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Max Payne 3

Martyn Zachary 5 Comments

Guys, I don’t know how to put this nicely. I solemnly swear, The Slowdown won’t be turning into Negative Gamer any time soon, but… do forgive us, for just one post, while I try to explain this to our advantage. When Max Payne 3 was first announced, we collectively voted, in unison, to absolutely hold our judgement – after all, we’re nothing short of massive fans of Remedy and the Payne franchise. I recently completed ‘The Fall Of’ no less than three times, in the row, during the previous xmas holidays.

Yet this is what we all thought: The new logography seemed to be a poor man’s combination of the ‘Impact’ font and grunge cross-hatches. The reimagined Max seemed as if he had been suddenly relocated, against better judgement, from film noir territory directly into the realm of Kane & Lynch. Everything that was iconic about Max Payne seemed to have been conveniently axed.

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Mind you, we thought we had it all wrong. I guess this is where we have to come to terms with the fact that things have really changed somewhat; VG247 happen to be showing off an unfocused photograph of a forthcoming GameInformer cover, and… boy, it does not look pretty. Kotaku, on the other side of the tracks, are hinting at a potential multiplayer feature.

I don’t know what to think. Do you?

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A Bugged Fate

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

Being the bearer of bad news is never fun, but we do finally have to report that nothing has changed since Mixnmojo learned, last February, that Crackpot Entertainment had lost their publisher for the still unreleased second part of Insecticide. The website reported that Crackpot was considering distributing cutscenes from the second episode on Youtube “in an attempt to complete the story as best they can in lieu of the actual game”, but so far only videos from the first episode have been uploaded.

Insecticide PC Cover
Insecticide PC Cover

SouthPeak Games’ Rob Burman confirmed earlier today that Insecticide has indeed not been added to their “line-up of titles”, and Crackpot president Michael Levine did not have anything further to add to the situation (apart from a plug for Planet Cazmo). Gawrsh.

This is a very unfortunate time indeed to advertise a verbose, sibylline review for a two-part game that might never be properly concluded, but perhaps some hilarity can be found in-between the lines, especially since the review was written back when Tales of Monkey Island was still just a collective wet dream (…or a headline in someone’s secret legal papers) and LucasArts seemed to have forever abandoned their roots.

You can read the anachronism here – in the meantime, let’s keep our fingers crossed for Crackpot!

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Breakwater Crumbling Before the Narrative Flood

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Since it looks like most of us are still reeling from the potentially lethal after-effects of E3, there is thus very little new press out there right now – other than the ostensibly amaranthine recaps and bullet point lists – so I thought I would just as well direct our attention to something completely different.

So. I enjoy reading Richard Cobbett. We go way back (…well, he does) as I originally chanced upon his blog, as an impressionable young man, thanks to his very questionable coverage of Sin Episodes. 1)Thank you archive.org! I couldn’t find the original post on his website. He’s cool and stuff and it so happens that he totally agrees with me on Guybrush’s new hair.

To cut to the chase, he has recently débuted an all-new interactive website called Narrative Flood, under the fantastic subtitle “Because Story Matters”; the right words indeed, in the correct order no less. I would like to be so bold as to highlight just a few intriguing topics that have already been tackled on the website, types of themes that I would hope to ultimately discuss here at the Slowdown as well:

  • A straightman take on Al Lowe’s often-disrespected but ultimately oft-reminisced and …yes, even beloved Leisure Suit Larry series and Larry’s romantic search for Real Love ™. Cobbett argues, like Lowe himself, that the “packaging … always promised much more sex than was actually in the games” 2)http://www.noisetosignal.org/2008/10/the-nts-interview-al-lowe
  • Sexy vs. Sexy, a discussion of the dangerous high-wire tap-dance that is the use and abuse of sex appeal in games.
  • Arachnophobia vs. Altruism, in which Your Hero laments the monstrous throng of spiders in games. I can’t help but mention I’ve only recently bested my own arachnophobia in video games; For instance – to keep on bringing up Sin any way I can – some years back, I simply could not envision myself playing Wages of Sin, the expansion pack, because the very first enemies in the game so happened to be spiders. I do have to add that I did ultimately conquer most of my fear during my relatively recent play-through of Dark Messiah.

A refreshing new website with a focus I can full well get behind – please do take a look!

References   [ + ]

1. ↑ Thank you archive.org! I couldn’t find the original post on his website.
2. ↑ http://www.noisetosignal.org/2008/10/the-nts-interview-al-lowe

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Mass Effect 2 at E3

Nabeel Burney Leave a comment

BioWare had a busy E3 this year, showing off Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins. Both games are being picked for best RPGs of the show awards already. The ME2 demo was aimed at introducing the newly revamped combat system, and emphasizing the darker turn the series will be taking in the sequel. Embedded below is 1Up’s interview and live demonstration of the gameplay presented by BioWare founders the doctors Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk.

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IGN Erases “Planet”s

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

IGN are to discontinue their hosting service.

At first sight, this statement might not sound neither all that unexpected nor meaningful, but let us take a step back into the year 1998, when Half-Life 1 was released. With it, the complexion of the internet gaming community was forever changed (arguably – let us forget the original Team Fortress and Action Quake 2 for now!) as we experienced the first full-on bloom of the modification. For those ends, HalfLife.net was, for a fleeting moment, the premier source of GoldSource-based news.

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