Kathy Rain is a bit of Nancy Drew for adults meets Gabriel Knight for non-hardcore adventure gamers. So far I haven’t run into any puzzles involving cat fur and maple syrup. Instead, it seems to focus on characters, relationships, and something intriguing that doesn’t come along until a little further into the mystery than I’m comfortable revealing. I haven’t played it nearly as much as I’d like, but I’ve played it enough to know I want to keep playing it.
Unfortunately, as of two weeks after its release, it’s a financial failure. But Jonas Antonsson from publisher Raw Fury doesn’t mind. He figures they’re going to make their money over the long run. He figures the positive critical response is going to give Kathy Rain a long sales tale. But he acknowledges this is particularly problematic for a developer, in this case a dude in Sweden named Joel Staaf Hasto. Slow sales mean it takes that much longer for a developer’s cut of the revenue to kick in. As Antonsson says:
Way too often the developer can’t survive this sort of scenario, usually because they don’t have other sources of income. They are — to put it frankly — fucked. This is especially true for newer and smaller developers.
That’s why Raw Fury and Hasto have an unusual deal. As part of the publishing agreement, Raw Fury is paying Hasto to keep working for the next year, regardless of what he’s working on. I don’t know how common this is, and I’m sure it’s easier for Raw Fury to do this with a one-man team than, say, a small studio. But it’s nice to read about a game that has the dubious honor of being a “critical success” (i.e. it’s not making much money) without putting the developer in dire straits.
Dear Blizzard,
Stop already. Just stop. Everyone knows how great you are. Everyone has already had to tear himself away from World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, Diablo III, and Heroes of the Storm. And you know we’ll have to do it all over again when Overwatch comes out next week. So why would you release new content for the co-op mode in Starcraft II now, today, mere days before Overwatch arrives? Why would you give us playable Abathur, more room to advance our favorite characters, and “mutators” to add a greater challenge to familiar levels? And why would the first mutator be a zombie train called Train of the Dead that I’m going to have to play because zombies and trains are two of my favorite things? At least you’re charging $5 for Abathur, which makes it easier to pretend I’m going to say no. But why would you continue to make Starcraft II relevant to guys like me who are above the single-player campaign but below the demands of competitive multiplayer? Why now? What are you trying to prove? That you can upstage Total War: Warhammer, the latest Fallout 4 DLC, Doom, Uncharted 4, and Homefront: Revolution? That your old games hold just as much sway as everyone else’s shiny new games? It’s too much. It’s simply too much. Just stop for a while and give everyone else a chance.
Yours truly (no, seriously, I mean “yours” in an unhealthy way!),
-Tom
The central concept in Stellaris — that a galactic emperor isn’t a god — doesn’t work. It’s a concept Paradox has explored to great effect, especially with Crusader Kings and Victoria (minus the galactic part, of course). Some things are outside the control of a ruler. He does not get to tell each point of population which tile to harvest. He does not get to gobble up territory indiscriminately. He does not get to move sliders willy-nilly. History, Paradox’s favorite subject, is not a strategy game. It is an exercise in limitations. It is about people trying to hold power against the demands of social unrest, religious freedom, petty rivalries, Popes, capitalists, natives making a fuss about self-determination, evolving political philosophies, progress, entropy. To their immense credit, Paradox’s strategy games are the same thing. They are among my favorite historical essays.
After the jump, what does this have to do with sci-fi? Continue reading →
On the off chance that you ever actually uninstalled Marvel Heroes, Gazillion announced they’re about to do that thing where you can start playing as soon as you start downloading. This will make it convenient to jump back in whenever you have the inclination to drive around a Marvel hero. And given the frequency of new movies and TV shows, that’s probably pretty frequent. For instance, I can’t be the only one who thinks this would be the ideal weekend to level up Jean Grey. In the near future, I’ll be able to do that without waiting for a 20GB download.
By the way, what level is my Jean Grey again? I’ll let you know in about 14GBs.
Wargame: Red Dragon, a supersexy for-serious modern military RTS that adds naval stuff to a game that really doesn’t need naval stuff, is still getting content from developer Eugen two years after its release. They’ve been adding armies, units, and maps all along. But today they announced upcoming Nation Packs for countries that still aren’t in the game. For instance, the Netherlands. The first Nation Pack will add their hardware, such as the Apache helicopter in the picture. Okay, so the Apache isn’t technically a Dutch helicopter. But since they bought some from us, a Dutch faction wouldn’t be complete without one. Eugene promises the Dutch have their own unique hardware as well, which will be included.
What sets the Nation Packs apart from the other add content for Red Dragon is that you have to buy them. As you know, going Dutch isn’t free.
A comedy starring Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz that you might not think is funny. We’re in textbook “not for everyone” territory here. At the 1:06 point, this week’s 3×3 considers the incendiary topic of people walking away from explosions. And be sure to check out the latest movie posters by listener sinnick!
Next week: The Nice Guys. Oops, we mean, They Look Like People.
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There’s no reason to expect much from Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. The developer, Naughty Dog, is commercially successful but creatively middling (their Jak titles have ranged from pretty decent to pretty bad). The game seems to be an unabashed rip-off of Tomb Raider, with the difference being that the main character is a dude, which out-Tomb-Raiders Tomb Raider for unabashedly ripping off Raiders of the Lost Ark. The prospects are not good.
After the jump, then you actually play Uncharted Continue reading →
Late in Uncharted 2, all the gunplay and Tomb Raidering and calculated snappy banter about Chloe’s ass suddenly stop. The hero strolls through a serene village. Along the way, he can pet the livestock, play with children, and watch the women go about their work. They don’t speak English and he doesn’t speak their language. There is no direct communication, and the game knows better than to provide subtitles. It’s pure character. A village, its people, and this newcomer, all bemused at each other. It’s an example of how expressive Uncharted can be when it trusts its characters.
After the jump, the rest of Uncharted 2 Continue reading →
As a shooter, Uncharted 3 is solid, if not mostly the same as its ever been. I can do without the fisticuff QTEs, which play like a bargain bin version of the fighting from Batman: Arkham City. It’s especially silly how you have to keep fighting the same big guy over and over, as if Uncharted 3 needs to keep saying, “Hey, remember how cool this bit was in Raider of the Lost Ark?” Uncharted 3 says that a lot. But the gunplay is good, and it provides a solid foundation for the mostly typical multiplayer support. You get lots of options for leveling up, customizing your characters, and playing various types of cooperative and competitive games. There’s even a competitive/cooperative mode in which two teams of two players take turns playing the heroes and playing special thugs amid all the AI thugs.
After the jump, so what’s the bad news? Continue reading →
If your game doesn’t do well, that’s obviously because you made it wrong. So just make it correctly. Then people will like it and therefore buy it. That seems to be the thinking behind drastic gameplay overhauls in titles like Skyshine’s Bedlam, an egregious multi-staged effort at a do-over that fastidiously wrings out the Bedlam in favor of more XCOM. If people on forums complain loudly enough, they’re obviously better at making games than people who actually make games. Hence, Skyshine’s Bedlam Redux. And now Act of Aggression Reboot. Act of Aggression, a Command & Conquer General clone that never quite caught on, has had the Eugen wrung so it can be fortified with 100% more Command & Conquer: Generals. Here are the bullet points.
* Streamlined Economy: Manage only one resource as oil is automatically converted to cash, allowing you to focus on the action. Unit expenditure is up-front, meaning no more micromanaging production lines.
* New Base Building System: Like a traditional RTS, base building units are selectable. Build directly from the builder (or destroy your opponent’s builder!)
* New Airstrikes: You no longer control the planes mid-flight. They go directly to their target and strike, much faster than previously.
* Huge balancing update and unit model improvements as well as UI tweaks and changes: for example, all units now accelerate and decelerate faster, guaranteeing more streamlined and action-packed RTS gameplay.
The problem with Act of Aggression wasn’t any of the stuff changed in this update. The problem was a lack of personality. It had all the character of unpainted furniture. This is the kiss of death for any RTS, a genre where one of the prime design directives is to make players care about the little dudes on the map. Although Eugen cut their teeth making a better Command & Conquer: Generals, their latest work has been supersexy realworld military hardware porn. Big surprise that fan base isn’t interested in a Command & Conquers: General clone, rebooted or otherwise.
Age of Aggression: The Reboot Edition (their name) is available now as a free update for Age of Aggression.
Before FTL let you manage your crew on their peril-fraught voyage into the procedurally generated deep unknown, there was U-boat sim Silent Hunter 5. You made the same kinds of crew management decisions. Okay, here we go into a battle. This man goes here and that man goes there. It was all very personal.
Uboot seems to take a page from the same ship’s log. At first, it looks like the usual third person naval action game. But as you watch the promo video (Uboot is just a Kickstarter at this point), the view zooms in to a quaint cutaway of the sub. Anyone who’s ever studied the cutaway view of a ship will appreciate this. It’s all very Life Aquatic. I like how the metal sides of the submarine actually slide out of the way. They don’t just vanish like the walls of your house in The Sims. They deferentially get out of your way. And what better way to highlight the terror of a flooding sub than showing the water level rising around your hapless crew members?
The developers in Poland, Deep Water Studio, don’t list any former credits. So you’re taking a chance with a first-time developer. They cite a deal with publisher Playway to match whatever Kickstarter funds they make. Playway has a lot of trash in their catalog, but they appreciate the awkward charm in the Car Mechanic Simulation games, in which you play, yep, a car mechanic. It’s as ridiculous as it sounds. And oddly enough, it totally works.
Uboot sounds even more personal than FTL or Silent Hunter 5. To wit:
You will see the lives of grey wolves in all its glory. We will not add any colour or flavour to it, even if the toilet overflows.
Yep, that’s uh, awfully personal. The Sims Kriegsmarine career track. You can get in on Uboot’s Kickstarter campaign for $12.
It’s been three months since the release of Political Machine 2016, Stardock’s serious-gameplay-but-not-serious-presentation Presidential election strategy game, which builds on the rock-solid territory control gameplay concepts they introduced in their Corporate Machine (nee Entrepreneur) series. In those three months, Political Machine 2016 has been incomplete to the point of being literally* unplayable. Today, that has been fixed. Because today Stardock released an update that adds playable Sarah Palin.
The update also does some other stuff.
* figuratively
Politics, heroics, franchises, brainwashing, epic battles between god-like entities, whether Stan Lee cameos are annoying! It’s all on this week’s podcast. We really put out backs into this week’s 3×3 about exercise, which starts at the 1:45 mark. And be sure to check out the latest movie posters by listener sinnick!
Next week: The Lobster
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If you’re missing Iron Man or Captain America from your stable of Marvel Heroes characters, you can get one — not both! — of them for free by entering TEAMCAP or TEAMIRONMAN on the redeem code page. While the offer is entirely neutral in this weekend’s civil war, the game itself is not. Marvel Heroes is clearly biased towards Iron Man. I have evidence after the jump.
After the jump, TEAMIRONMAN Continue reading →
Do you feel that FTL goes by too quickly? Do you wish it was a more drawn-out experience with minigames, twitch-based JRPG combat, full-blown 3D graphics in wide-open space with a z-axis and no easy way to look around? Do you long for crewmembers who are entries on a spreadsheet? Do you crave a DIY economy at the onset of every game? Do you harbor a secret desire that a city builder would stowaway in the cargo hold and occasionally peek out to badger you? Do you want your progress to vanish without a trace after every game?
If so, Into the Stars is the game for you!
After the jump, into the airlock Continue reading →
