RPS Feature A beautiful b-movie
There’s been a lot of talk about INSIDE‘s [official site] beauty and poignancy, and I don’t disagree with any of that, but my own appreciation of it was for another reason. I thought it was bloody funny, in the malevolent manner of Evil Dead 2 or Braindead. Inside is a horror videogame, yes, but it’s also an extremely cheeky videogame.
N.B. here be FULL SPOILERS.
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RPS Feature And bowed
Concluding – for now, at least – a short, primarily in-character chronicle of adventures in The Witcher 3. Please be aware that this entry contains spoilers for ‘The Bloody Baron’ line of sub-quests, though does not reference the wider story. Please also be aware that it covers subjects which some readers may find upsetting.
He’s a monster. Everything I know about him, everything he’s admitted to – I should strike him down where he stands. But all I want to do is put my arm around him and say how sorry I am.
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If you’d rather not read spoilers on whether a cool mod exists, you’d better stop reading this sentence right now because – SPOILERS – it does. If you’d rather not be spoiled as to the name of that mod, you’d probably be better off not reading the rest of this post, really. Because – SPOILERS – it’s called the Blue Frog mod. It’s for Spelunky, and it turns every character sprite in that game – the player, plants, bats, exploding frogs, the ghost, everything – into the blue frog sprite. That sounds initially dumb, but actually it’s clever and great. If you don’t want spoilers as to why, you definitely shouldn’t read on.
RPS Feature Haroooooooo
Two Smiths and one Meer gather to discuss the latest episodic adventure game from Telltale (they of the recent Walking Dead series). The Wolf Among Us is based on the comic series Fables, and concerns folk from fairytales carving out a noirish life in the big city. It also concerns MURDER MOST HORRID. You should perhaps read Adam’s thoughts yesterday for a more fulsome summary, but moreso you should have played the game, for this here article is awash in the dreaded SPOILERS.
Are you sitting comfortably, or at least in a way that won’t cause you back problems in later life? Then we’ll begin.
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RPS Feature The scary crow, the tin soldier and the cowardly lion
The following theory is not true, but it could be. It’s surely no accident that BioShock Infinite often evokes The Wizard of Oz – there’s even an early stage of the game named after it. Even so, the similarities, be they deliberate or coincidental, run deeper than a turn-of-the-century character being mysteriously transported to an amazing world of technology and magic. Once I started down the yellow brick road of looking for parallels between Dorothy’s adventure in Oz and Booker’s adventure in Columbia, I couldn’t stop – I identified what seemed to be dozens of them. Am I onto something, or am I projecting? It doesn’t matter – this is purely a thought experiment, not a claim to accuracy, and I’m entirely sure you could achieve a similar effect by comparing Binfinite to Star Wars or the Bible or Peppa Pig. I’m doing this for fun. Mostly.
Also, SPOILERS UNBOUND. Do not read past this point if you haven’t completed the game. (Or if you somehow haven’t seen/read The Wizard of Oz). If you have, fire up Dark Side of the Moon and let’s go off to see the wizard.
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RPS Feature Defending The Ending (DefEnding)
The obsession with endings is a peculiar one. Perhaps it’s a result of having been indoctrinated by a lifetime of movies with “surprise twists”, or stories so poorly written that they rely on their final hook. But however we’ve come to this place, it’s one that fails to recognise the real pleasure of being told a story. Mass Effect 3 tells a story, and I’m here to defend it.
All it takes is a TV show for everything and everyone to want a manly hug from you. Bigpoint’s free-to-play MMO is the third game I’m aware of that’s based on George RR Martin’s easily spoiled fantasy doorstops, A Song of Ice and Fire, but it’s the one that’s interesting me the most. It plonks you right in the middle of Westeros during the first book’s timeframe at a very specific moment, and gives you everywhere from the North to the South to explore. The Lannisters, Baratheons and Starks are all scrabbling to grasp flicking tail of power (can you guess why?), and you can either take a side and get involved in the political PvP backstabbery, or wander the land headbutting the environment in PvE. Actual spoilers below.
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If, like me, you were left out of this weekend’s Guild Wars 2 beta then you’ll know the tang of anger and the boiling of bile that welled up inside, directed at those that did. Felt good, didn’t it? Don’t lie: that directed spew of internal grrrrr made you feel all war-like, yeah? Me too, which is why I’m starting a guild of non-Guild War 2 players. Our mission: to not be playing Guild Wars 2 while others are enjoying it and videoing their fun. We shall, instead, watch them with twitching eyeballs, consuming all the video we can and learning about their ways, ready to exploit any weaknesses we witness. Join me, for I will be your leader and guide you through the land of Guild War 2 beta videos, unless I’m invited to play, in which case I never knew you and I was never here.
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Holy wow, I’m stunned by how many plot spoilers and visual giveaways EA have managed to cram into their Dead Space launch trailer. Half the game seems to show up in this two minute edit-splatter. I’d suggest you only watch this if you have have zero intention of playing this (rather good) ultra-violent space shooter.
The reason I know how spoilery it is, of course, is because I’ve played the game in question. My review is in the next issue of the best PC gaming magazine there has ever been: PC Gamer UK. It has their Fallout 3 review in there too. The magazine is out on 23rd October, and Dead Space comes out on the 20th of October on PC.
I’ve been reviewing Call of Duty 4 over the weekend, a game we haven’t talked about much here as yet. It may have gotten a bit lost in the recent FPS deluge – though I suspect it’ll be a mega-hit on console – and I have to admit I hadn’t been paying a great deal of attention to it myself until now. Possibly because, having found GRAW 2 a bit dull, I wasn’t in much of a hurry to play any more thinly-veiled allusions to the Mess O’Potamia just yet. Discussion on the quality and content of the game I’ll save for once the review’s published, but kindly commissioning editors have given me the go-ahead to briefly mention one moment.
There’s a cutscene after the first mission, only a few minutes into the game, which dropped my jaw. There are no plot spoilers in the following, but if you’d rather experience than read about the inventive approach taken by one of the game’s earliest sequences, you may want to turn away now. Read the rest of this entry »
