FTL is a frantic permadeath game about managing the crew of an interstellar ship as it voyages through hostile space. Imagine being Captain Kirk, but your bridge crew is a bunch of morons. Putting out literal fires and driving off enemy boarding parties takes up the lion’s share of your time. There is a delicious tension between handling emergencies and navigating the cold depths of the galaxy. Subset Games has announced FTL: Advanced Edition and there are a few reasons for you to get this expansion.
After the jump, the ship can’t take much more of this!Continue reading →
There is something moving around on the other side of this wall. I can hear it shuffling and dripping some kind of unspeakable ichor as it slides over the ruined stonework. I have only my knife and a rock to keep me safe in this cyclopean hell and I must make it back to the relative safety of the labyrinthine library. A giggle rises from my lips, but I quickly silence myself. I cannot afford to lose my sanity in these deep corridors. I creep forward, darting my view in all directions. Suddenly, there is a dreadful noise behind me! I turn whilst steeling myself against this fresh horror… Awwww! It’s just the sweetest looking Deep One I’ve ever laid my eyes on! Come here, li’l guy! Come – OH GOD, WHY IS IT KILLING ME?
The Enhanced Edition of Baldur’s Gate II is out for PCs this week. This is Bioware’s classic RPG with the Throne of Bhaal add-on included. It’s also got a whole mess of new content, new characters, an updated interface, new cinematics, and support for monitors you wouldn’t have even dreamed of when you first played it back in 2000. It’s also only $25. Get it here.
For something a little more latest-gen, X: Rebirth is the latest in the X series of open-world space games that are too complicated for you. XCOM’s expansion, Enemy Within, adds mechs and biogenetic mods for your soldiers. Deadfall Adventures is an Uncharted-a-like from the folks who did the wonderfully unhinged Necrovision and the Painkiller remake. It’s no Necrovision. But then again, what is. Finally, the latest Killzone will be available for $600 ($60 for the game itself and $540 or so for a platform to play it on).
This weekend, attendees of BlizzCon learned about Warlords of Draenor, the next World of Warcraft expansion, and more details about Diablo III’s expansion, Reaper of Souls which will allow players to choose between playing in linear Campaign Mode or Adventure Mode. The new mode will unlock all waypoints on the map from the outset. Instead of playing through the story, you’ll be able to skip around in endless battles. Randomized Bounties will give players a goal to chase. These will vary from killing a specific beastie, to clearing a dungeon, or completing an event. Nabbing a Bounty will give players the normal gold and experience, and will give them special objects that can open Nephalem Rifts. These Rifts are portals to completely randomized mini-dungeons containing greater rewards and hazards. Finally, players can officially ignore the storyline.
It’s a dark world indeed when this podcast can’t agree whether the second Thor movie is awful or wonderful. So we purge the sickness for this week’s 3×3 by considering our favorite scenes of vomiting in movies. Well, inasmuch as a scene with vomiting can ever be a favorite. It all comes out at the 59-minute mark.
The Playstation 4 and Xbox One? Pish. Leave it to EA’s technical wizards at DICE, a Battlefield game, and a souped-up PC to rip the curtain back from the next generation. You can’t very well watch one of these skyscrapers topple — as carefully scripted as anything in Call of Duty, but with some secret ingredient that actually instills awe — without feeling like you’ve arrived somewhere you haven’t yet been. Unfortunately, the skyscrapers aren’t the only things that topple.
Marvel Heroes gets a massive update today which adds Loki as a playable character and Asgard as a new zone.
Travel to the frozen Fjords of Norway and battle Frost Giants, Dark Elves and more! Help Reed Richards uncover the mystery of how and why these enemies from another realm are invading Earth by donating items that have been exposed to the energy of the Cosmic Cube! Doing so will unlock a brand new zone! Norway can be unlocked by bring a hero who has defeated Doctor Doom on the present difficulty mode to the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier and speaking with the transport S.H.I.E.L.D. agent near Nick Fury. Over the next 4 months, new areas of Asgard will become available, including a raid zone, PVP zone and Siege challenge.
Furthermore, Thor’s storm strike has been buffed. All this just as a new Thor movie is coming out. How fortuitous! You’d almost think it was planned!
Frictional Games’ Thomas Grip has posted a prototype of Gone Home during the early stages of its development. Designer Steve Gaynor and his team originally created it using Frictional’s Amnesia. Grip writes about it here and provides a link to download it and unpack it into your copy of Amenesia if you’d like a first-hand look.
The prototype is quite short and very basic; it is really more of a proof of concept. But it still gives a very good sense of the game, and having played the full version, I could recognize quite a bit. It does feel a bit awkward to play an early test like this though. Gone Home is a very personal game, and playing this prototype felt like a meta version of the game’s voyeuristic thematics.
Gone Home recently added a commentary mode. You can listen to my conversation with Gaynor on this podcast and read the review here.
Secret World has been out for about a year and a half. In an MMO, this normally means the population has fallen off and maybe a bunch of servers have closed. It can be hard to find people to group with. Maybe you can’t talk your friend into playing because he’s playing something else. So you’re on a lonely journey through what should be a thriving world built for parties of adventurers. It’s depressing. Like Baltimore.
Well, as you can imagine, the player population of Secret World isn’t what it used to be. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Age of Empires II HD gave everyone nostalgic for a taste of the old fashioned real-time strategy game a chance to play with modern resolutions and enchanced Steam features. Now, more than ten years since The Conquerers, Age of Empires II has a new official expansion. The Forgotten, which started as a mod, has been published by Microsoft Studios. The expansion features five new civilizations, Twitch streaming integration, spectating, adds two new modes to multiplayer, and four new story campaigns. One of the campaigns finally brings Vlad Dracula to Age of Empires!
History forged an incredible legend around the man who ruled Wallachia in the mid-14th century. Holding his ground against the vast armies of the expanding Ottoman Empire, his cruel tactics made him the most feared man in all of Eastern Europe. Shall his thirst for blood and the loyalty of his soldiers hold the Turks back for good?
We have so much to cover this week that it takes four of us! Welcome to the podcast for Call of Duty: Ghosts, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Batman: Arkham Origins, Grand Theft Auto Online, and Eldritch. That’s right, Eldritch.
In most games, you’d just reboot at this point. But Battlefield 4 reboots itself often enough that you have to keep playing whenever you can. You can update your drivers when it crashes before the next round.
Microsoft has opened a hotel based on their next-gen console. The Xbox One Hotel in Paris, France has Xbox One themed decorations, cocktails, rooms, and even the restaurant menu has Microsoft-approved meals. It’s like sleeping in a green and silver explosion of marketing drivel! The hotel is only open for the month of November, so hurry! You might miss out on the upscale accomodations.
Videogame site Polygon has paved the way for reviews to be living breathing documents, like the Constitution, the Bible (the Catholic one), or a Star Wars movie. Their reviews can evolve and grow, like a Mitt Romney position. One day, SimCity is a nine. The next it’s a four. Tomorrow, it might be a seven. What’s Battlefield 4 today? Let’s check. It’s a very Buddhist approach to reviews: the only constant is change, never stepping in the same river twice, let a thousand scores bloom, yadda, yadda, yadda. Where some people might see a lack of commitment, others see a willingness to change one’s mind. You say potato, I say waffle.
Fair enough. Why hold a game accountable for any given single state? Let’s roll with it by re-reviewing Funcom’s Secret World, a game I really wanted to like when it was released, but couldn’t because its launch issues undermined what was great about it (although I followed the two-star review with about ten articles detailing what was great about it). Now that Funcom has had about a year and a half to tidy everything up, let’s take another look and give it a new rating.
After the jump, a first chance to make a second impression.Continue reading →
Live-action videogame theater, how I love you! Freddy Rodriguez and Tom Savini both appeared in Robert Rodriguez’ Planet Terror as part of the Grindhouse double feature. Thanks to Twisted Pixel’s trailer for LocoCycle, they’re back again in a cinematic masterpiece. Robert Patrick and Lisa Foiles voice the artificially intelligent motorcycles.
LocoCycle will be a launch title for the Xbox One.
