Monty Python alum John Cleese is now in Payday 2. The Hoxton’s Housewarming Party update in Payday 2 adds a number of features focused on players now being able to customize and upgrade their safe houses. The new additions include masks, weapons, a shooting range with a damage calculator, and the ability to repaint the escape van used at the end of missions. (Gee, I wonder if that will include van skins to buy later?) The new safe houses come with another benefit. That’s John Cleese voicing Aldstone the butler!
The veteran actor is no stranger to videogame voice work. John Cleese was in Jade Empire, James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, The Elder Scrolls Online, Fable 3, and more, going all the way back to Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail.
Television can be both blessing and curse for storytelling. The blessing is the longer form that allows for more involved stories. The curse is a narrative beholden to episodic structure and uncertain series endings. Although anthologies forego the blessing, they easily avoid the curse with their fun-sized approach storytelling. The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Outer Limits, and Night Gallery are some of the earliest and best examples of television storytelling, and they often live squarely in the genre of horror. So to start out a week of television recommendations, here are a couple of specific episodes we recommend.
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Let’s talk about the last week’s horror videogame recommendations, and what some of the runners up would have been. We also tip our hand about next week’s Make October Scare Again list.
That’s the trailer for the Knights of the Eternal Throne expansion coming to Star Wars: The Old Republic. The expansion continues the story from last year’s Knights of the Fallen Empire. There’s even a call-back to the older trailer in this one with the training arena. The trailers for Star Wars: The Old Republic have consistently leaned into the strength of its story, a curious tactic for an MMO, but one that works. I have no idea who these people are, but I want to see what happens next.
The Knights of the Eternal Throne expansion will be available for subscribers on December 2nd.
Our Make October Scare Again recommendations aren’t just the best or our favorites. They’re things we feel deserve a little nudge in your direction, for whatever reason. But that’s not what’s going to happen on Fridays. This month’s Friday recommendations are determined shoves in your direction. These are our current favorites.
Dead by Daylight, the asymmetrical multiplayer game from Behavior Interactive, pits a killer against four plucky survivors in familiar slasher film environments. The killers are all generic versions of horror movie archetypes like the chainsaw hillbilly, or the undead nurse. They’re close enough to the originals to be scary, while deftly avoiding lawsuits. That’s worked fine so far.
Halloween is coming up and wouldn’t it be nice to run from someone a little more appropriate instead of a nondescript masked guy? Producer Mathieu Cote agrees. The Hallowe’en Update will add Michael Myers, Laurie Strode, and a suburban neighborhood map that will mimic the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois. Let’s hope the developers put a palm tree in there to really nail the movie setting.
The Silver Case, a 1999 game for the Playstation 1 at a time when it was also the only Playstation, is now available on Steam. Here’s the Wikipedia description:
The setting is contemporary Japan…. Within a place called the 24 Districts, a series of bizarre murders occurs, prompting the 24 Districts Police Department to send two detectives from their High-degree Murder Division to solve the case. The killings are soon linked to Kamui Uehara, a notorious killer who supposedly died several years before. The gameplay revolves around text-based situations, point-and-click mechanics, and interactive question and answer segments.
So other than being really old and apparently really Japanese (High-degree Murder Division?), what sets it apart from the hundreds of other point-and-click adventure games on Steam? Or even visual novels? I mean, really, what else should I make of “text-based situations”?
The Silver Case is the first game by Goicha Suda, aka Suda51, after he quit working for “The Man” and formed his own studio, Grasshopper Manufacture. Their credits include marvelous oddities like Killer7, No More Heroes, and Sine Mora. Especially Killer7. I’m convinced Killer7 has got to hold up (okay, it probably doesn’t). Their credits also include non-marvelous oddities like Shadows of the Damned and Lollipop Chainsaw. I have no idea where The Silver Case fits into their range of titles, but as a brand and a developer, Suda51 has been nothing if not, uh, distinctive.
You can get The Silver Case here, with the option to pay more for a deluxe version with an art book, comic, and soundtrack.
What number are we on for Resident Evil games? How many Friday the Thirteenths are there? The thrill of a good scare is something we intellectually know can’t be repeated, even though we never stop going back to the well. But the scares we know too well aren’t scares anymore. They’re horror comfort food. We can almost guess which crew member is the first to be Xenomorph meal. We know which couple gets the chainsaw first. We know the monster is going to be some CG boondoggle. We know when the refrigerator or medicine cabinet closes, something will be there. Ah, yes, it played out exactly like it was supposed to. Next!
It’s been a rumor for years, but it’s finally, officially going to happen. Ubisoft is working on Beyond Good and Evil 2. The original 2003 game was meant to be the first chapter in a trilogy, so fans have been waiting a long time for the story to move forward. A 2011 remaster fueled speculation that Ubisoft might be reviving the series, but all was quiet regarding a true sequel until creator Michel Ancel posted a pre-production image on Instagram for an unspecified game. The latest post from the publisher confirms that Ancel and Ubisoft Montpellier are collaborating on the long-awaited second installment.
In related news, Beyond Good and Evil will be free from Ubisoft beginning on October 12th through the company’s Ubi30 celebration. If you haven’t played it yet, this may be a good time to find out why people have been obsessed with this title for over a decade.
Craig Miller, who’s never been into miniatures games, explains why he’s playing one now. But as you’ll discover in the course of the podcast, he won’t be playing it very much come February!
You only say “it’s really about the journey” when the destination is a disappointment. That’s what people tell themselves when they climb a mountain, only to discover the view obscured by fog. Or when the end of a game sucks.
Earlier in the year, developer Respawn and publisher Activision announced that all map and game mode content added to Titanfall 2 post-launch would be free for all players. This was welcome news. One of the big issues with Titanfall’s multiplayer was that once the map packs rolled out, the community was split into smaller groups of haves and have-nots each time. It’s a problem for any multiplayer game that clings to the map pack DLC model unless it’s Call of Duty and has a core of players willing to loyally buy each installment.
Respawn has announced that the first free post-launch map release will be a remastered version of Angel City. It was fan-favorite in it’s original incarnation, so remaking the map for the sequel is an easy win. It’s coming sometime in December.
Along with that news, we have official confirmation of how Respawn intends to fund post-launch support. It’s cosmetic DLC!
These items will be available for purchase, but as always, gameplay is first here at Respawn and they will in no way impact the gameplay.
Fashion-forward players can pay for everyone else’s spot on the servers. It’s a win-win! Titanfall 2 is launching on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on October 28th.
I wish Ubisoft would quit adding cool updates to Anno 2205. I mean, seriously, who thinks up biomes for a city builder and comes up with space stations? The game already came with the moon, and now it’s on its way to the stars? Enough already! Anno 2205 was already an insidiously effective timesink and one of my favorite citybuilders.
In case you’re worried about sinking yet more hours into Anno 2205, the new Frontiers DLC is the bad news. But if you’re a season’s pass holder, the good news is that Ubisoft is officially done with you. You got Tundra, you got Orbit, now it’s time to quit being a freeloader and pay up. Frontiers will cost you $12 on top of the $20 you paid for the season’s pass, itself on top of the $40 you paid for the game. Seasons aren’t forever. Given Anno 2205’s 11/3/15 release, seasons are only 11 months and one day.
If former Israeli soldier and current Wonder Woman Gal Gadot played Wargame: Red Dragon, she’d be pretty excited that today’s nation pack adds 96 Israeli units. Here what your six dollars gives you:
In addition to the legendary Merkava tank family, one of many of Israels indigenous designs, the army also features heavily modified import units. These include British Centurion, American M60s, French Mirages III & V, as well as Soviet T-55 and PT-76 – salvaged from previous wars.
Import units? In other words, things already in the game? As much as I respect Eugen’s excellent post-release support, and as much as I realize that, yeah, that’s pretty much how it works in the real world, is it worth six dollars to spraypaint a Star of David on the side of some Centurions, M60s, Mirages, T-55s, and PT-76s?
One of the first things you’ll want to do with a list is define your terms. We’re not going to do that. In fact, we’re going to recommend a couple of things that might have you protesting, “Hey, there’s not a single jump scare, slasher, ghost, or zombie in there! That’s not horror!”
