Welcome to the first (and hopefully final) Tumblr edition of Kotaku's Week in Gaming Apps, where we look fondly back at the mobile games that touched our lives during this trying time, except for the one from Monday that we can only link to via Google cache.
Since our normal format won't work here, I give you this abnormal format instead. Just a simple selection of links to games about punching things in the face, winning the race, becoming a vocabulary ace, breeding robots in space and using guns to say grace.
Check them out while I go be all proud of myself for that last sentence. Good job, me.
It's come to the point where I'm getting excited about any opportunity to see more of the characters of the delightfully silly Borderlands franchise.
And apparently Gearbox is heeding my call, because they're bringing back the Claptrap webseries, which, if you're like me and haven't even watched season one yet, you can watch all of right here. Gearbox says that the first episode of season two will premiere on their Facebook page early next week.
The Hitman series has long been about choice-bald-headed 47 was set loose inside a semi-sandbox with a target or two, and players could come up with any of a number of ways to do away with them.
That style of play is becoming increasingly uncommon, at least in mainstream AAA console games, at least in part because it can be a challenge to communicate that kind of freedom to modern players. But lo, that's what Hitman: Absolution makers IO Interactive are gonna try to do.
And this is something that is also… it's quite difficult, actually, to educate players that this is what the game is trying to serve you, because people are increasingly used to games where you're told to do one thing, and if you stray from this line, there will be nothing else around. It's like, you have this experience, and that's it. So we're telling people, actually, "No, no, no. You choose by yourself."
If you want to go in here, or here, or if you want to kill them or not, it actually changes the way you play the game - when you understand that you have the choice. So in the first couple of levels, we are continuously working [on it]. And still back in Copenhagen we're trying to find out, are we teaching the players everything that they need to understand about the gameplay and the possibilities of the game?
I do imagine that a player steeped in linear games would have a hard time getting much out of Hitman: Blood Money (a game I love). Then again, if there's anything we've learned over the last couple of months from games like XCOM and Dishonored, it's that there's still a lot of life left in older, more-complex game design, as long as it's done right. We'll see if IO pulls it all together soon enough.
Last month Zynga revealed that 13 of its lesser-performing Facebook games would be closed in order to make the social side of the company less of a massive disappointment. Yesterday players of FishVille and Treasure Isle were informed that those games would be closing up shop on December 5.
What, there was a FishVille?
Not only was there a FishVille, Zynga refers to people playing the game as Fishvillers, wish isn't something I could see myself ever wanting to be called.
Players of both games are eligible for a bonus package if they move to one of Zynga's less dead-in-the-water titles.
Greetings Fishvillers,
Thank you for supporting FishVille and for being a loyal player! We're sorry to inform you that FishVille will be shutting down on December 5, 2012. In place of FishVille, we encourage you to play other Zynga games like Castleville, Chefville, Farmville 2, Mafia Wars and Yoville.
We appreciate your participation in FishVille as it helped make the game a fun place to meet with friends. As a loyal FishVille player, you are eligible for a one-time, complimentary bonus package in one of either Castleville, or Chefville, or Farmville 2, or Mafia Wars or Yoville. You can start the process by clicking the Redeem button in game when you log in. Please note that this offer will be valid only until December 5, 2012.
Twelve years will have passed between the release of Grand Theft Auto III in 2001 and Grand Theft Auto V in 2013. Those 12 years have seen ten releases of major GTA games and DLC, each putting its own spin on the series' classic vector art look.
The 71 official images pulled from Rockstar's website cover GTA3, Vice City, San Andreas, Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories, GTA4, The Lost and Damned, Chinatown Wars, The Ballad of Gay Tony, and GTA5, including the images released just last night.
So by the numbers: what do the faces of Grand Theft Auto look like?
58 are men (0 in sexually provocative dress and/or poses)
21 are women (15 in sexually provocative dress and/or poses)
22 have guns
5 have melee weapons or are fighting
9 are wearing sunglasses, even indoors
8 have visible tattoos
5 are eating or drinking
4 have cigarettes or cigars
4 have mobile phones
3 are showing cash
…and 1 has a dog that will eat your face. Twice.
Flipping through the full gallery is also just a neat way to look at how a signature style of art has evolved and changed over the past decade.
"Oh no!" you are almost certainly thinking. "Gawker Media is underwater, desperately clinging to Tumblr like that guy in that movie where the cruise ship sank. But it is Friday! It's 3pm Kotaku Time! What will I do without my favorite weekly JRPG/sex-advice column Random Encounters?"
You are too sweet. But don't worry! I am still here, I've still got power, and I have a serious illness where I can't go more than a week without talking about JRPGs, so Kotumblr will have to do.
Over the next few weeks, the bulk of the gaming industry will set its sights on games like Assassin's Creed III, Halo 4, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. I will not. I'll be playing Paper Mario: Sticker Star and Persona 4 Golden, two Japanese role-playing games that I find more interesting and engaging than any big-budget shooter or adventure.
I'll have lots to say about Mario's latest papery excursion next week in my review, which should be up Tuesday, drowned servers permitting. For now I want to talk about the latest Persona game.
Persona 4 Golden, which comes out for the Vita on November 20, is unusual in a lot of ways. For one, it's a video game on the Vita. It's also 3,137 megabytes, which is particularly insane when you realize that the lowest-end Vita memory card is 4 gigabytes, or roughly 4,000 megabytes. The highest-end Vita memory card, by the way, is 32 gigabytes, and it costs $100. This is a business strategy commonly called "we can do whatever we want because fuck you."
The other interesting thing about Persona 4 Golden is that it's a remake of a video game that came out in 2008. This is sort of like that joke about how the people behind Twilight started planning a remake of Twilight when Twilight came out, except instead of a joke, it's real and actually just happened.
But it's all good, because people love Persona, to the point where it's become the shining example of A Japanese RPG It's Okay To Like. It's common to see gamers and critics write things like "JRPGs? Oh, I hate JRPGs. But boy do I love Persona!"
So one big question I'm pondering as I play Persona 4 Golden - my first experience with Persona 4 in any form - is why? Why do people love Persona so much?
I never finished Persona 3 Portable, a game that Kirk and I have discussed quite a bit on the site formerly known as Kotaku. I logged some 25, 30 hours in the game before I had to put it down for one new thing, then another, and then another, and no matter how many times I promised myself I would go back and finish it, I never quite could find the time. But I loved what I played. I loved the calendar-dictated rhythm of daily life as a student in Iwatodai. I loved the dichotomy between mundane classes at school and harrowing journeys through Tartarus. Something about the whole thing just worked.
It's also very, very Japanese, and I say that not to disparage, but to point out that this is a game that wholeheartedly and unabashedly embraces both Japanese culture and Japanese game design. Aside from the obvious - it's a game about people in Japan - Persona 3 also clings onto a lot of design quirks that Western games try to avoid. Repetitive rituals, for example, like that ticking clock animation that appears every time it turns midnight. While Western-developed games like last month's fantastic Dishonored try to give you the player more control than ever, Persona 3 does quite the opposite. Persona wants you to know that it's in charge. Not you.
Similar trends are rearing their heads in the first two hours of Persona 4 (although I'm sure it'll open up more soon). It's got all sorts of funny little ticks. Every time you head in and out of the game's bizarre TV World, the screen will turn funky and that same old TV World animation will play. Just before you're about to watch television at midnight, your character will close the curtains and walk away from his window. Rituals.
And then there are the moments during which the game tells you what to do. "You should go to bed," the game will tell you. Or "You shouldn't talk to him right now." You won't even have the option. Your character spends a great deal of time performing actions that are dictated by the game, not you.
To many people these things would be unacceptable, the definition of "bad game design." But a large number of Westerners-even the ones who don't typically like JRPGs-have fallen in love with the quirks and trends of Persona 3. What's up with that?
Maybe the series' unique structure-seriously, what other games follow this sort of rigid school-dungeon-school-dungeon routine?-makes it easier to forget about what we'd consider flaws in many other games. Maybe these sort of choices work only for games like Persona. Or maybe we're just too in love with Mitsuru to care?
I'll be thinking about this question more and more as I continue to play through Persona 4 Golden. I would invite you to offer your own theories in the comments, but we have no comments. Hurricane Sandy affects us all.
Nowadays, it seems like all sorts of beefed-up characters in shooter games can sling taunts and emotes. But back in 2008, Army of Two won a crucial bros'-rights battle when the two leads-whose names, c'mon, no one even remembers-were able to express their bro-love for each other in a series of team-based mechanics. With elements like drawing fire from hostiles to give the other guy a chance to mow them down or cradling your fingers together to enable a crucial step-jump, Army of Two exemplified what true bro-dude-ness feels like.
Now, Army of Two did have slight aspirations of political commentary, which were focused on what it would look like private military corporations ran amok. Amidst all the co-op shooting and fist-bumping, you got the sense that someone in there wanted to say something about organizations like Blackwater being active in geopolitical hotspots. But mostly it was about saving your bro from dying a lot. That game's sequel Army of Two: The 40th Day was set in a Shanghai laid low by an cataclysmic earthquake also had some subtext about the behaviors that bubble up when society crumbles. But, whatever, it also let you do a sweet air-guitar gesture after shooting out a guy's kneecaps.
When a third game in the Army of Two series was announced earlier this year, homeslices everywhere wondered what kind of bro-hemian rapture (that's the name of the tune from Wayne's World, right?) was in the works. I got a brief hands-on with Devil's Cartel a few weeks ago and I swear my baseball cap turned itself around on my head. (Note: I don't even wear baseball caps!)
Devil's Cartel aims its pair of protagonists at the bloody drug trade that's wreaking havoc in Mexico. Tequila-based power-ups? Noiiiiice. (Those aren't in the game. But they should be.)
The bro-mance started right off as my character was shot in the dome-which I assume wasn't lethal thanks to a bitchin' faceplate-and had to help my partner fend off a bunch of jerks until he could come get me back on my feet.
From there, the level I jumped in on had the two mercs storming a villa filled with bad guys. I didn't hear any of the sausage party bickering that charactized the previous Ao2 games (no one calls it AoT, aight, guy?). These badasses were getting along? S'all good. Homies can get along. Bros contain multitudes, too, y'know?
Speaking of multitudes, the art style in Devil's Cartel-done up in the Frostbite 2 engine-seemed more high contrast than in previous Ao2 games. And the violence seemed more amped up. The EA rep on hand said that the Visceral Montreal dev studio was aiming for more of an action movie feel, and the gameplay certainly felt like it would be at home in a Jason Statham movie. (Can Brit dudes be bros? Must research.) Cover-chaining lets the player move from safe spot to safe spot quickly and an assortment of pistols, assault rifles and grenade launchers were on hand to blast enemies with. Every kill and co-op move built up an Overkill meter, which feeds a power-up that gives you unlimited ammo and basically turns you invulnerable for a short time. In other words, it turns you into Bruce Willis, blessed be his name.
Lots of environmental destruction was in evidence as we blasted our way through the level, especially when a helicopter gunship-hey, those are NOT cliché-tried to perforate the two main characters. Pumping round after round into the hovering aircraft was kind of mindless but enjoyable fun. And it crashed under our assault, because that's what's supposed to happen. Kicking butt not only earns Overkill but also banks points that you can use to upgrade guns and gear, too. The plot details of Army of Two: Devil's Cartel aren't being discussed now but whatevs to that. You know what the story's about: you and your bro-back-to-back-against the world.
Hurricane Sandy didn't have an effect on the video game scene the way it would have if it had hit in a city like Montreal or San Francisco, where many of the most popular video games are made. But New York City and the surrounding region does have a vibrant indie gaming scene, millions of passionate gamers, a lot of game shops, the headquarters of the site you're currently reading and at least one game development studio you've all heard of.
So, what did this storm do to us all?
Nothing too bad as far as gaming is concerned. Nothing that comes close to the destruction it did to lives and homes across the Eastern Seaboard. It was more of a nuisance.
Sandy shut down businesses in downtown Manhattan, which remain, four days after the hurricane, without power. Electricity is supposed to be restored today or tomorrow, according to ConEd, the utility whose 14th street power station exploded when Sandy hit.
Among those thousands of businesses was Rockstar Games, which went dark when the rest of downtown lost power and wasn't going to raise a fuss about it. But word was getting out that a new trailer was supposed to hit this week, so they updated fans to let them know it wouldn't be happening. Not yet. The second Grand Theft Auto V trailer (first in a year!) was delayed because of the storm. While most of the development of GTA V is likely happening in Edinburgh, Scotland, home of Rockstar North, trailers tend to come from HQ in downtown New York. So it makes sense.
Rockstar is pretty much across the street from NYU, which has a growing game design and game studies program called the Game Center, run by game designer Frank Lantz. He told me that they're shut down until Monday but plans are still on track for the second annual "Practice" weekend games conference starting November 9. (Tickets still available.)
One of Lantz's students told me the storm had him playing games, because, with no power, there just aren't as many other things to do for fun. "My girlfriend and I are playing board games each night by candles in our dark apartment," Game Center MFA candidate Shervin Ghazazani told me. He's in Manhattan in the Chelsea neighborhood and has stuck around in the darkzone to feed his and his girlfriend's two cats. "We are rediscovering the joy of classic board games such as Guess Who, Crazy Eights and Blockus," he said. "Playing these games has helped us through this tough time. I don't know what we would do each night when we get home for ~3hrs before we sleep."
I noticed Spelltower game designer Zach Gage talking about having no power on Twitter and hit him up. Maybe he had a story about what he was going through? A photo? He e-mailed back last night: "I've got no power no water and only recently Internet/cell service in my new 11-floor walk-up :) I've just been reading comics, making food runs, and hanging out listening to my girlfriend play guitar and bbqing on the roof. Played a few board games, no photos though. Since there's no power I've had to conserve my phone and keep it off. Trying to charge it off various laptops." He told me he nearly designed a dice game, but it didn't pan out.
The Nintendo World Store-the flagship store for all things Nintendo anywhere on the planet-is in Rockefeller Center, comfortably high up enough in midtown that it's had power. They shut down for the storm but were open again on Wednesday. Back on Sunday, the super-gamer/super-self-promoter TriForce Johnson, who had started waiting outside the store a month early to ensure he'd be the first to get the new Wii U on November 18 decided to go home. He needed to be safe with a hurricane coming down and he was assured his spot would be held. He's back now-walked for three hours from Brooklyn to get back there yesterday. He managed to step off the line to seeWreck-It Ralph, though; the wonders of having pals who will take your spot in the line for you, perhaps?
Sandy also delayed the release of CityVille 2, Zynga's new city-building sequel, from early in the week to Thursday.
The offices for Kotaku parent company Gawker Media aren't far from Rockstar's, so we've been shut down as well. The regular New York team-me, Tina Amini, Evan Narcisse, Jason Schreier, and Chris Person-have been working from home, most of us with electricity and occasionally intermittent Internet, only one of us crazy enough to have shot a video of power lines on fire during the storm.
You may have noticed that our home website went down late Monday. We've been posting this Kotaku-ized Tumblr ever since. (And, yes, we know some of you prefer this layout… next year's will look a bit more like it.) All of the Gawker sites were knocked out when the datacenter we use had its lower-Manhattan basement flooded with about 16 feet of water. We're expecting to be back next week. For now, we're here.
I took a walk last night from my dry home in a minimally-affected area of Brooklyn to the Brooklyn promenade. It was dark, and from the Promenade, lower Manhattan should look like this. (Image via Shutterstock)
But, via my iPhone, it looked like this:
Here's a little more of a view up toward midtown where there is power:
This video shows the sweep of the scene:
But, hey, at least the subways are free right now… as far as they'll go. They still can't run through flooded tunnels or into the blackout zone.
In the surrounding area, from New York to New Jersey to Maryland, many gamers are still without power and undoubtedly worrying about other things than when they'll play a video game again. To our readers who were affected by Sandy, we hope you are en route to a full recovery.
The Mass Effect Trilogy-which bundles BioWare's acclaimed sometimes controversial sci-fi series all in one place-comes out next week. (PS3 owners will be able to download the first game in December.) In case you need a refresher for Commander Shepard's saga, watch the clip above.
