Month: November 2010

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

…has, with the most recent batch of screenshots from the game, confirmed what CD Projekt RED senior producer Tomasz Gop boldly stated in a March 2010 developer preview, that The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings would be “the best-looking RPG you’ve ever seen.” 1)http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcph86_the-witcher-2-dev-diary-0-the-begin_videogames, 4:39

Above, the detailed greens of the grasses contrast against the charred, smouldering red hues of a battlefield partially shrouded by smoke, together with the dynamic silhouettes and tense poses struck by soldiers and burned-down tree trunks standing in the horizon, creates one of the most beautiful low fantasy vistas that I have yet to behold. Despite all the aforementioned detail, a great degree of visual clarity and readability remains, seemingly in large thanks to a lighting scheme that accentuates the characters scattered on the battlefield.

If graphics alone do not make The Witcher 2 seem like a must-buy, what really seals the deal is how Gop revealed earlier this month that CD Projekt RED have, in their implementation of the game’s combat system, “been inspired [by Batman: Arkham Asylum]. I’m not hiding this. We have.” 2)http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-11-25-the-witcher-2-were-not-afraid-of-dragon-age-interview?page=2

Like Red Dead Redemption before it, The Witcher 2 seems to be really pushing forward the art of functional and cohesive visual design in video games. The only question that truly remains now is how to best acquire the forthcoming Collector’s Edition – and if you’re a collector spirit like us, find that suitable spot for the cheesy Geralt bust that comes with the whole dang shebang.

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2K Loves Me, Loves Me Not, Loves Me!

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Ever since the BioShock 2 launch, 2K Games have been giving PC players high blood pressure and ulcers thanks to a laundry list of problems with the game, ranging from its Games for Windows Live integration and DirectX issues to the infamous “Rapture Metro” map pack, giving much credence to the view that the game was effectively left to rot on the platform.

To add insult to injury, this sentiment was already firmly established before the publisher’s wishy-washy approach to “The Protector Trials” and “Minerva’s Den” DLC packs, which were originally slated for – and then later announced cancelled, only to move back to production – the PC. 2K community manager Elizabeth Tobey sums up the news in a sentence: “We have resumed development on all three and they will be coming to PC.” 1)http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1254568#post1254568

Although the aforementioned – plus an additional patch – are now back in production, the only real response to this whole affair can but resemble this, especially after Irrational Games head honcho Ken Levine jumped to a profanity-laden PR save at Kotaku: “If you want to know the future of gaming, buy a PC. And pay attention. Because above all, that thing on your desk is a crystal ball.” 2)http://kotaku.com/5675559/the-future-of-pc-gaming-according-to-the-lead-creator-of-bioshock (more…)

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Bionic Commando Recharmed

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

The new Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 characters that Capcom has been posting on their official Facebook page are adorable and really wacky:

The game itself will probably play just like the first one – not everyone’s cuppa tea and whatnot – but hey, this time around, it sports a roster full of cute chicks with big teeth along with a series of funny slash fugly dudes! Really, just seeing characters with natural smiles is a change of pace, and heck, I think I even see some overbite to go with the big ass grins and grills!

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The Road More Traveled: 5TH Cell’s Hybrid

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Cowabunga! Washington-based Scribblenauts devs 5TH Cell probably could not have done a more complete 180 degrees in licensing Valve’s Source engine for their latest game, Hybrid. The just-announced game is unfortunately going to be released on the wrong platform – that is, as an XBLA exclusive, at least for the time being:

5TH Cell is proud to announce Hybrid, a revolutionary new video game available in 2011 exclusively for Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA). Hybrid is a pioneering third person shooter set in a devastated post apocalyptic world, giving players a completely new gameplay experience never seen before in the genre. 1)http://www.5thcell.com/

Revolutionary, schmevolutionary, pioneering, schmioneering – so far, Hybrid files under “just another post-apocalyptic shooter.” As much flair for creativity as 5TH Cell have exhibited with their past track record, and as much as we love the Source engine, it is hard to compute exactly how 5TH Cell went from the “revolutionary” and “pioneering” Scribblenauts to this:

While some interesting mechanics seem to be in store for players, including wall-walking – the red Variant soldier walks upside down on the ceiling in the trailer above – the little dialogue in the trailer does not exactly get points for originality:

When I was little, my father used to say, “Son, god didn’t create money… man did. God didn’t create war… man did. God didn’t create hell… the Variants did.”

After all, the post-apocalyptic landscape has been utilized very often in video games as of late, as a visual metaphor of the basest kind, using the entirety of the external world to blatantly affect and reflect on the internal, resulting in the strength of the metaphor diminishing further with every use. This is also why players are beginning to tire of it – post-apocalypse it is no longer unique, it is ubiquitous, especially now that even the pioneers of the post-apoc genre are once again being remade for a new audience (Fallout).

Therefore, despite being an exciting announcement from a very well-esteemed team, thanks to its thematic constraints, it’s hard to be excited just yet. The same restraint applies to the project’s utilization of sci-fi (E.Y.E.), religious themes (Scivelation), warring factions (Nexuiz) and clashes between races (Half-Life, Halo etc). Throw in Afterfall for good measure. In a way, the simple fact that the teams are red versus blue for the NTH time just underlines all this.

(more…)

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The New Vegas Fallout

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Major video game launches are a huge deal these days, and sprawling, feature-rich open-world titles like Obsidian Entertainment’s Fallout: New Vegas come very close to being MMO-like in their courting with danger. As soon as the early reviews begun pouring in, New Vegas indeed turned out to be just as bug-riddled as Fallout 2 originally was back in 1998:

At least the player above got in-game, though – while personally installing Fallout 3, I was met with a faulty DVD, an “Error: -5006 : 0x8000ffff” notice and finally the magnificent extent of Bethesda’s Windows 7 support. A veritable brick wall, in other words… in any case, New Vegas senior designer Chris Avellone, who also worked as designer on the aforementioned Fallout 2 (a connection that we detailed in an earlier post, From New Reno to New Vegas), quite unsurprisingly explains away the bugs with the length and scope of the game:

I think when you create a game as large as Fallout 3 or New Vegas you are going to run into issues that even a testing team of 300 won’t spot, so we’re just trying to address those as quickly as possible and so is Bethesda. … It’s kind of like the bugs of the real world – the sheer expanse of what you’re dealing with causes problems. 1)http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=271206

In other words, having never completed Fallout 3, it becomes much easier for me simply to stand back and enjoy the show of fireworks until this latter-day Frankenstein’s monster gets stitched together and squeezed into yet another “Game of the Year” box. I don’t mean at all to imply that I find enjoyment in Obsidian and Bethesda’s misfortunes; instead, what’s exciting to me are the dynamics and mechanics of a major botched launch… after all, instances such as these are rare glimpses into closed-door game design and corporate decision-making at its most tangible, glimpses that only really become available if something goes truly awry. (more…)

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