Year: 2009

The Blackwell Convergence Review

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Dear readers, though this article focuses primarily on the 3rd instalment to Wadjet Eye Games’ “Blackwell” series, The Blackwell Convergence, we are subsequently also to publish a second, combined number on the 1st and 2nd episode. Please bear with me as we progress, in reverse order, to achieve some degree of relevancy.

Both parts will also touch upon topics beyond the make-up of a “review”; whether we should chalk them up to “analysis” or “discussion” remains open for interpretation. Should you agree or disagree, let us know what you think in the comment section! Finally, if you are yet to familiarize yourself with this ongoing series of adventures, I do hope you should come back to check out part 1/2. The easiest way to find out when is to either subscribe to our Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/slowdownvg) or to our RSS feed (http://www.slowdownvg.com/feed/)!

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Batman: Arkham Asylum Demo Released, PC Version Delayed

Nabeel Burney Leave a comment

A demo for Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Asylum has been released to all platforms. The PC version of this hefty 2GB package can be grabbed here, at nVidia’s site. As with Resident Evil 5, the demo works with nVidia’s 3D Vision technology for those who have the required hardware. The playable portion is the area that was shown at E3 a few months back, early in the game with a few areas and enemies for players to experience the various facets of the game mechanics.

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This gameplay teaser comes with slightly bitter news for PC gamers, as their version of the game has been pushed back from the previously simultaneous launch date of August 25th date to September 15th. The reason stated is the improved implementation of nVidia’s PhysX technology, which provides the physics for the game’s environments and objects. A similar situation occurred in January with the release of Mirror’s Edge on the PC, which was a few months behind the console versions 1)http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/11/20/mirrors-edge-pc-delay-down-to-physx/1. The game is highly anticipated here at the Slowdown, so stay tuned for some impressions of the demo.

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Left 4 Dead Crash Course DLC

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

As most of you know by now, Valve announced the Left 4 Dead Crash Course DLC on the Steam news blog. I apologize for being this late, but we decided against posting the announcement due to the ghastly, nasty genericalness of the PR available:

[Crash Course] delivers new single-player, multiplayer and co-operative gameplay to both platforms. … While containing both Survival maps and a Co-operative Campaign, the primary goal of “Crash” is to deliver a complete Versus mode experience in just 30 minutes…

Left 4 Dead Crash Course Poster
Left 4 Dead Crash Course Poster

All this changed earlier today, though, when we had Destructoid jump to the aid in the form of an exclusive preview of the new levels. There are good news and bad news.

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TF2 SDK Update for Machinimaists

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

The recent announcement of further SDK materials being prepared for Team Fortress 2 strongly reminded me of something when Valve’s Mike Booth explained, in the post, that Valve’s primary motivation for the SDK update was to “…make it much easier for … machinima makers to have more control over how characters animate in their movies.”

What was it, exactly, that the announcement reminded me so strongly of? Lit Fuse Films’ Ignis Solus, one of the earliest (if not the very first) Team Fortress 2 –based machinimas. Ignis Solus succesfully demonstrated back in 2007 the extent of what a capable group can convey and put cinematographically on display in the absence of actual tools. The short film sports an evocative original soundtrack, and primarily engages the viewer through the clever use of the Team Fortress 2 emotes. Some small credit for the overall success of the project must thus be awarded, primarily to Valve’s clever design for the pyro class, and secondarily to its imaginative voice acting.

All in all, Lit Fuse manage to establish a vivid canvas of emotion with no access to low-level source materials, perhaps at once revealing how and why machinima works, technical aspects aside, by taking a well-known context, and then engaging viewers with the unexpected and the unfamiliar.

While there is, one would surmise, relatively little incentive for Valve to keep on releasing more SDK materials to the public, especially now that a major portion of the TF2 source has already been available for quite some time, it’s still nothing short of spectacular that the team continues to serve general interests beyond those of players, no matter how trivial the contribution may be in the grander scale of things.

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Interview with Yama Designer Mark Edwards

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Source level designer Mark Edwards is currently making a bit of a splash in the Left 4 Dead customization community with his promising work-in-progress custom campaign, Yama, refreshingly set in the country of Japan. Though L4Mods currently rules Yama content with an iron fist, Edwards nevertheless graciously took the time to answer our questions.

Edwards, fresh off releasing a custom survival map, Dead Meat (his portfolio additionally includes a contest-winning level for the Steamworked Zombie Panic: Source) is no stranger to gaming horror, and while we explicitly wanted to hear his feelings on the more technical intricacies and design-related dilemmas present in developing Left 4 Dead content, Edwards also touches on broader conceptual decisions, issues and themes that are present in the horror genre, relating his vision to titles such as Silent Hill and Siren: Blood Curse.

We would like to thank Edwards for answering our questions, and for those with a keen eye, there are Yama and Dead Meat screenshots sprinkled amidst the answers after the jump! Dead Meat can be acquired from http://www.scorchingcraniums.com/portfolio/abattoir.html.

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