Telltale Games is letting us know the Wallace & Gromit Grand Adventures demo is now (exclusively, at the time of writing) available at Yahoo and FilePlanet. After an admittedly brief play-through, as the short demo is only really designed to acquaint new players with the generic mechanics of the adventure game genre, I still found myself surprised enough!
Two Cents
BioShock 2 Information Starts to Surface
The marketing campaign for BioShock 2 has started in full swing. A viral site popped up a week ago, There is Something Under the Sea, showing a world map. Static and radio chatter fill the speakers, and curious annotations on the map mark out spots around the world. Alongside each cross and date is a handful of information, in the form of letters, newspaper clippings and photographs.
Zeno Clash
This year’s standout finalist in the IGF “Excellence in Visual Art” category and ModDB’s Best Upcoming Indie game for 2008, Zeno Clash, a tiny yet potentially explosive close combat -oriented indie FPS built around the Source engine, is coming fresh off the back of a string of accolades preceding its actual release.
In the game, players settle in the role of Ghat, a young man fleeing away from his creator, the Father-Mother, the most powerful clan leader in the city of Halstedom. The rebellious chap must escape and fight his way thru the dangerous lands of Zenozoik together with his companion, the high-spirited and trust-worthy Deadra.
The most distinct quality of Zeno Clash seems to be its ability to potently divide an audience like Moses did water, and if anything, the fearless look and feel rooted in a mind-bending array of influences – including Hieronymus Bosch, John Blanche and Dark Crystal 1)http://www.moddb.com/games/zeno-clash/features/zeno-clash-interview-part-1 – seems like an open call for opinionage.
Obviously, for an indie game, it’s definitely better to go down in flames than simply fade away, and the ACE Team have this all planned: Project leader Andres Bordeu indeed notes that the team actually feels safer about the off-the-hook stylistics:
From a certain point of view going for the unconventional has been the safe thing to do for us. … We knew it was impossible to compete with big companies that tend to put a lot of their muscle in technology graphics-wise.
If you’re interested, RPS have posted an article on the game in their Unknown Pleasures series, and the two-part ModDB article can be found here and here, respectively. The team promises a solid 4-5 hours of gaming, for the competitive price tag of $20, and if Arkane’s Dark Messiah from 2006 is anything to go by, Zeno Clash is bound to be an exciting, corporeal experience at best, and a curious piece of gaming ephemera at worst.
Personally, I expect nothing but the best from the project. For a few more screenshots, check out the gallery after the jump.
References
Indiana Jones and the Stuff of Kings
One of the more disappointing title announcements in my recent memory came when LucasArts finally revealed Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings to the public – amidst heated rumours of the game having been altogether scrapped:
The fact that it still remains perfectly unclear whether the next-gen version of the game is still in production or not probably contributed to the relatively chilling response to the title (Some of us are already losing hope, while some remain stern!), and with the recent lay-offs at the company, even a more successful announcement would probably have been proved to be too little, too late.
Admittedly, the title is slated for release on the current mainstream platforms (Wii, Nintendo DS, Playstation2, and the PSP), but I can’t help but compare the screenshots, in gentlemanly fashion, to an earlier game in a similar vein…
The prerendered trailer makes the announcement that much sourer because of the fact that we can all still remember our euphoric response to LucasArts’ then-revolutionary application of the Endorphin/Euphoria physics engine, and the smashing 2006 E3 footage for the game.
Oh, and the “Fate of Atlantis” unlockable is Wii only.
New Preview of Deus Ex 3
It’s been a while since we’ve heard about Deus Ex 3. The game seems to be covered by a shroud of mysterious information embargo; any article that appears online gets taken down almost immediately. A sharp fan at the official Eidos forums managed to find a gallery of high quality images at Gamestar where the original preview was no longer available for reading.
A new preview of Deus Ex 3 has appeared on Czech gaming site hratelne, and has stayed up. Reliable as ever, the enthusiastic fans provide a summary (and more detailed translation) of the article for us non-Czechs. While the preview treads familiar ground, it does drop a few new details.