Mass Effect Galaxy was released a couple of months back for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This $2.99 top-down shooter tells a story that takes place between Mass Effect and the upcoming sequel. The main characters will appear in ME2 and the story touches on threads that will be picked up therein, too. So is it worth checking out for fans of the series?
German publisher bitComposer Games report they are to publish GSC Game World’s latest game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat in the fall:
bitComposer Games has secured the worldwide rights to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, the next first-person shooter from Ukrainian developer GSC Game World and follow-up to the highly successful S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: … the newest episode seamlessly connects to Shadow of Chernobyl. The release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat for Windows PC is scheduled for Fall 2009.
This turn of events was largely presaged in GSC Game World utilizing a different publisher for each game in the franchise so far: With Shadow of Chernobyl, they utilized THQ, and Clear Sky was published by Deep Silver respectively. Looking from the outside in, I would personally wager that GSC Game World’s relationship with Deep Silver was marred somewhat by the publisher’s odd insistence on prematurely publishing untested patches for the game – not once but twice – first with 1.5.06 and again with version 1.5.09, further contributing to the pre-existing stigma of the game series’ assumed instabilities.
Though there’s a decided dearth of footage – some twelve screenshots in all – available for this forthcoming prequel at the moment, you can nevertheless take a gander at the game’s official website. bitComposer Games, then, are an all-new company, founded only last March, and are planning to come out with a slew of titles all to be published Q3 2009, including “RACE On“, the obscure “Scorpion: Disfigured” and “The Void”.
The last-minute visual overhaul of the original Left 4 Dead cast, revealed during EA’s 2008 E3 conference 1)http://www.destructoid.com/e3-08-left-4-dead-main-characters-get-redesigned-95661.phtml, came mere months before the November 18 launch date for the game. The changes, though minuscule as well as practically-minded, felt like a crushing blow to some, yet wholly inconsequential to others.
Some players might have missed the debacle altogether. Me? In response to the news, I envisioned a future scenario wherein Beyoncé models for a revised Alyx in Half-Life 2 EP3. I was desperate to commentate on the topic right there and then, but ultimately decided against it. Phew. Now, despite the fact that Left 4 Dead 2’s characters have barely been cast out to light, however, I am bold enough to suggest that an intriguing pattern has emerged, that a trajectory of design can be seen in the way Valve and Turtle Rock Studios have designed the various characters of the Left 4 Dead series.
In this text – which is just as much a history of the games’ development cycle as it is an analysis of the concept of “character” in the gaming medium – I will first navigate us through a series of dates, occurrences and currents that ultimately affected the make-up of the casts of both games. I will also attempt to explain and pinpoint decisions related to the series’ art direction. Since we’re broadly three months removed from Left 4 Dead 2 release date of November 17th, you’ll have just about enough time to read through my admittedly thorough assessment. Thanks for reading!
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Notice: Don’t forget to check out our latest update to this post, “Dissecting the Casts of Valve’s Left 4 Dead Series“
This post is a quick sneak peek into our forthcoming article that focuses on the evolution of the casts of Valve’s Left 4 Dead series. An interesting feature of the original campaign posters is their equal-weight character distribution: The placement of the characters rotates evenly, with very little utilization of character-specific poses and personality-emphasising traits. In the five LD41 posters (the new Crash Course included), Zoey and Francis both cover all four placement slots, with Bill and Louis found in three out of four. Illustration below:
This seems to be about to change in Left 4 Dead 2: In the two campaign posters revealed so far – Swamp Fever and The Parish – there are marked differences compared to the previous game.
Many websites have already titled this game “arguably the most anticipated game of the summer” 1)http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/08/07/batman-arkham-asylum-demo-released/: Though it easily makes top 5 twice at GameStats, it only comes close to cracking the top 20 at Eurogamer. That being said, however, Batman: Arkham Asylum could very well be the most anticipated game – not titled Call of Duty.
British developers Rocksteady dropped demos for the game last week, and rather than crumble under the excitement, we dedicated the entire Slowdown team to combing through the demo, three-man Bat-style, giving it a hard long look in anticipation of the forthcoming September release of the PC version. In fact, this may very well be the most ridiculously in-depth look at the demo you’ll happen to chance upon. Should you find a more thorough article, though, let us know in the comments section… and we’ll retract this boisterous claim. Consider yourselves warned!
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