By John Walker on November 23rd, 2009.
I remember being very pleased the time I found a Delorean mod for GTA Vice City. That lovely car, upward opening doors, very cute. It was as nothing compared to this mod for Crysis that Lewie points out to us – all that Back To The Future detail. You can time travel in it! (To the opposite time of day, but you know, it’s still time travel.) Check out the video below.
By Jim Rossignol on November 23rd, 2009.
News of a mini-expansion for GSB arrives over on the Positech blog. Cliffski says: “…current plans for the pack are to introduce a new race to the game. It will have the same variety of ships as the other races. The ships will also have a few race-specific modules, and some quite drastic ship bonuses. It was a relief to work out that ship bonuses can be negative, meaning this new batch of ships will have weak shields, weak armor, and very strong hulls.” He’s not yet decided on a price for said expansion, claiming he only wishes to recoup the cost of making it.
By John Walker on November 23rd, 2009.
Yesterday saw my No One Lives Forever retrospective appear on the mighty Eurogamer. Maybe you’d like to read a thing like that. A thing like that begins like this:
They say money makes the world go round, but this is somewhat inaccurate. Leftover momentum from the solar nebula makes the world go round. Money, in fact, is not responsible for rotation, gravity, nor indeed any number of other phenomena in the galaxy. It does, however, occasionally make games less interesting. You simply couldn’t make No One Lives Forever today. You couldn’t because it would be too long, require far too many assets, and most significantly of all, risk all the cost of development on a comedy game – a genre that no longer exists. Its international scale, its enormous volume of content and its emphasis on making you laugh add up to something that feels like it’s from another age – an age before an FPS lasted six hours and cost $250 million.
By Kieron Gillen on November 22nd, 2009.
Sundays are for forming all-star comic boyband on stage at an 3am at a comics festival, snatching hurried sleep, catching a train back to the South away from the land of 24-hours Greggs shops and compiling a list of interesting game related that caught my eye from across the week, while trying to avoid linking to something to immortalise that pretty magical evening. Go!
By Lewie Procter on November 21st, 2009.
This week, bargain bucket is ironically delayed because I took an impromptu trip to KFC. Sorry about that. These deals are all good til at least Monday though, so still plenty of time to give them a think over. For more entertainment software savings, follow this hyperlink to SavyGamer.co.uk. Freshen up wipes at the ready.
By Kieron Gillen on November 20th, 2009.
Yeah, this is the definition of people spinning out a story from very little, but Massively report the LA Time doing an article the LA Times did on MW2′s launch. Fairly standard fluff. Except at the end a source close to the company say that they’re considering an MMO. Which is an interesting idea, especially tied to news that a third company are now working on Call of Duty franchise games. Of course, “considering” is a word which means little. You’ve got a franchise like Call of Duty? You at least consider it.
By Alec Meer on November 20th, 2009.
Confession time! I have never played a game by mad-brained indie wunderkind Jonathan ‘Cactus’ Söderström before. No idea why – despite Jim regularly giving his games an approving nod, in that stern, stoic Jim Rossignol way of his, I’ve managed to miss every single one. Dungeon, his collaboration with one Arthur ‘Mr. podunkian’ Lee (what is it with these names? I’ve gotta get me one. Call me Alec ‘Windows Sound Recorder’ Meer from now on, if you will), rather confirms my opinions from afar – that the chap is making splendid but oddball independent videogames that will please anyone who doesn’t scream “pretentious!” the second they’re faced with something even slightly artistically-minded. Not that Dungeon is necessarily artistically-minded – it has another agenda…
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By Alec Meer on November 20th, 2009.
Today on Games I’m Not That Interested In But Kinda Wish I was, it’s Starcraft II. I’m still waiting for the reveal as to quite what it is about the singleplayer that necessitated trifurcating the game, because I’ve never been much of a one for multiplayer RTS. I can’t, however, imagine that Blizzard are unaware of this kind of mindset, especially in light of what their name means to that hefty slice of the WoW crowd who aren’t into the PvP or raid elements. They’re up to something, I don’t doubt – I just don’t know quite what yet. Hopefully it won’t just involve bombarding us with expensively-made cutscenes until we pass out from lore exhaustion. There’s a hint of what they’re up to in a new dev diary here, which includes the magic word ‘decisions’. Ooh! I like making those! Unless they’re about what to eat or whether I should put any clothes on, anyway. Also: new Zerg footage below. It’s SC2′s take on The Spy…
By Jim Rossignol on November 20th, 2009.
It’s about road safety and it’s still set in a fantasy world! These MMO designers. Tsk! Code Of Everand was actually down when I clicked through to have a look, but apparently the idea behind this free MMO is teach road safety skills to nippers. It’s a metaphor, you see: “Deadly ‘spirit channels’ inhabited by roaming monsters criss-cross the land. Players are ‘pathfinders’, heroic adventurers trained to cross the spirit channels safely.” The UK’s Department For Transport worked with augmented-reality games dev specialists Area/Code, (responsible for the Discovery Channel’s Sharkrunners and Drop7 on me iPhone), to create the game. It’s probably worth noting to the rest of the world that the UK drives on the wrong side of the road, so what this MMO teaches foreign children could potentially result in comedy cartoon flattened-by-steamroller mishaps. It won’t be as good as being taught how to cross the road by the man who was inside Darth Vader, anyway. (See below.)
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By Jim Rossignol on November 20th, 2009.
As we’ve mentioned a number of times previously, Bioshock 2 will feature multiplayer. A new video of that mode has been released unto the internet today, and we’ve posted it below for your delectation. As you might expect, it demonstrates a number of the in-game powers, the barks of your freakish gene-splicing characters, their weapons, and the rather splendid Art Deco environments that all the murderin’ is going to take place in. It’s an odd addition to the game, however, and I can’t help thinking about how hard they’re going to have to try to compete with their contemporaries. Is an old-skool deathmatch add-on really want we demand for 2010?
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By John Walker on November 20th, 2009.
A while back I was ranting about how the indie developers creating AGS adventure games have a great deal to teach those currently making the games professionally. If you look in other areas of development this truth is beginning to emerge – major development studios are taking notice of indie teams, mimicking them, or even hiring them to creating games of a similar vibe (Dragon Age: Journeys being the most recent example of this). But adventure development still seems to be sticking to its non-indie guns. Which makes a couple of articles on A Hardy Developer’s Journal well worth reading for anyone making the genre professionally.
