Updates the rest of this week will be spottier than usual since I’m away at the Game Developers Conference, which I always find relaxing, informative, and oddly re-energizing. If you’re at GDC this year instead of playing Mass Effect 3, come see the panel I’m moderating at the very end of the conference. The topic is that free-to-play games suck. Actually, that’s not technically the topic, but I’ll see what I can do.
And while I’ve got your attention, thanks for supporting the site by visiting us. We’ve been growing nicely even though I’m awful at promoting things. So if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I could use your help. We have a new Twitter feed ripe for the following at @Qt3, a Facebook page here that I’d be much obliged if you’d “like”, and podcasts that could use your ratings on iTunes (games podcast here and movie podcast here). We’ve also had a donation button up for a while that I’ve been pretty shy about pimping, but I’m grateful to the few folks who have used it.
First, let me explain that I’m really weird about trailers for movies. I don’t watch them, because they mess up the experience of letting a movie unfold the way the director intended. I know Tom Hanks is going to get rescued in the end, that Johnny Depp isn’t going to want to jump off that cliff, and that Jason Bateman is going to be grossed out when Leslie Mann uses the ladies’ room. I feel similarly about some game trailers, which is one of the reasons I am a terrible Videogame Journalist ™.
Now that you and I understand each other a little better, I have a favor to ask. Please don’t watch Electronic Arts’ latest trailer for Mass Effect 3. You probably already have. You’re probably watching it right now since I have embedded it in this post to test your resolve. In which case, you’re spoiling at least one truly awesome moment in the game. So if you must watch the trailer, please don’t pay close attention to it.
In case you haven’t gotten enough of me burbling enthusiastically about Conquest of Elysium 3, Bruce Geryk and I launched our own Occupy movement on the strategy gaming podcast, Three Moves Ahead. Our tent city was finally dispersed by repressive host Troy “The Man” Goodfellow.
In this new golden age of co-op shooters (thanks Left 4 Dead!), Payday: The Heist is one of the best games you can play for hearty accessible gunplay, a gratifying long-term leveling system, and a handful of dynamic memorable heists. And this weekend you can play the PC version for free. Give it a shot and remember that you have to grind the easier missions a few times to build up your character for the tougher missions. Be sure to play with the difficulty settings for greater risks and therefore greater cash rewards. Because cash is, of course, your experience points in Payday.
Once you’re sick of the bank, which is the equivalent of the game’s tutorial, try the crackhouse a few times to see how it can unfold. And when you really want a challenge, see how many of the diamonds you can snag — they’re basically big fat xp gems that are yours for the taking! — before setting off the alarm in the Nakatomi Plaza skyscraper mission. That one is actually my favorite for how unpredictable it is. Just ask the CFO.
Although Payday: The Heist works best with three other players, you can bring along AI buddies. They won’t use any of the game’s nifty toys, take hostages, or have the common courtesy of bringing along extra ammo for you, but they do have their own infinite supply of bullets and they’re very conscientious when it comes to reviving you.
Payday is available on Steam free of charge through Sunday at 1pm California time.
After spending some time with an early build of End of Nations, I can safely say that it’s a bit early to conclude much about how it plays. That last phase of unit balance and interface polish does a lot to a real time strategy game. That won’t happen to End of Nations for a few more months. Suffice to say that at this point, the game shows every sign of developer Petroglyph getting back in touch with their Command & Conquer roots.
On a moonlit night,
every thousand days,
the restless dead,
rise up to play.
They did not expect,
on this night though,
a fierce opponent,
of sauce, cheese and dough.
Thus begins the journey of pizza.
That’s probably the weirdest opening I’ve ever written, which fits because Pizza vs. Skeletons is one of the weirdest games I’ve ever played. Well, played and liked. I can think of several weirder, yet horrible, games.
After the jump, a culinary favorite declares war on the dead. Continue reading →
One of the many reasons I love Wargame: European Escalation, the latest RTS from the developers of the sadly underappreciated Ruse and Act of War, is the graphics. What a mostly gorgeous rendition of Cold War hardware in the thick of battle (pictured)!
I say “mostly” because of that weird grid of dots inside the explosion. Do you see it? I can’t help but see it, on each of the four systems I’ve used to play the game, every time there’s a big explosion like that. It looks like a broken dot matrix display or a half-assed Lite-Brite. Apparently, it’s a bug and it’ll be fixed in the next patch. ETA: who knows. Great. I understand weird bugs, occasional corrupted textures, and driver issues. But something this egregious baffles me. If I made a game this good, I wouldn’t want players having to look at that error any more than I’d leve a typo in an article. See how annoying it is?
So until the next patch, playing Wargame: European Escalation is like admiring a lovely painting with a bunch of staples randomly stuck in the canvas.
Electronic Arts, the latest licensee of the official Scrabble name, is taking its duty seriously. They just issued a press release rating the acceptance speeches during the Academy Awards for their best Scrabble scores. And the winner is…
Inexplicably — Score:28 (Meryl Streep, Best Actress, “The Iron Lady”)
Indefatigable — Score:20 (Eugene Gearty, Sound Editing, “Hugo”)
Provocateurs — Score:17 (Christopher Plummer, Best Supporting Actor, “Beginners”)
Prosthetics — Score:17 (J. Roy Helland, Makeup, “The Iron Lady”)
Chameleon — Score:15 (Gore Verbinksi, Director “Rango”)
Financier — Score:14 (Michel Hazanavicius, Director, “The Artist”)
Resilience — Score:12 (Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Documentary Short, “Saving Face”)
Virtuoso — Score:9 (Colin Firth’s introduction speech for Best Actress)
I can hear half of America going, “Oh no…oh, come on…why? Her. Again.” But, whatever.
Sequels can do things originals can’t. Superhero movies, for instance. The first movie is an origins story. That’s when you have to explain the rules to people like me who didn’t read the comic books. The superhero frets about great power. Aunt Martha gets killed. The superhero stops fretting and punches a few punks. Finale. But once you get to a sequel, your superhero fights better villains and maybe even trashes the city, since sequels have bigger budgets for special effects.
Ascension: Storm of Souls, a sequel to Ascension, gets down to the serious business of serious spectacle now that the ground rules have been laid. It may not be better than the core game — the elegance of basic Ascension is a tough act to follow — but it’s different, it’s more, and it’s the logical next step if you’re an Ascension fan.
After the jump, is it as good as fighting Terence Stamp? What about Heath Ledger?Continue reading →
Can Electronic Arts recapture the glory days of the SSX series? Find out this week with SSX Rebooted, which isn’t actually called that, but I can’t very well just call it SSX. Yeah, sure, that’s the name, but how are you going to know I’m not talking about the original Playstation 2 game?
I also can’t very well call the other four games out this week what they’re actually called, because I can’t keep the names straight. Can you? Here are four shuffled titles. I defy you to pluck the actual names from the list!
Pokepark Neptunia
Black Domain 2
Deep Hyperdimension: Wonders Beyond
Binary mk2: Reloaded
I’ve often said that asymmetry is inherently interesting. So is randomness. Eventually. In Ascension, a tabletop and iPhone card game for two players that a few of us on Quarter to Three have written about fondly, players compete for cards in a middle row to build up your decks. Whoever earns the most victory points wins. You get these victory points by either using military power to kill monsters in the center row, or “spacebucks” to add more cards into your deck. Sometimes you can do both at once! Some monsters also give you spacebucks to buy more cards.
But there’s one card — only one! — that can earn you points in three different ways. Xeron, Duke of Lies. Not to be confused with an Intel processor or a noble gas. He hates that. He’s a monster who gives you victory points for banishing him and for adding another card to your deck. But Xeron can also earn you victory points a third way, because the card you add to your deck is randomly taken from the other player’s hand. So you’re earning victory points for the act of kiling Xeron, by adding another card to your deck, and by reducing the other player’s victory points when you steal a card from his deck.
This doesn’t always work out well, because you might draw one of the common worthless cards from the other player’s hand. Oh, look, an apprentice worth zero points. Big whoop. That’s Xeron for you. He’s not called the Duke of Lies for nothing. But sometimes — sometimes! — it works out slightly better than that. And then there are the times you involuntarily make a loud whooping sound before you even realize it.
I’m not sure who Crazy Puck is, but in the game we’ve been playing, I defeated Xeron and then drew a card from Mr. Puck’s hand. The card I got was the Hedron Link Device, which is worth seven points. That means a 14 point swing in our relative scores in a game that is often won or lost by a few points. Of the roughly 250 cards in the game, there is only a single card that would have been worth more points (the Hedron Cannon is an eight pointer). The combination of conditions that had to come together for this to happen is unlikely, to say the least. The device had to bubble up out of the 250 cards in the deck, Crazy Puck had to acquire the device, I had to defeat Xeron on the turn he’d drawn it, and then I had to pick it from his hand instead of one of his other cards. And it’s a real shame I don’t know Crazy Puck, and that we’re playing on the iPhone instead of in person, because it was one of those quintessential game moments that randomness and rarity make all the more special when you know the victim.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent stands apart from most recent horror games for how it doesn’t have any combat, and doesn’t even really want you to look at scary things. It’s got an old school adventure game vibe, but it has its share of fans who appreciate not having to headshot zombies for a change. The game’s developers at Frictional Games recently announced the name of their next game, and not much else, to Joystiq. But what a name it is. Amnesia: a Machine for Pigs. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you name a game!
A Machine for Pigs (pictured?) will be written and designed by Dan Pinchbeck, the creator of the artsy Source mod/ghost story, Dear Esther. Frictional intends to release it at the end of this year.
I feel a little silly posting about something as inconsequential as promotional wallpaper, but when it’s wallpaper this good, I can’t help it. As you can see above, it’s a bit of evocatively creepy promotional art for Echo Bazaar, a game I’m still playing long after having written a review. Which isn’t something that happens very often. And the cool thing about that wallpaper is that the mood-breaking promotional URL tucks neatly under your taskbar in Windows XP.
I like to shoot things. Battlefied, Call of Duty, Killing Floor, you name it. If it has guns and things to shoot, chances are I’ll entertain myself with it. If it also has regular people dressing up as homeless versions of Batman and the Joker, trying to kill eachother for no reason with guns, gadgets and rollerskates, I’m going to be in love before I even play it.
After the jump, when is three hours actually forty minutes?Continue reading →
