Ron Gilbert allies with Hothead for hilarious RPG-Adventure “DeathSpank”

DeathSpank

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 Director

The 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.

CES 2008: Voltaic Solar Bag saves Earth, but not your money

Voltaic’s Generator bag

Out in the gadget wilderness there are all sorts of energy saving solar-powered concoctions designed to save the Earth like some kind of inanimate superhero, with each claiming to be more super than the last. It’s no surprise then that CES 2008 brings with it its own contenders for the next batch of gadgets to appease the likes of Al Gore.

The Voltaic Generator bag (pictured) promises to produce 14.7 watts of energy from the giant solar panel on the front of the bag, that’s enough to charge a laptop from a whole days worth of sunlight. According to Voltaic, no other bag can do this.

Every wannabe superhero comes equipped with accessories, where would Batman and James Bond be without theirs? The bag includes adaptors for phones as well as a car charger and is compatible with USB devices.

And just in case you find yourself in one of the less sunnier climes like this London-based blogger there is a battery inside should you run out of solar energy.

Of course not everyone can be superhero. Priced at a whopping $599 that’s still the case. Why are environmentally-friendly gadgets always so expensive? 

Email Sucks

Ever go on a vacation and didn’t have a laptop, Blackberry, or any other device that you could read your email with? I thought it would be fun to go on vacation and escape it all. Little did I know that there would be a massive uncontrollable build up.  400 emails later, I began to write this post without a doubt that email is obsolete and inefficient.

I’ve stored thousands of emails all tucked away in folders and many, many sub-folders. Years later, I’ve come to realize, what’s the point?! Why do I store this information and forget about it?

Email is impersonal. Social networking websites have taken over and writing on someone’s wall is now more important that sending out forwards with hundreds of contacts. See their face, quickly respond, and forget the whole thing ever happened.

It’s great not having to pick out spam and delete pointless messages with social networking sites. I’ve just spent hours going through all of these emails. Random messages, some important while others not so much.

Reality has now come back to bite me in the ass.

Email

Crysis v1.1 patch online.

Crysis

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

Cloverfield monster attacks Chuai Station, could be Ninja!

A Ninja in Cloverfield?

Ah, Cloverfield – there has been no better viral marketing in the world. In fact, I’d warrant that the viral marketing itself has gotten more people on than the movie ever will. It’s coming out in only 11 days now, and we still know what/who the great monster guy is.

Continuing the viral marketing, a new video (or rather, series of videos) have appeared across the Internet, that take the form of news channels reporting that the Chuai Station that belongs to the Tagruato Corporation has been mysteriously wrecked. According to Tagruato’s site, Chuai Station is located quite a ways off the North American East coast (a good place to start ravaging New York) and was “opened” in September 2007.

While of course, we have no doubt that the monster should be at work behind this, Tagruato Corp. released a statement:

There has been an altercation at the Chuai Station. Although details are limited at present time, be assured that Tagruato is taking every measure necessary to ensure the safety and well being of all staff and crew. Specialty teams have been deployed, and are working aggressively to restore harmony at the site.

The cause of the problem is currently being investigated, although it is suspected that an eco-terror cell is responsible for the disturbance.

We have top investigators on our side. Everything will be resolved shortly, and all problems will be fixed. If you have any questions, please contact us at +81-3-5403-6318 for further instructions.

For those of you not in the know, Tagruato Corp. doesn’t actually exist, and it’s only part of Cloverfield’s vast viral marketing campaign.

 

That’s the Spanish version of the video, with the German and Italian versions also available (they all have slightly different footage, so you’ll want to check them all out). Very conveniently, there is no English version yet.

If you observe the videos carefully, you’ll notice that there are gun-toting ninjas escaping the station. Perhaps this is all a secret ninja conspiracy, whereby they secretly control the world? As you know, Ninjas are too fast to be seen – and if we are seeing them in the video, they’re probably decoys! There is a ninja conspiracy afloat, people. Be very, very careful.

The Moral Cost of Video Games

christian-science-monitor.jpg

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.