I know you’ve grown tired of the zombification of our planet. I have too, friends. However, being late to the party is not a crime, in fact sometimes it might even be a good thing. Enter: Dead Island. Sometimes you go away for a long weekend and when you come back you find electronically transmitted pieces of mail from your friends; heartwarming it is. Sometimes those pieces of mail show you a teaser/trailer that you …
Warning: Bulletstorm will make you rape people. So says Fox News, that bastion of fair-and-balanced reporting, its experts dourly citing completely unrelated and often debunked studies to that effect. To my knowledge no rapes have been connected to the recent demo release, but likely the law hasn’t been looking for said connection. Bulletstorm is going to make you rape stuff, not because there are any rapes in it or because it endorses rape or even uses the word rape (though it does use the word “dicktits”), but because… um.
Assuming what we can from the demo, Bulletstorm is juvenile toilet humor with liberal amounts of gore and NSFW, often sexually-charged achievement names for killing things by pumping shells up their rectums or what have you. Sometimes juvenile toilets can be kind of awesome.
I’ve written Culture Clash for the IGDA website for over eight years now. I’ve always meant to start posting my monthly columns here as well, but never got around to until now. As time permits I’ll post the older ones and back-date them, so give me a couple days, then be sure to check out the Culture Clash category archive here at Tap to read more.
This one’s about… hell, click the button and you’ll see.
Over at the official EVE Online site, CCP have begun to reveal details relating to the new Captain’s Quarters that players will be able to experience by the summer. The dev-blog describes the Captains Qaurters as: “your place of power, center of your control, operational nucleus, living room and home office. They are the dusty motel room for the vagabond capsuleer. Whether docking your ship to a station or entering EVE for the first …
After Guild Wars 2’s recent Human Week, ArenaNet have announced the second installment to their ongoing series dedicated to detailing the races featured in Guild Wars 2. This coming Monday the official ArenaNet Blog will give players an in-depth introduction to the shape shifting half-giants known as the Norn, and throughout the remainder of the week will provide readers with additional insight from the developers on the lore, the newest art, and a new video! If you haven’t already …
“A future in which almost every aspect of your life includes a game like experience is all but inevitable.” — Jesse Schell, Video game designer/researcher, Carnegie-Mellon University I just got around to reading the December issue of Scientific American. Bad mistake, I should have gotten to it earlier because therein is a fascinating article by John Pavlus called “The Game of Life.” He makes the very simple claim that games will become part of our …
With over 300 hours invested, I’ve lost patience with Team Fortress 2. As a team based, class based shooter, its original focus was that of a competitive but organised multiplayer experience, which required cooperation between you and team mates in order to be successful. The result of its mutations and gradual evolution over many years however, is that Team Fortress 2 is distinctly lacking two key elements: team-work and organisation.
As my second piece of news, also Steam related, SEGA of America, Inc. and SEGA Europe Ltd have today announced that Total War: Shogun 2, will be available on Steam on February 22. The press release goes on to state: SEGA and The Creative Assembly are proud to let gamers everywhere know that a demo for Total War: Shogun 2 will soon be available on Steam. The demo will allow all armchair samurai to test their skills …
I should have been posting this bite-sized news yesterday, but I’ve been feeling under the weather lately (I blame Steerpike and his relentless beatings). So I’m posting it now, instead. Forbes Magazine in February’s issue have revealed that Steam controls up to 70% of the $4 billion market for downloaded PC games, with a staggering 200% year-over-year growth. Although Valve have never revealed their turnover or profit margins, its fair to say that their profit will undoubtedly …
A few weeks ago Armand from Bits ‘n’ Bytes Gaming inspired me to check out The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, a game I’ve been curious about for years but never felt compelled to pick up. After a quick dash around some of the local game shops I found a copy of the Bloodmoon expansion tucked away amongst a neglected pile of second-hand titles and miraculously, a few shelves down, Morrowind and Tribunal, all for the …
Review by MrLipid A Casual Revolution Author Jesper Juul Publisher MIT Press Released 2010 Verdict: 5/5 Gold Star “Let’s start with the hype. A Casual Revolution is terrific. A succinct, informative, thoughtful examination of the forces that have been, as its subtitle says, reinventing video games and their players. Oh, and on top of all that, it’s just plain fun to read.”
A question I’ve been mulling over for years now, is why is there not a Pokémon MMOG? It’s startlingly obvious and has genuinely remained on my mind for far too many hours lately. Considering Pokémon has sold in excess of 100 million units world wide, since the launch of Pokémon Red and Blue, I am stunned it isn’t already in production (although it should be noted Nintendo have squashed some fan attempts). What is even …
I’ve been playing Ninja Theory’s Heavenly Sword. I like it a lot.
I like it because I think I get what they were trying to do. They didn’t succeed all the time but you can perceive their intent, pulsing just under the gloss veneer of the game itself. Not only do I get what they were trying to do, I respect it, and because of that I’m going to reward them by buying Enslaved – which we learned today has sold a pitiful 460,000 units worldwide.
So we knew that From Software, creators of the glorious Demon’s Souls, were working on a “sequel.” Now we know its name: Dark Souls, to be published in the west by Namco-Bandai. That’s a bit of a surprise, since Atlus did so well with the original it seems they’d want sequel localization rights, but there you go. All we know right now is that it’ll be a PS3 exclusive in Japan but probably a PS3/360 …
It wouldn’t be sensationalist to state that RIFT is the most polished and accomplished MMOG BETA I have ever taken part in. And while not fault free, the single problem I did encounter (being unable to login due to queueing issues), was when servers first opened; a problem undoubtedly linked to the sheer quantity of people flooding on-line. The rest of my evening however, was flawless.