Yesterday, I looked at the highest rated Little Big Planet level ever. Today, I’d like to get a look at the other end of the spectrum. However, there’s no option to sort lowest rated. And besides, wouldn’t some of the worst levels ever be simply unrated? What’s an easy way to just jump into something junky?
After the jump, I play the odds. Continue reading →
Among the list of usual suspects announced at a recent press event, Paradox Interactive revealed titles like Salem, Gettysburg: Armored Warfare, Dreamlor–. Wait, hold on. Back up. Isn’t armored warfare like, you know, tanks and stuff? I see what you did there, Paradox. What gives?
“Well, everyone knows General Lee lost at Gettysburg. What this game presupposes is, maybe they had kevlar crotch guards? Oh, and tanks and zeppelins.”
Gettysburg: Armored Warfare, which is a shooter/RTS hybrid, is one of several free-to-play games in development. Dig it:
* Salem — A free-to-play crafting MMORPG title set in a mythical version of New England.
* Gettysburg: Armored Warfare — A free-to-play FPS/ RTS hybrid. The game is set during an alternate version of the Civil War and includes tanks, zeppelins, a wide variety of firearms and much more.
* Hearts of Iron: The Card Game — A browser-based, free-to-play digital collectable card game based on the Hearts of Iron franchise.
* Dreamlords: Resurrection — A free-to-play Massively Multiplayer Online Real-Time Strategy (MMORTS) game.
Is it silly to be psyched about a Hearts of Iron CCG? I know it’s fashionable to think WWII is played out, but I love accessible new gameplay approaches like Petroglyph’s Panzer General on Xbox Live Arcade. When my opponent taps Hitler to keep his Panzer Division from retreating, I’m totally going to play my Atom Bomb card for ten points of damage. GG, Germany.
A couple on their honeymoon in China takes a wrong turn and gets chased by naked bald men coated in talcum power. Or “moon demons”, as the movie calls them. Of course, it’s moon demon-infested rural China, so there’s no cell phone service. However, Seventh Moon does something I’m seeing more often in horror movies. The cell phone without any reception becomes a source of light, as Amy Smart has discovered above. This is way better than a flashlight for a horror movie. The unfocused light from a cell phone illuminates the actor and it also makes for a more unsettling and unpredictable effect, because something scary could be just outside that soft sphere of light. Like, say, a moon demon!
Director Eduardo Sanchez makes the moon demons “scary” by lighting them poorly, shooting them out of focus, and jerking the camera around. Splice in footage of people running through the woods and, voila!, you’ve got a horror movie.
Sanchez got a lot of mileage out of people running through the woods when he made Blair Witch Project. But that running through the woods was given context with an eerie backstory, good actors, and masterful use of its unique twist (the “found footage” concept was novel back then). None of that is present here. Instead, we have a production that managed to get Amy Smart for a quick shoot in China and, uh, not much else.
For the better follow-up to Blair Witch Project, see a movie called The Objective by Sachez’s co-director, Daniel Myrick. It’s a flawed low budget horror movie, but it demonstrates that Myrick knows what made Blair Witch Project good and he’s capable of doing it again from a very different perspective.
A New York Times blog reports Russian television making a connection between the bombing at the Moscow Airport and Modern Warfare 2’s infamous “No Russian” mission (pictured).
Russia Today, a government-financed satellite channel, broadcast a report that mixed footage of the aftermath of the attack with gory scenes from a video game, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,” which allows players to take part in a terrorist attack on a Russian airport.
Russia Today’s report, which emphasized that the video game was made by Americans, included an interview with Walid Phares, a Fox News terrorism analyst, who suggested that terrorists might be using virtual games like this one to train for real attacks. “I think those who have been radicalized already — let’s suppose in this case jihadists, Al Qaeda or [some] other kind — they look at the games and say these games will serve them to train,” Mr. Phares said.
However, it looks like New York Times writer Robert Mackey knows his videogames.
The report asserts that the suicide bombing on Monday “mirrors” the video game’s scenario. In fact, the game dramatizes a commando raid on a Moscow airport that much more closely resembles the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008.
You’re not an asshole, Mark. You’re just trying so hard to be.
I’m so charmed by this demo. I can’t help it. It brings to mind that friend who tries really really hard to be tough, especially to talk tough, but never quite gets there. He knows the words. He’s heard them all before. In movies probably. Or more likely he’s read them. But when he says them…not so much. It just doesn’t translate. It’s like he’s forcing little puzzle pieces together that clearly don’t fit. You like him so much, though, you let it slide. And eventually this becomes an endearing part of his personality.
This Xbox Bulletstorm demo is trying its darndest to be hardcore funny, but it’s such a dork. Dick-tits? Really? I should dismiss you out of hand, Bulletstorm. But I can’t. Because I think I love you, man. You’re just trying so hard with that pseudo-gruff pirate-voiced narrator. Grayson Hunt is the name? I’ll try not to giggle. Come over here so I can give you a noogy. What was that you wanted me to do? Bury my boot* in that freak’s poop passage? Poop passage? Did you really say that? Fine. You’re invited to the party Saturday night. You’re adorable.
Also, that leash thing. I like.
*pictured
That’s blast radius, a level for Little Big Planet 2 created by Johnee. I found it by going to the community section, paging past the Cool Levels, Media Molecule Recommendations, and Text Search options to the More area. From there, I selected “highest rated ever” in the browse options. Blast radius appeared, and after a short loading time, I was inside a twin stick shooter with different weapons for blasting asteroids to get at the scoring crystals on the inside.
It’s cute. It’s just a twin stick shooter with different weapons and screen clearing bombs. Aggressive UFOs come along eventually. There are leaderboards that show me somewhere around 8,000th place.
After the jump, I’ll show you the cool thing it does. Continue reading →
As a game, Atom Zombie Smasher is just a series of RTS matches. You’re harvesting resources from a map. Instead of fighting an enemy, you’re fighting time, because the resources go bad in a matter of seconds (these are very short matches). You get three or four units, which makes Atom Zombie Smasher a bit of a puzzle game. Sometimes you’ll get a perfect set of tools for the situation. Other times, you’re completely and utterly screwed. It’s all indie graphics — dots, really — strung together in a simple but effective campaign mode.
But that’s just the game part.
After the jump, there’s something more important going on in Atom Zombie Smasher. Continue reading →
Blizzard has just posted their three official Starcraft II mods. There’s a Protoss cooking game called Auir Chef, a head-to-head match-3 called Starjeweled, and a co-operative zombie survival mode called Left 2 Die. This latter mode is an adaptation of the Outbreak campaign mission.
At night, you and a teammate are tasked with protecting your base against waves of infested terrans. In order to survive, you’ll need to use defensive structures like bunkers and coordinate your defenses against the invading zerg armies. You’ll also want to watch out for special zerg units such as the Kaboomer and Stank that can perform unique and powerful abilities capable of overwhelming even the strongest front lines.
During the day, the attacks on your team’s base will cease, giving you and your teammate time to train additional units and take them out to destroy infested terran settlements scattered across the map. It’s also a good idea to continue building up defenses during the daytime so you can survive the merciless onslaught of zerg that swarm your base at night.
There’s even an endless night mode where the goal isn’t to win, but to survive as long as you can.
Although these are technically beta, I’ll bet you dollars to donuts they’re ten times more playable as the typical beta in Starcraft II’s poorly organized morass of custom maps. It’s kind of cute when Blizzard suggests that to play these modes, “simply [sic] go to the Multiplayer tab in StarCraft II and look for the custom games window”. That’s like saying to defeat communism in Southeast Asia, “simply send in a few military advisors and defeat Ho Chi Minh”. A far better way to find these modes is to type the name into the search box and hope the actual mod floats to the top.
Go here to read more details on the game modes, including screenshots.
Yeah, yeah, that’s all good and well. Very clever, Mr. Joel Guelzo. But what I’m really looking for is more Sunset Sarsaparilla. Do you know how much of that junk I’ve drunk looking for the star bottle caps?
The day of the big date comes and…OH SHIT SON are you wearing a dog collar outside the collar of your frilly lavender shirt? Really?
[Ed note: Angie Gallant is doing the unthinkable in this thread, in which she plays through and thoroughly deconstructs something called Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side 1st Kiss. I cannot recommend the thread highly enough.]
So, the Tokimeki series is a huge series of dating games…The Girl’s Side games have you playing a girl through 3 years of high school. This is not a visual novel where you read/listen to lots of dialog and then choose from a couple of options to navigate the story. This is a life sim where you need to choose your classes, afterschool activities, clothes, and friends, go on dates and attend special functions, have a job, compete in mini-games
This isn’t just a game about wooing high school boys. This is a game about touching high school boys. You are periodically given opportunities to use the DS stylus to stroke your 2D boyfriend and watch him blush and object while hearts fly out of him. It’s possible to touch him too inappropriately and make him mad, so you have to really think about the ways in which you are going to molest each high school boy.
Part two of my DC Universe Online field report for Gamepro covers customization, character builds, game balance, and the age-old question of whether to PvP or not to PvP. On this last subject, I’ve had a powerful change of heart since I started playing the game.
DC Universe is only putatively an MMO. More accurately, it is a multiplayer open-world action game in which villains and heroes fight it out in a besieged city.
In other words, you’re not playing DC Universe Online unless you’re playing PvP.
By the way, that picture up there is me taking a flamethrower to Nightwing, who tricked me into playing as Robin.
The two big releases this week are actually little! First up is Atom Zombie Smasher, a $15 strategy game about zombie apocalypses. I’ll be reviewing it later, but here’s an example of how it plays.
The other great release this week is the PC version of Monday Night Combat, which has been available as a beta for a while, and on the Xbox 360 for an even longer while. Now it’s on the PC for real and for only $15. It’s like Team Fortress 2 met Demigod and had a baby. A smart, funny, in-depth, accessible, team-based shooter/RTS baby.
If bigger budget releases are more your thing, I expect lots of elaborately rendered stuff will jump out at you in Dead Space 2. Two Worlds II is a big RPG from the developers of Two Worlds, who insist they know Two Worlds I was bad and they’ve fixed whatever was screwed up. Finally, Lord of Arcana isn’t just the most generically named game in all of history. It’s also a Square/Enix Monster Hunter sort of game for the PSP.
Finally a movie we don’t agree on. It’s a 2 vs. 1 split on Peter Weir’s out-of-Siberia odyssey. If you’re worried about spoilers, jump to the 53-minute mark for our 3×3 of great character introductions.
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Okay, you know Batman’s sidekick, Chris O’Donnell, or “Robin”, or “Burt Ward”, as your parents might know him? He’s in DC Universe. If you spend 10 legendary marks, you can play as him in the arena battles. Ha ha, who’s going to voluntarily play as Robin? That’s a good one. DC Universe certainly has a sense of humor.
I cleverly sidestep the humiliating experience of showing up for an arena PvP battle as the Boy Wonder by saving up my legendary marks. I save up 35 of the silly things. And I spend them unlocking some sort of bad-ass ninja dude named Nightwing. He’s got a black-and-blue theme going, kind of like Quarter to Three. He hits people with two sticks about the size of rolled up magazines, a la Jason Bourne in Bourne Supremacy. I install this wallpaper on my computer. When I spawn into an arena battles, I figure I’m one of the cool guys instead of one of the losers who blew his first 10 legendary marks to role-play Chris O’Donnell in tights.
Or so I thought. I just found out via a cutscene that Nightwing is Robin. He grows up, ditches Batman for some sort of solo tour under the name Nightwing, and then promptly fails to protect the city when it’s devastated by a chemical warfare attack. So not only am I playing Robin, I’m playing an adult Robin who has done the exact opposite of saving people. I feel so…betrayed.
According to 2K Games, you have until May 3rd to make jokes about how Duke Nukem Forever will never come out, at which point they will put out a game by that name.
