So here we have a very noisy trailer for the totally unnecessary US remake of Let The Right One In, which was mostly quiet and all the scarier for it.
I am by default opposed to this sort of remake – the immediate do-over in American English as soon as a film finds any sort of success abroad. It seems like fixing something that ain’t broke for lack of any better ideas.
-ssr
I haven’t got a whole lot I can add to these photos of Spanish case modder pinchillo’s Dreadnought PC case. Win, dude. Pretty much win forever.
Yeah, that’s a computer case.
There was a tide of new Warhammer 40k video game publicity earlier this week for some reason, and I’d like to address it really quickly since we’re fans of the franchise generally. First off, I’m not that likely to get into it anyway but the teaser video for the new 40k MMO didn’t excite me much.
Yeah, that one.
I’m willing to reserve judgement until more is known – like, anything at all – but aside from the scenes with Titans the whole thing looks like a WoWalike, right down to the button bar at the bottom and the portrait/resources panel at the top left. I’ve said it before: WoW does what it does very well, and you’re more likely to beat Blizzard with something truly different than by beating them at their own game. WoW with bolters doesn’t count as “truly different”, especially when your art style looks more like WoW than it does the rest of 40k.
So let’s talk Space Marine.
There’s still plenty we don’t know about this game either, but the in-engine footage of combat looks interesting. The shooting looks really reminiscent of Resident Evil 4/Gears of War over-the-shoulder style action games, which I quite enjoy. The melee seems nice and fast, with the marines jumping and lunging into their attacks rather than plodding about; I quite liked the bit early on where a marine charges through the sort of chest-high concrete wall that usually winds up inviolate in shooter games. I didn’t see a wide variety of attacks, though which suggests the possible danger that things could get into throbbing red Dynasty Thumbs territory rather than tasty and caramel-flavored God of War-ville.
I’ve got questions, of course, but I’ll try to avoid the ones that are just thinly-veiled speculation. Who’s the unhelmed marine we see in some of the shooting segments? Do we still get to use any weapons aside from the bolter and chainsword? Are there enemies aside from the orks? Multi?
There’s still plenty of time for them to screw this up, but it would be possible for the stuff shown in that trailer to be parts of a game I would enjoy. Beyond that I allow for nothing!
-ssr
It’s a loser of the week double feature in our ongoing war against the crappy names people pick for themselves on the internet!
Loser #1
FyreHaar: Vampirique
SonicRob: snrk
SonicRob: snksnk Continue reading What’s My Name
I totally slept on the original Deus Ex games back in Ye Olde Gaming Times; I was a Mac/PS gamer, and PC gaming was a sort of terrifying black sewer complex of command line prompts and hardware incompatibilities. Many years later, I was intrigued enough by the reputation of Warren Specter’s open-ended FPS to give them a shot. Sadly, I found they just hadn’t aged well enough to retain my interest past the opening Statue of Liberty level. Maybe I suck, but as I recall the experience, Deux Ex was firmly rooted in the “I’m not telling you shit, Mr Player; just die until you figure me out” school of game design that’s been all-to-slowly dying out this last decade or so. It’s too bad really, as I normally tend to enjoy games with a strong non-combat component, but for whatever reason the experience not only didn’t grab me, but was actively repellant, so I mentally shrugged and set the whole thing aside.
And now, here’s Squenix with the trailer for a nice, current-gen entry to the franchise! Will it retain the previous games’ multiplicity of approaches and update them with nice modern design touches? Almost undoubtedly. Will it be able to set itself apart from all the other games that have built on its fight/sneak/talk approach to mission choice?
Uhhhhhh… Maybe. Watch the video after the jump and we’ll talk.
Continue reading Say It With Me, Children: “Day Use”, Not “Deuce”
We have two excellent contenders this week and Sonic and I continue our search for the best and worst gamer handles.
This week’s loser:
SnohKrash
Hey, ShackNews has brand new information on Front Mission Evolved, the latest in the long-running mech strategy game that I used to really like back on the PS1! It’s supposed to be coming out any day now, so I’m really looking forward to some really polished pre-release publicity stuff! Let’s dig in:
Previously due during the vague “Spring 2010” timeframe, Double Helix’s mech-tastic action game Front Mission Evolved will now arrive at North American retailers in PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 form on September 14, 2010.
Oh. Dang. Well, I guess they’re taking the time to really do the game right!
Alongside the release date, publisher Square Enix offered up a new trailer and several new screenshots, plus word that the PC edition will be playable in stereoscopic 3D.
I… wait, what? Why? What could adding 3-d headache-o-vision add? I could see it maybe being relevant for an action title, but certainly not for a turn-based strategy title.
Evolved marks a departure from traditional Front Mission entries, focusing on real-time third-person action instead of the turn-based strategy the series is known for. In addition to its single-player campaign, Evolved will also pack four multiplayer modes and the ability for players to customize their “wanzers” with a variety of parts and weapons.
…
So instead of the nichey little strategy title with the ridiculous length and deep squad customization that I was looking forward to, you’re doing the second most played-out genre possible – right after FPS – and tossing in a schlocky flavor-of-the-month technology gimmick as well?
*Sigh* If I was uninterested in Front Mission Evolved before, I’m downright incurious now. I’d be willing to give it a chance on its own terms as a new action title, but all the franchise goodwill I had saved up is out the window now.
-ssr
Irrational Games, nee 2K Boston, nee Looking Glass Studios, has a half-hour monthly podcast called Irrational Behavior. It consists of five to seven very short interview segments with various employees of the studio, not least among them Irrational impresario Ken Levine. As these are people who’ve had long careers at some of the more creative game studios around, their stories are uniformly interesting and frequently delivered with more than a little flair. The whole thing is nicely produced, with plenty of musical bumpers and narration by GFW/EGM alumnus Shawn Elliott to tie it all together.
Podcasts can be stuffed with filler or too topical to retain value in the future. At their worst, podcasts are little more than torrents of consciousness; unfiltered, meandering, and ultimately frustrating. Irrational Behavior avoids all of these traps, although probably at the cost of a more rapid publication schedule. The cast is slick, to the point, and satisfying. It is, of course, marketing, but it is also entertaining, and as long as you bear in mind what it is you are listening to, the fun can be safely sluiced out of the propaganda via various mechanisms within your brain.
You can find Irrational Behavior on the iTunes store, or get all of the episodes from the Irrational Games website here.
-ssr
Crystal Dynamics’ global brand director Karl Stewart, for telling CVG in all earnestness:
“I think the model as we see it right now is a frail one. Having the used market is not beneficial to any of us.”
Which is a completely true and honest statement, for values of the word “us” that do not include the subset “customers”. Try to keep that in mind the next time you decide to sling flame online in the name of your favorite major game corporation.
This Project $10 thing from EA is starting to get a bit out of hand. I didn’t particularly care when it was just extra stuff like costumes and weapons that aren’t part of the core experience of a game; in fact, I thought it was a clever way to incentivize buying a new title. The new deal, where sports games will cost an extra $10 to play online if bought used, flips that all upside down. It’s taken what originally sounded like a reasonable proposal – here’s a nice present if you do things the way that’s good for us – and turns it into a muscle play. I can’t imagine nearly as many people are going to stick up for the “buy it new or it’s broken and you’ll pay to fix it” model as were willing to speak out in favor of new-game bonuses. We’re not far now from simply having console games that require a 1-time activation code – free with a new copy, $60 otherwise – to work at all. we’ve already taken the leap that gets us about halfway there.
There’s no two ways about it: this experiment with Shadow of the Colossus is not going well. I sit down to decide what to do with my evening, and as my glance strays towards the PS2, SotC disc slumbering away in its tray, I remember that I have Space Marines to paint. Episodes of Glee to watch. Dishes to wash. The catbox could use cleaning.
Apparently I don’t want to play this game anymore.
There’s a lot to like about Colossus, and I touched on some of it in the last podcast. It’s beautifully atmospheric. The designs of the colossi are interesting, and the puzzles are interesting to figure out and solve. I’m just looking for a bit more, I suppose.
Continue reading Make Me Play Videogames: What’s Going Wrong Here