Month: February 2010

Robots In This, Guys

Nabeel Burney 2 Comments

Like a certain caped crusader up until very recently, the Transformers IP hasn’t had much luck in the gaming space, with generally mediocre attempts over the years despite the no-brainer concept. That could change, though, if the new game from High Moon Studios delivers on its potential.

Transformers: War For Cybertron was announced at the end of last year with a teaser trailer, showing pre-rendered carnage taking place on Cybertron. Details were scant at the time; Game Informer had the exclusive preview in a recent issue which revealed some interesting information. The game uses the Unreal 3 engine, and has a gritty, war-torn look a la Gears of War. The design of the characters lies somewhere in between Generation One and the Michael Bay films aesthetics, with changes not only to the characters’ looks but some of the transformations as well – Megatron’s alternate form is a hovertank, Optimus’ is a hovertruck without a trailer. In fact, all the ground vehicles have been changed to hover-something or other, to allow for a shared control scheme between the two forms 1)http://www.joystiq.com/2010/02/26/impressions-transformers-war-for-cybertron/.

Today a new trailer went up, with realtime footage using the game engine as opposed to pre-rendered CGI. While we still have no gameplay to make first impressions, one thing’s for sure: High Noon makes some epic trailers. I’m not exactly a diehard fan of the series, but I did grow up with the original animated show and toys, so I am excited by the promise of this title. A few gameplay impressions have gone up, Stephen Totilo’s at Kotaku gives a cautiously optimistic recap of the demo he witnessed. I only hope the game turns out better than the last game people were cautiously optimistic about.

As Totilo explains, there are two campaigns, the Autobots and the Decepticons, with up to three-player online co-op. Players choose from a selection of Transformers each with its unique weapons, vehicle and abilities. In the demo shown to the press, Optimus (not yet a Prime) had an area-of-effect stat boost called War Cry. Transformation between forms is done with the touch of a button and is smooth, keeping the momentum going. Joystiq remarks how the game plays a lot like linear third-person action games such as Ratchet and Clank.

High Noon may not have the best credentials with their previous less-than-stellar efforts in Daywatch and The Bourne Conspiracy, but they recognise the task at hand and assure that are trying to “make a great game” that is “true to the spirit” of people’s expectations. Transformers: War For Cybertron is due this May 2)http://www.joystiq.com/2010/02/10/activision-singularity-transformers-war-for-cybertron-due-in/. After the jump, said epic trailers.

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Subversion, Procedural Cyber-Espionage From Introversion

Nabeel Burney Leave a comment

It’s been more than three years since Introversion, indie developers behind Uplink, Defcon and Darwinia, first dropped the name of their new project, Subversion. That blog post and every subsequent entry were incredibly candid about the process of building the systems behind the game with screenshots and videos. But what kind of game it actually is was never revealed, until now. Rock, Paper, Shotgun has the scoop with news from Introversion’s launch event for Darwinia+, where Subversion was demoed for the first time.

From the very early work-in-progress demo that was shown, it appears that the game is about infiltration and sabotage. Where Uplink was a game of hacking and espionage on the intangible, ethereal level of the internet, Subversion takes place on the physical, infrastructural level, with the same kind of goals to accomplish. In the examples given the player was tasked with finding a secure server room in an office building, and had certain tools at his disposal including a stolen keycard and a wallscanner. A second run demonstrated a brute-force approach with guns and explosives 1)http://shfts.com/?p=2497. The way RPS’ Jim Rossignol puts it excites me:

On a wider, genre basis, it sits roughly in the Commandos area of careful execution of planned procedures. Or perhaps it is to Syndicate as Thief was to the shooter tradition…

The visuals of the game will no doubt use the neon-retro style that Introversion is known for. As you can see in the early development screenshots, flat-shaded and wireframe graphics portray the city blocks and interiors. It suggests an abstraction of the action, placing the player in the role of an overseer, able to witness the situation from various camera views.

As explained in the blog posts (and in the video embedded below), the art assets like the buildings and room layouts are all created procedurally – that is to say, generated by a computer algorithm as opposed to hand-crafted by a person. Changing certain values or randomising them produces completely different results, and in this way whole cities and offices can be created. Perhaps this will be done every time you play a level in Subversion, which would mean that each playthrough would have different maps to infiltrate.

Update:
Chris Delay of Introversion has updated the blog with a post about the Subversion demo, with screenshots of the build shown. Hit the jump to check them out.
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Alan Wake No Longer PC Bound, Heading To 360 In May 2010

Nabeel Burney Leave a comment

This will probably be the last update of Alan Wake that I will do here or on our Twitter, as the game has fallen swiftly off my radar with the confirmation that it will no longer be coming to the PC. This disappointing news came on the heels of other announcements by Microsoft at their recent X10 media event, including the release date and details of the collector’s edition of the now 360 exclusive. A new trailer, embedded below, was was shown off and the game was announced to be hitting stores in the US on May 18 and in Europe on May 21.

Pre-ordering the game will net you the ‘Bright Falls Bonus Pack,’ which offers “avatar gear, an Xbox LIVE theme, and a ‘making of’ video.” The Collector’s Edition will include a number of bonus items:

– Game Disc in box with unique art
– Exclusive In-Game Audio Commentary and Hints by Remedy
– “The Alan Wake Files” – a 144pg book that includes a short story written by Alan Wake and compiles the FBI dossiers investigating the events in Bright Falls, WA
– Exclusive Audio Disc with Soundtrack and Score
– Game Add-on token redeemable on Xbox LIVE for the first Alan Wake add-on content pack
– Exclusive Xbox disc with special content: Alan Wake Xbox Live Theme and Alan Wake Avatar for Xbox LIVE

The ‘add-on content pack’ possibly refers to the additional DLC promised earlier this year. The book sounds intriguing, providing substantial back story and detail to the world created by Remedy. I am impressed that there will be audio commentary, a feature very rarely offered by developers and one that usually proves insightful. After the jump, the new trailer unveiled at X10. It was nice knowing you, Alan.
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(Mouse)Look At System Shock In A New Light

Nabeel Burney Leave a comment

There aren’t very many mods for Looking Glass Studios’ classic System Shock. Apart from patches that increase the video resolution and make the package portable, fans have had to play the game almost exactly as it was on release, convoluted controls and all. That it still holds up for many people after all these years is testament to its timeless design. But a brilliant modder by the name of Malba Tahan has come out with a handy controls reconfiguration patch, that adds configurable keys and mouse look support. The first addition is welcome but by no means new, the second is a godsend. If you’ve ever played the game, you’ll know that it is not quite a conventional first-person shooter; the mouse cursor is movable independently of the view, which allows you to interact with objects and manage your inventory – but means you have to manage the view separately, which can be frustrating for twitch gamers.

The sequel, System Shock 2 by Irrational Games, improved the control scheme by allowing mouse look when shooting, and then detaching the cursor when using the inventory. Malba has recreated that scheme in SS1 by making mouselook available at the touch of a key, which, as you can see in the brief demonstration I put together below, makes the game appear much more like a typical FPS.

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Slowdown: Year One

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Hey there, and thanks for joining our birthday party – we are officially wrapping up the first full year of The Slowdown today. It’s all in the books, baby, and it’s been great! (It’s also the time for another Wordle, to capture the Zeitgeist… by the way, does anyone know of fun alternatives to Wordle for that?)

Admittedly, the date – 4th of February – is revisionist history: Like you might have noticed earlier, our archives actually extend back to August of 2008. It’s the domain, slowdown.vg, that was registered on this particular day.

I think the date is as good a birthday as any because it marked, for us, a distinct change, akin to Woolf’s 1910, where nothing effectively changed, but we now had a marker, a calling card, a signature – something to go by. In the beginning, after all, we had few goals beyond simply publishing to and for the whole wide web instead of just mumbling, redundantly and repetitively, to each other like we had, for years before.

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