News

Blackwell Cartoon Shorts

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Wadjet Eye Games, having fiendishly teased its fans for a good while now, have just published their first cartoon short for the Blackwell game series:

This might be completely uncalled for, but the way poor Rosangela is played for comic relief in the first episode feels slightly off-register. Not to complain about free laughs, obviously, but in my very generic understanding of the series, the depth of the cast goes far beyond what is on display here, and in that sense, Blackwell newcomers might be somewhat confused as to where the ‘true’ register of the game series lies.

While the assemblage of characters in the series does seem to contain some influence of the American sitcom tradition, I’m not so sure that situational comedy, at this point in time, is the best way to deepen the characters, especially since we are – forgive the worn-out turn of phrase – not laughing with Rosangela, but at her.

I’d love to hear what others think of the cartoon short, though (for all I know I might be wrong about this) and obviously for now I’ll have to hold my judgement in anticipation of the subsequent episodes. In any case, I believe the cartoon is a first for indie adventure gaming, and it’s always delightful to see an ‘extended’ universe at work!

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Modern Warfare 2 Full Trailer

Nabeel Burney 1 Comment

Finally, after teasers and teasers of teasers, we have a full trailer for Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2. The 2-minute cinematic montage features a voice-over by Imran Zakhaev, one of the main villains of the first game. A number of different scenes flash by, some of which were previously glimpsed in the earlier snippets like the snowmobile chase and underwater diving. But new scenarios have been revealed such as an urban terrorist assault and a breathtaking escape sequence from a castle. The game looks to be as dramatic and thrillsome as the previous game, and I’m probably going to stop watching video trailers so as to avoid visual spoilers. There are some things you just want to experience, and Infinity Ward proved that with every single high point of the first Modern Warfare.

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Zeno Clash 2 Announced

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Straight from the horse’s mouth, ACE Team have just revealed a post-launch Zeno Clash trailer to “celebrate the announcement of ACE Team’s next project; Zeno Clash 2”.

The sequel is to continue directly where its predecessor left off, with both Father Mother and the mysterious Golem making a return alongside an extended cast of characters. Glorious! It’s certainly uplifting, from our perspective, to hear that Zeno Clash has done well enough to warrant itself a sequel. If only ACE Team’s apparent success at capitalizing on the small-scale format did not rather vividly remind us of earlier failures of the similar kind, with the likes of Sin Episodes failing to grow into a full-fledged franchise.

In relation to Michael Russell’s post on Sin Episodes above, one might surmise that a fair portion of the success should be owed to the collective goodwill and support ACE Team managed to accumulate over a relatively short period of time, with developer Carlos Bordeu going so far as to reach out to torrenters in the comment section of a torrent for the game, and with project leader Andres talking often and directly to the likes of ModDB. The game’s unique look must have also contributed to the game standing out from the crowd.

Ultimately, what propelled the game upwards in the sales ranks was the company’s decision to aggressively utilize various guerilla discounts to produce interest and word-of-mouth. Finally, the team never overreached, even choosing to scrap an earlier project of much larger scope in favour of a more concise experience that prudently focused on doing one thing – FPS melee – well.

In retrospect, it’s quite fantastic how Andres’ earlier remarks, that “the unconventional has been the safe thing to do” 1)http://www.moddb.com/games/zeno-clash/features/zeno-clash-interview-part-1, came to be sagacious instead of inauspicious.

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Re: Slowdown

Martyn Zachary 2 Comments

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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