PC – Page 61 – StuffWeLike

3 New DeathSpank Teaser Trailers; Thong of Justice

DeathSpank. You may not have heard of it, but I have my eyes, ears and private parts on this one. The reason is that this the brainchild of Ron Gilbert, the legendary warrior-game designer who created the Monkey Island series and can today be seen grumbling and annoying people at his personal blag, Grumpy Gamer.

Yes, so what’s so great about DeathSpank, you ask? The answer would be Gilbert’s description of the game: “Monkey Island meets Diablo”. That is indeed a diabolic statement, but coming from Gilbert’s mouth, they could either be dead serious or dead sarcastic. Or both. Hmm.

Anyways, we’ve just got a bunch of teaser trailers to DeathSpank floating around the sea of YouTube that we’d like to show you. Each weighs in around a minute, the first showing off some stylish action that has just enough gore to mock Tim Schafer’s Brütal Legend.

The second and third show off some items and gear from the game that will most probably assist DeathSpank in whatever heroic act he is in at the moment. Of course, the most remarkable of these would be the spacious and ballsy Thong of Justice. We’ll just leave you at that.

To save you from some browser slowdown, we’ve put the other two videos after the jump, so continue reading!

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S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky Delayed for Silly Reason

Most game delays have reasons like an extended development cycle, or maybe trouble in the development team, or so. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky isn’t one of these games. According to reports, Clear Sky’s copies were recalled from North American stores when it was found that a printing error had left without CD Keys. Without goddamn CD Keys.

The game was to be released of September 5th, but will now be pushed back, most likely to September 15th. No change in the European release date, so it’s only North Americans affected. Well, to be entirely honest, I don’t think STALKER was too big of a title to miss for 10 days anyways.

STALKER: Clear Sky is the follow-up to STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. I go on about it now, but why don’t you just checkout this post I made back when it was first released? It’ll sure as hell make my keyboard last a little bit longer.

Gearbox working on Duke Nukem Game? WTF?

Right, okay, let me get this straight. First we have rumours that Gearbox is working on Halo 4 for the next Xbox. Now /gamer reports that it won’t be Halo 4, but a goddamn Duke Nukem game. That’s right, Gearbox is developing a Duke Nukem title, according to the rumour.

/gamer’s mysterious source contacted them, informing them that there is, in fact, no Halo 4 going on. Also, he mentions “When it is announced fans of a series from the past will be surprised.” Note how he says “a series from the past”.

Now, they are contacted once again, with their source hinting at an article they wrote about Duke Nukem Forever. Why the source is not willing to state directly is unknown, but by his enigmatic words, this most probably would mean that 3D Realms is handing the reins of Duke Nukem to.

This wouldn’t be very surprising. Hell, it’ll be great, considering we won’t have to wait another century-and-half for another Duke Nukem game. Besides, the guys at Gearbox are trustable enough to deliver a quality shooter like Duke Nukem’s calibre.

Chris Taylor: PC Gaming is Rediscovering Itself

In an age where pretty much everyone believes that PC gaming is dying a slow death, it’s nice to see some optimism from developers. While Blizzard and Valve have already shown their love for PC, there’s another developer scurring behind them, and that’s Gas Powered Games, known for their PC-exclusive games, such as the Dungeon Siege series, Supreme Commander and last year’s Space Siege.

Chris Taylor, supreme commander of GPG said in an interview that he believes that PC gaming is, in fact, rediscovering itself. The last 10 years of it, have been all about breaking system requirements, and the audience was also crazy enough to buy the latest gear for it. That is starting to change.

“We have to be careful we don’t create games that require four gigs of RAM to run. It’s just not responsible. It kind of was, in the old days; now, well, hardware’s pretty quick. We don’t really need to do that. We should be focusing on the characters, the story, the UI, the design.”

Nice to see it come honest and clear from a game developer. While console gamers have only to buy a disc and pop it into their drives, PC gamers have to inspect the game, compare the requirements, install it, and then hope it’ll run as it should. No wonder even the most hardcore PC gamers have been taking to consoles!

Taylor also thinks that Blizzard has the right idea, “using art direction rather than pure technical showmanship to create visually appealing but less-demanding games.” He says that GPG is working on something very similar with Demigod, their upcoming RPG-Strategy hybrid.

We’ll just hope Taylor’s optimistic tone holds up. Long live PC gaming!

Far Cry 3 Set in Africa

Wow, it seems like only yesterday I brought you the news of Ubisoft Montreal announcing Far Cry 2. With that game coming close to release now, Ubisoft Montreal goes further to announce another addition to the franchise. No, it’s not the Far Cry: Africa Pet Zoo for the DS, it’s a full-fledged Far Cry 3.

Announced at Leipzig, it has been confirmed that the game will be set in Africa. Ubisoft Montreal seems to be keen on boosting African tourism industries with their repeated interest in African wildlife and the promise it holds. I agree with that, too: you can only fight so much in Normandy! Still, I was expecting a Far Cry set in, say, an East European urban setting, or maybe the Great Wall of China or someplace equally exotic.

The team has made a commitment to Africa, supposedly, but shows interest in the Antarctic setting as well, which would be totally cool in my opinion, no pun intended. They also admit that the Africa setting will save time. Hmm.

The game will use the same engine as Far Cry 2 and we don’t have any more details on it, as usual. Suffice to say, it’ll involve lots of exotic, open-world, instinct-based action. Crytek is, as usual, out of the picture, probably too busy working on Crysis 2 or some such.

Terry Deary’s “Horrible Histories” to get Video Games!

Now if one of my favourite book series as a kid are Goosebumps, another will be Horrible Histories. Written by Terry Deary, Horrible Histories are essentially history books. They tell you history. But there’s a twist. They tell you the more horrible, the gorier, the more twisted parts of history. The sort your history teacher doesn’t.

Interestingly, there’s going to be an expansion to the franchise. While we won’t be seeing a movie for it, like Goosebumps (hmm, interesting idea), Horrible Histories will be going into the video games arena, with developer Slitherine Strategies taking it up.

If you’ve never heard of Slitherine, do not despair, for you haven’t missed anything. Slitherine’s previous works appear to be rather obscure titles I’ve never heard of either. Still, I think it should be in the right hands, since all of Slitherine’s previous works have been historical strategy games.

To be entirely honest. I’m not sure how a strategy game on Horrible Histories will work out. HH is more about the obscure facts and secrets of histories that were either distorted or maybe censored in time. How can you convert a series like that into a strategy game?

And the second focus of Horrible Histories is humour (and black humour at that). The last game I’ve seen that was actually funny would be Psychonauts. Okay, there’s Portal too. My point being, comedy in video games is an art. How well will Slitherine capture it?