By John Walker on July 7th, 2011.
Later on today we have the second part of our massive interview with The Secret World lead, Ragnar Tørnquist (first part here). In that one Ragnar and I end up having a bit of a “discussion” about the nature of truth and authorship, as well as ambiguous endings and where gaming needs to go next. In the meantime you can enjoy the latest CGI (cinematic) trailer for The Secret World, which is below. This one is mostly about wee.
By Jim Rossignol on July 6th, 2011.
Crikey, The Elder Scrolls IV: Andoran, which is a Russian-language Oblivion mod, is looking splendid and, more importantly, a bit mad. Spotted by the chaps at PC Gamer, the mod’s trailer (which you can see below) reveals a more visually interesting world, and the game’s site boasts that it has a “non-linear plot”.
It also says this: “What would it be, if the time went mad? Meeting your own self, talking rats, intertaining fleas, live cheese and horses walking on the sea is what a player will face in the Axis, one of the games areas. But things are not as they seem, the matters will become clear after a while and logic, though unusual, will replace the madness.” I don’t know what that means, but it sounds AWESOME. Go watch the trailer. I mean it.
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No More Racing Games
By John Walker on July 6th, 2011.
Yesterday it was announced that ten former members of Eden Games in France have split to create a new independent studio called Blossom Minds. A tongue-in-cheek press release explained that they were no longer interested in AAA games, but wanted instead to focus on digitally distributed smaller ideas. We got in touch with the team to find out more, and have heard back from designer Jerome Braune. He explains to us why the studio started, their reasons for going indie, and how they won’t be making any more driving games. In fact, they’re making a platformer.
A Throne Of Games
By Dan Griliopoulos on July 6th, 2011.
We’ve played Guild Wars 2. It’s tough. It’s good. Here’s a little feature about how it is coming together, including some thoughts on that newly-revealed Engineer profession, and underwater combat.
Okay, so you know Ascalon? Noble, quaint kingdom, lovely people, delightful taste in continent-spanning walls? Crushed by the Charr at the beginning of Guild Wars, and so forth? Population massacred, people scattered, a last stand frozen in time by the desperate actions of King Adelbarn? Hmm, yes, them. Tragic story. Sad.
Did you ever think that they may have been the baddies?
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By Lewie Procter on July 6th, 2011.
Sega have just sent us word that they’ve now had over 1,000,000 players registered on their free-to-play Action RPG, Spiral Knights. I thought that was a bit rude, just emailing us to brag, but they also sent news of a new batch of free content. You like free content, right?
By Lewie Procter on July 6th, 2011.
I’m a bit of a sucker for 8-bit inspired Metroidvanias. This one has snails in it too, so I was helpless to avoid clicking on “Play”. Snailiad is the name of the game, and you play as brave Snaily Snail, the hero of Snail Town, on a quest to rescue the missing snails. Sound snaily, no? But are you snail enough? I think I have said “snail” too many times. Read the rest of this entry »
Interview
By John Walker on July 6th, 2011.
After spending some time at Funcom’s Oslo HQ to see The Secret World, I sat down with project lead Ragnar Tørnquist to chat about the game, the process that led up to it, and how it fits in with his philosophy of gaming. In part one of our chat we talk about the game’s origins, find out why we should care about each of the three factions, how Funcom is able to make games that don’t match the trends, some of the more peculiar and esoteric plans for blurring our realities, and finally how the game is going to inevitably lead to Tørnquist’s brutal murder.
By John Walker on July 6th, 2011.
The first part of our enormous interview with Funcom’s Ragnar Tørnquist is appearing any minute, but just ahead of that there’s some new footage of The Secret World to see. And importantly, this is all in-game, rather than one of the (very impressive) CGI trailers. See it below.
By Jim Rossignol on July 6th, 2011.
As a number of you have pointed out to me this morning, this is more like it. Answering community questions on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Bethesda Todd Howard, Bruce Nesmith, and Matt Carofano have addressed a bunch of issues with the PC version of the game, including emphasizing the return of mod tool stuff (which we already knew was happening). Key bits highlighted below.
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By Lewie Procter on July 6th, 2011.
Check it out. Here are twelve (count ‘em!) minutes of hot Deus Ex: Human Revolution footage, courtesy of the overflowing infinite video vat at IGN. Eidos Montreal Director Jean-Francois Dugas shows us around a section of the game located in “Tai Young Medical”, where Jensen is on a critical mission to collect some information from a data core. Why is it always a data core? It’s never data-lollipops or data-bears… Hmm. Read the rest of this entry »
Better Than Watching TV
By Dan Griliopoulos on July 6th, 2011.
Hello, Darkness, My Old Friend.
The Darkness, Starbreeze’s 2008 shooter, was unusual in many ways. Though it was violent, it wasn’t defined by this violence. It had a strong sense of place, a grimly entertaining story and a variety of gameplay. Anyone who sat with the protagonist’s girlfriend for the last time and watched To Kill A Mockingbird until she fell asleep on his/your shoulder couldn’t fault the fineness of the storytelling. The many side-quests you could get in the NYC underground station (jumping on the tracks to grab nickels, scaring off punks) cleared it up; this was a very pure FPS-RPG, guns and conversation perfected, unusually without compromising the shooter or the story.
So, so much for the original; how about the sequel?
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