Earlier in the week Cara reported in on her time with The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, and gave it Jeff Goldblum. Now though you can supplement these frivolous editorialisations with your own eyes-on experience, because the special news investigators of VG247 have posted footage of the same sequence that Cara played, and you can see that below. (more…)
Jim has mentioned before that he’s mightily impressed by the sheer scope of this giant zombie ‘open world, voxel-based, sandbox game blending the best elements of FPS, Survival Horror, Tower Defense and Role Playing Games’, though it’s probably that scope that has pushed it onto Kickstarter. 7 Days To Die is such a massive game – in the new video they have made they discuss how each material in the game has a different structural integrity. All food and items in the game have a purity level… The detail is astounding. It even has something called a ‘Stealth and Distraction System’. Have a look after the jump to see just how much stuff they are planning to jam into this crimsonhead shambler. (more…)
I suppose I should have got over finding that funny by now, but I really haven’t. Anyway, the folks from EA/DICE are keen to talk about how the web-based game launcher system will be enabling your game functionality in the online infospace matrix we call The Big Hook Up for Battlefield 4. This next Battlefield game is, of course, out on October 29th, and I am looking forward to my inevitable descent into assault rifle sports for the following month.
But yes, Battlelog explained, below. (more…)
Ever had one of those days where it feels like the whole world’s out to get you? Like you just can’t win? Like you are a magnet whose polarity is perfectly calibrated to attract gigantic, writhing jerkswarms who will stop at nothing to steal everything you love? Congratulations: you might be Super Crate Box and LUFTRAUSERS (among many, many other things) developer Vlambeer. Between countless clones and a recent theft of what basically amounted to their entire company during E3, the two-man team has been plagued by a string of bad luck so crushing that you’d think it was a giant joke.>
So Rami Ismail and JW Nijman laugh at it. They laugh and count their blessings.>
Wargame publishing leviathan Slitherine held their 2013 press conference last Friday. Fredericksburg, Virginia was the venue and I was there! In spirit. Physically I was in a small room in Staines, Surrey eating fig rolls and reading Nevil Shute’s ‘Pastoral‘ but I’m determined not to let a minor detail like that get in the way of pithy reportage. With the help of half a bottle of Auntie June’s extra-strong sloe gin, enough press releases to wallpaper a Pickett-Hamilton fort, and considerable experience of events of this type, I’m sure I can provide a fairly accurate account of what went on.
There’s a new conference taking place in a couple of weeks, following some successful Kickstartering: Nine Worlds Geek Fest 2013, near London. Heathrow, in fact. Convenient for our aeroplane readers. And I’ll be there, along with Cara Ellison and some mysterious, besuited stranger called Kieron Gillen. Along with proper famous names like Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow, the Guardian’s Laurie Penny, Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell, game writer Rhianna Pratchett, Red Dwarf star Chris Barrie, and a squillion others. The conference covers comics, sci-fi, science, geek feminism, and of course, gaming. Cara and I are on panels for the latter two, and you should come along.
As someone who self-identifies as (and gets paid to be) an oftentimes colossal nerd, I’m ashamed to admit that I’m only just now> getting into Neil Gaiman. I’ve been ploughing through Sandman, and I just finished American Gods the other day. It’s all been marvelous, and I absolutely despise myself for not starting sooner. But late-bloomer Gaiman binges do have their advantages. For instance, maximized> excitement over the Man Who Desperately Wishes He Had My Hair’s first foray into the world of digitized amusement laser rainbows – sometimes referred to colloquially as ”videogames”. It’s called Wayward Manor, and it sees you play as a grumpy ghost who must frighten away a “remarkable” band of intruders while maybe – just maybe> – learning a little something about himself in the process. Or, well, his death, anyway.
Shadow of the Eternals is the crowdfunding effort that will not die>. Instead, it merely crawled into its cold, cashless coffin and emerged after a month of rest, ready to face a new day. It is, one might say, eternal. Or at least, that’s what Totally Not Silicon Knigh– er, Precursor Games is going with. The Totally-Not-Denis-Dyack-led outfit is claiming to have secured a new source of funding, thus allowing it to drop the Eternal Darkness spiritual successor’s Kickstarter goal from $1.5 million to a still rather lofty $750,000. Other things have changed too – and not all of them for the better.
It’s finally happened. Activision-Blizzard has bought out the majority of its shares from Vivendi, leaving Bobby Kotick as the CEO of a basement-dwelling bedroom-coding indie studio. Will Call Of Duty: Sepia Ops claim next year’s IGF Grand Prize? Can the next WarCraft’s block-based image change see it taking on the might of independent mega-hit Minecraft? Will Spryro return as a pixellated retro-dragon, starring in a side-scrolling puzzle-platformer about pacifism, divorce and the decline of the LP in an age of easily consumable digital music? Yes, yes, yes.
For being couched in so many specific characters and mythos, FEAR has become a bizarrely well-traveled series. First it started at Monolith, then TimeGate developed a bunch of expansions – only for Monolith to completely ignore those adventures in slow-mo and mediocrity with FEAR 2. After that, the series crept up on Day 1 Studios without ever actually moving its feet how did it do that>, and Fuh-three-arrrr was born/about birth. And now Korean developer Inplay Interactive is taking the reins for a free-to-play multiplayer spin-off. Sounds like FEAR’s real fear is one of commitment hahaha welp time to hang myself.