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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Gear Up For The Coming Storm In Mass Effect 2

Nabeel Burney 2 Comments

Mass Effect 2‘s release is imminent. The past couple of months has seen a barrage of media in the form of screenshots and videos in the lead up to the game’s January 26 launch. It’s still early, but reviews are starting to come in and so far the game has been maintaining a 90%+ rating in magazines like Official XBox Magazine and PC Gamer 1)http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/xbox360/masseffect2?q=mass%20effect%202. So the hype machine is in full force for the much-anticipated sequel, it only remains for fans to decide which edition of the game to buy.

We’ve spoken before a little bit about the pre-order DLC, but BioWare has now detailed the various pre-order options available on their site. It’s not quite as ridiculous as it was with Dragon Age: Origins, but it does mean that fans will have to yet again decide between mutually exclusive sets of in-game items. There are two basic editions, Standard and Collector’s, and there is a Digital version of each which can be bought at various digital distribution outlets. Pre-ordering the Standard from Gamestop gets you the Terminus Assault Armour and Blackstorm Weapon, and everywhere else gets you the Inferno Armour.

The Collector’s edition consists of (along with superior box cover art): extra bonus discs containing a Making Of documentary and the soundtrack, the first issue of the Dark Horse spinoff comic Mass Effect: Redemption, a 48-page artbook, and an additional set of DLC armour, the Collector’s Armour. You may just want to pick the Terminus design based solely on how formidable it makes your Shepard look, but each of the armour sets has different benefits, like increased shielding or sprint speed, so it’s probably worth looking at the stats before choosing.

One item that will come with every version of the game is a single-use unlock code for something dubbed The Cerberus Network, which will be “a conduit for players to receive bonus content as well as daily messages and [Mass Effect 2] news.” 2)http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/21907/Mass-Effect-2s-Cerberus-Network-Revealed/. It sounds like it will be a platform for managing DLC in the game, much like what is being used in DA:O. There will be content available from day one, such as new missions and items, as well as the previously-rumoured extra companion, Zaeed. It’s most likely an incentive for customers to buy new copies of the game as opposed to used; a similar situation occurred with DA:O, which offered for download an extra character called Shale – who was by no means tacked-on, rather an integral part of the game. There will be more DLC down the line, like a new vehicle called the Hammerhead which will allow players to navigate planet surfaces.

While I’ve been trying to avoid most of the videos for fear of story spoilers, there are a few that neatly outline the game’s premise without giving too much away, one of which I’ve embedded below.
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