I made the mistake of not knowing enough about Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine before playing it and therefore thinking it was just a game where you move dudes around levels to collect coins, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. I’d played one of those recently on Xbox Live. It was pretty awful. I don’t even remember the name of it. It had bank robbers. You could give them hats and costumes and whatnot. I figured Monaco might be like that, but hopefully not awful.
Little did I know Monaco is the game I had hoped Introversion was going to make before they cancelled Subversion, their ambitious heist game about characters with different abilities getting into levels and then getting out again. And now here it is, but not from Introversion. It’s like Hotline: Miami, but with more gameplay and nearly just as much style.
I love how differently Monaco’s characters play. You’ll probably think any given character is overpowered at some point. At first, it was The Cleaner who I thought was overpowered for how he can sneak up behind guards and bean them. Most of the other characters need to find a weapon. Now it’s The Hacker, who can get a swarm of viruses crackling along the level around him without even hacking computers. Just get him to the wall outlets and he’s good to go. He’s a pet class! Speaking of pet class, maybe The Collector is overpowered for how his monkey Hector will automatically collect coins in the area, which directly pumps up your score. The scoring system records the time it takes you to finish the heist, but it adds a time penalty for all the treasure you didn’t get. That’s where Hector takes up the slack. Yeah, I’m going to say The Collector and his monkey Hector are overpowered.
But what I think I love most is the sense of discovery with the various missions and levels. Introversion’s game was going to feature procedurally generated office buildings, which sounds like about the most boring heists you could ever have. But Monaco’s imaginative locations are so lovingly built, with so many affectionate touches, and their own sense of flow. Take a look at that oceanographic museum above, which is rendered as a drawn map when it’s not in your line of sight. You know you want to see what’s under those labels.
Monaco: What’s Your Is Mine is out today for the PC. The Xbox 360 release has been delayed for an unspecified reason.
Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb sends word that Microsoft will hold the next-gen Xbox press event on May 21st at 10 AM PST on the Redmond campus. The event will be livestreamed on Xbox.com, through your Xbox 360 console, and Spike TV.
On that day, we’ll share our vision for Xbox, and give you a real taste of the future. Then, 19-days later at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, we’ll continue the conversation and showcase our full lineup of blockbuster games.
This is it folks! Will the rumors be true? Is the future of Xbox gaming an always-online required, no used games, TV streaming, mandatory Kinect hellscape? Will the console still require a Gold subscription to get anything done? Time to find out if I’m going to become a PS4 owner for the next-gen.
Your overall progress in Victoria II is mostly your prestige. In 1839, as Sweden, I get a nice little prestige bump because of that chick up there.
After the jump, the best use of opera in a videogame since Heroes of Might & Magic 2 Continue reading →
The patch that Playstation 3 owners have been enjoying in Skullgirls since last November is finally impending for those of us whose fightsticks are for the Xbox 360. If you have any intention of playing Skullgirls in the next few weeks, don’t read these patch notes. It’s basically a list of “well, no point playing until this stuff is implemented” changes. Of particular interest to me are reworked character-specific tutorials with strategy advice. Of particular interest to anyone playing is the dramatically tweaked gameplay.
That said, I really wish Skullgirls had more single player oomph. As much as I love the characters — Peacock was my pick for favorite character design of 2012 — it’s going to be a tough transition jumping back into vanilla versus matches againt the AI after spending time with Injustice’s generous bag of single-player shenanigans.
One of the most valuable videogames ever made was purchased in a North Carolina Goodwill store over the weekend for $7.99. An english copy of Family Fun Fitness: Stadium Events was found by an anonymous woman that was bargain-hunting. Only about 200 of Bandai’s 1987 NES Stadium Events cartridges were ever sold making it one of the rarest games on the market. In fact, the North American run of this game was so small that it was only ever shipped to Woolworths in the North-East part of the United States.
Unopened cartridges of the game have been valued at $38,000. The North Carolina copy of Stadium Events is currently up for auction on GameGavel for $12,000 because it shows signs of use, although a more worn copy was auctioned on the same site for almost the same amount so it is expected that this will close with a higher final bid.
I love old-school videogames, but $12,000 for Stadium Events? Does this even give you any cool Achievements? Where’s the DLC?
Pour one out for the Nintendo DS. The dual-screen powerhouse is being put out to pasture by Nintendo. Retired. In Nintendo’s most recent year-end financial report, it was revealed that production has been stopped and no new units will be manufactured. 153.87 million units were shipped over its total lifetime! That’s a lot of hand cramping!
We’ll always have Pokemon, little guy!
In related news, the fiscal earnings results were a bit grim. Nintendo posted a $366 million operating loss for the year citing slow sales and the depreciation of the yen. The 3DS and the Wii U missed sales projections. In both cases, Nintendo cited scheduling gaps of compelling software in overseas markets as a factor that hindered sales.
The RPG/shooter E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy might be best summed up as “What if Deus Ex had an even worse interface, full co-op, a metaphysics-punk setting, and required twitch skillz?” It’s vast and weird and often inscrutable. The fact that it’s made in France might have something to do with it. There’s nothing quite like it.
It’s also nearly two years old and now getting DLC. Blood Games adds four new single-player/co-op areas and a capture-the-flag mode that, uh, looks a bit overwhelming. So basically you respawn a lot? Since the scoring is based on each team having a limited pool of resurrectors, that makes sense. You can apparently hack away some of the other team’s resurrectors. More capture-the-flag games need hacking. If only there were terminals on the bottom floor of the Facing Worlds towers! More info here.
Also, Blood Games is free.
Adrian Chmielarz is one of the founders of People Can Fly and the lead designer of Painkiller, one of the greatest shooters ever created because it’s also one of the smartest shooters ever created. He has since left People Can Fly, but he was involved in the early design process for Gears of War: Judgment. In a conversation with Eurogamer, he had this to say about what he would have done differently with Judgment’s star rating system for the level unlocks, which is a pretty smart thing to do to a Gears of War game:
They still changed a couple of things I do not agree with…I wouldn’t have any headshot bonuses counting towards the three-star ratings…The reward for the headshot was supposed to be intrinsic not extrinsic. The reward was supposed to be, because the ammo was scarce, [okay] I only used one bullet instead of three. That was your reward in my version.
What a great point, Mr. Chmielarz. In a game like Gears of War, where the enemies are all huge honkin’ bullet sponges, headshots are already perfectly incentivized. They do more damage, and therefore save your ammo, and therefore keep you alive longer. In fact, they’re pretty much mandatory on the harder difficulty levels, where ammo management is arguably as important as aiming. The stars I earn should ideally be for things above and beyond the basic gameplay. Chmielarz also disagreed with stars for things like the executions, but I feel that’s a perfect system for earning stars. I see little need to do executions beyond the fact that they look cool. Why not attach a gameplay system? Which is exactly what Judgment did. I found myself actually trying to set up executions, which is something I’d never done in a Gears game. But headshots? I was already doing those, because I knew I needed to.
Besides, years of videogaming will train a guy to aim for the head. It’s such self-perpetuating gameplay that I almost always assume it’s what I’m supposed to do. I’ve come to expect some reward for headshots, whether it’s intrinsic, extrensic, achievement, or whatever. In Black Ops II, where the lethality is plenty high without worrying about the difference between three bullets and one bullet, I have to constantly remind myself to quit trying for headshots. Just put bullets on the target in the fastest and most consistently reliable way, Tom. Leave the headshots, quickscoping, and bellyflops to the power gamers who are already way better than me anyway.
But Infinity Ward smartly tied a completely independent reward system into headshots: weapon skins. You only earn the various camo schemes by racking up headshots with a weapon. Lucky for me, I don’t care one whit about weapon skins! Unlike the star scheme in Gears of War: Judgment, the developers at Infinity Ward didn’t just pile overlapping reward structures onto the same system.
Movie deals have been announced for both Ratchet & Clank and Heavenly Sword game properties. According to Variety the movies will be CG-animated films produced by Blockade Entertainment. The Ratchet & Clank movie will be animated by Rainmaker Entertainment which recently made the critically panned Escape from Planet Earth, while the Heavenly Sword animator has yet to be anounced.
“We’ve always thought ‘Ratchet and Clank’ would be a fantastic all-ages movie and are thrilled our intergalactic heroes will finally get their chance to shine on the big screen,” said Ted Price, founder and CEO of Insomniac Games. “Insomniac is especially honored to play a hands-on role with the film’s production, including the screenplay, consulting on character development and animation, and adding support to the film’s marketing.”
While the Ratchet & Clank movie is intended for a general theater premiere, the Heavenly Sword production is slated for a direct-to-video release.
Have you ever stared at your TV and thought, “Man, I want a delicious Pizza Hut pan pizza right now,” but you just couldn’t get the gumption together to pull out your phone and call? Well, Microsoft and Pizza Hut finally have your answer. There’s a Pizza Hut Kinect app! You use the motion and voice controls to build your pizza and place the order, so you can carbo up and get back to gaining XP for prestige or whatever it is you do while digesting a lump of processed cheese and bread.
Microsoft’s Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb told Polygon that the app has been in the pipeline for a long time.
We’re always looking at ways to give our audience more of what they’re interested in,” he said. “If you look at our audience, they love pizza.”
Users who download the app and use it to purchase a pizza before May 6th, will get 15% off their order, so you’ll have more money to spend on Mountain Dew and Doritos. And yes. That’s a hot dog stuffed pizza in the picture.
The only reason I’m not amazed that SimCity is still so broken is because of how broken it was when it was released. The latest patch, optimistically dubbed 2.0 as if to herald a rebirth, addresses plenty of issues. For instance, it’s nice to see the results of interaction with other cities in the region, even if it just shows how pointless they are. An occasional measly 100 simoleons to give up two ambulances for my neighbor’s city? I think I’d rather have the ambulances on call locally. But I do appreciate knowing that I’m earning money when I sell electricity to my layabout neighbors who can’t be bothered to shell out the cash for their own power plants. It’s nice to see more things finally working like they’re supposed to work.
But not all is well, after the jump Continue reading →
Jade Raymond, Managing Director of Ubisoft Toronto, spoke to Eurogamer about the Splinter Cell series and why it’s not more of a sales hit.
“One of the things that held it back is despite all of the changes that have happened over the years, it’s still one of the more complex and difficult games to play,” Raymond told Eurogamer.
“Even though we do have core fans who are like, ‘Oh, I want to have more of this experience,’ when you play any other game that has stealth elements, they’re all a lot more forgiving than Splinter Cell.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist, is scheduled to launch in August on PC, PlayStation 3, Wii U and Xbox 360.
The mondo update for SimCity has just gone live. Read the notes here.
THQ closed up last year, and the licenses for top-tier games like Saints Row and Company of Heroes were snatched up immediately. The auction for THQ’s less in-demand properties ended with almost $7 million being raised. (Contrast this amount to the figure paid by Sega for just Company of Heroes – $26.6 million.) Licenses were divided into six lots for bidding according to court documents.
Lot 1: Darksiders
Lot 2: Red Faction
Lot 3: Homeworld
Lot 4: MX
Lot 5: Titan Quest, uDraw, Summoner, others
Lot 6: Supreme Commander, Worms, Costume Quest, others
The sales will be finalized through the next few days so information will trickle out from various sources.
First up, space battle fan favorite Homeworld has been purchased by Gearbox Software. Let’s hope that whatever they do is more like the quality of Borderlands 2 and less like Aliens: Colonial Marines. This sale is especially interesting as it was the target of an unsuccessful bid from fans using Kickstarter to bring a port to iOS.
Update: Nordic Games Licensing AB bought Darksiders, Red Faction, and Lots 5 and 6 for $4.9 million. Gearbox paid $1.35 million for Homeworld. Finally, 505 Games purchased the Drawn to Life license for $0.3 million.
I partly admire Starseed Pilgrim, a colorful languid creation that might be the game design equivalent of poetry that doesn’t rhyme, for how it plays its cards close to the vest. It took me quite a while to figure out the first few steps, and that’s something you don’t see much in this age of hand holding and spoonfeeding. Instead of instructions, I got a snippet of verse that didn’t make a lick of sense until after I’d figured out what to do. It’s a rare game this willing to elude me for this long. Pacing is not on the agenda.
But it’s also a rare game that puts this much trial and error between me and progress. This color does that, that color does this, but not always in the direction I want, and now that block went to the wrong place and I think this sortie is all for naught, but I’m waiting to see if the pink blocks can grow fast enough, and hey, I didn’t know I could float, so maybe I should try a few more times. You will have no idea what this means if you haven’t played Starseed Pilgrim. You might have no idea what this means if you have played Starseed Pilgrim. And for all I know, it’s all about to be meaningless because Starseed Pilgrim is on the verge of doing something else entirely. So do I hunt down spoilers about how it all works, or will that just defeat the purpose? I had hoped to explore a lovely spare universe, but I think I’m in a game about exploring a set of rules instead.
