Layers of Fear tries to ask a few questions. Can a videogame play with the idea that you have no idea what reality has been constructed behind your back when you’re not looking? Can it violate the laws of physics? Can it ruthlessly deconstruct physical space? Can it do zero-G? Those are the questions it intends to ask. Of course, anybody who has ever played a videogame already knows the answers. But Layers of Fear asks anyway.
And then it jumps in your face and makes a loud noise.
After the jumpscare, another jumpscare, and another, and another, and another.Continue reading →
Three moderately comics savvy dorks going to see a Marvel superhero movie that killed at the box office? What could possibly go wrong? At the 1:12 mark, this week’s 3×3 is about that part in the movie when the movie says its own name. At the end of the podcast, we update the list of candidates for the 2016 Make Us Watch Whatever You Want Fund Raiser. You still have one week to make your mark on that list!
If you haven’t played Soma, I’m jealous that you get to experience it for the first time. I hope you didn’t read any reviews. Possibly including this one. All you should know going in is that it’s by indie horror developer Frictional Games and that it’s something about an underwater base. Oops. I wish you didn’t even know that second bit. But, really, there’s no avoiding it. Whether it’s the screenshots or the “set below the waves of the Atlantic ocean” in the product description, that particular cat is well and truly out of the bag.
After the jump– wait, should I even click past the jump?Continue reading →
It’s no surprise that the directors of the two strongest segments in V/H/S also provide the two strongest segments in Southbound, a new horror anthology. A collective of filmmakers who call themselves Radio Silence wrote, directed, and did the visual effects for the Halloween-party-gone-wrong effects-heavy rollercoaster finale of V/H/S. Their segment in Southbound, called The Way Out & The Way In, is also effects-heavy. It features a solid set of actors and unique creature design. It gives Southbound its structure and payoff.
But the highlight of Southbound is smack dab in the middle. David Bruckner’s segment, The Accident, consists entirely of the delightful Mather Zickel on the phone, splattered with gore and unsure what to do. It’s a one-man show about about the horror of helplessness in the face of grievous injury. It begins as a typical scenario that would fit snugly into any horror anthology. A driver on a remote road hits someone, panics, and flees the scene. Then he’s haunted and somehow punished. But Bruckner immediately swerves. Zickel, playing the driver, doesn’t flee. He tries desperately to do the right thing. He gives in to the calm guidance and soothing reassurance of the 911 dispatcher at the other end of the line. Or is it in his head? Is this authority, or is it conscience? Is this the Milgram experiment or Psycho?
In addition to gore, The Accident is dripping with the same delicious dark humor as Bruckner’s apocalypse party segment in The Signal (I didn’t care much for Signal co-director Jacob Gentry’s Synchronicity, recently released for VOD, but I was thrilled to see three of the actors from that apocalypse party back together again). Bruckner’s segment in V/H/S, Amateur Night, was also far and away better than the rest of that anthology, for its premise, execution, social relevance, and hugely gratifying payoff. With calling cards like these, I can’t comprehend why Bruckner, probably the most unsung horror director working today, has been unable to get a feature film going in Hollywood. That’s the real horror of Southbound.
Battlefield Hardline’s next big update will add swords to the arsenal of killing devices. If you thought the police were too militarized, or that the criminals were unrealistically kitted in Battlefield Hardline, then the addition of clangy swords and gunfights in locations like Alcatraz and Chinatown in the Betrayal map pack probably won’t disavow you of that notion. Coming in March, the DLC will feature four new maps, seven new weapons, and two new vehicles. The DLC is part of the Premium pass for the Electronic Arts shooter. There will also be a free update to the base game that will add eleven new weapons along with an improvement to the loot tables for the Battlepacks players get as slot machine rewards.
The Chinatown map may be the rumored remake of the Grand Bazaar map from Battlefield 3, albeit with sword fights and police sirens. With a player population that is regularly lower than the older Battlefield 4, it certainly can’t hurt to mix things up with ridiculous weapons and remakes of fan-favorite maps.
There will be no main Assassin’s Creed game from Ubisoft for 2016. Via the message from the company, Ubisoft is taking the lessons learned from the panning Assassin’s Creed: Unity received, along with feedback from fans, to “re-examine” the franchise. Like fictional Abstergo Entertainment, Ubisoft is using the information they have to change the way they delight their customers.
We’re taking this year to evolve the game mechanics and to make sure we’re delivering on the promise of Assassin’s Creed offering unique and memorable gameplay experiences that make history everyone’s playground.
Instead of a new Assassin’s Creed game, the publisher reminds everyone that they’ll be able to watch Michael Fassbender play assassin Callum Lynch in the movie based on the license. Nothing is true; everything is permitted.
Flowers are good. Expensive chocolates are nice. Dinner and a movie will work. If you really want to blow your Valentine’s mind, invite her into a three-way with a Hun, a Russian general, and a space marine. (I guess technically that would be a five-way, but let’s not get all judgy.) Starting on February 14th, the annual Make War Not Love 3 event is beginning. This year, gamers can play Total War: Attila, Company of Hereoes 2, or Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II and contribute to the war effort. The game that garners the most matches played by the 25th will win a prize. Dawn of War players could get the Tau Commander for Dawn of War II: Retribution. Company of Heroes players could snag the British Forces expansion. Total War fans could win the Slavic Nations Culture Pack. Only one game will win, so get playing!
If you’re wondering what the Slavic Nations Culture Pack could be, it’s brand new DLC for Total War: Attila. It features the Anteans, Sclavenians and Venedians for use in single or multiplayer modes. The Slavic factions have poison arrows and build wonders on the strategic map to win the campaign game.
A tech tree should be a game’s skeleton, giving it its shape. And since a tech tree is variable, it should create distinct shapes. These choices will make this kind of game; those choices will make that kind of game. A tech tree is a way to let a game design itself as it’s played. A latticework of possibilities, different every time. Clockwork Wars is my favorite example of a tech tree in a boardgame.
After the jump, wait, there are tech trees in boardgames?Continue reading →
When I spoke with Julian Gollop shortly after the release of Chaos Reborn, I politely but insistently asked him not to add more spells. The game is a wonderfully self-contained gem in an era of cloying post-release support that piles on avalanches of DLC. Chucking new stuff into the mix would mess up Chaos Reborn’s fundamental concept of fewer more meaningful pieces. Do you think the original Chaos got any add-ons, new units, DLC, or update packs?
Gollop didn’t listen to me. Today’s update adds four new spells.
Two of them, bolt tower and paralyze, seem awfully shy. I ran through several games and didn’t see hide nor hair of them. I suspect one shoots bolts and the other paralyzes things. I did, however, see the Icarus tower. It’s a mechanical horse-bird with a stone tower on its back that will automatically try to shoot down incoming flying units. Now those pesky eagles aren’t so pesky.
As for the fourth spell, zombies… Well, let’s just say if I’d known Gollop was going to add zombies to Chaos Reborn, I would have asked him to hurry up and get to it. Every game needs zombies and Chaos Reborn is no exception. The zombies come in hordes, of course. When you cast the spell, you get two of them. And when one of them kills another creature, that creature becomes an undead version of itself under your control. Given that Chaos Reborn makes undead immune to nonmagical attacks — think of it as a way of having to put one in the brain — zombies that build up a little momentum are a serious threat.
American Truck Simulator launched with two drivable vehicles. Two. You got the Kenworth T680 and Peterbilt 579. I’m not a semi-truck expert, but there has to be at least four or five different kinds of trucks that kick up gravel into my windshield during my daily commute. SCS Software explained that they had licensing issues that prevented them from launching with a fuller stable of long-haul options. It turns out that truck manufacturers aren’t hip to the world of video games and the cross-marketing opportunities they represent. The developers vowed to work on the licensing and get more trucking goodness into the game.
SCS has announced that a third truck is on the way. The Kenworth W900 was one of the first trucks the developers made for the game, but the manufacturer had a different plan.
Truck manufacturers tend to be very careful about their image, and Kenworth, as the pioneer in aerodynamics in cabin design with their T680, had a rather different idea of the ideal truck to have in our game at the moment of release. So it was back to work for us to finish the other truck first before we could hope for the licensing deal to be successfully signed.
A quick trip to Kenworth’s site for the T680 confirms that they do indeed consider it the “most aerodynamic truck ever” whereas the W900 site just says that truck has “traditional” styling. Which is better? Jerry Reed drove the W900 in Smokey and the Bandit. That’s settled.
We should know by now what videogames can and can’t do as a medium. When they’re not aping movies, they can tell riveting environmental stories in contained settings with gratifying payoffs (Gone Home, Bioshocks 1 and 2, Portal). In the context of gameplay, they can use animation, voice acting, and writing to establish effective relationships among characters (Uncharted, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Grand Theft Auto V). They can create a sense of mystery (Myst and a hundred other games).
What they can’t do is what Firewatch is attempting.
Remember Titanfall’s campaign story? Me neither. There’s was something about blowing up a grounded spaceship, and then something else about blowing up a robot factory. It was a bad story told in the most annoying way possible. Between the 30-second pre-round cinematics and the mid-match HUD transmissions, no one paid any attention to the story of generic group A versus generic group B. How can any story compare with two-story tall mechsuits fighting parkour gunslingers?
Respawn’s lead writer, Jesse Stern, says Titanfall 2 will do better. In an interview with Forbes, Stern says the sequel will feature a single-player campaign. He claims that the universe of Titanfall is compelling enough to inspire a spin-off television show produced by Lionsgate.
“In Titanfall 2 there will be a lot of [scenes] where science meets magic, but keeping it grounded and dirty and human and real.”
We got robots and parkour in the first game. Why not add wizards? Titanfall 2 is rumored to be coming to PlayStation 4 as well as Xbox One and PC.
You might not have even heard of this movie. There’s a reason for that. At the one-hour mark, we dip into a conversation about our favorite scenes of people getting wet.
