Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’m actually afraid to play Assassin’s Creed III’s Tyranny of King Washington DLC. It’s been on my List Of Vaguely Tantalizing Curiosities for quite some time, but I’m sick with worry that it can’t possibly live up to the madness its trailers boast. I mean, so far we’ve seen ghost eagles, mind-controlled Benjamin Franklin, and Washington sauntering – dual pistols cocked, nostrils flared and lips slyly pursed – like he’s on a catwalk at some eeeeeevil fashion show. And now? Now there is a pyramid. In the middle of New York. For those not in the know/possibly from space, that is not a place where pyramids traditionally go. Watch the trailer and join me in wondering what manner of strange, wonderful brain worm has infested Ubisoft after the break.

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We had Craig wipe his grubby hands all over The Mighty Quest For Epic Loot last week, and he came away feeling rather positive. So that’s good. But what does it look like when all the screenshots come rapidly, one after the other, in some sort of “moving picture”. We have the technology.

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And by “dumb,” I mean wonderful. Maybe even brilliant, in the sense that Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon seems on track to be a neon-emblazoned clown who secretly conceals both a high-powered laser rifle and an Ivy League college degree. That also fires lasers. The bits we’ve been shown lovingly satirize everything – ’80s action flicks, shooters, modern games, old games – with a surgically deft robo hand. Far Cry 3, eat your heart out. Otherwise, the blood dragons (which are actual things) will do it for you. This live-action mini-epic is no different, combining low-budget special effects, terrible costuming, and glorious over-acting to make… something. I can’t do it justice with these words of mine. They’re incapable of producing a synth-dirge soundtrack, and without that, I am lost. See the movie for yourself after the break.

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The voice at the beginning of the new Splinter Cell trailer sounds a lot like Jigsaw, the dying/dead/metaphorical villain of the horrifically dull Saw series. This voice is threatening the whole of America though, which means he might not be Jigsaw, who is more likely to spend his time righting individual wrongs, such as finding a chap who inadvertently left the milk out of the fridge and sewing a cow’s udder to his bottom lip while perching him on a machine that converts his bumcheeks into burgers. The rotter! New Sam Fisher will deal with the Splinter Cell baddy and the video suggests he’ll do so by STALKING, STRIKING and SILENCING. He’s also magnetically attracted to helicopters.

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Another World’s re-release allows players to turn off the new graphics and play with the game as it was originally designed instead and I am very pleased about that. Less pleasing is the trailer for the remake of Delphine stablemate Flashback, the story of a man with no memory rolling through a jungle and appearing in a deadly gameshow. As with Another World, it’s difficult to detach memories of playing Flashback from memories of how the game looked – it had a varied palette and tremendously expressive animations, all of which fed into a clarity of control. The trailer for the remake, which is being developed by Vector Cell and five members of the original team, strongly suggests that everybody involved has forgotten many of the things that made Flashback worth experiencing.

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ShootMania: Storm is the strangest name. On one hand, it sounds like some kind of lighthearted term for craving or addiction – kinda like party fever, March madness, or meth ragekillsanity. But before long, the “Storm” subtitle rolls in all ominous and gloomy, raining  on even the most incurably diseased of parades. Naturally, then, ShootMania: Storm is a game about lasers. Oh, but there’s also exceedingly robust level creation, arcade-y speed, and balance that’s been meticulously honed for eSports purposes. All indications point to it being quite the thing, honestly. Take a jump pad past the break for a snazzy launch trailer. Here, grab my hand. We’ll go together. One, two, three… SPROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOING.

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I still can’t quite believe that Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon exists but as of this weekend, the standalone title not only has a release date, it also has Michael Biehn’s voice. Actually, the Xbox Marketplace listing which reveals the May 1st release date doesn’t specify ‘voice’, it says ‘a VHS era vision of a nuclear future, where cyborgs, blood dragons, mutants, and Michael Biehn collide’. Is it possible that the man in possession of the only true Reese’s Pieces has been transformed into binary code and inserted into the game? We’ll find out soon enough.

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On April 1st, a peculiar thing happened: a game company debuted a seemingly implausible spin-off that wasn’t a gigantic, painfully obvious hoax. Now, notice I said “hoax,” not “joke.” Reason being, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon still seems incredibly, absurdly silly. The advantage it has over its smoke-and-mirrors peers, however, is that it’s actually, you know, real. What began with a schlocky (though impressively elaborate) ’80s-style B-movie adver-site now has a series of neon-soaked screenshots, and – in a fun twist – they look almost nothing like Far Cry 3. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, well, I guess by that metric Far Cry’s dev team has some pretty darn sterling mental health. All other indicators, however, would seem to suggest otherwise. In a very, very good way.

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