Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Seeing this on Ifanboy lead to a yelp of surprise and swiftly downloading it. It’s a UDK-powered final project by Game Design students in Illinois, which transfers Rick Remender and Tony Moore’s splendid Fear Agent sci-fi comic into the world of games. Albeit briefly. It’s a sort of micro-slice of game, forming a brief adventure complete with cut-scenes, with a single action set-piece. Go and have a nose at the gore after wandering around a bit to set it off. It’s 400Mb, and I would say of primary interest of those who either want to see what amateurs are doing with UDK or simply want to see Fear Agent in game form. Get it from here, assuming it doesn’t fall over. I suspect most other people will be satisfied with the video which follows…
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The new season of Sam & Max has started with an episode whose title I can’t write, else my inner-12 year old takes over and the rest of the post is just me sniggering. To lure you in, there’s a playable demo available for the PC and the other PC. If you want to play more, you have to buy the whole season, which gets the episodes shipped to you monthly. But where to buy? Well, two options. Get it from Telltale’s shop and you get the collector’s edition DVD shipped to you when the season is complete. Buy it from Steam before April 23rd and you get some Team Fortress 2 items, as worn by our two models above. But if you pre-ordered it already from Telltale, you can unlock your hats here. So get it from Telltale, I guess. Anyway – the trailer for the first episode follows…
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Ah! Denby spots this on Robert “Radiator” Yang’s facebook status and it has such a strikingly beautiful title page there was no way I wasn’t going to fire up wordpress and have it looming over RPS’ front-page overnight. Poto & Cabenga is the work of Honeyslug and a one button game about a sorta-guy and his sorta-donkey. Think slow-motion Canabalt with a split-screen twist. Worth playing for the gorgeous aesthetics alone. Hell, worth playing just to have the title screen bobble along with its neat parallax. Do so!

Sundays are for tea, working at hacking through your inbox and compiling a list of the fine (mostly) games related writing from across the week, while trying not to include a link to some elder statesmen of pop returning for one last little conceptual game.

• Since it’s such a big talking point of the week, let’s give a proper less-sarcastic link to Ebert picking up his games aren’t art drum and beating it some more. To keep things brief, there’s always been a big hole in his argument: “No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.” accepts the fact that you can compare them, so are art. His argument isn’t “games aren’t art” to “games aren’t as good art as cinema, literature, etc”. In other words, he’s admitted he’s 100% wrong inside his own articles. Since he’s conceded the point, we now have someone just saying he doesn’t like games, having never played the relevant ones, thinking watching a video of a fragment of one is a suitable way to judge one – which is equivalent to me reviewing the merit of the concept of movies from looking at their posters in front of the cinema.

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Since it’s been pointed out by a whole load of people, I was going to Sunday Papers this, but it’s just too good to bury. While not the funniest thing I read about videogames today, The First Person Observer left me with considerably more goodwill towards my fellow humans. The Onion model of satire on videogames has been tried before, of course… but rarely has it hit its targets this well. Even all the headlines made me at least smirk, which is more than The Onion has managed for years. The work of Christopher Livingston, I suggest you read it with your eyes and comprehend it with your mind, via this link. Or, if you prefer, this one. But not this.

No, the game, not the bizarre nerd rapture. And anyway, it’s a manshooter news day, alright. Raven’s time-bending shooter, Singularity – which I maintain should have been called TIME GLOVE! – is actually being released in 2010. In fact, we can be more precise still: it’s coming out on June 29th. And there’s a new trailer, which is around here somewhere… Blimey, it actually looks moderately interesting. Some of the time-based transformations are pretty impressive and… well, if Raven can make a full game out of them then we might just be in for a treat. Also, I want to fight people by making them old.
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It’s a trailer for a game in which men in masks shoot other men in masks! Actually, with a name like Blacklight: Tango Down, you might be forgiven for thinking it was some kind of dancing game set in a dodgy club. Perhaps it should have been. We’ll be able to tell soon, as we’re going to be taking a closer look at it before a release this summer. Clickwards for trailer.
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With news of worlds colliding over at the L4D blog, we learn that The Passing is out “next week”. Time for those mysteries to give themselves us. And time to dust off those zombie-whacking skills. Thwotch!

Much better week that last week, hurrah! You’ve got cars, zombies, jedis and balls, what more could you possibly want? Last week was definitely an anomaly, don’t expect another respite for your wallet any time soon. For more cheap games, direct your browser to SavyGamer.co.uk. Here’s the fully recharged bargain bucket:
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I didn’t know this was happening, but it’s welcome. BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger – which does sound like the sort of title Quinns would make up at his most frenzied incoherence – arrived on the consoles in Europe this month, in the UK via Zen United. “IRRELEVANT TO THE TRUE CHURCH OF GAMING” you may say. To which I say i) your saying is a lot like a lot of other people’s shouting. Chill, daddio. and ii) the PC version hits in June. If you want to know why that’s a good thing, I point you at Eurogamer’s 9/10 review which elaborates how it pushes the 2D Fighting game, in terms of a more building-up rather than pure memory combo system. Also, neat character design. It’s also worth noting that it’ll be compatible with the 360 multiplayer, meaning that there’s a community of gamers for you to meet and be beaten up by in existence. When it’s a genre which – to be polite – tends to lean consolewards, that sort of thing is quite important. It could be very lonely otherwise. A trailer nestles below…
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Since there hasn’t been any PC gaming news today, I thought I’d make some up.

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