Star Citizen, Chris Roberts’ return to spaceship combat, will not be releasing the long-anticipated dogfighting module this year as originally planned. The module has been pushed back “a couple of months” because the record breaking crowd-funding effort has resulted in a much larger project than anticipated. In an open communication to fans, Chris Roberts explained the delay.
I feel that the Dogfighting module, especially with Star Citizen’s greatly increased profile, needs to be more polished than a typical “alpha”. There are a lot of eyes on the game, and more than a few people wanting us to fail. Because Dogfighting is the first module that will involve significant gameplay, it has to be good – I don’t feel that we will get a pass just because it is pre-pre alpha.
Roberts promised to show off some of the dogfighting work-in-progress during a special livestream scheduled for 9:00 AM PST on Friday, December 20th. Star Citizen has raised over $34 million in funding so far.
That busy screenshot above comes from Tales of Maj’Eyal, or ToME, a roguelike that just released on Steam last week. It’s exactly as fiddly and deep as you think it appears to be. ToME has been around in one form or another since 1998. The version on Steam has been cleaned up and given a new life thanks to a relatively easy to use graphical interface and mod support through the Steam Workshop. All that is fine and dandy, but there’s really only one thing you need to know about this game. There are 1,225 achievements. You read that correctly. A whopping 1,225! According to the developer, Nicolas Casalini, it’s a new record.
“I’ve been told by Valve this is the game with the most, by far, achievements on Steam, enjoy collecting them all!”
Tales of Maj’Eyal is currently $5.99 on Steam to celebrate its launch.
Overrated is a loaded term. It looks good in a headline. It’s often used for no purpose other than to goad a reaction. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful. When I call a game overrated, I don’t mean it’s bad, that the reviews were wrong, that the people who liked it were dopes, or even that I didn’t like it. It just means I’m surprised more people weren’t more critical, that the conversation wasn’t more often about ways the game could have been better.
Also, for this year’s lists, my experience has been entirely last-gen. I have no first-hand experience with the latest console systems, which probably have their share of overrated games. So over the next week, I’d love to hear from you early adopters in the comments section about next-gen games that were overrated, disappointing, surprising, or your favorites.
Energy Hook, Jamie Fristrom’s game about futuristic thrill-seekers getting in touch with their inner Peter Parker, will be coming to the PlayStation 4 and Vita systems in 2014. Fristrom revealed the new system ports during a Reddit exchange. He credited Twitter for helping him to get in touch with Sahid Kamal, business development manager at Sony. Fristrom explained that he had been turned down by Sony previously, but that through Twitter he was able to reach out to Kamal and negotiate a new deal.
“I’d previously been turned down by @nsuttner and pub fund, so it goes to show you can pitch to one department, blow it, lower your price (but also lowered what I offered, from complete exclusivity to just one month) and pitch a different region or department in the same company and still get in. Twitter has been amazing for my indie career.”
Jamie Fristrom spoke to Quarter to Three during our June 5th gaming podcast. Energy Hook is inspired by Jamie’s own work on the open world gameplay of Spider-Man 2.
Scott: For the most part the social interaction stuff has been harmless. Most folks are content to scrawl a little fun graffiti with their stickers, or comment on such and such level. The Miiverse posts are so antiseptic and innocent, it’s a nice alternative to what we usually see when anonymous gamers share their thoughts. It must be tough to moderate this content considering it’s not just text but also drawings and clipart mashups. What could be a dicey environment for kids has turned out to be pretty pleasant. The nice lady in the above screenshot even helped me spot an easter egg.
Capcom’s Street Fighter IV must hold some kind of record for longevity. The game has been going strong in the tournament scene since its release in 2008. Rather than reinvent the wheel, Capcom has kept it fresh by adding expansions with balance tweaks and new features. Ultra Street Fighter IV is coming in 2014. As the video above shows, you’ll be able to have 3 vs 3 team battles and train online. Why spend hours in the singleplayer training mode, only to go online and get your pants kicked off? With Ultra Street Fighter IV, you can get your pants kicked off right in training!
The full retail version of Ultra Street Fighter IV will be $39.99 on consoles and $29.99 on PC. The digital upgrade from previous versions of Street Fighter IV will be $14.99 on all platforms.
This week, having apparently not learned our lesson last year, we see the latest Hobbit movie. At the 52-minute mark, we recall our favorite Paul Walker moments.
Tom: Love the driveable ice skate! Just when you’re on the verge of saying, “okay, enough with the damn ice”, the ice skate comes along and you’re a little sad there isn’t actually more ice.
Scott: The ice skate is a great example of how creatively rich Mario games can be. As far as I can tell the ice skate is confined to one level. The skate is a great nod to Mario fans. I remember a similar level in Super Mario Bros. 3 where you get inside a big boot and stomp around. It only appears in that one level. Bad examples of this are the levels where you ride that seamonster around. Is it supposed to be some Yoshi stand in? Is Yoshi too big time to show up in a Mario game?
Zoe Quinn has a critically lauded game called Depression Quest. It’s a minimalist interactive fiction game in which the player takes on the role of someone living with severe depression. It’s mainly just a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure game with super downer options. The interesting thing is that Quinn’s game will present options that a person without depression might choose, like “go to a counselor” but then strikes them out as invalid because a clinically depressed person would not be able to that. I thought that was a good way to put players into someone else’s shoes. I spoke about it on one of my first Quarter to Three podcasts.
Recently, Depression Quest was submitted to Steam’s Greenlight program. That’s when the harassment started. Apparently, the idea that Zoe Quinn’s work could someday be sold as a game drew the ire of some people that thought it wasn’t worthy. Unfortunately, since this is the internet, the people that were opposed to her game decided to focus on Quinn and women in general instead. Indie Statik captured some of the “discussion” amongst these jewels of the web.
The harassers sent insulting tweets to Quinn and negatively voted on her Greenlight page. The campaign progressed to the point that Quinn allegedly began receiving sexually graphic and threatening phone calls from the harassers.
Here’s the kicker. This is the second time this has happened to Zoe Quinn. Depression Quest was submitted to Greenlight before and Quinn removed the game due to the harrassment.
The good news this time around is that Quinn has decided to stand her ground and fight. She refuses to remove the Greenlight listing.
As the year winds down, Brandon Cackowski-Schnell, Tom Chick, Scott Dobrosielsky, and Rob Harvey consider 2013. What stood out, for better or worse, this year?
If you’ve checked out your favorite “Let’s Play” channel on YouTube recently, it’s a good bet that you’ve seen the infamous “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim” notice. These copyright takedowns were common enough before, but there’s been a marked increase of them recently. What happened?
Tom: Hmm, Shadow Play Alley is certainly stylish. And, hey, look, it’s the Mystery House Melee, a sort of quick n’ dirty combat chamber with increasingly difficult enemies. Basically a 30-second horde mode, with a star for each wave you pass. This is more like it. In fact, it occurs to me that short levels always make for a better game. If I don’t like a level, it’s over quickly. If I do like a level, it’s convenient to replay!
But what really won me over was Double Cherry Pass. Who can resist a small army of Princess Peach clones raising holy hell with fireballs? And I even got the sticker to show for it. It’s a picture of Princess Peach with a fireball in her hand. It’s like they knew I was going to take Princess Peach in this level! Here I am, caring about a sticker.
Cliff Harris of Positech Games made a game about managing a country by winning over an electorate, promoting policies, and generally being a competent modern leader. Democracy was popular enough that he was able to make Democracy 3. Unfortunately, what he couldn’t do was convince the people running the marketing arm of a “major US games site” that the advertisement for his game wasn’t some subversive political statement.
“I apologize, but we can not promote any politics as this is a sensitive topic.”
Was it the star on the guy’s hat? Did it just look too much like the communist star of yore? Maybe it was the black ballot box with the 3 that reminded the marketing department of some penny-ante dictatorship. Whatever the reason, we salute this attempt to bring enlightenment to the oppressed people of gaming!
Tom: Hey, you don’t have to be Mario! I can instead think of this as Super Princess Peach 3D World. The next two weeks are going to be much easier. Furthermore, it has cat suits. Cat suits! It’s a little weird and I can’t help but think of that scene in The Shining when Shelley Duvall sees people in bear suits or cat suits or whatever doing things to each other, but I’ll gladly take weird over that insufferable little plumber.
Scott: Mario loves getting weird. The cat suit is just the latest in a long line of animal skins: Frog Mario, Racoon Mario, freaking Tanooki Mario (Tom’s previous fave) and that’s just canon. I’m sure there are plenty of bizarro suits in Mario games I haven’t played. It’s surprising it took this long to get to cat. Seems like a massive oversight.
Tom: Nintendo is clearly more of a dog person.
Scott: Or maybe the folks over at Nintendo were waiting for a desperate moment like this — Wii U on the rocks, stockholders getting anxious — to break out the cat.
In Martin Wallace’s excellently crafted empire building boardgame, Struggle of Empires, I experience something I don’t usually experience in a boardgame: regret. Not the kind of regret you get for buying a game and having it turn out terrible, but regret for taking part vicariously in imperialism. I’ve played many civilization builders. I’ve been part of countless virtual atrocities. But Struggle of Empires uses a few key pieces to really frame the historical context. It gives me pause as I consider the ethics, or lack thereof, of the rise of the European empires.
