. Beats even the shiniest of trailers. You can see a trailer below, captured in-game, along with thoughts on the wonderful time-twisting mechanic.
A couple of weeks ago I was teasing splendid Kotaku writer Jason Schreier after he tweeted describing Dishonored as “still underrated.” Underrated?! The PC version has a Metacritic rating of 91! There s only one score (or rating , you might say) under 8/10, and that review is silly. This is one of the most highly rated games ever!
Since I ve started replaying it, once again attempting to rescue the young empress from an evil regime, I keep thinking to myself, Man, this game was underrated. Sorry Jason.>
As much as PC gaming hardware has changed and improved over the years, there’s always been one constant: the limitations of disk space. Granted, it’s far cheaper and easier (no more absurdly tiny Master/Slave toggles) than it used to be to grab a new hard drive, but the rise of ever-faster but more expensive SSDs set things back a bit in that regard. With new mainstream games regularly asking for as much as 30 Gigabytes I remain, as I always have, in a battle for space. Which means I’m constantly uninstalling half-finished stuff in order to make space for the next big thing. Sometimes it’s heartbreaking. But there’s a line. There are a few games I can never uninstall, because it would hurt too much. Granted, they change a little over the years – new ones come in, old ones finally, finally lose their lustre (or I give up entirely on the belief that I will ever go back), but here’s how that list of inviolable treasures looks right now.