I had forgotten how beautiful Wipeout HD is. Not just the course graphics, but — THOOM — pretty much everything about it. The looks of the different vehicles. The design of the fictional product placement around the tracks. The color and activity. In the background of the — THOOM — above screenshot is a milling crowd I’d never noticed. Even the interface before you’re into the game proper is beautiful. The animated folders for the — THOOM — Fury add-on. The icons for each individual track on the game settings screen. Wipeout has always been an aesthetic feast.
I had also forgotten that every race seems to take place over an underground mining colony hard at work with their, I dunno, rock pounders or whatever they’ve got that makes such a racket. I’ve never seen them, but by golly I can hear them. THOOM. Erratic but constant, deep and resonant. It drove me crazy. I never understood it. A perfectly sublime game — THOOM — ruined by its inexplicable proximity to invisible industrial machinery. Surely that can’t be how the game is supposed to sound. Was it some problem with my sound set up, maybe a — THOOM — crossed wire sending the wrong signals to my subwoofer? I even asked other players if they noticed it. No one knew what I was talking about. Like the pipes that heated my college dorm*, I learned to live with it.
Until now.
After the jump, the mystery of — THOOM — Wipeout HD’s pounding diversion solved Continue reading →
Stalker 2, a sequel to a game that people thought would never come out in the first place, has released its first bit of detail. Instead of telling you about the setting or a new enemy, GSC revealed that the sequel will require a live internet connection and will stream bits of the game off of internal servers. Recently, after being asked about their copy protection plans, studio director Sergey Grigorovich had the following to say:
Protection from piracy? Part of the content will be located on the server and downloaded as the game progresses. Permanent internet access is required. Text information, code and quests will be loaded through that connection.
This was brought to the attention of the GSC forum users who weren’t overly fond of this move. As far as I know, this is a first. I’ve never seen a company announce their DRM before telling anyone anything at all about their game. Luckily, GSC has since backed off of the claim, stating on twitter:
DRM was only mentioned as a possibility, not a choice. We’re still looking for a method that is acceptable for both GSC and the community!
Here’s hoping they come down on the side of the gamers.
The problem with most party games is that they think simplicity and depth are mutually exclusive. So you get a bunch of people sitting around frantically shaking Wiimotes for no good reason. Moto Heroz — lordy, I hate that name — knows better.
After the jump, you liked Trials HD, didn’t you? Continue reading →
Sometimes I like to think I’m fairly sophisticated when it comes to movies. The cinema, really. The culture of filmmaking and its sociological implications and Louie Malle and whatnot. For instance, I read this article about the influence of Islamic cinema on the Arab Spring. I fully intended I would then watch some of those movies to be, you know, more informed and culturally aware and stuff. But the entirety of my takeaway from that article was “Wait, there’s an Islamic horror flick?”
After the jump, there is in fact a Pakistani slasher movie with zombies Continue reading →
If you have small children and a Kinect, two things that aren’t conducive to videogaming as we know it, this is your lucky week. Doublefine’s Sesame Street game, Once Upon a Monster, is out this week.
Aliens: Infestation for the Nintendo DS is a 2D game in the tradition of the Castlevania/Metroid games, set aboard the Sulaco immediately following the events of the movie Aliens. As you explore, your squad of Colonial Marines will have to contend with a permadeath mechanic that also ties into the aliens’ lifecycle. Will we see the most meaningful chestburster gameplay since the multiplayer in Monolith’s Aliens vs. Predator 2? Based on what I’ve heard about Aliens: Infestation, Sega seems to be sitting on something special.
Dead Rising 2: Off the Record marks the re-return of Frank West and his camera, after the disappointing Case West add-on. Do I really want to play revisit the same area I’ve already played through a couple of times in Dead Rising 2? And hasn’t the meaty combat in Dead Island upstaged Dead Rising’s inconsequential zombie mowing? Will Off the Record’s sandbox mode be enough to sustain another trip through Fortune City?
Heroes of Might and Magic V is out this week. Oops, I meant VI. Heroes of Might and Magic VI. I’m sure they’re totally different games. Another totally different game is Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, which is the technical title of Ace Combat 15. I’m not exaggerating. There have been 14 Ace Combat games. Number 15 is out this week.
If you turn your nose up at console games and therefore missed Renegade Ops, now you can get Avalanche Studios’ superlative vehicular mayhem RPG for the PC. It will be available on Steam, with a Gordon Freeman buggy thrown in for good measure.
Finally, Forza 4 is out for those who want to use the Kinect to look at their cars in the new Kinect-driven “autovista” mode. Well, some of their cars. Kinectlook is only supported on certain cars. But I’ve been told you can also race in Forza 4, so keep an eye out for that if you’ve exhausted your copy of Shift 2.
The new technology introduced in this week’s podcast is more dramatic than anything in Ides of March, a rather sleepy political yarn from George Clooney. We have perfected our bleep technology to shield you from a spoiler someone (i.e. Kellywand) lets slip about an unrelated movie. Exciting stuff. And if you don’t want Ides of March spoiled, fast-forward to the 53:30 mark for a 3×3 of our favorite post-coital lines of dialogue.
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