People Can Fly

Hard Reset Review

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Disclaimer: Blade Runner was not harmed in the writing of this review.

For those potentially coming fresh off Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the cyberpunk action-adventure of the moment (also included on our list of recent cyberpunk titles), Flying Wild Hog’s début throwback FPS Hard Reset might take some getting used to. After all, the game’s name could and should be taken in reference to its status as an earnest homage to “all those forgotten Dooms, Quakes, and Painkillers” 1)http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/action/hard-reset/news/6326099/hard-reset-qanda-whats-old-is-new-again?sid=6326099&mode=previews&tag=topslot;thumb;2.

What the ex-members of CD Projekt RED, People Can Fly, City Interactive and Metropolis do is literally drop the you onto a dank, bleak futuristic alleyway, with barrels and crates strewn across the street, glowing power-ups beckoning. Efforts to interact with this architecturally impressive scene will prove much in vain, however, with items merely bumping, bouncing and rolling about; If you discover an explosive barrel or a glowing transformer, you can rest assured its only function is to act as a stationary tool for tactical destruction.

Stuff blows up. Big time. End of story?

(more…)

References   [ + ]

Read More

Interview with Epic Games’ Jay Wilbur

Nabeel Burney 161 Comments

Since its inception in 2008, the Dubai World Game Expo has been the annual showcase for game developers in the Middle East. In the last few years many western studios have taken an interest and have come to sponsor or give panels, including CryTech, Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, and Epic Games.

Epic had a large presence at DWGE 2010, showcasing their latest development tool, the Unreal Development Kit. Their booth featured a workshop with tutorials on the basics of the UDK, and representing Epic at DWGE were Jay Wilbur, Vice President, as well as Markus Arvidsson and James Tan – two of the independent developers behind UDK-based game The Ball. I sat down with these fine gentlemen to discuss a variety of topics including Unreal Engine 3, the UDK, and games development in general. What follows is my conversation with Jay.

The Slowdown: The Unreal Engine has a long history of licensing and modding; how did the decision to launch the Unreal Development Kit only come about now after all these years?

Jay Wilbur: So, all the while, we’ve always made our games open and available for people to mod – Unreal Tournament 3, going back to the original Unreal. People would be able to use the tools to make their own mod. But that locks those creative endeavours to the game, so somebody else would need to own that particular game in order to play the mod. With the UDK, we’ve freed developers to create standalone applications, turn it into a standalone playable entity – asset, I should say, and then deliver it to anybody who wanted to play it. They wouldn’t necessarily need to own that game in order to play it. So the goal was basically to have more people use Unreal Engine 3 in the development and also have more people be able to play the end result.

(more…)

Read More

Bulletspeak

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

Together with EA and Epic Games, the Polish Painkiller developers People Can Fly are certainly doing their darndest to specifically target us connoisseurs with their latest Unreal Engine 3 game, Bulletstorm.

How, exactly, you may ask? Glancing over older press releases (frantic, adrenaline fueled, immersive) for Painkiller, the lingo has been amped up several notches: Symphony, carnage, blockbuster, unadulterated, entertainment, arsenal, outrageously, unprecedented, frantic, yell-inducing, inciting, mayhem, insane, execute, exaggerated, excited, onslaught, cutting-edge. 1)http://news.ea.com/portal/site/ea/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100412006088&newsLang=en

(Only missing the good ol’ slobberknocker and barnburner, in other words.)

Good thing, then, that the just-released debut trailer below should back up some of that smack, too:

Below, a list of excerpts and examples of the aforementioned jargon in action:

  1. The developers are slated to deliver a “Blood Symphony of Gunplay and Carnage” packed with “blockbuster moments” 2)http://news.ea.com/portal/site/ea/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100412006088&newsLang=en
  2. The developers “believe” in “making killing ridiculous enemies as awesome as possible” 3)http://gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2010/04/16/before-bulletstorm-there-was-painkiller.aspx
  3. Inspired by pulp and Heavy Metal, the company is collaborating with comic book author Rick Remender, “best known for his original pulp sci-fi series Fear Agent and his work on Dead Space” 4)http://gameinformer.com/games/bulletstorm/b/xbox360/archive/2010/04/19/inside-bulletstorm-writer-rick-remender-s-head.aspx
  4. The game places specific emphasis on the methodology of the kill: “special kills that reward players with increased upgrade points” 5)http://gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2010/04/26/killing-with-style-an-illustration-of-bulletstorm-s-skillshots.aspx
  5. The team “dubs the close combat in Bulletstorm ‘creative mayhem'” 6)Gameinformer May 2010, p48
  6. The company has also done away with the cover systems of today: “Bulletstorm … has no cover mechanism, and we’re turbo sliding 20 or so metres further than science’s popular ‘momentum’ would realistically take us.” 7)http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=245721

While Wolfire & co. have been shoving it to the mainstream in a slightly different manner, People Can Fly seem to be aiming to counter the current established shooter paradigm in ways that are reminiscent of the Death of Glam Metal!

The question remains, then – which side of the fence is glam metal on, exactly, and what about the Death of Grunge? According to Joystiq, EA have slated Bulletstorm for Q1 2011.

P.S.
Ulysses?

The question remains, then – which side of the fence is glam metal on, exactly? And what about the Death of Grunge?

References   [ + ]

Read More