Feb 14, 2012
Kotaku
Is that love in the air, or is it Energon? No reason it can't be both. Anything's possible when he, Grimlock, loves you.
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Is that love in the air, or is it Energon? No reason it can't be both. Anything's possible when he, Grimlock, loves you.
After a decade of lurking in the darkness just outside of gamers' views the evil clown rides back into town, guns blazing, engines roaring, and game reviewers rarin' for a shot.
In the world of car combat, Twisted Metal has reigned supreme since the original game hit the PC and PlayStation back in 1996. Potential usurpers have come and gone, but David Jaffe and Scott Campbell established a concrete rule about the genre in that early entry: Vehicular combat must have evil clowns. Without an evil clown, what's the point?
The new Twisted Metal for the PlayStation 3 is chock-full of evil clown, which is why it tends to get along modestly well with game reviewers. See how it fared while I field angry emails.
G4TV
After a long sabbatical, one of Sony's most nostalgic franchises is back. Twisted Metal will be instantly familiar to the legion of gamers who spent hours orchestrating vehicular mayhem on their PSOnes. As it turns out, after so many years, very little has changed. Twisted Metal is a game that unabashedly services those old school gamers with its retro, arcade action, but it also unintentionally proves just how far action games in general and driving games in specific have come.
Destructoid
Although almost every Twisted Metal game exists within its own narrative bubble, this freshest iteration is as close to a full reboot as the series can get. The large cast of colorful characters, each with their own sick goals and personalized vehicles, has been tossed entirely out of the window in favor of one unified storyline. There are only four main characters — Sweet Tooth, Mr. Grimm, Dollface and Preacher — all of whom are totally reimagined as darker and, dare I say it, slightly more grounded characters. At least, as grounded as a demonic serial killer clown can get. Their tales intertwine as they each sequentially enter the Twisted Metal tournament, hoping to win their ultimate wish from the nefarious Calypso — and suffer an ironic fate in the process.
There is still a large variety of cars, although they are now operated by generic "gang" members inspired by the four named drivers. Familiar rides such as Sweet Tooth's ice cream truck and heavily armored Warthog are joined by such unique vehicles as the Meatwagon (a bloodstained ambulance that fires explosive patients strapped to remote-controlled gurneys) and the Junkyard Dog (a pickup truck that flings entire taxis at opponents). While many cars are unlocked during the course of campaign play, some of the more elusive rides will take momentous feats to obtain, such as completing all the story challenges on Twisted difficulty ... and getting a gold medal in every one! Each car can also be given a custom paint job, for that all-important personal touch.
GamesRadar
There's so much at your disposal, in fact, that getting the hang of it all can be a little tough. However, while there's a quick, optional training mode you can dive into (which we recommend, as the deceptively simple controls hide a ton of not-so-obvious functionality), there's no real tutorial in Twisted Metal; once you start, any learning you do will be through experimentation in the heat of battle.
It's an approach that fits in perfectly with the game's old-school, tough-as-nails mentality; while the visuals might be a little more colorful than previous Twisted Metals, the action is just as unrelenting and the difficulty is even more unforgiving. Especially when you're on your own.
GameTrailers
Twisted Metal's story mode can be played alone or with a friend in split-screen, taking you through 18 total scenarios. In addition to standard battles, you'll have to wreck Juggernaut semis that regularly spawn enemies, and compete in battle races that require you to take first or die. There are also massive boss fights as well as cage matches that do a great job of keeping the fight close while giving you guided tours of specific levels. You can also set up custom single player challenges against bots, ranging from one-on-one battles to endurance matches with endless waves of opponents.
Game Informer
Thankfully, the multiplayer is pure Twisted Metal. Deathmatch modes place you in one of the game's numerous massive maps, and it doesn't take long for things to turn into an all-out warzone. Nuke mode is chaotic and entertaining, with two teams capturing their enemy's leader and launching him or her at a massive effigy of the opposing team. Hunted and Last Man Standing are also fun, but can't compete with the insanity of Nuke. Gamers irked by the "die five seconds after you spawn" experience from titles like Call of Duty should enjoy the longer lifespans of Twisted Metal's online play. On the other side of the coin, shooter fans used to extensive progression systems may be disappointed with Twisted Metal's bare-bones ranking system. Though it has an XP system, all you can unlock are sidearms, vehicles, and skins that are already offered in the story mode.
Digital Chumps
Twisted Metal doesn't seem overly concerned with the gross artificiality and assumed necessities that have risen in popularity and become and staples of the current generation. This isn't to imply Twisted Metal is mechanically dated or conceptually bankrupt, but rather that it feels like it was built from the ground up to grind fun out of learning and becoming proficient in its systems, rather than the modern positive reinforcement generator of racing toward the next unlock. Car combat is literally a lost art, a genre abandoned by a progression in game design that we all assumed left its concept antiquated and irrelevant. How wonderful is it for Eat Sleep Play to come along and show us their art can be just as vibrant, appealing, and, most importantly, viable in 2012 as it was in 1995?
Sony's new PlayStation Vita handheld sports a good amount of ways to connect with people. It will let you share your trophies, passively trade and unlock game content, and even broadcast how you're feeling about the games you're playing.
Well, to a point. As it turns out, the Vita won't let you tell people if you don't like a game.
The Vita's most comprehensive and interesting collection of social features is "Near." Near is something like the Nintendo 3DS' spot-passes and street-passes - the idea is to let you passively connect to other players. Its coolest feature is the ability to scan of your local area (a 3 kilometer radius) to give you information on all of the PSN activity around you.
It also keeps a running bulletin board tracking the popularity of various Vita games. One of the first games to pop up on my chart was Uncharted: Golden Abyss. I decided to take a look at the page for the game and see what was what.
Upon arriving on a page called "Players' Voice," a message popped up: "Tap 'Pick Some Emoticons!' to share your opinion of this game."
Okay, Vita. I already shared my opinion of this game, so I have a pretty good idea of what it is. I hit the "emoticon" button to assign an emoticon to this game. Presumably, this emoticon would then be broadcast out to the people I connected with via Near, letting them know what I thought.
A window popped up featuring a handful of emoticons. I looked for the one marked "disappointment" or "sadface." And yet what I saw were… only positive emoticons.
"Funny," "moving," "exhilarating," "engrossing," "rewarding," "cool," "captivating," "amazing," and "heartwarming." Those were my only options.
That means that the Vita is telling me that it's fine if I share my opinions with my friends, but only if they're positive. I didn't really think that Uncharted: Golden Abyss was any of those things! There wasn't even an emoticon for "good graphics."
Ironically, despite the exclamatory energy behind the "Pick Some Emoticons!" feature, the menu's baseline icon—a collection of three grey, flat-mouthed faces—comes the closest to actually conveying my feelings about Golden Abyss.
Engineered positivity isn't new to social media. There is a reason that Facebook doesn't have a dislike button - from a business perspective, social networks need to grow to survive, and positivity helps growth. "Liking" something on Facebook doesn't even necessarily mean that you're expressing approval - sometimes it's merely a way to put something on your page and share it with others, thereby helping Facebook to grow.
But all the same, there's something vaguely sinister about how the Vita muzzles players who want to provide their honest take on a game they've played. It's so falsely cheery; the simplistic Orwellian (actually, Huxlian) undertone of the mandatory smiley-face.
So no, this alone is not the harbinger of some terrifying dystopian future. And we're still able to give star ratings to games in the PSN store. But this feels calculated nonetheless. If Sony wants us to use their social features and contribute to their social network, they could at least let us express how we actually feel.
The June release date for Darksiders II has been narrowed down to a specific day via the game's official Twitter. Expect Death and the pale horse he rode in on June 26.
Until about, oh, early last week, Psychonauts 2 seemed like an idea—or maybe a wish—that would never become a video game.
But then the man who made millions making Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson, offered, over Twitter, to "make Psychonauts 2 happen."
Tim Schafer, whose Double Fine Productions made the first beloved Psychonauts game told Notch he'd be into it, but it was going to be expensive.
"I was like, 'I don't think you can make [it] for a million dollars.' The original game was, I think, $13 million, I think you have to match the original game."
"As soon as I mentioned the amount of money he said, 'Yeah, I can do that.'"
Imagine if other rich people—say, any game publisher in the business in the last half-decade—had been as ready to make this game happen.
Tim Schafer has pitched Psychonauts 2 to big video game companies. He has pitched the sequel to a game that was canceled, revived and then earned raves when it finally came out in 2005. But no publisher ever bit. They thought it was too creative or too obscure.
The failures frustrated Schafer, because Psychonauts, an adventure about a boy who can enter the minds of other colorful people and explore their thought-landscapes, wasn't supposed to be one-and-done.
"We had a lot of plot elements that were backstory in that [first] game that we planned on revisiting in the future and tying it back in," Schafer told me last week. "We had a longer story arc planned for those characters."
This is how he'd pitch the sequel to big game publishers: He'd show a 2010 fan trailer called Inceptionauts that mashed up the movie Inception and the first Psychonauts. "It's better than any trailer we ever had for the game," Schafer said. He says it even helped him remember how much he'd liked Psychonauts, which he had taken a break from thinking about after it came out. "It reminded me how much I like it," he said, adding that "I'd like to thank that fan for making the video. I used it to try to fund Psychonauts 2."
Schafer may have talked plot and setting to his potential Psychonauts 2 backers, but he demured from telling me how the new game would relate to the first, other than to tease that "I have ideas to take them to a more international setting."
He did, however, definitely talk to publisher suits about sales. "My pitch also involved how the game sold something like 400,000 copies initially. It wasn't enough for us to make money. But since then, through Steam and Good Old Games and all the places it's been, it's gotten in the hands of a lot of people." He recalls one day when a $2 Steam sale pushed Psychonauts even ahead of Call of Duty for revenue for that day. That, he remembers, was a good day.
None of this turned Psychonauts 2 into a real project scheduled to become a game you or I could play.
Then, on February 7, Notch Tweeted.
Schafer woke up to text messages from friends telling him to check Twitter. He thought he was being sued. No, the opposite. Someone wanted to give him money.
Soon, Notch and Schafer were talking.
"He said he had no idea it would get picked up like this. He said, 'Sorry for putting you on the spot, I didn't realize it would go so big.'
"I feel like I was being proposed to on the jumbotron at the baseball game."
Schafer sounds like he wants to say yes, but negotiations between him and Notch remain private. (Notch and his team at Mojang didn't respond to requests for comment for this story.)
The man who oversaw the making of Psychonauts simply wants to work with the man who made Minecraft. "He's been pretty successful. And, when you look into it, it's a really inspiring story. He's just a regular guy. He didn't do anything sleazy to get it. He just made it himself, distributed it himself, it's a great story. I think we have a lot to learn from him, so I'd like to do something with him.
"And I'd like to make Psychonauts 2."
You just know the team at Reverge Games have been giggling to themselves for the past week in anticipation of today's reveal of Nurse Valentine, the Skullgirls fighter with a prescription for pain.
Body bags, scalpels, and other implements of clinical destruction mark the repertoire of Nurse Valentine, continuing the 3D fighter's habit of mixing fetish with the freakish. They've got a kitty girl with a detachable head, why not a sexy nurse with a penchant for torture? It's two great tastes that taste great together.
Will you be hers?
Continuing in our long-standing tradition (aka yesterday) of Watch This, Play This are three pieces of entertainment to stave off that bitter Valentine's Day loneliness, or that romantic dinner you totally forgot to plan but that you promised your significant other you would. Oops.
WATCH: Jimmy Fallon astutely declares Curt Schilling as a "nerdy nerd."
PLAY: Beat Hazard Ultra is our favorite iOS game of the day.
WATCH: When Toy Fair demos go awesome. A part 2 from our venture to the New York Toy Fair this past Sunday.
Ratchet might not want to harass anybody when he uses Clank as a helicopter, but sometimes it just can't be avoided.
In this video, which we shot at the New York Toy Fair on Sunday, you can watch the anthropomorphic feline ride around like an out-of-control... well, helicopter.
Until now your iTunes music library has remained passive, patiently waiting for you to allow it to waft delicately to your eardrums. With the release of the iOS version of Beat Hazard Ultra your music is now a deadly predator, lurking in your playlist, awaiting the call to be transformed into explosive levels of eye-melting twin stick shooter action.While the gameplay has been enhanced, the song remains the same. Beat Hazard Ultra takes any song in your iTunes library and transforms it into a fast-paced twin stick shooter. The game monitors the different frequencies of the track that's playing for short, medium, and long term triggers. The short term triggers affect the power of your weapons; medium triggers handle enemy numbers and patterns; and long term triggers are linked to boss encounters and enemy wave generation. As you battle you'll pick up various power-ups increasing song volume, weapons power, and score multiplier. Once the level is complete your score is added to your experience level, and you might just gain a rank or two.
The formula used means that every song you use in the game is different, yet each time you play the same song the level is the same. That means there are as many levels in the game as there are songs, and last time I counted there are quite a few songs.
So hard music punishes you while softer sounds are easy, right? It doesn't quite work that way. I played through a level of heavy dubstep no problem, only to get my ass kicked by a little smooth jazz. Everyone needs to get their ass kicked by a little smooth jazz now and then.
And if your iTunes library isn't that varied, Beat Hazard Ultra features a nice selection of internet radio stations to play along to in a timed fashion, leading to some very interesting musical combinations. There I was, floating through space, shooting waves of enemies while Kelly Clarkston sang some melancholy tune. How bizarre.
So not only is Beat Hazard Ultra a new way to enjoy your own music, it's a highly entertaining way to introduce yourself to some new tunes as well.
And the visuals, man. The visuals will sear your eyes with white-hot magic. You can turn the effects down in the game's settings, but why? You've got a retina screen, man! Let your retinas melt onto it.
Beat Hazard Ultra [iTunes]
38 Studios founder Curt Schilling uses tales of baseball triumphs past to hook Late Night host Jimmy Fallon and then brings Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning in for the kill.
