By Quintin Smith on June 15th, 2011.
RPS hasn’t posted about the fan remake of Super Mario Bros. 3 before, and I’m not sure whether that’s because of this project’s hazy legality or simply because that particular moustachioed protagonist has a way of seeming like the antithesis of the PC. Well, shucks. I’m posting about it now. In a roundabout way, this is the kind of project that makes the PC great.
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By Jim Rossignol on June 15th, 2011.
Canvas is a Half-Life 2 Ep 2 modification that, as mods go, is one of the most impressively produced efforts you are likely to see. It tells the story of a girl with psychic powers, her psychically animated/possessed teddy bear, and the disappearance of her father, which the pair must investigate. Canvas is a 3D puzzle game, where the protagonist and her companion bear must use their powers to overcome obstacles and defeat enemies. Intriguingly, it’s also set within the worlds of various paintings, which they must enter to unravel the mystery.
The teaser is below, and it’s genuinely worth watching.
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By Jim Rossignol on June 15th, 2011.
One of the more unusual announcements from E3 was that of Defiance, a cross-platform MMO, that is also a cross-media project incorporating a TV show alongside the game. It’s being developed by Trion Worlds (of Rift) and the television channel SyFy. Anyway, it turns out that the game is “set in a futuristic San Francisco Bay Area”, and will be a mission-based third-person shooter, in which you can play as human or alien races. I’ve posted the full fact-o-thing and screenshots below. Click for full size.
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By Alec Meer on June 14th, 2011.
Update 2: League of Legends is the latest target. Its login servers are currently down, with its website also apparently suffering.
Update 1: Notch has told us that “Looks like we’re back up.. I just hope it lasts!”
Following yesterday’s Bethesda incursion, and earlier attacks on the likes of Sony and Nintendo, hacker collective Lulzsec have targeted further games and gaming services today. Over the last couple of hours, they’ve taken out first Eve Online and then Minecraft’s login servers, as well as knocking out gaming site The Escapist.
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By John Walker on June 14th, 2011.
Valve have just announced, as a few were speculating, that they will now be supporting free-to-play (F2P) games via Steam. The first five that have now arrived on the service are Spiral Knights, Forsaken Worlds, Champions Online: Free for All, Global Agenda: Free Agent, and Alliance of Valliant Arms. There’s to be “exclusive content” if you try each of them out on one of the following days until this Saturday, depending which is the “F2P game of the day”. The micro-transactions will be handled by the same tech that’s currently selling hats in TF2. So that’s Hi Rez, Atari, Sega, Perfect World and NHN USA Inc. on board already, with surely very many more to follow. F2P is out there, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. You’re even – whisper – bound to start playing one soon.
By Alec Meer on June 14th, 2011.
Landmark cRPG Wizardry, one of the first games to try and electronicify the values and systems introduced by D&D and thus help birth the genre we now call roleplaying games, has never entirely gone away, truth be told. It’s seen an unending torrent of spin-offs, sequels and remakes since its Apple-based birth in 1981, but a full-on comeback has eluded it. That appears to be on the cards, thanks to a reboot in what’s now the age-old tradition – sticking the word ‘Online’ on the end of the title. But wait! Do not gallop away on your horse of cynicism. There’s at least one thing to suggest this is taking roleplaying very, very seriously…
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By Jim Rossignol on June 14th, 2011.
Via our exuberant American chums at G4, come some E3 leftovers in the form of Hawken footage, which I’ve cleverly reblogged below. Once again it’s looking seriously impressive, this time showing off a “Siege” game mode, where players have to gather resources to launch battleships against opposing bases. Only the battleships can destroy the enemy base, but they themselves are vulnerable to attack, too. The piece is presented Adhesive’s talented art lead, Khang Le.
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By Jim Rossignol on June 14th, 2011.
You might recall that GamersGate have been teasing the release of their FreeGames service, which apparently offers a service of uh free games in exchange for you being explosed to some advertising. I had a chat with GG’s Theodore Bergquist about some of the details, and you can find that chat below.
This way for explanatory chat »
Bionic Interview
By John Walker on June 14th, 2011.
During E3 I sat down with Deus Ex: Human Revolution’s director, Jean-François Dugas, and lead writer, Mary DeMarle. With the game nearly complete we talked about the experience of creating a game in such a renowned series, the transhumanist literary inspirations for its tone and design, and how characters nearly had deer legs. We explore the process behind how you can maintain multiple paths, whether it really can be just a straight shooter, and learn that the game was influenced by Johnny Mnemonic.
Carrier Bagged
By Jim Rossignol on June 14th, 2011.
There are some remakes which are baffling, and others which are ultimately pointless – when they they share little more than a name with the original game, for example – but there are others still which were crying out to happen, and make perfect sense when they arrive. Carrier Command: Gaea Mission is one of these. The original was an extraordinary piece of game design, straddling strategy and vehicular combat in the crude 3D of its day, and managing to create an open-ended sandbox experience early on in the history of gaming. It now looks all the more impressive for having been released in 1988. While it has had a couple of notable imitators such as the Battlezones and Hostile Waters, it’s perhaps surprising that no one has tried to remake the original until now. What is most extraordinary (and unsettling) about this remake is just how faithful a game made over twenty years later has managed to be.
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By Alec Meer on June 14th, 2011.
OK, now that we’ve had our dose of morning bitterness and recrimination, let’s turn our attentions to something altogether more cheery. Indie dev Quickfingerz’ free browser game Drop combines ambient music-making with pong-style physics. Blessed with minimalist, icy neon prettiness that evokes an thoroughly abstracted Frozen Synapse, it’s a puzzle game that’s both relaxing and challenging. Unless you play the sandbox mode, in which case it’s purely relaxing. A clever webtoy in its own right, and well thought-out drawing-based puzzles to boot. Give it a go, and feel altogether a little more calm and optimistic about today.
