I hope From Dust is good. How can something with concept art like the above not be good? Otherwise, the only notable release this week is Catherine, and that’s not notable for the reasons you hope a release is notable.
Captain America might not have won over all of us on this podcast, but it beat Harry Potter. And at least one of the guys on the podcast loved it. Listen to find out who (it’s not who you expect), or fast forward to this week’s 3×3 at the 1:10 mark. We discuss our favorite tears.
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Though I’m sitting pretty in Tixa, I can’t train militia there, and I’ve got to abandon it for Cambria to the north. There’s another S.A.M. site right nearby, as well as the Cambria mine and the hospital, right in a convenient line.
Unfortunately, you won’t see any of it, because at some point while playing, Fraps stopped taking screenshots when I told it to, and I have no screens of the S.A.M. site or the hospital. At least Cambria was relatively uneventful…except for things getting a little hairy at the hospital.
Afterwards, though, I have a run-in with Mother Nature.
After the jump, the hunt begins Continue reading →
It’s our special Comic Con Heat Wave episode, featuring stuff about Star Wars: The Old Republic, extreme pinball trash talking, and various fighting games like Marvel Cross Ted Sudoku featuring Steve. Also, McMaster recounts his brush with fame and the subsequent fallout.
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“No story. Just a platformer.”
I appreciated that odd little bit of honesty that the designer wrote in the details for this week’s community level, Roses (Platformer). No attempt to hook me with some phony mythology about why my sackboy needed to get from the beginning of the level to the end. No effort at setting the mood whatsoever. Just the simple words above and bam, you’re off and running and jumping.
And why not? If I need some poorly spelled gobbledygook to get me in the mood to play your platformer level, I probably shouldn’t be playing a platformer. Sometimes it’s better to just cut to the chase.
Then again, sometimes it isn’t.
After the jump, what you want, and what you need Continue reading →
At a recent press event for Warhammer: Space Marine, THQ brought out some fans of the Warhammer 40k miniatures game, along with their fantastic armies. In fact, I was surprised that one of THQ’s PR guys had brought along his own Tyranid army, coated with a glistening glossy finish meant to evoke slime. Who knew PR guys could also be such devoted nerds?
The most remarkable miniatures had been carefully pieced together from bits of other miniatures, and complemented with hand-sculpted custom bits. A Chaos Marine army built by a Ph.D. student in pharmacology was one of the most beautiful sets of miniatures I’ve ever seen. Just looking at all the detail and craft in those grotesque misshapen brutes was like falling into a microcosm.
But then there was the actual gameplay. We were treated to some demo games, and sent along with a hardbound copy of the basic rule set. As a boardgamer who loves mechanics, I don’t get the appeal of this tabletop system, which seems hopelessly dated, imprecise, and awkward. Having to prop up a die on a meticulously modeled vehicle to represent what type of damage it’s taken? Hovering over blast templates to read who got hit by what shot? Using a tape measure to keep squads together, calculate movement, and gauge firing range? And so much min-maxing, with so many different sets of rules, with so many six-sided dice, and so little information displayed on the table? Frankly, it all seems like an excuse to do something other than leave these exquisite pieces on a shelf to be admired. I remember when I was a kid and I used to make model airplanes. It took a while to realize that playing with them afterwards wasn’t the point. The point was the making.
But regardless of me not getting the appeal of the tabletop gameplay, I sure did enjoy the spectacle of so many lovingly painted creatures arrayed among so many dice on such wide expanses of table. It very nearly upstaged the actual videogame. Fortunately, developer Relic seems to have a solid idea for how to translate Warhammer 40k into an action game. Read about how a real time strategy developer* approaches a multiplayer shooter in my coverage on GamePro.
* To be fair, they deserve shooter credit for the underappreciated tactical shooter/RTS hyrbid, The Outfit.
It’s really not my fault. In fact, I call entrapment. I feel like I was getting mixed messages from Call of Juarez: The Cartel. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to do what I did. In fact, I’m still not sure whether I was or wasn’t supposed to do it. But the fact is I did it and now I feel compelled to explain myself.
After the jump, my confession Continue reading →
The problem with Sins of a Solar Empire — and it’s a very real problem — is that I can’t get far with it. I start up a game, as depicted in the above screenshot where the Halcyon class carrier Merciless and a few Disciple Vessels are fighting a tiny independent faction that’s taken up residence around the ice planet Daedalus. We need that planet for its rich stores of crystal. And really, this is just the opening move of the game. It’s not the least bit spectacular in terms of the overall scheme of things. It’s like fighting one of those throwaway gnoll creeps in Warcraft III.
So why am I spending so much time slowing everything down to super slo-mo, flying the camera around, taking screenshots, and admiring the space opera of it all?
Sins of a Solar Empire is too gorgeous for its own good, and that invariably gets in the way when I just want to sit down and actually play the darn thing. Which is what I was trying to do today. Developer Ironclad just released a hefty update that reworks the diplomacy system. Read the details here. In brief, there’s a whole new system of what you get for being friends with other players and how you get it.
Microsoft’s annual Summer of Arcade program starts tomorrow with the release of Bastion, which is the first in a series of four eagerly anticipated titles and one Kinect game. I don’t envy those other games for following Bastion. It really is an ingenious piece of work.
A friend of mine said about the movie Hanna that it should be taught in film school. He didn’t like it as much as I did, but that was his way of saying that he recognized its genius regardless of how much he liked it. And while I have no such dispassionate regard for Bastion — I really love this game — I do think it should be taught in, uh, game designer schools. We have those now, right?
After the jump, 15 things videogames can learn from Bastion Continue reading →
I’m old enough that my childhood technology obsessions predate game consoles and home computers. In elementary school, instead of immersing myself in fantasy space battles, my geekier classmates and I watched the Apollo, Skylab, and Apollo-Soyuz launches, and read of a fantastic reusable spaceship that would arrive at end of the 1970s called a Space Shuttle. Until game consoles and Commodore 64s became prevalent in high school, we had to make do with Star Trek, sci-fi novels, and science fact.
Cut to today, when we have a real space station in orbit that’s been manned for over a decade, and we’re jaded enough to nitpick the details of our fantasy space excursions in games like Mass Effect 2 and Halo. But for us Apollo kids, for the space aficionados who not only remember the tragedy of the Columbia landing but that of the Challenger launch as well, space travel remains a fascinating, exciting endeavor, filled with discovery, wonder, and risk.
Thus, when I found out I was one of just 150 people selected from over 5,500 applicants to view the last launch of the Space Shuttle program as part of the #NASATweetup program, I was beyond excited. I booked my tickets, hooked up with the rest of the “Tweeps” online (ironically, via Facebook), and made plans to witness a historic milestone.
After the jump, milestone witnessing Continue reading →
Tixa isn’t too far away from Alma, so after resting up and training militia in the town, the Dispensables are ready to go bust the mine owner’s brother out of prison. Attacking Tixa during the day would be a huge mistake, so again, I go in at night.
In the past, I’ve often gone with a frontal assault on Tixa, because I usually don’t take the prison until I’ve progressed a bit farther in the game, and I have enough high-powered weaponry to blow a whole right into the building. However, for my second Thin-Lizzy-inspired entry, I’m going to be a bit sneakier.
After the jump, all hell breaks loose, alarms and sirens (don’t) wail Continue reading →
I don’t generally play many (any?) free-to-play games, mainly because I’m mostly playing pay-to-play games. But I get lots of press releases about them. I know how hard it is out there for any game going that route. I don’t envy anyone the task trying to muscle into that particular niche, where free-to-play often isn’t just a business model, but a statement of quality.
I recently played a free-to-play shooter because I was writing a short piece for Gamespy. War Inc is a pretty typical entry in the niche that doesn’t have the benefit of Electronic Arts slapping a Battlefield brand on it. I was actually surprised War Inc wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Not that I necessarily recommend it to anyone who’s already digging on Killzone 3, or Bad Company 2, or Fear 3. But if you’d rather pay a few bucks at a time rather than $40+ up front, you could probably do far worse than War Inc, which comes with some weirdly suggestive quote marks when you check your overall time played:
I can talk at length about a game I like. But when asked whether I’d recommend a game, suddenly it’s 100% trickier. A recommendation has to take into account the recommendee, which is exactly twice as many people to manage as when I normally talk about a game. But then there is the occasional game I would recommend without hesitation. Bastion is one such game. There is no man, woman, or child* to whom I wouldn’t recommend Bastion, which is available this week on Xbox Live. Just consider your Microsoft spacebucks account 1200 points poorer.
I had hoped Battlegoat’s Supreme Ruler: Cold War would be a more manageable and theme-driven version of their overbusy Supreme Ruler 2010 games. Based on booting it up and messing around a bit with the tutorial, and then accidentally escalating the world to Defcon 1, I don’t think any such thing has happened. I don’t know who plays these things, but they’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
Runespell: Overture is a card-based trifle with a mess of fantasy RPG connective tissue, but it’s an engaging trifle. The combination of poker and solitaire — How come no one thought of this before? — has a surprising amount of depth. It’s out on Steam this week.
Also out this week is Call of Juarez: The Cartel, which takes Techland’s cowboy games and brings them into modern times. I haven’t played it, but Techland did some nice things with the previous Calls of Juarez. More importantly, playing Techland’s Dead Island at E3 was a revelation that these guys seem to have moved on from just doing fancy graphics engines to actually doing good game design. Maybe we’ll see some of that in The Cartel.
Finally, some licensed Smurfs game and Captain America game (pictured) are coming out this week. I would make a crack about not being able to care less about both things, but I actually kind of like playing Captain America in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. He’s the no-frills idiot-proof character anyone can play to learn the basics. Also, I liked Ryan Reynolds in Buried, so I’m happy to see him playing a famous superhero in the Captain America movie. It’s clobberin’ time!
* Kudos to developer Supergiant for not scrapping their innocuous enough liquor references and smoking pipe. Technically speaking, the E10+ rated Bastion features underage drinking and smoking!
We know what you’re thinking: “What’s Phase 7?” It’s a cool apocalypse thriller from Argentina that got very limited distribution and will hopefully be on DVD soon. We can spoil it for you now or you can listen to the podcast after you’ve seen it later. Either way, our 3×3 of movies we’re bummed never got made starts at the 1:03 mark.
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Normally, after capturing Drassen and securing the services of Skyrider, the next logical step is to go for Cambria, the large town at the center of the map. The hospital at Cambria is an excellent place to patch up wounded mercs, and can provide enough medical kits to last me the rest of the game, if I’m willing to pay a bit of town loyalty as a price.
I’m not going there, though. Not yet. Just to the south of Drassen is Alma, the primary military base of Arulco. While a much more difficult target, the rewards significantly outweigh the risks.
After the jump, stat-heads rejoice Continue reading →
