Would you rather survive a crash landing on a hostile alien world or watch After Earth? Unfortunately, we weren’t given the option to decide one or the other. Then, if you’re not busy, would you maybe like to join us at the 38-minute mark for a 3×3 about dates in movies? We’ll pick you up at eight.
Next week: Upstream Color
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I was several missions into Warhammer Quest before something dawned on me that must be obvious to a lot of you. Warhammer Quest is based on a boardgame. Which explains a lot. But what it doesn’t explain is why this is such a terrible boardgame port.
After the jump: Smokey, this is not Nam Continue reading →
You may not realize this, since it’s not true, but today is HP Lovecraft Day! So we’ve invited Tabitha Chirrick of Machines in Motion to talk about Kingsport Cases, a game with a unique angle on the Lovecraft mythos. Go here for the Kickstarter page. We also talk about other games attempting Lovecraft, and how they succeed or fail. We’re sure we missed a few, so that’s where you come in. Post them below. For this week’s games of the week, we choose our favorite gods/giants, how Wonder Woman is uniquely suited to run Arkham Asylum, and how many human revolutions it takes to finally save the world. Finally, Tom confesses that he once condoned Lovecraft’s racism, but it was totally on accident.
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You could do worse than The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing (hyperbole theirs). Developer Neocore, fresh from a long stint homaging the Total War series with their King Arthur series, is now homaging Diablo. They mostly get the Diablo feel, even if they don’t get the Diablo polish, replayability, moment-to-moment gameplay, and variety. And does Diablo really need a tower defense game?
After the jump, you might be surprised at the answer Continue reading →
Grid 2 (not pictured, since there’s nothing duller than a screenshot of a latest-gen racing game) is out this week! The original Grid rivaled the best of Forza and Gran Turismo when it was released, and it even held up next to the upcoming Need for Speed: Shift. Since then, developer Codemasters has mostly been retooling their various Dirt games, which are easily the best arcade rally racers you can race. Now that the wheels are back on pavement, I look forward to seeing how they handle. Consider your wallet threatened.
I’m pretty sure Wargame: AirLand Battles is supposed to be out this week, but it’s already missed one release date. It’s fully playable now as a skirmish game (buy it now and you can bang on the beta to your heart’s content!), so all we’re really waiting for is the ambitious dynamic campaign. Consider your wallet threatened.
Finally, Electronic Arts releases Fuse, Insomniac’s disappointing attempt to fuse the serious shootery bits of Resistance with the wacky weapons bits of Ratchet & Clank with the godawful four-player co-op of Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One.
This week we see the latest movie in which Paul Walker and Vin Deisel and some other people blatantly disregard traffic laws. We also discuss whether Dwayne Johnson is a better actor than Harrison Ford. At the 48-minute mark, this week’s 3×3 considers our favorite moments of compassion in movies.
Next week: After Earth
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Reus reminds me a lot of SimCity Societies in that it’s about fitting together distinct imaginative pieces into a functioning whole. In the case of SimCity Societies, the pieces are buildings, of course. Each building has unique properties, feeding into and feeding off the city in different ways. But in Reus, the pieces are plants, animals, and minerals. And not the usual wheat, deer, and iron. Reus is full of weirdly specific things like dandelions, stoats, and topaz, each with very different characteristics, each interacting with other bits in sometimes intuitive, sometimes strange, sometimes surprising, and almost always delightful ways. You could have guessed that foxes like having chickens around. But did you know that gold is less valuable as there are more gold mines on the planet? Did you know that aloe vera’s medicinal power gives you extra technology for nearby animals? Or that some banks really groove on chili peppers? Or that the prized prey variant of the market pays considerably more for dangerous predators?
After the jump, the ecology of Reus is nothing if not unique Continue reading →
There must be some demand for ports of these arcade cabinet games from the 80s, right? Otherwise, Capcom wouldn’t be selling them in bundles of three on Xbox Live and the Playstation Store, carefully arranging the familiar with the “what the heck is that one?”. And now you can buy all fifteen games for $30. That’s got to be a good deal for someone, somewhere.
I’ve tried a few of these ports, and I appreciate the retro atmosphere around the edges of the screen. But in 2013, I just don’t understand the appeal of the actual games. Knowing what I know now, having played great modern games, I break out in a cold sweat imagining what sheer hell it would be to have only these to play. Can you imagine whiling away the hours with Ghosts n’ Goblins or 1943 or Contra, with those tinny electronic squakings reverberating in your head, jerking a stubby joystick left and right and left, slapping one or two buttons, seeing the game over screen after losing three lives with a nary a checkpoint to be seen. I’m in hell. I can’t take it anymore! Make it stop!
This week, Toddler Taxonomist developer Clay Heaton joins us to talk about how such long Latin words found their way into his kid’s game and the unlikely name for his Rogue-like currently in development. We also talk about first-person tower defense game Santcum 2, god game Reus, and space exploration sandbox Kerbal Space Program. Plus a recap of Microsoft’s new console and dog announcement.
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You know the early stages of a new game, when you’re trundling along, hoping that it won’t do something wrong and reveal that it is, in fact, a bad game? You’re basically muttering to yourself, over and over, pleasedon’tstartsucking, pleasedon’tstartsucking, pleasedon’tstartsucking, pleasedon’tstartsucking. That’s where I am now with Van Helsing, an action RPG from a small studio with middling to big ideas, but since they’re still a small studio, the game only has one class instead of five. The class is a Van Helsing with his feisty ghost wench as a sidekick. Her idle animation is basically struggling to keep herself in her, uh, whatever you call the top part of one of those old timey dresses.
Fortunately, it hasn’t started sucking yet. I’ve already been through about three or four things that could have sucked. And I felt like I was in good hands early on.
After the jump, getting the first impression right Continue reading →
Although I’m a sucker for the “just add zombies” approach to game design, I’m not sold on its viability for boardgaming. I know there are some co-op zombie games. But I’m over co-op boardgaming that doesn’t have some sort of traitor gimmick. There are probably even games that stick some poor sod with the role of zombiemaster. But I was convinced zombies aren’t a good subject for boardgaming.
And then I played Dawn of the Zeds and realized I was dead wrong. Victory Point Games has done a dead-on job of expressing zombie mythology, and they’ve furthermore done it in a solitaire game, so I don’t even have to press my friends into service.
After the jump, when there’s no more room in hell, the dead shall walk the tabletop Continue reading →
I show 13 hours on Steam’s “time played” entry for Metro Last Light. To some folks, this is short. To me, it’s exactly how long developer 4A needed to tell Artyom’s story. But to 4A, it’s not the whole story. Today, they announced four sets of DLC will be released over the summer, all available as part of a $15 season’s pass.
The Faction Pack and the Chronicles Pack will include new, original single player gameplay that expands on the Metro: Last Light universe and story. The Tower Pack will present a unique solo challenge to Metro veterans… The Developer Pack will give creative players some interesting tools with which to explore the world of Metro.
Artyom’s story may have been concluded in Metro: Last Light, but there are other characters with stories to tell, some familiar locations that fans of the Metro series wanted to revisit, and some new challenges that 4A wanted to explore.
Here’s hoping for a storyline featuring the Venice fisherman with the boat, the crazy hat, the cigarette, and the box of dynamite. I liked that guy. Plus, I owe him a blood debt.
One of the most insidious formulas for a horror movie is to let you hang out for a while with people you get to know and like, and to then do terrible things to them. Wolf Creek and Black Water, for instance, are examples of horror movies in which nothing horrific happens for a long time and the movie is all the better for it.
The latest crop of bad horror movies — many of them found footage — gets this all wrong by forcing you to sit for a long time with unlikable characters played by bad actors. By the time anything horrible happens, you couldn’t care less. In Aftershock, mostly forgettable bad things happen to an unlikable bunch of snotty Chileans with a couple of foreigners sprinkled into the mix, including Eli Roth, who perfected bad things happening to bad characters to bad effect in his wretched Hostel series.
Roth didn’t direct Aftershock, but you’d never know considering what artless trash it is. It consists of a half hour of three dude hitting on chicks in nightclubs. Kill me now. Eventually, a low budget earthquake happens, a funicular crashes but they didn’t have the budget to show it, local hires playing escaped prisoners tastefully rape one of the actresses and burn Roth alive with CG fire, the heroine and a surprise bad guy flop around contentiously in a poorly lit cave, and then a really chintzy CG tsunami shows up for the final shot. Aftershock is ultimately like one of those cheaply made “bad weather” Sci Fi Channel movies, but with an R-rating made pointless by the fact that the director was clearly influenced by either Roth’s Hostel movies or the sorts of crass 70s exploitation horror that Dimension Films would never let him shoot.
Aftershock is available for video on demand. Not that you should care.
Microsoft officially unveiled the Xbox One with a release date of “later this year” and a price of “uh, what?”. Nick has a more detailed breakdown above, but for my money, the only standout was a few glimpses of Infinity Ward’s upcoming Call of Duty: Ghost, in which you get a cool SEAL Team dog. Move over, Dead to Rights! You can watch the presentation at xbox.com, but I don’t necessarily recommend it unless you’re in the market for a voice-activated cable box.
(Thanks to Teiman for the awesome picture!)
Today is Victoria Day. No joke. It’s a holiday they celebrate in some countries. I’ve never heard of a Europa Universalis Day or Crusader Kings Day or Hearts of Iron Day. Just a Victoria Day. Fitting. Victoria is one of the most Important strategy games ever made.
After the jump, yeah, I just spelled important with a capital I Continue reading →
