Archive for September, 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8k1r-A3UAE
Funcom’s Joel Bylos narrates a short video promoting the newest Secret World content in the latest episode, “Digging Deeper”. Apparently, as of today, everyone gets a rocket launcher just for doing a new rocket launcher mission. Rocket launchers are featured in classic horror such as Steven King’s Maximum Overdrive.
The “Digging Deeper” content is free, so long as you’re paying your subscription fee.
It’s weeks like this that make us pine for the good old days when companies would make convenient six-hour games with multiplayer on the side that no one is going to play anyway.
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Look out! Zombies! Oh, wait, they’re friendly. They show up to help me every now and then. In fact, they show up every two minutes, like clockwork. How did this happen?
Find out after the jump. Continue reading →
In Electronic Arts’ press release for Dragon Age 3: Inquisition, Bioware general manager Aaryn Flynn notes:
…we know we need new technology to truly make this vision become fully realized. And we’ve been working with DICE to make Frostbite 2 the foundation for the engine that is going to power Dragon Age 3.
Mass Effect 3 pushed Bioware’s traditional “connected shoeboxes” level design as far as it was going to go, and it did it long after it should have gone. To see the Frostbite 2 engine in action, boot up Battlefield 3. And now imagine how it will look in a game scheduled for late next year. That’s what Bioware is finally working with.
Dune Wars is probably the finest Civ IV mod I’ve ever played. I’m certainly fond of Fall from Heaven for how it’s wildly inventive and cleverly put together. But the AI seems less inclined to fall apart in Dune Wars. Furthermore, Dune Wars is such a unique and thorough expression of Frank Herbert’s fiction, which is second only to Star Wars in terms of the hold it had on my adolescent imagination.
So I was pretty disappointed when Bruce Geryk and I couldn’t get the multiplayer to work. I was keen to play the Harkonnens to his Atreides, or maybe to let him run roughshod over the early game with the Fremen while my House Corrino ferried Sardaukar from offworld for an imperial endgame, or perhaps I’d try my hand at the Bene Gesserit to cultivate a Kwisatch Haderach. But we hit on the idea of a succession game, the same way people pass around saved games for Dwarf Fortress. I’d play fifty turns, then he’d play fifty turns, then I’d play fifty turns, and so on, until we won.
You can read about it in the first new Tom vs Bruce, which is online now for the folks who supported us at the second tier or higher on Kickstarter. Alternatively, you can donate to our PayPal link at tomvsbruce.com. Or you can just wait until it goes public on Wednesday morning. Whatever the case, we hope you enjoy reading about our Dune Wars game as much as we enjoyed playing it.
Maybe you’re not getting enough loot in Diablo III and Guild Wars 2. Maybe you need more. Because that’s the thing about loot. You never have enough. So this week, you’re in luck. Borderlands 2 and Torchlight II arrive, bearing even more loot.
I won’t know anything about Borderlands 2 until I pick up a copy (i.e. midnight tonight for the Xbox 360), but I have it on good authority that Torchlight II is pretty much exactly as good as you think it will be (i.e. even better than Torchlight I). I’m not too keen on what my 24th level liked Outlander (pictured) is wearing, but gear in Torchlight II is like the weather in the South. If you don’t like it, just wait fifteen minutes. It’s also nice to play an action RPG that I can make as difficult as I want whenever I want. It lets me get ambitious by starting out on veteran and then having to dial it down a notch half way into Act II. What a nice contrast to Diablo III, which forces you through an obligatory easy playthrough before it starts getting interesting.
The HD version of Jet Set Radio will be available on Xbox Live and the Playstation Store. I have no idea whether Jet Set Radio holds up in the real world as well as it holds up in my imagination, where it’s a timeless classic. But if it doesn’t hold up — hi, Tony Hawk HD! — I’ll at least have the soundtrack.
Continue reading →
What do two fans of Resident Evil: Afterlife and Kelly Wand think of the latest Milla Jovovich/Paul Anderson nonsensefest? Listen to this week’s podcast and find out. If you want to avoid spoilers, fast forward to the 36-minute mark for this week’s 3×3 of our favorite tantrums. Also, find out how you can participate in next week’s 3×3!
Next week: Dredd 3D
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Normally when you go underwater in a game, you have a breath meter that determines how long you can stay down there. This helps level designers design their oceans by limiting how far down the player can go. After all, not all games are Endless Oceans. It also keeps your character’s fingers from pruning.
Guild Wars 2, however, has some pretty wide ranging underwater exploration. When the level designers need to keep you from just heading out into the empty seas, they cite “currents” as the limiting factor. I would have also accepted “undertow”. But when it comes to briny depths, there’s some awfully amazing stuff in the water. And since all characters have rebreathers with unlimited air capacity and magical defenses against nitrogen narcosis and the bends, you can explore freely! The only drawback is that you look like a certain ridiculous villain in a certain recent movie.
Nintendo announces the new controller for Bayonetta 2! We’re excited! You? Plus some enthusing and naysaying about FTL, followed by more inability to not talk about Guild Wars 2.
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As much as I skip over the lore while I’m playing Guild Wars 2, I can’t help but admire what an imaginative world ArenaNet has made. Ever see a frog in heavy armor? Well, you have now. Pictured. Left.
I recall another MMO called Vanguard having various dog and cat people, and as near as I can recall, they were just human character models with dog and cat heads stuck on top. It’s just like how all the aliens on Star Trek are bipedal humanoids with prosthetic noses or ears or whatever. One of the things I really like about playing a charr in Guild Wars 2 is that it’s not just a human character model with a cat head. The charr have an entirely different posture, size, and movement animation. Similarly, the various non-human races around the world — I don’t just mean the monsters, but the NPC civilizations — have a distinct look. In addition to the frog people, there are polar bear people, platypus people, rat people, and bird people, and not a one of them uses the basic human character model. In fact, with all these NPC races, with all the charr, with all the diminutive asura, it sometimes seems that human character models are the exception rather than the rule.
From a solid zombie movie to an inexplicable demonic possession retcon, the [REC] series of Spanish horror movies went from great to “huh?” in short order. Now the third movie plunges deeper into “huh?” territory by veering further from what made the first movie good. [REC] 3 opens as a wedding video, which sets an ornate stage for a zombie apocalypse. But when it arrives, it’s mostly just a big gory goof, played weakly for laughs. Perhaps the biggest laugh — and I can’t tell if it was supposed to be funny — is how [REC] 3 decides to stop being a found footage movie shortly after the zombies arrive. After all those found footage movies when you wonder why they don’t just drop the camera, someone finally decides to drop the camera.
What should have been the signature scene (pictured) as well as a cool reveal is splayed out on the box cover, so you know it’s coming. When it finally arrives, it’s not nearly as gratifying as it should have been. As the bride, the lovely Leticia Dolera doesn’t have the physicality necessary to make the scene work. The poor woman can barely lift the chainsaw. Furthermore, it doesn’t really go anywhere. If you want to see a blood-spattered bride slicing up zombies with a chainsaw, you’ll have to visit a wedding chapel in a Dead Rising game and go to town. [REC] 3 will just disappoint you.
[REC] 3 is available on video on demand.
V/H/S is an example of how horror can live comfortably outside the usual narrative structures. This is an anthology, but it’s also a cool variation on the found footage concept. The idea is that a single tape has accumulated and sometimes overlapped footage of various horrific events, starting with a Halloween fun house (?) in 1998 and working its way in reverse order to a wraparound device involving the tape itself, which starts the movie. Cloverfield played briefly with this idea of a reused tape where you learn something when the old footage bleeds through. V/H/S is based entirely on it. And given how everyone uses digital storage these days, it’s a concept with a limited shelf life, like phone booths and television snow.
These stories are mostly morality plays that would be right at home in an R-rated splatter version of Twilight Zone, but with a latter day YouTube aesthetic, where the video artifacts, poor resolution, blurred lights, and bad sound are an asset. The best segment is “Amateur Night”, contributed by David Bruckner, one of the three directors of the brutal and brutally funny The Signal. “Amateur Night” unfolds like some sort of Girls Gone Wild gonzo porn segment, rolling along during a night of partying, accumulating hangers on, and eventually winding up in a motel hell of overthrown sexual power. It’s a nearly perfect example of how horror can combine nudity, gore, and shocks. Amateur Night, I like you. I like you.
A Horrible Way to Die director Adam Wingard contributes a lot of the movie’s connective tissue. Ti West’s segment, “Second Honeymoon”, has one of V/H/S’s strongest single moments, but it doesn’t have much payoff. Joe Swanberg’s “The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger” applies the found footage concept to people connected over videochat, an extra layer that ironically makes it even more intimate. And if you’re going to slaughter a bunch of teenagers in the woods, “Tuesday the 17th” (get it?) has just the video trick to do it.
These are mostly well written vignettes, and the directors are good enough to know they need good actors. Hence Hannah Fierman’s bird-like succubus, Helen Rogers’ frail girl-alone-in-a-dark-house, and an assortment of believable victims. Found footage like this is the new cinema verite, and it gives horror a distinctly relatable touch. This isn’t just a movie. This is people going about the business of taping their daily lives. And you’re gazing into the mundane, waiting to glimpse something fantastic and terrible. V/H/S will oblige you.
V/H/S is currently available on video on demand.
During one of the storyline missions in Guild Wars 2 — these will vary based on your answers to multiple choice questions when you make your character — I had to investigate some strange goings on in the sewers of Lion’s Arch, the game’s main city. The mission takes place in an instance of the sewers scripted to involve some things I’ll leave you to discover on your own. But as soon as you walk in, you see a steady stream of rats coming out of the sewers. The idea is that there’s something up ahead that they want no part of.
So I did the mission and then ended up back at the entrance, watching the rats stream out. I’m not proud of what happened next.
After the jump, a one-man Vamanos Pest Control Continue reading →
NHL13, which stands for the National Hokey League 13, is out this week. In this sport, you hit a round thing with a stick, which means hokey is very similar to the sports of golf, baseball, and jai alai. If you’re into hokey, this is your lucky week.
The other game out this week is Tekken Tag Tournament 2, which is a lot more fun that NHL 13 when it comes to saying the names of a game out loud. Go ahead, try it. Saying NHL 13 makes it sound like you’re ready to take a nap. Saying Tekken Tag Tournament 2 makes it sound like you’re announcing the impending arrival of something at least snappy, if not downright exciting.
