How to explain World of Goo, an utterly charming PC game? It’s basically sticky blobs that when connected have the ability to bridge gaps, curve around odd contraptions and create pathways for other gooey blobs to get sucked into a giant vacuum-like pipe. Oh, and there’s physics involved. Um, what? I truly don’t have the words. So, here’s a suggestion: first, check out the above video. Of course, it doesn’t reveal too much except that …
I always thought (always until this morning) that Strauss Zelnick, owner of ZelnickMedia and head of Take-Two Interactive, was somewhat more intelligent than other game publisher CEOs. EA’s John Ricitiello and Activision/Blizzard’s Bobby Kotick are imbeciles; everyone knows this. Their behavior and public remarks prove them to be, at the very least, mildly impaired and at worst utterly retarded – when Ricitiello or Kotick speak in public, they make Rick Wagoner’s testimony before Congress compare …
For those trapped at office jobs with unfettered internet access and a good set of headphones, you can stop your work now and trundle on over to this site, where you’ll find one of the more fascinating and beautiful rhythm games I’ve seen in a long time… like Rez, but dreamier. Seriously. Auditorium will entrance even the curmudgeonliest among us, and promises hours of unproductive leisure. It’s also a pretty amazing example of what a …
The newest installment in Ubi’s money-printing Prince of Persia franchise hits stores today, and the first reviews are beginning to trickle out – notably this one from IGN. There’s really only one way you can take a 9.3, and while I hope that the game actually lives up to this score, I’ve certainly lost all faith in mainstream game journalism since the 8.0-10 scoring the abominable Far Cry 2 received from nearly all ad-supported outlets.
An official trailer for the long-promised Black Mesa total conversion is available above and on their website. Like all really ambitious fan mods, this attempt to completely recreate the original Half Life using the Source engine threatens to be more than its unpaid, indie dev team can chew… though I must say the trailer looks pretty darn impressive. It’s certainly a sight better than the waste-of-a-download Half Life Source that Valve itself provided with Steam …
Valve Software, lovable koala bear of a game producer that it is, has released interesting stats on who has achieved what, Achievement-wise, in their zombiriffic cooperative shooter Left 4 Dead. That’s… really all I’ve got for you. My take on Left 4 Dead, having now actually played it: it’s another win for Valve, whose commitment to quality and finely tuned gameplay are again on display here. And it achieves the heretofore impossible goal of structuring …
From the Department of WTF comes word of a panel of British teenagers who – lacking, apparently, the capacity to recognize that grown-ups do not comprehend sarcasm when it comes from kids – claim that the the UK’s recent spate of knife crime is fueled by violent video games. I don’t… even know where to start with this.
Fresh on the heels of Fallout 3’s release, Bethesda Softworks is announcing the official editor for Fallout 3 – G.E.C.K. (Garden of Eden Creation Kit) – will be available for free download in December. G.E.C.K. will allow Games for Windows users to create and add their own content to the game. Additionally, Bethesda will offer its first downloadable content – Operation: Anchorage – exclusively for both Xbox 360 and Games for Windows players in January, …
A few slices of Portal cake to celebrate some big birthdays this week, with Penny Arcade turning ten yesterday and the original Half Life reaching its tenth today. Valve is celebrating by putting the game on sale for $0.98 over Steam, though if you haven’t played it by this point even that price probably isn’t enough to woo you. Neither the game nor the cartoon could be reached for comment regarding birthday wishes, but I …
Autumn Moon Entertainment has released a demo of their much-anticipated comic adventure A Vampyre Story; which chronicles the adventures of opera starlet, Mona De Lafitte and her batty side-kick, Froderick. The demo offers a short look of Mona as she attempts to find graveyard dirt for her coffin in preparation for some travelling. A Vampyre Story is scheduled for a UK release on November 24th; while the word on a US release is listed as …
Ethereal Darkness Interactive, developers of the adventure/RPG hybrid Morning’s Wrath, have finally released their second game – The Lost City of Malathedra – a PC graphic adventure heavily inspired by classics such as The Dig and the King’s Quest series. Players will take on the role of Rebecca Wolfe as she searches for her historian father, Jonathan. Malathedra is available as a DRM-free web-only download for the paltry sum of $19.95. A demo of the …
Ubisoft, France-and-Canada based developer/publisher behind such mongo franchises as Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell, and Rainbow Six, has acquired Swedish Massive Entertainment, the highly-regarded RTS maker responsible for the much-loved World in Conflict. Originally published by Sierra, Massive lost its home when the Activision/Blizzard merger resulted in Sierra’s closure. Some other big name titles also got the axe, and we’re slowly hearing of their resurrection at other publishers. Atari, for example, will be handling the …
New over the news tickers today is the suggestion that failed Maxis “masterpiece” Spore, released to tepid reviews but hella sales in early September, underwent some significant changes to up the simplicity and cute factor and back-burner the SimLife science originally planned by Will Wright and his team. The conjecture is that Maxis employee and outspoken industry dude Chris Hecker is responsible for the change. Whether or not that’s true, the cuteification of Spore actually …
Continuing my Day of Plagiarism, allow me to pull directly from Alec Meer’s IGN UK review of Fallout 3: “So it’s tragic that the often awful production values make a fool of it so regularly. Whenever you’re really settling into the game and thinking what a wonderful world it is, it goes and does something incredibly stupid and clumsy, and the whole illusion shatters. It’s a truly fabulous RPG in so many ways, but we …
So EA’s internally-developed Dead Space comes out Wednesday, and reviews have been a mixture of pretty positive and very positive. This is one I’ve got on my GameFly list rather than down as a purchase. Why? Because scary games make me tremble, and because I’m witholding judgment on the game’s overall quality until I hear a little more about it. EA is not, after all, really what one thinks of when one thinks of innovative …