I love the way South Park: The Stick of Truth looks just like the TV Show. I know the show has been animated on computers for years, but imitating its 2D animation so perfectly is a greater magic trick than anything performed by Battlefield 4.
Speaking of magic tricks. Come watch this latest trailer about how to cup and throw one in the other new Obsidian RPG. (more…)
Do you want to know almost everything ever about Obsidian’s newly renamed Kickstarter opus, Pillars of Eternity? Then click that link for impressions and more new information than you can shake a stick of truth at. But still, somehow, thousands of words later, there is more. What follows is an interview snippet concerning Eternity’s development progress, what’s been left on the cutting room floor, the game’s size/scope, party members, and of course, the Dungeoniest Dungeon To Ever Done Dungeon A Dungeon.>
The trailer for Company of Heroes 2′s most recent DLC ends on a sombre and slightly surreal note. Men trudge through mud, done down by the weather as well as the enemy. They are all fashioned from the same model, all have the same animation, cookie cutter quarry in a nightmare landscape. Intentionally or not, it’s a scene that uses the apparent limitations of the character models to great effect and makes a refreshing change to the explosive way that war is often depicted in a short sales pitch. Edit: this isn’t a sales pitch at all though – the DLC is free I misread the press release, sorry. The free part of the DLC includes two new multiplayer maps, base game improvements and Steam Workshop integration for maps made in the recently released World Builder. For three quid, you’ll also receive several solo challenges and AI battles.
SAMURAI GUNN SAMURAI GUNN SAMURAI GUNN SAMURAI GUNN SAMURAI GUNN SAMURAI GUNN SAMURAI GUNN SAMURAI GUNN SAMURAI GUNN SAMURAI GUNN SAMURAI GUNN SAMURAI GUNN.
OK, enough with the formalities. Let’s get down to business. Samurai Gunn is great. I’ve played it in various stages of completion, and its local-multiplayer-centric blend of lightning-quick, one-hit-and-you’re-done slashing and impeccably timed shooting is sublime. It is essentially a game in which you do two things (three if you count moving/jumping), and they all feel perfect. It is out now. Go do something about that, or actually maybe don’t because it’s kinda light on content at the moment. Your call.
There are many sights to see through this next door, which is the start of a very long journey indeed. If it snows, we’ll stop at the side of the road and watch the lights going by while the world sleeps. But always remember – business before pleasure.
Some time ago, I read and then offered opinions about Bedlam, a novel by renowned crime writer Christopher Brookmyre, which was about PC games. PC games as a whole that is, rather than being based on a particular game. Its wider sci-fi trappings and its broad humour I wasn’t especially taken with, but I did greatly enjoy its clear love for and whirlwind dash through the earlier days of PC shooters, and its careful, affectionate description of what those early id’n'Epic worlds of brown rock and alien war without end would be like if somehow made flesh.
Flesh we don’t get, but what is happening is a videogame adaptation of this book about videogames, a first-person shooter that’s also a tour through the history of first-person shooters. (more…)
Oh Double Fine, you clever masters of language’s darkest arts, I see – and indeed, understand the true ramifications> – of what you did there. You said a thing that sounded like one thing, but it actually meant something entirely different. How cunning, how deceptive. Language, my friends, will never be the same. The Amnesia-Fortnight-born Hack ‘N’ Slash isn’t a top-down action-packed hack-and-slash at all. Instead, it’s an adventure puzzler about hacking> – like, with computers and stuff. What’s next? An RPG about rocket-propelled grenades? A Metroidvania that’s actually Metroid and Castlevania duct-taped together? A shooter that’s about shooing-away Ters, whatever those are? This is a brave new world.
It’s official! Project Eternity finally has a real big boy name: Pillars of Eternity. On its own, that’s hardly the most exciting news in the world, but it also means that Obsidian is finally ready to take the wraps off more than, like, three screenshots and precious little else. I had the good fortune of traveling to Obsidian to witness plenty of gameplay and conduct multiple eternities-long interviews, and The Artist Formerly Known As Black Isle sent me away with some video to boot. See, hear, read, and – I guess if you want – taste and touch so very, very, very much of the newly rechristened Kickstarter darling below.>
Hello youse.
Today I want to give you some suggestions for Christmas board game gifts for the more hardcore members of your family. By hardcore I mean hardcore geek . It’s not a sexual thing. A board game would be a terrible gift for a sexually liberated person. It’d be like saying I thought you might, I dunno… play some board games instead? I’m not saying that sexually liberated people don’t play board games, by the way. They do! Board games are hugely sexual. Eyes meeting over a table, hands touching hands, feet brushing feet. Damn. Give me a second here. (more…)
I just spent half an hour squinting at my monitor, reading melancholy messages shared between a group of acquaintances. I wasn’t browsing my inbox or Twitter feed – I was playing the imaginative and absorbing FOC/US, a free game created by Felix Park. It’s a dreamlike experience, not in a fantastic surrealist sense, but rather in the way that it reconfigures the mundane. The atmosphere contains something of the claustrophobic oppression of sleep paralysis along with everyday anxieties that stem from love, friendship and money. It begins with a camera with a zoom lens. Next to it, a tiny person lies on the table. Zoom in and speak to him and he reveals the location of the next person. Sad, strange and startling, it’s a wonderful little thing.