So IndustryGamers and others are reporting a new controversy surrounding Infinity Ward’s upcoming Modern Warfare 2: it looks like, for at least a small portion of the game, you will play as a terrorist, with the objective of gunning down civilians in an airport terminal. It’s sparked quite the little inferno. I’m okay with this, and I’ll tell you why. But I do worry about the mainstream kneejerks… and I’ll tell you why.
So there I was, minding my own business last Friday night, when a friend of mine – a lawyer, I hasten to add – calls me up and, over the course of a half hour, literally tricked me into picking his wife up at the train station and driving her 35 miles back to his house through a massive end of the world storm, without my ever realizing that I was being manipulated. And he did it with Borderlands, which I’d bought over Steam. The PC version didn’t come out until the 26th, so I was patiently waiting. All that changed when Pete bamboozled me into collecting his wife with the bribe of co-op 360 Borderlands.
Looks like the joint publishing venture between THQ and Russian 1C company is about to come to fruition: 4A Games’ Metro 2033, based on a Russian novel series of the same title, is nearing completion and will find its way to Westerm shores (hopefully with that great voice actor narrating) sometime in 2010. Metro 2033 tells the tales of a postapocalyptic Moscow, where citizens hundle in the subterranean Metro system, and hints at a game …
Sir Peter Molyneaux, Commander of the British Empire, has dished publicly about what he believes to be the five most innovative games of the past 20 years. I agree with him on all but one.
And to think that just a few short years ago, Polish developer CD Projekt was nothing more than a small localization company that did translations of big games (they did Baldur’s Gate) for the Eastern European market. All that changed with The Witcher, the first CD Projekt-developed game. While the RPG was initially troubled by technical issues and long load times, CD Projekt’s continued support and releases of major upgrades allowed the game to get …
Kotaku’s Mike Fahey has written a candid and powerful article about his Everquest addiction – one of the worst cases I’ve seen – and how it nearly destroyed his life. It takes a lot of strength and courage to write something like this about oneself, and Mike’s story is as heartrending as it is personal.
1UP illuminates us this morning with a review of Borderlands, Gearbox’s anticipated open-world shooter whose chief claim to fame is the procedurally generated weaponry that literally allows for something like twelve million firearm variants. I bet you can’t guess what score they gave it.
Review by Steerpike Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor Developer Tiger Style Games Publisher Tiger Style Games Released August 10, 2009 Available for iPhone, iPod Touch Time Played Finished Verdict: 4/5 Thumbs Up “Spider is a platformic puzzler that benefits from exquisitely tuned controls and a surprising depth hidden in the world, for those who take the time to look. It’s also a wonderful game.“
Shameless self-promotion? Yes. No! (But yes). We love The Escapist here at Tap-Repeatedly, with all its escaping and its clever videos and its pretty graphic design and its outstanding contributions and its willingness to publish me, little tiny me, every now and then. Today they published my article on IGDA reform, a subject near and dear to my heart. You should read it! So should your friends!
Fall is my favorite season, and Thanksgiving my favorite holiday. Canadian Thanksgiving, of course, no sense putting a perfectly good holiday in late November when there is fifteen feet of snow on the ground and igloos litter the landscape like so many sugar donuts. Fall and Thanksgiving are tightly entwined with my childhood memories of the grain harvest on the farm when I was a kid, when my mom and me would sit in a …
Tremble, humans, before the return of a sartorial sarcophagus so inundated with insanity, so grim in its grimoire, that it can only be known as MrLipid’s Closet of the Odd! Your greatest Weirds lie within. Do you dare explore it?
Review by MrLipid Heaven: the Game Developer Genesis Works LLC Publisher Genesis Works LLC Released September 2009 Available for PC Time Played All the way to heaven Verdict: 2/5 Rotten Egg As the fellow who reviewed the pair of games in the Wild Divine series, it seems only fitting that I take on (and offer my take on) Heaven. After all, both Wild Divine and Heaven make claims about improving the spirituality of their players, …
Word’s finally official that Obsidian’s action/rpg spy romp has been delayed to 2010, though reports vary on whether we’re looking at a early or late second quarter release. Since Obsidian insisted that Alpha Protocol was on schedule as recently as August 27, one can’t help but assume this latest in a long line of delays is fallout from a recently leaked document written by a SEGA quality tester. Salient to our story are the claims …
Atlus-published From Software’s Demon’s Souls arrives at retail in North America a la mañana, and the raves continue to pour in. I’ve seen nothing below an eight and plenty of 9.5s (and higher), all incongruously paired with statements like “the hardest game I’ve ever played,” “I’ve never felt frustration on this level,” and “brings new meaning to the word ‘grind.'”
In lieu of having the time to actually write anything of my usual length, or the two reviews I have cooking, I’ll announce news of a game that’s fallen off the radars of most: The Void, from Russian developer Ice-Pick Lodge. Formerly called Tension, it’s been available for ages in Russia and Germany, and is coming to English-speakers in a couple weeks.
Never heard of Ice-Pick? Your loss. They made one of the best and most important games in history. Only it’s not really your loss, because it was also one of the most broken and FUBARed games in history, as so eloquently told by John Walker. With this, their second outing, early noises suggest that Ice-Pick has done it again, only this time without the FUBARing.