By Alec Meer on January 10th, 2012.
With the tile-based facepalming of Windows 8 slowly slouching this way, Microsoft used its CES conference last night to reveal assorted PC-related shenanigans. One of the more interesting – in theory – is a new version of its Kinect motion camera thinger, designed specifically for PC rather than Xbox.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Alec Meer on January 4th, 2012.
Can digital information really constitute a barrage? I don’t know, but I’m scared. Barrages sound nasty to me, but Rockstar have pledged to send a barrage of Max Payne 3 info at us over “the coming weeks and months.” I’ve looked at the first missive from their asset-cannon, and it’s only some screenshots rather than gunshot or a disease-riddled corpse, so I think we’re safe for now. They’ve also included some captions on these screenshots, which I shall quote verbatim* below.
Read the rest of this entry »
Portal Zoo
By Robert Yang on December 23rd, 2011.
Level With Me was a series of conversations with level designers like Dan Pinchbeck, Jack Monahan, Magnar Jenssen, Brendon Chung, Davey Wreden, Ed Key, and Richard Perrin. At the end, we all collaborated on a Portal 2 mod. You can download that mod here. Liner notes, installation notes, and screenshots are after the jump.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Adam Smith on December 12th, 2011.
The VGAs coughed up a new trailer for Hitman: Absolution, which is crammed with sneaking, stealthery and silence. Except for all the parts with windows exploding in slow motion and The Bald One murdering almost every single person in his path, which just happens to take him through a hospital ward. Those parts are quite noisy. There’s also a crying nun. She is crying because of the constant gunfire and images of men being shot through the abdomen at point blank range. Do you want to see such things? They are below.
By John Walker on November 8th, 2011.
Splendid pirates-em-up The Wager has now officially released its version 1.2, that I somewhat prematurely wrote about on Monday. So you should definitely get it. Because it’s brills. And free. And I’ve some hints on their next game, The Archive. It will apparently “draw on roguelike” with randomly generated elements that are reminiscent of games like Spelunky and The Binding Of Isaac. “Except in space! With lasers!” There are more details on Surprised Man’s podcast. That’s still a year off, but in the meantime, for goodness sakes play the very enjoyable The Wager. Because I said so.
For Science?
By John Walker on November 8th, 2011.
No. No she is not. But Baroness Greenfield recently came under some considerable fire for making inaccurate and unevidenced claims about gaming’s effects on the brain. The once highly respected scientist has now become a go-to for the worst sorts of anti-scientific scaremongering. It’s one thing when a Melanie Phillips type writes any old rubbish that falls out of her face, but when it’s the former director of the Royal Institute, it’s especially sad and frustrating. So how did the member of the House of Lords, and professor of synaptic pharmacology at Oxford, respond to the widespread criticism debunking her claims? She produced more of the same, this time in the form of an edited extract from a forthcoming book, published in the Times (requires subscription) on Saturday.
By Craig Pearson on November 7th, 2011.
“Kinect. KIN-ECT! Write this down… no, don’t open the DVD drive. Close it. C-L-O-S-E it! Don’t make me come over there: you’ve seen what I do to a mouse during games of Team Fortress 2. Yeah, I thought that would scare you. I knew you things talked to each other. Right, so I’m speaking these words into my Kinect. It’s hooked up to my PC, thanks to Microsoft releasing it for the PC. Also, I’m from the future.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Mods And Ends
By Adam Smith on October 28th, 2011.
‘Tis the season to be unjolly while hiding under the bedsheets or behind the couch, so I thought it would be a good idea to share a little mod that’s been darkening my nights this week. By some measures, it’s a very simple mod indeed, but it’s one I’ve found myself hopelessly enthralled by. Minecraft, meet Weeping Angels.
By Alec Meer on October 12th, 2011.
Good, in fact excellent, tidings for those who find themselves able to enjoy Fallouts both old and new, and for anyone who lived through the 90s heyday of PC RPGs. Tim Cain, the main brain behind the original Fallout and later co-founder of the much-missed Troika, has fetched up at Obsidian. Until this July, he was at Carbine, working since 2005 on what turned out to be Wildstar, but today we discover that he’s now Senior Programmer at the Fallout: New Vegas/ KOTOR 2 devs. AVENGERS ASSEMBLE.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Jim Rossignol on October 5th, 2011.
As keen as I am to poke CCP in their collective eye for being rubbish about Eve things, it’s true that CCP’s CEO Hilmar Pétursson is a decent chap. And it seems particularly okay of the flame-haired Icelander to post an extended apology to Eve players on the game’s site. Dwelling on recent debacles, he says: “Somewhere along the way, I began taking success for granted. As hubris set in, I became less inclined to listen to pleas for caution. Red flags raised by very smart people both at CCP and in the community went unheeded because of my stubborn refusal to allow adversity to gain purchase on our plans. Mistakes, even when they were acknowledged, often went unanalyzed, leaving the door open for them to be repeated. You have spoken, loudly and clearly, with your words and with your actions. And there were definitely moments in recent history when I wish I would have listened more and taken a different path. I was wrong and I admit it.”
He also observes that words mean little next to actions. It’ll be interesting to see just what actions the pioneering MMO studio end up making. There doesn’t seem like any easy way out.
By Adam Smith on September 30th, 2011.
Psychonauts unexpectedly updated itself on Steam today, adding achievements and cloud saves. For our Macintosh brethren, there’s super-exciting news in that the game is now available on OSX, so you too can neglect to buy it. To ensure that your portable iDevices won’t be jealous when they see the mindscapes you’re traversing, Doublefine have also released a Memory Vault Viewer app, which has all the memory slides with new commentary by Tim Schafer and Scott Campbell. Along with the other Steamy updates, there’s also a difficulty tweak to one area of the game. Guess which one? I’ll tell you, but only if you click for more.
