Exploring Stuff That Makes Life Great
While we love our gadgets we hate wires. They are the bane of technology; always getting tangled up as if by magic. So it’s a good thing Nyko has unveiled a wireless Nunchuk for the Wii.
There’s just one little problem. After stories of Wiimote related accidents in the home doesn’t this make the Wii’s controls even more deadly?
1UP has been running an exclusive recently that the one game long awaited by both fighting game fans and deviant porn aficionados, Soulcalibur IV, will feature Darth Vader and Yoda in guest appearances. No wait, what? Yes, for real. Look at the screen above and you’ll know we aren’t making this up. They packed their bags and ran to Sony’s CES, where they found out what side of the Force the two consoles fell.
The PS3 (or Darth PS3) version of Soulcalibur IV is on the Dark Side and will feature Darth Vader, while the Xbox 360 (or Jedi Master 360) version will allow players to be Yoda. While Vader fighting Ivy is enough to get gamers like me spewing liquid all over the floor, we will probably not see a Vader vs. Yoda war in Soulcalibur, unless Namco Bandai decides downloadable content is cool.
Star Wars fanboys like me will see that the Vader and Yoda models as the most realistic ones seen in video games yet (and ironically, not handled by LucasArts) – they even look better than that Force Unleashed game coming out soon. And I don’t mean to nitpick, and I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something weird about that Darth Vader model. Hmm.
If downloadable content turns out to be a reality, it will also be great to see other Star Wars characters in these photorealistic renders, preferably Obi-Wan, Darth Maul and Jar-Jar Binks.
Oh shit. Before I get sacked, here’s the Sony CES trailer to make up for the boo-boo. Note Yoda and Darth Vader in a sneak preview towards the end.
Among the gaming halls of fame is a platinum bust of Ron Gilbert, famed video game designer, two great works of his being Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island. If you had any assumptions that Mr. Gilbert had been abducted by adventure-game-loving aliens, think again, because you were somehow right. HotHead Games, developers of… uh… have taken dragged Ron Gilbert into their fortress of doom to design a video game he had in his mind for a long time – DeathSpank! This video game will truly be used for nefarious purposes to enslave mankind!
DeathSpank will be an RPG-Adventure hybrid, and I have a feeling we’re talking real adventure here, because that’s Ron Gilbert talking. He describes it as a Diablo-Monkey Island hybrid, which sounds like beautifully twisted fun for all ages. It will be an episodic game, with its first episode titled rather sombrely as “Orphans of Justice”, which will be coming rather soonish, according to the big poster on their website.
And now, because your subconscious mind really asked for it, here’s the official press release(!):
HOTHEAD GAMES TO PUBLISH NEW RON GILBERT GAME DEATHSPANK
Gilbert joins the Vancouver crew as Creative DirectorThe Great White North, January 9, 2008 – In a move that may upset the balance of the universe (or at least that around the 49th parallel), Hothead Games announced plans to publish Ron Gilbert’s long-awaited RPG-Adventure game, DeathSpank. Described as “Monkey Island meets Diablo”, the game will be released in episodic format and feature Gilbert’s unique style of humor and storytelling. In a related move, Ron Gilbert will be joining the company’s Vancouver-based studio as Creative Director, effective immediately.
Speaking from his secret game design cave, Ron Gilbert said, “I’ve spent over four years trying to find the right publisher for this strange little game. Now that I’ve done it, you just know that somewhere four horsemen are saddling up.”
The episodic game follows the thong-tastic adventures of a misguided hero named DeathSpank, a character that first appeared on Gilbert’s Grumpy Gamer website in a series of animated comics he penned with long-time creative collaborator, Clayton Kauzlaric.
Hothead prepared for Gilbert’s arrival by ordering the finest morsels of jellied moose meat and lager brewed with water from the nearest available glacier. “We’re all huge fans of Monkey Island and we love Ron’s unique vision and sense of humor,” said Joel DeYoung, COO of Hothead Games. “Ron shares Hothead’s goal of bringing much-needed humor and innovation into games, so having him here in Vancouver as our Creative Director is an excellent fit.”
“I’m really excited to be working with Hothead Games not only on DeathSpank, but as their new Creative Director,” said Gilbert. “I got to know everyone at Hothead while I was helping with On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. They really understand humor and being creative like very few publishers do.”
As Creative Director, Gilbert will work in the Vancouver-based studio on all of Hothead’s games. He is also expected to improve his hockey skills substantially during his stay.
After what feels like forever the very long awaited patch for Crysis has been sneaked out during CES week. While most of the games journalists of the world have been looking at this years big up and coming titles the 140mb patch found its way onto a few websites. What isnt listed is a fix for the sound stuttering and mute issues during online play and a fix for the AA vehicle destroying itself when it fires. We can only hope. Also nothing has been said to its compatibility with the recently released MP map pack.
Fixes:
– Damage dealt to vehicles when shot by LAW has been made consistent
– F12 (screenshot) now works in restricted mode as well
– When player melees during gun raise animation, their gun will not be in a permanently raised position anymore
– Memory leaks and potential crashes
Updates:
– Improved SLI / Crossfire support and performance
– Improved overall rendering performance (DX9 and DX10)
– Enabled VSync functionality in D3D10
Tweaks:
– Reduced grenade explosion radius in multiplayer
– Clamped water tessellation to avoid cheating in MP
– Reduced LAW splash damage vs. infantry in PowerStruggle mode
– Slowed Rocket projectile speed down in MP slightly
Credit goes to Shacknews for the bug fix list.
Download links:
http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/11604/Crysis+Retail+Patch+1.1
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/crysis/download.html?sid=6184406&tag=top_downloads;title;0
| Add The Pipeline – Video Games to your page |
Well, at least they’re not harping on the violence anymore. Christian Science Monitor, perhaps perceiving that that trope has run its course, offers a rather novel critique of our beloved hobby- the lack of consequences.
But what games conspicuously lack is moral consequence. Once you’ve killed someone, stolen something, or blown up a building, that’s usually the end of it – you’ll rarely get to see the emotional impact of your actions on the characters around you.
Every bit of mayhem becomes just another item on a video-game to-do list. Games ignore moral consequence and emotional nuance to focus on the purely visceral. There are only two types of decisions you can really make: the strategically correct one or the strategically incorrect one. There is no “right” or “wrong” – only success or failure.
Get the full story here.
You will not sell a publisher on a title unless the marketing weasels know how to pitch it to the retail channel. If it fits into an existing, established game category – an RTS, an FPS, an RPG, action adventure, driving, sports – then they know how to sell it. But if you’re doing something novel – forget it.
An industry that was once the most innovative and exciting artistic field on the planet has become a morass of drudgery and imitation
Thus saith Greg Costikyan, founder of Manifesto Games and one of the foremost advocates of independent game development. According to its proponents, indie games present a haven from the stultifying pressures of risk-averse publishers more interested in games-as-commodity than games-as-art. Free from corporate suits, marketing execs, and the epidemic of sequelitis that has afflicted the gaming industry for far too long, they claim that developers can realize their visions and lead the gaming industry into a new golden age of innovation and compelling new content.
That’s if you believe the hype.
But even if indie games frequently fall short of these lofty aspirations, they can usually be counted on to produce a quality product. Most of the time, they operate like PC’s Xbox Live Arcade or PlayStation Network- offering smaller, less technically accomplished games with free demos and cheap prices, and low system requirements to boot. In addition to the wildly experimental games, these outlets also serve traditional markets now all but abandoned by the big corporations. Here, the 4X and Turn-Based Strategy genres never died; here, point-and-click adventure games flourish; here resides many throwbacks to the days of 16-bit RPGs.
Despite producing some compelling, if fairly niche, products, this platform has been almost completely ignored by the gaming media. We here at StuffWeLike.com hope to fill this void in a new, hopefully regular feature called Indie Watch, where we point you towards some of the best games the field has to offer.
Today’s featured game, called Ballistic Wars, is an odd amalgam of turn-based strategy, pool, and puzzle gameplay. So odd, in fact, that I’m not even going to try to describe it; it’s best that you experience it for yourself. While it’s not the best game in the world, it’s worth the download for the novelty alone. Check it out here.