http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew-4x6_b0Hs
There are a couple of reasons I’m predisposed to follow World of Diving, an underwater exploration game from an independent Dutch studio crowdsourcing its development (Indiegogo link here and Steam Greenlight link here).
The first is that I’m an erstwhile diver myself (if you haven’t actually been in the water in the last, say, two years, you can’t call yourself a diver in the present tense; scuba diving is as unnatural as space exploration and it takes acclimation, no matter how much experience you have). So I love the idea of a moderately serious simulation in a procedurally generated underwater world. In the above video, I was sold when the divers gave each other the “okay” sign rather than talking over mysterious microphones in their mouthpieces.
But the main reason I’ll be following this game is that there are too few like it. Nintendo’s Endless Ocean games for the Wii were a bit too gamey, as befits games published by Nintendo. Most of you have never even heard of the golden standard for this tiny genre. Aquanaut’s Holiday, for the original Playstion, came out in 1995. It was a simultaneously confounding and relaxing game, from a time when there was no such thing as a first-person open-world sandbox. As I should have guessed from the title, Aquanaut’s Holiday had no game structure: no quests, no goals, no danger. I swam around in vain searching for something like a shark or a giant squid. What sort of underwater videogame doesn’t have a shark or a giant squid? I’m not sure I ever figured out that the only thing that passed for gameplay was a coral reef endgame in which you built a home for fish. The developer of Aquanaut’s Holiday went on to make another confounding and relaxing game called Tail of the Sun, which is arguably a precursor to games like Minecraft and Don’t Starve.
Unfortunately, World of Diving is also an online game. Here’s where the promise of procedurally generated underwater exploration starts to look like something else:
Starting out in the Caribbean, World of Diving recreates and brings to life the world of wonder and discovery that is at the bottom of the ocean, where you will be hang out with friends — whether you have met them in or outside of the game — and can dive with the sea turtles, hunt for the great white shark, and party on your own luxury yachts.
tank lfg 4 GWS quest
You can usually tell early on when a no-budget movie is going to be a waste of time. It’s clear early on this isn’t the case with Resolution, which has a deliciously creepy slow-burn script, a confident style by co-directors Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, and two appealing leads. Vinny Curran is a gloriously bearded redneck junkie and Peter Cilella is the friend who single-handedly conducts his intervention. Curran has the showier role and he’s in over his head at times. But Cilella is particularly good as the exasperated straight man, with all of Greg Kinnear’s appeal and none of the smirk. And most importantly, they’ve got the kind of chemistry to make what they’re doing believable.
The intervention angle is mostly a set-up to get these two guys to linger for a few day in one of those cabins in the woods that you might see in movies such as, well, The Cabin in the Woods. To imply there’s anything meta going on could be a spoiler. Suffice to say Justin Benson’s script is no stranger to Cache, one of Michael Haneke’s finest, most intricate, and most infuriatingly elusive movies. Resolution manages to do far more with things that go bump against the camera than any mere special effects. And once the ending rolls around, there’s no denying this is a movie that has earned its title.
And hey, look, they even got Bill Oberst Jr.!
Resolution is available for video on demand. Support Qt3 by watching it on Amazon.com.
The Last of Us is the most emotionally resonant game you will ever play about plank, ladder, and pallet management. To be fair you’ll sometimes scooch dumpsters around. At one point, you scooch a piano.
After the jump, are there crates? Continue reading →
Everyone knows Jean Grey died after being possessed by Apocalypse. What Marvel Heroes presupposes is maybe she didn’t. We discuss whether Marvel’s superheroes are suited to a free-to-play Diablo style action RPG called Marvel Heroes. Is it good? Does it cost too much? Is there enough variety? What is the endgame? And when can we play as Batman? We also consider games of the week, which include iOS titles Puzzle & Dragons and Agricola, but not The Last of Us.
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This week we skip the summer releases to catch up on Upstream Color, a sci-fi movie about, well, we’re not entirely sure what. But it’s a synopsis you won’t want to miss. At the 53-minute mark, this week’s 3×3 is about jewelry in movies.
Next week: Man of Steel
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Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Andrew House closed out the Playstation 4 presentation with the following line:
Concepts like true consumer ownership and consumer trust are central to everything we do.
These words sum up how Sony cashed in on Microsoft’s ungainly fumbling as they tried to finesse various announcements about policies hostile to consumers. The words are a carefully crafted emollient that could only be made by listening to consumers, by being nimble enough to react, and by making specific and difficult decisions about whether Sony’s priorities are with consumers or with publishers. They chose consumers. By singling out the contributions of independent developers, by focusing on games over shoehorned transmedia and unnecessary proprietary interfaces, and most importantly by continuing the status quo on used games and DRM — two issues that go hand-in-hand — Sony has effectively won E3 before the doors of the show floor even opened.
The $100 cheaper price point is just gravy.
We already knew about Ubisoft’s new Splinter Cell, the new Rayman, the next Rocksmith, whatever The Mighty Quest is supposed to be, Watch Dogs, Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, more insufferable Rabbids, more Trials, and another Just Dance. What we didn’t know about were the standouts of today’s E3 presentation. Some former Test Drive Unlimited developers and Driver: San Francisco developers are working on The Crew, an ambitious open-world driving game set on a map of the United States that makes me wonder why anyone would bother with Forza 5 and Need for Speed: Rivals. As some cars rounded a bend overlooking Las Vegas, the guy presenting the demo said, “You could drive all the way down there and drag race the Strip.” That’s what I like to hear.
The Division, from Ubisoft’s Massive studio in Sweden, is an equally ambitious and enthusiastically presented MMO/shooter, laid out in a canned demo convincingly acted by a group of players who put to shame EA’s godawful commander mode gameplay session for Battlefield 4, in which 63 people rode boats to the top of a skyscraper while a 64th player identified himself as a commander as he poked at a tablet. In The Division demo, a group of players used various cool gadgets to liberate a besieged police station, showing off gameplay that would do any single player shooter proud. The Division claims it’s a massively multiplayer open world with some players on the ground while other players fly drones around. And sometimes PvP just breaks out. Then confetti fell from the ceiling. Ubisoft knows how to make a party out of a presentation.
Command & Conquer is redefining RTS gaming for the next generation, amplifying classic gameplay elements for a new era of PC gaming and introducing all new ways to play in the genre. Or so EA tells me in a press release. You’d never know from their press conference, which successfully kept the upcoming RTS a secret.
My favorite part of Microsoft’s Xbox 1 presentation was game studio VP Phil Spencer coming out in a State of Decay T-shirt. He must be pretty happy about the sales of Undead Labs’ open-world zombie game (it’s second only to Minecraft for the numbers of copies sold in two days). And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer game. State of Decay is a fascinating contrast to Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, which has considerably greater production values, meticulously engineered and calculatingly effective emotional beats, and the same vivid characterization that made Uncharted so successful. But for all the raw manipulative power of The Last of Us, I can’t stop thinking about State of Decay while I play. Undead Labs knows well something too many larger studios forget as they chase their larger ideas: good game design will lead to good storytelling, but good storytelling in no way guarantees good game design.
Unfortunately, Spencer’s tastefully informal blazer covered the edges of the game’s name. Puzzled viewers must have wondered what Ate of Dec was. Furthermore, Spencer faithlessly changed into another T-shirt later in the presentation, shilling for something called Apy while showing off the new game from Superbrothers’ developer Capybara Games.
In the vanilla version of Sins of a Solar Empire, Hypatia would be just another comfortable terran planet. I would settle it, upgrade its civilian infrastructure, and let its population grow for a while. It would eventually be a high-population world, useful mainly for the taxes it pays and whatever strategic place it occupies in the galaxy. Since it’s a fair distance from my capital, I’d of course build a temple to raise its allegiance, which is a base modifier to income. I might search it for artifacts. Of course, I wouldn’t find any. But you can’t very well not spend the money to check each planet for artifacts.
Hypatia would eventually turn into a blue marble that spits out credits. Basically, a cash cow. I would know this from the moment my scout warped into its gravity well for the first time. Terran planets equal credits. Next world.
But this isn’t the vanilla version of Sins of a Solar Empire. This isn’t your father’s Hypatia.
After the jump, what you’ll find on Forbidden Worlds Continue reading →
This week Jamie Fristrom, the designer of Spiderman 2, joins us to talk about getting around in open-world games. Which games do it well? Which games do it poorly? How do we feel about repeatedly mashing a button to run in Rockstar’s games? And will Fristrom’s upcoming Energy Hook replace the Spiderman 2 shaped hole in our hearts? We also talk about the latest Red Orchestra, we don’t talk about Save the Date because that would ruin it, and we wonder what the heck the designers of State of Decay were thinking.
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State of Decay, a supposedly open-world zombie survival sandbox, doesn’t seem very sandboxy at first. Two buddies are coming back from a camping trip only to discover the zombie apocalypse happened while they were out of range of cell phone service. Don’t you hate it when that happens? So they throw in with a handful of survivors at the ranger’s station to play a sort of third-person sneaker with some headshotting, meleeing, resource management, and even driving. Some scripted stuff happens. So far, all this could have happened in Dead Island: Rip Tide.
But I hadn’t met Ondrej yet.
After the jump, things that absolutely couldn’t happen in Dead Island: Rip Tide Continue reading →
So I’m running around an instanced mission with a Hawkeye, a Thing, and two Storms. I’m Jean Grey, of course. I’m morphed into my Phoenix form, wings splayed out bigger than any of the other character models, marvelous flames a-flicker all over my body, flinging fireballs, emanating waves of deadly fire. I’m a flame-based scrubbing bubble, scouring this lair of bad guys, picking off the distant ones with my fireballs, debuffing the attacking mobs with my telepathic lethargy. My Phoenix power is supposed to drain slowly, but for whatever reason, that’s not happening now. I can Phoenix as long as I want. If you’re going to have launch issues, this isn’t a bad one to have.
My teammates are playing free characters. You get to choose The Thing, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Daredevil, or Black Widow when you sign up. I’m pretty sure you get Storm as a mission reward early on. At least I did. That would explain the pair of Storms firing lightning vainly into my maelstrom of fire. How cute. You can play the free dudes to your heart’s content, up to the level cap and beyond. Of course, along the way, you’ll get loot for characters who aren’t free. You might sell it. You’ll more likely put it in your stash at Stark Tower. Every time you open your stash, you’ll consider a Captain America for that shield, a Wolverine for those claws, and how nifty Thor might look in those boots. Furthermore, you’ll see folks like me playing resplendent superheroes like Jean Grey in her Phoenix form and you’ll want them. It’s not pushy. It’s far more effective than being pushy. It’s in your face, on your shoulder, whispering in your ear. It’s actually pretty darn clever. I suspect I’ll end up with an Iron Man on my roster by the end of the day.
Marvel Heroes is live today. Jump in without paying a nickel. Pick The Thing, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Daredevil, or Black Widow. Jean Grey and Iron Man, however, cost $12 each.
At first glance, Wargame: AirLand Battle might seem like a minor update to Wargame: European Escalation, the brilliantly Cold War RTS from the undersung RTS heroes at Eugen Systems who’ve been quietly innovating and polishing for over ten years (if you think they arrived on the scene with Ruse, you haven’t been paying attention). But this is no “just add airplanes” update. This is yet another instance of Eugen’s innovate-and-polish approach, this time applied to their own game. And AirLand Battle belongs on any list of the finest RTSs ever made for a few reasons, but mostly for one simple reason:
It does something that almost no other RTS can manage.
After the jump, the Cold War gets hotter Continue reading →
This week Capcom releases Remember Me, a sci-fi adventure game in which the main character climbs around a lot (“Can we appeal to the Tomb Raider crowd?”), gets in fistfights (“Can we appeal to the Arkham City crowd?”), and manipulates memories (“Oh, right, we have to fit the central conceit into the game somehow…”). It begins with an interesting aesthetic, but once you escape from the laboratory and climb out of the sewers, you come to that moment when the music swells and a sweeping vista of the amazing sci-fi city stretches before you. My reaction to that moment in Remember Me was, “Really? That’s all you got?” Any further curiosity about the world or the gameplay pretty much dimmed once I got hung up on the first puzzle, which involves watching a doctor give medication to someone over and over again. Basically, these are puzzles about fast-forwarding and rewinding through cutscenes while you guess at whatever obscure solution the developers have in mind. If you really want to play an adventure game, I’m sure someone other than me could recommend a good one.
Also out this week is new DLC for Sins of a Solar Empire, a fantastic RTS that’s no less fantastic for its ongoing touch of feature bloat. Every time I play, there are about six or seven cool things that I know I’m probably not going to touch this time. Whether it’s mines, starbases, titans, some of the cruisers, superweapons, artifacts, inter-imperial pacts, refineries, or cultural boundaries, there are far too many nifty features for any single play sessions. Consider the trade port subgame. You might not even know it exists. But if you string together an unbroken line of trade ports, you get an income bonus. So you don’t just want that dwarf planet because your people need a place to live. You want it because it will extend your trade route by one system. Spacerailroad Tycoon in my RTS. The $5 Forbidden Worlds add-on will lets you further tweak planets, and it will add news planets, bonuses, and technologies.
A possible release this week is State of Decay. It’s in certification at Microsoft, and if all goes well, it will be included in Wednesday’s Xbox Live Arcade releases. Why should you care? Because of all the genres that need more games, single-player open-world zombie survival games need more games the most. Besides, I haven’t headshotted a zombie since dinking around with Resident Evil: Revelations a few weeks agao. I’m starting to go into withdrawal.
Finally, I wouldn’t normally care one whit about a free-to-play action RPG/MMO. But given that Marvel Ultimate Alliance is one of my perennial “you know, I should go back and play that yet again…” games, I’m actually looking forward to the free-to-play action RPG/MMO Marvel Heroes. The early launch this weekend has apparently been beset by problems — the PR rep sheepishly slinked away after last Thursday’s “hey, do you want early access to Marvel Heroes?” email — but whenever its issues get ironed out, I’m looking forward to getting my Jean Grey on. That right, Jean Grey. That’s how I roll.
