Re: Slowdown

If you’ve happened upon some decidedly rough patches on The Slowdown over the course of last few days, our apologies; Those of you that have already been here before have probably noticed how we’ve now largely finalized our complete overhaul of the look and feel of the website. The new theme is (hopefully!) functionally closer to our original plans for the website.

Though my insistence on tailoring ourselves a custom theme instead of opting for an existing one (or trying to find a suitable designer to do our bidding, for that matter) somewhat hampered the overall pace of development and the general produce of new content, we should be getting back into full swing sooner than later!

For those of you that are more technically-minded, we did eventually come to place some great emphasis on browser interoperability: We should in fact display just about correctly whether your web weapon of choice is Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome or IE7/8. Even IE6 will work (though using that monstrosity would hardly be recommended – Nabeel was none too pleased with my willingness to bend over for users of Internet Explorer). If you so desire, you could also take a look at how the website fares with more obscure browsers at Browsershots!

I hope you enjoy the new website as much as we do! If you do bump into anything resembling an annoyance, do let ‘er rip in the comment section. Finally, I’ve also included the latest Wordle-generated word cloud for the website. Quite strange a balance with some words there, huh?

slowdown-wordle-2009-05-21

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Mass Effect 2 Prelude to E3 Trailer

A new Mass Effect 2 video has emerged, showcasing brief shots of gameplay interspersed with developers hyping the game’s unveiling at this year’s E3. The game will be playable by attendees, and will apparently show off all the new elements introduced in the sequel including the revamped combat system. Also discussed is the darker tone to the game brought on by new environments and narrative techniques. The trailer conveys that very effectively, giving eerie glimpses of Commander Shephard’s space-faring vessel the Normandy empty and in ruins.

(more…)

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Thief 4 Finally Announced

At long last, Eidos Montreal has finally announced Thief 4. Initially the announcement was made by Community Manager René Valen on the TTLG forums, but eventually the official site made space for the new game.

index

The main site for the game has no information whatsoever past a logo, and links to the official forum and twitter. The game is apparently in very early stages, hardly into production.

In the world of gaming, there are mainly three phases – the concept, pre-production, and production – and right now we’ve reached our goals with the conceptual base, the story.

Stéphane D’Astous

It would be asking too much to expect that we will see anything more about the game for a long time, and indeed the game will not be shown at E3. For now all the fans have is the logo (which is tentative, Rene assures us) and sure enough the community has exhausted that avenue of anxiety.

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Merchants of Brooklyn: Drug Wars

The crazy cavemen over at Paleo Entertainment recently braved outside their developmental caverns, revealing a kooky plan for a new multiplayer game mode, Drug Wars, to be given out free to owners of Merchants of Brooklyn. Though the game was erroneously reported to be a stand-alone game on some other websites, as it stands, Drug Wars looks to be no more than an additional component to MOB. Here’s what the team had to say about it:

“Find the drugs, stash the drugs, defend the drugs, kill everyone and take their drugs! YOU MUST HAVE DRUGS!”

Based on the little promotional material revealed so far, Drug Wars seems to be taking some more advantage of CryTek’s more-than-boisterous CryENGINE 2, apparently sporting both drivable vehicles and larger levels, and is currently being prepared for a public release announcement at this year’s E3 gaming expo.

…In other, far less interesting news, I’m still yet to restart MOB from scratch due to the patches corrupting my save games…

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