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.
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.
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 →
If you thought Prometheus would have been better with a small budget, Last Days on Mars is the movie for you. Mars here is played by Jordan, which doesn’t look much different from Arizona. The landscapes look as if there might be a 7-11 if you just panned the camera a few degrees to the right. As a story, this goes exactly where you think it’s going to go (check out Europa Report for a space adventure with a real sense of mystery). At times, Last Days on Mars teases at a space horror romp on par with a Dead Space videogame, but it doesn’t have the stomach or R-rating for anything too visceral. So there’s a lot of running away from stuff, a lot of yelling about “what are we going to do?”, a lot of crawling through the inexplicable tunnels under this pre-fab Mars base, and a lot of supposedly smart astronauts doing stupid things to draw out the plot.
What’s most horrific is that it features a few actors who are good enough to know better. Sure, I get that Liev Schreiber, star of the Omen remake, would agree to phone in a laconic leading man performance. But how do you explain Elias Koteas, Olivia Williams, and Johnny Harris (see the brilliant London to Brighton and the middling Welcome to the Punch if you need any convincing about Harris)? Oh my. The production design is moderately nifty, if not awfully spacious. And I sure do like their Mars trucks. But it’s no Moon. And it’s ultimately a pretty pointless exercise in poorly done horror. Does Mars really need zombies?
Last Days on Mars is available now for video on demand. Watch it on Amazon.com to support Qt3.
The latest update for Secret World, dubbed Issue #8, is out tomorrow. But even if you don’t buy the $10 add-on to this ridiculously generous free-to-play MMO, you’re still getting a lot from Issue #8. First up are augments, which is a layer of customization added to the skill system. The core of Secret World is a set of skills based on your choice of two weapons. Do you want a sword and pistols? Or are you more of a shotgun and blood magic guy? Every weapon has a huge set of skills, and you can mix and match freely from whichever two weapons you equip. Last year, starting with a rocket launcher, an auxiliary weapon slot was added so you could complement your fighting style with stuff like flamethrowers or chainsaws. I’m currently leveling up my whip. Now here comes the augment system as a whole other set of skills based on crafting, upgrading, and applying tweaks to your active skills. They’re like gems in Diablo or Path of Exile. If you thought the skill system in Secret World was detailed, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This is all endgame content, so it’s not going to be dropped in your lap when you start playing. But even for us active players, the augment system is simultaneously daunting and thrilling.
So how do you get these augments? By playing scenarios. And what are scenarios? They’re randomized missions run in the Venetian Council’s virtual mission simulator. Each scenario consists of three waves of random enemies attacking clusters of survivors, with a boss and a special event between each wave. During a demo today, our group’s events were traitors (some of the survivors opened fire on the other survivors) and a supply drop of special weapons crates (one of which contained a rude surprise in the form of an unfriendly golem). Our first boss was an experimental zombie hulk. The second was a very angry undead bear (pictured).
As you fight, the monsters drop augments and the bosses will drop particularly choice augments (at this point, the scenarios are the only place you can get augments). There are three maps, each playable in a variety of difficulty levels and set for solo players, pairs, or full groups of five. One map is freely available to all players; the other two are reserved for folks who purchase Issue #8. The basic gameplay model — defending survivors from three waves of attackers — is consistent on all the maps, but Funcom has plans to add new modes and new random events. There are tentative plans for later maps based on getting across an area with a minimum threat level (I hesitate to call it stealth, but the model is the sabotage missions already in the game) and escape scenarios similar to the snowmobile sequence in the Issue #7. I haven’t played that yet. I’m too busy leveling up my whip to gad about on a snowmobile. But I’m never too busy for randomized horde modes. The scheduled time — fingers crossed — for Issue #8 to go live is tomorrow morning.
Experimental developer Tale of Tales has released their latest game.
In Luxuria Superbia, the player is asked to give pleasure to the game, as much as the game promises pleasure to the player. This starts sensually and physically with cheeky innuendo and playful feedback. As you progress it expands gradually into the ethereal and the euphoric. Luxuria Superbia is a celebration of joy and beauty in life.
More here. Must be 18 or older. Not legal in some states.
Call of Duty isn’t really a game anymore. It is an annual event about a box of games. We should unpack it the way we unpack a new console system, or a care package, or a gift basket. Here is the controller, here are some oatmeal cookies someone made, here is a gift certificate to Burke Williams, here are some little bottles of wine. Wait, I don’t like oatmeal cookies. Oh, these aren’t bottles of wine, they’re wine coolers. Is there a Burke Williams near my house? It can be very confusing. At least I can use this $10 iTunes gift cards.
After the jump, the four faces of this latest Call of Duty.Continue reading →
The push-your-luck card game Dead Man’s Draw is a smart design smartly themed, even if some of the ruthlessness of the iOS marketplace is drizzled into the design. However, it’s potentially available without any of the iOS trappings via this Kickstarter campaign for a physical deck of actual analog cards. That you can hold in your hands. And shuffle. And scooch around the table. And put in cards sleeves if that’s your thing. Weirdo. I bet you have plastic covers on your furniture. Seriously, don’t be so uptight.
Developer Stardock was kind enough to send along a deck of the physical Dead Man’s Draw cards. As much as I enjoy the iOS version’s leveling up, the time-wasting casualness, and the AI that actually understands the rules, I’ve decided I prefer Dead Man’s Draw as a physical tabletop game played against a friend. In fact, I like how playing with the physical cards doesn’t track your score at every point, unless you’re some sort of card-counting point-calculating savant. On the iOS, you always see the exact score shift at any given moment. While there’s something to be said for this moment-to-moment efficiency — Dead Man’s Draw on the iPad can feel awfully mathy — I prefer it as a seat-of-your-pants game. The score fluctuates so much over the course of a match that you really don’t need to fuss with the counting until it’s all over. Playing on the tabletop is more about the tense uncertainty of the back-and-forth than the careful moment-to-moment optimization.
Of course, I lose a lot, so what do I know? The good news is that a round of Dead Man’s Draw is never going to take longer than ten minutes. At which point you’re shuffling together all those lovely cards again, coolly riffing the unsleeved edges. Just as I prefer the feel of Ascension cards under my fingertips instead of the iPad’s glass, I’ve come to prefer the physical cards in Dead Man’s Draw.
Also, all the unlockables are already unlocked in the tabletop version. The set comes with cards for each character, listing one or more unique skills for players to choose among before the match starts. Some of these seem awfully overpowered. Chez Chick has instituted a house rule that no one is allowed to play Madam Margot’s ability to collect an opponent’s busted cards because are you crazy? How is that fair? The jury’s still out on Black Bonnie and Scurvy Pete.
The physical version of Dead Man’s Draw is currently in the waning days of what looks like a failed Kickstarter campaign. But you can help by ponying up $25 for your own deck with an estimated delivery of March 2014. Otherwise, come on over to my house and we’ll play a round. Just don’t try to pick Madam Margot. Seriously, how is that fair?
State of Decay is one of the best open-world games and one of the best zombie games you can play. If you have an Xbox 360. That all changes on Tuesday, when developer Undead Labs intends to officially release the PC version. If you like open-world games, you won’t want to miss this one. If you like zombie games, you cannot miss this one. It gets certain things about zombie mythology that no one game gets (read my review here and listen to my podcast with designer Richard Foge here). Consider your wallet warned. It’ll be available on Steam for $20.
At last, a movie that elevates After Earth, that makes Pacific Rim look like a timeless classic, that marshals the full range of Harrison Ford’s emotive prowess, and that firmly establishes the reputation of X-Men Origins: Wolverine director Gavin Hood. At the 48-minute mark, this week’s 3×3 considers our favorite siblings in movies.
This week we welcome Mel Kirk and Bobby Loertscher from Zen Studios to talk virtual pinball. What’s the difference between classical and fantastical tables? What makes a great table great? And, of course, what three Zen pinball tables do you take to a desert island? We wrap it up with a little Wolf Among Us, Torchlight II, and Battlefield 4.
Stardock’s excellent fantasy strategy game, Fallen Enchantress, gets a new undead faction in The Dead World, a $5 pack of downloadable content that adds the Empire of the Dead. You know the drill. These guys are your usual undead empire, with skeletons, spiders, and possessed knights in their armies and a badass spellcasting lich as the head of state. No, not Dick Cheney. But what sets them apart from the other factions in Fallen Enchantress is that they don’t eat. This means when you’re picking the best spots for your city, you don’t have to fuss with the balance between materials and food. Who cares about food when your digestive system is full of holes and maggots? This also means you don’t have to fuss with the usual bakeries, butchers, and breweries in your cites. Let those other empires waste valuable time and resources with agricultural infrastructure. All you need is the occasional graveyard to boost your city’s population limit.
But the drawback is that you only have two ways to grow your cities. The first is by finding death shards. That’s not going to be easy. And until that happens, you grow your cities by killing armies and razing enemy cities. It’s very much like the slaver faction in Fallen Enchantress, but with the added urgency of an entirely stagnant population. The dead may not eat, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t hungry.
So far, I can report that the doo-dad physics in Battlefield 4 are top notch. As you’ll see in the above screenshot, the van that opens the second of seven single-player missions that constitute the campaign — basically, an extended tech demo for the Frostbite engine’s latest ooh-la-la incarnation — has a tiny T-Rex dangling from the rearview mirror. In the PC version, on an Nvidia GTX 770 using the just-released 331.65 drivers in Windows 7, the little T-Rex bounces and twirls exactly as you’d expect while the cutscene drives you through Shanghai. We haven’t yet run our T-Rex dangling diagnostics on the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, but we’ll keep you updated.
