Second Hand News

2009-11-22T23:27:00.002Z

LSTAR: What a strangely great idea for a game... We need more voxels, people!

Also, faux Zelda!

THIS HAS BEEN THE SUMMER OF OUR MISSED CONTENT

2009-11-21T22:20:00.002Z

LSTAR: And with that particularly painful pun out of the way, I'm back!

The Genius of Onomatopoeia

2009-09-18T19:55:00.002+01:00

LSTAR: Easily the best thing about being a PC Jockey (other than cheap games and big resolutions) is seeing the bizarre little concepts and gimmicks people work into their mods on an almost hourly basis. From the inspired puzzling of Research and Development, to team based Medieval combat in Age of Chivalry and a thousand others in between (and that's just Half Life). This one may just take the cake by replacing all the pings, clicks and reports of Half Life 2's sound effects with modder Trase's own vocal mimicry. Everything from flicking on a torch to firing a grenade now gleams with the nostalgia of the playground battlefields of old. Oh, and Spaced.

The mod can be downloaded here, and positively begs to be spliced with Action Half Life.

You just don't get this kind of thing on XBox...

Scraping By...

2009-09-12T16:22:00.003+01:00

LSTAR: If, like me, you're still waiting on the PC release of Arkham Asylum at the end of next week, don't be glum! Watch Baman Piderman instead!

Interestingly, already in the hands of PC pirates, developers Rocksteady have artificially crippled the game to stop players from progressing beyond a certain point in the story. Looks like Pirates will have to pony up on release day, or at the very least wait on a patch. While not as elegant as Valve's solution (releasing game data early, but withholding crucial executables until release day) it is a discreet reminder that no matter how skilled Crackers are at subverting copy protection, few of them will be up to the task of fixing the game itself (or coding it in the first place...).

As Eidos Admin Keir puts is, "It's not a bug in the game's code, it's a bug in your moral code."

Speechless...

2009-08-28T01:01:00.002+01:00

LSTAR: Good Lord... A Playstation advert that doesn't make me vomit furiously!? Or want to beat my face in!? A PS3 pricecut!? And a new slimline PS3!?

This might just be the year of the PS3 after all...

Unlike 2006. And 2007. And 2008.

What a Wonderful Left 4 Dead

2009-08-19T23:22:00.002+01:00

LSTAR: There've been a lot of Left 4 Dead themed music videos made recently, but this one in particular made me smile. Wonderful!

Gotta love them "rainbows"...

Firefox Tweaks #1 - Aging Tabs

2009-08-12T00:39:00.006+01:00

LSTAR: Being a frequent victim of the scourge of Tabsplosion, I've been looking for ways to cut down on open pages and shorten Firefox's startup times. One of the best solutions I've found is an Extension called Aging Tabs that gradually alters a Tab's appearance based on how long it's been unused (either in seconds, or page changes).

The way I have it set up, tabs change from pale cream to dark grey in 5% increments over the course of 20 minutes of inactivity. Anything that's darkened completely, I can generally assume is safe to close.

How do you keep your browsing under control?

And if you're still stuck using Internet Explorer... I have nothing to say to you...

Studio Engineering

2009-08-11T15:42:00.004+01:00

LSTAR:

1 x Twin RCA Coupler - £1.75
1 x Twin RCA Male to 3.5mm Female Lead - £3.40
2 x Post and Packaging - Free

Being Able to Hear the XBox Through My Headphones - Priceless.

At least, that was my approach to overcoming my TV's lack of an Audio Out socket. And it sure beats listening to things through its notoriously bad speakers...

Alien Prequel Comfirmed

2009-07-31T20:50:00.004+01:00

Shed: SO SORRY I'VE BEEN GONE.

A new Alien movie has been confirmed, with none other than Ridley Scott at the helm. It's a prequel. Colour me hopeful.

LSTAR: Interesting. At least it's not another damned AvP! There's a reason fanfic isn't usually made into movies...

This Week I Have Mostly Been...

2009-07-30T22:43:00.008+01:00

LSTAR: Wow. Scummy update schedule, eh? Anyway, I think I can make a post out of what's stopped me from posting over the past week with a little help from Jesse...

Playing - Ground Control

Massive Entertainment's Magnum Opus seemed to ignore as much of RTS convention as it invented. 3D terrain, that had debuted the year before in Warzone 2100, was seen to full effect with pesky hills getting in the way of barrages of cannon shells and what not. With no economy, resource gathering or base building (units being limited to between 3 and 12 depending on how many dropships were available for a given mission) battles boiled down to pure tactics. Units had to be positioned to complement each other, avoid damage and (more importantly) minimize friendly fire. Juggling tank squadrons, pulling back units for repair and constantly trying to outmaneuver the opposition makes for incredibly compelling skirmishes. Graphically still holding up nicely today despite a somewhat hideous UI. All wrapped up in a Hard Sci-fi plot that's basically Starship Trooper, minus the bugs.

Reading - A Clash of Kings

George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire saga continues it's descent into GrimDark with more senseless violence, depravity and smart Fantasy writing. A slightly slower pace than the first volume with an interesting look into some of the Religions of Westeros.

Listening - Spotify

I can't really nail this down to any one album or even artist. I've been listening to everything from Chopin's Noctures through Gnarls Barkley's Odd Couple through to even poppier numbers like La Roux's La Roux and Röyksopp's Night Out. If there's one thing I can say about Spotify, it really does help with breaking down your inhibitions.

Watching - Movies!

I went to see Moon this week. It's very Clarke (high praise in my books) and looks a lot like a cross between 2001 and Dark Star. I also managed to see a screening of The Blues Brothers which was epic, as always.

I've got a few days off work now, so I'll try to come with something interesting to say...

WebComics - Garfield Minus Garfield

2009-07-15T12:43:00.003+01:00

LSTAR: As I'm sure is the case for quite a few of the Internet savvy crowd, I lose a not-insignificant chunk of my day to following a few webcomics. From impractical self-help guides, to the occasional flash of nerdy brilliance... But every so often you come across something so bizarre it's hard to explain why its so compelling...

Dan Walsh's Garfield Minus Garfield is one such strip. Walsh's continuing mission is to take original strips from Jim Davis' Garfield and photoshop out all references to the eponymous Garfield, leaving only the support characters to continue alone in a confusing and empty existence. The result, understandably, shows Jon, the original strip's other central character, as such a freaking sociopath it's hard not to laugh.

And the rest of the comedy is simply wondering what the original joke was supposed to be... I'm not sure I'll ever get round to finding out though... I mean, Garfield's not really my cup of tea.

Senor Deskophant is born!

2009-07-08T22:51:00.003+01:00

LSTAR: Not quite appropriate, I know, given that we're still in the middle of July, but I've just taken delivery of a whole pile of computer components, over a week early. And since I've got a day off tomorrow, I feel much tinkering will be done...

Nothing like 17 kilograms of silicon and assorted metals to get you in that jolly mood...

Anyone who's interested, the new specs are as follows -

Intel Q6700 @ 4x3Ghz (or really, as high as I can push them)
ATI HD 4890 PCS+
4 GB OCZ RAM @ 1066Mhz
1TB Samsung Eco Drive
DFI LANParty X48
And a few other, less important bits and bobs,
All wrapped up in a surprisingly attractive Antec 300 case
And a Partridge in a Pear Tree

BANned?

2009-07-02T20:17:00.004+01:00

LSTAR: Last night Blizzard, of Diablo and assorted Craft fame, came out with one of the most baffling statements I've seen in a long time. It seems that Starcraft II, the second iteration in the insanely popular sci-fi RTS series, will be dropping LAN support. What's that? LAN support? You need support for a LAN!?

Yup, it seems that when SCII launches at some as yet undisclosed time in the next year, multiplay will only be possible via Blizzard's revamped Battle.net system.

Wow. I'd never really thought of LAN play as a feature, it's just always been there. Ever since Doom we've had the opportunity to bring together a cluster of computers together and let the good times roll.

Now one game, albeit a blockbuster, isn't going to be that much of a big deal to most people. The scary thing is that the decision makes a hell of a lot of sense, and could easily become that much more common in the future.

The big appeal of the LAN, at least other than having all your buddies there beside you for easy access goading (mileage may vary depending on friend quality...), was that in the dark ages of 56k and 28.8k modems, you weren't relying on bouncing (relatively slow) signals to your friends, waiting for the reply and generally being pissed off by the devil Lag. Connection was fast and smooth in a way we never dreamt the internet could provide. These days, with more and more of my acquaintances getting 20Mb and even faster internet connections this is becoming less and less of an issue. We were able to have a quite comfortable 4 man game of Team Fortress on an internet server a while back with no noticeable issues.

The real issue, at least in Blizzard's corporate perspective, is the ever-present scourge of Piracy (Yarrrrr!). When the Ethernet cables go in and internet goes off, anything goes. Phone-home scripts have no where to call, CD key checks are easily spoofed and there is next to no evidence. While normally a fairly clean-cut, straight edge digital denizen, I'll admit on numerous occasions to sharing around a full game on a memory stick. To me it's not much different to syncing an extra controller to my 360. Just adding another player into a game I own and have payed good money to enjoy. And on quite a few occasions it's even convinced people to buy games I'm sure they'd never have considered without the gratuitous taster of a free copy. But, of course, I'm pretty certain Blizzard don't see it that way... To most sales execs, anyone playing a borrowed copy is someone who won't be handing over money at a till any time soon. Something they, whether correctly or incorrectly, want to avoid.

Connecting through Battle.net will of course mean that every player will need not only a directory full of ones and zeros, but a genuine, unique CD key to play. Somehow I find it hard to believe that some of my less PC savvy friends will be able to justify the expense of a game they may play once a month at best...

But it is an interesting situation. Play an RPG and you hardly expect everyone to pick up a Player's Guide; pay for cable and you hardly expect to be charged extra to let your friends come over and watch a movie... Less and less now are we treating videogames as "products" and more as "licenses to use services". How far is too far?

Great job Blizzard. It seems you may have taken a damn good shot at killing off one of the best parts of Freebooting. Playing the damn games.

Shed: You're getting very good Lstar. This article is excellent, if not too epic. Keep it up xox.

Well, I suppose for as long as it takes for Razor or some other bunch of aspiring "info-terrorists" to rig up a working keygen...

What're You Buying?

2009-06-29T00:00:00.001+01:00

LSTAR: As you've probably seen, Sehane at the moment is a bit of a General Interest blog. By which I mean, we write about things we find generally interesting without any real sense of focus.

Not that we pay much attention to criticism (hey, that's our job!) I thought it might be prudent to ask you folks what you want us to focus on.

And yes, you may vote for multiple categories.

Missed Playing Resident Evil on the PS1?

2009-06-28T12:00:00.001+01:00

LSTAR: Great! Now you don't have to, thanks to this hi-definition/hi-fidelity remake!

Dan Deacon - Bromeister

2009-06-27T12:00:00.002+01:00

"I've Been Wrong So Many Times Before - But Never Quite Like This."

LSTAR: Dan Deacon has always been a favourite of mine ever since Spiderman of the Rings found its way into my CD Drive. So far, Bromst - his latest effort - hasn't disappointed, mixing the classic elements of his previous work with a hitherto undisplayed maturity. Wheras Spiderman was very much an Ode to Playtime and Milk and Cookies, Bromst, while keeping the fun jungley jingles and overall insanity, shows a much more complex side to Deacon. Richer, more organic and ultimately more listenable.

Also, the fact that people can now overlay their comments on the actual videos on YouTube is as exciting as it is sickening. A new venue for expression, a new venue for people to ruin...

SteamWatch - Zeno Clash and Dark Messiah

2009-06-26T23:50:00.004+01:00

LSTAR: This week's Steam Deals (Steals?) are two flawed favourites from the Archives of Sehane. While arguably not worth the full entrance fee, with 50% off on both titles they should become a lot more appealing to even the most cynical of reader...

On the one hand, Zeno Clash, the jewel of Chile's game development scene, an insane romp through a prehistoric world via the medium of kicking, punching and stomping. It feels very much like a cross between a modern shooter and one of the sidescrolling classics of the 90s like Streets of Rage or Double Dragon. At £7.49, while not an essential purchase it should be considered, especially if you find the possibility of kneeing an Elephantman in face even slightly tempting. The newly released (free) DLC also helps to lessen the painful briefness of it all.

On the other, fantastically grim fantasy action courtesy of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Leaving its dusty RPG roots behind, Dark Messiah is an all Kicking all Stabbing action-game with nary a dice-roll in sight. Fun and compelling virtually the whole way through (with the exception of the Goddamn Evil Spiders...)At £3, this source-powered gem is an absolute steal and I'd be hard pressed not to recommend it to anyone. Easily amongst the top 5 games I played last year, Metacritic be damned.

Buy it. Now. Twice.

Sehane Review Here.

Layar - Reality, Augmented.

2009-06-19T15:48:00.006+01:00

LSTAR: In my steady march towards renaming this the "Things that are Kinda Like Shadowrun Blog", this caught my eye. An Augmented Reality system deigned for Andoroid-powered mobile-phones and (soon) the iPhone 3GS. Through a mixture of GPS, Electronic Compass, Internet and Camera technologies, items of interest are highlighted on your camera's view by AROs (Augmented Reality Objects), with more information available with a touch.

While this demo seems mostly focused on real estate (and who isn't focused on real estate?) the Application can cover Bars, Hotels, Restaurants and pretty much anything else worth adding to the database. Although the currently released edition only covers the Netherlands, "Layars" for other countries, including America and Britain, are promised by the end of the year.

Although staring into your mobile might seem like an impractical way to get around town (not that most of us don't do this anyway already...), this could make for a perfect excuse to ditch those tourist guides further afield. And hey, it can't be long now until true Optical Implants...

iEye... I can see it now...

GameWatch: Prototype Review

2009-06-14T22:52:00.006+01:00

LSTAR: This week I got Prototype. This week I finished Prototype. That should tell you two key facts off the bat: It's very compelling, but oh so very short. While such a short campaign would be easier to forgive in Corridor Shooter X, in a free-roaming game like Prototype, isn't 70% of your time spent travelling from place to place anyway? I guess it's in Prototype's favour then that transport is so well done. A little like Assassin's Creed, if Altair was able to fly and didn't have to worry about falling off things...

Loved

That's a lot of... "Fisting" action...: With 5 biological forms of hand-to-hand (or tentacle-to-hand) combat, not to mention an array of handheld weaponry, there's no shortage of ways to make yourself felt on the shifting battlefields of New York City. From the slow and heavy Hammerfists to the lithe, lethal Blade it's easy to find a favourite. Although I settled into using the awesome Whipfists for most situations, the fact that the game kicks in a burst of slowmo upon opening the radial Powers Menu makes it easy to mix things up when the circumstances demand it.

The Venn Diagrams of War: As the game goes on, the two factions occupying NYC move their areas of influence, based in part on your actions. Reduce a Marine staging point to rubble? Chances are the boys in khaki aren't going to be securing the Upper West Side any time soon. Light up an Infected Hive with a thermobaric device and soon there'll be tanks running roughshod over disease ridden corpses. Some of the best scenes in the game occur when the two factions' areas of influence overlap. Soldiers, mutants, monsters, tanks, helichoppers get to it, while civilians flee and you take advantage of the distraction.

Man-Glider: One of Mercer's most useful and awe-inspiring powers is his ability to glide. While not capable of true flight, running vertically up the side of a skyscraper, leaping off the top and swooping to your destination, bouncing from rooftop to rooftop like some sort of urban flying squirrel is almost better.

Close to Home: Even with all the virulent imagery and state brutality, the most disturbing thing is watching pedestrians walk through central park and blocks of traffic honk their way through rush hour when barely five blocks away, in a neighbouring district, you can hear the sound of frantic gunfire. After all, how close would we let a pandemic come before taking notice?

How... Intriguing: The Web of Intrigue is a very interesting way of letting the player unravel the story of Prototype. While, in function it's not too different to the Journal Entries that have been cluttering up corridors with prevailing frequency since they appeared in Bioshock, the WoI has a much stronger flavour. With Mercer's ability to consume enemies, both body and soul, it makes tremendous sense for him to investigate his predicament by snatching persons of interest from the street. In any case, these mobile memory banks make a Hella lot more sense than assuming that everyone of importance will pour their hearts and souls into a diary any could stumble across... Oh wait.

These Times, They Are A Changin': It's also interesting just watching the City change over the course of the campaign. Seeing increasing numbers of soldiers patrolling the safer districts, propaganda posters ("Do YOU Know The Signs?") being pasted over adverts for TV shows and perfumes, then being defaced when people realize that the closest thing to a cure is a Tactical Nuclear Missile.

Hated

Haven't I Seen you Round Here Before?: For a game that's supposed to be about a dynamically evolving super-virus there's a disturbing lack of variation. Pedestrians are decently mixed (not that you ever pay much attention to them) with a variety of ethnicities and styles, but the meat of your enemies, the Military forces have less than a dozen different models, the Infected only 3 or 4. It's really is hard to see why Radical didn't just alter the existing civilian models for their Infected counterparts.

Deja Vu Demolitions: Bizarrely, while Marine Outposts and Infected Hives move across the city throughout the campaign, they always, without fail, settle in the same type of building. It's a real shame that with all the sky-scrapers, warehouses, sports stadiums and apartment blocks in Manhattan that the Infection always infests the same, dull, squat building. Always.

Fightin' Der Final Boss: The final boss is, well...
A: Frankly Unnecessary.
B: A Repetition of a Previous Boss.
C: Set Against a Timer.
D: Barely a fifth the size of the boss that came before it.
It's hard to think of any Golden Rules it doesn't break...

The villain's gambit is also faintly ridiculous...
Villain: "Don't kill me! Only I know the code for the missile!"
Mercer: "I can eat people to learn what they know!"
Villain: "Oh no! A Big monster!"
Mercer: "Let's fight!"

All in all, Prototype is an immensely enjoyable experience. Any technical or design quibbles are quickly swept under the carpet when you realize just how much power the game is offering you. By the end of the campaign you're swatting helicopters like flies, taking out entire squads of infantry with a single sweep of you fists and sending people flying like ten-pins just by running past them. While the Web of Intrigue does provide a bit of extra content, longevity will still be the deciding point for most people. That is, people who aren't already completely sold on becoming a cross between Wolverine, The Hulk and the Common Cold.

Care to nitpick?

Scribblenauts: Child-friendly Badassery?

2009-06-12T18:46:00.002+01:00

Scribblenauts at IGN.com

Shed: Sorry for the hiatus, folks, been too busy playing games to write about 'em!

So here's Scribblenauts, a new puzzle/action/platformer from 5th Cell, to be released later this year on DS. The concept behind the game is that "anything you write, you can use". So with the DS stylus, you can write the name of an object, and it will spawn: you can then place it where you want in the game world and it will behave as it would in real life (or in fiction as the case may be.) The aim is to collect Mario-esque stars to complete the 200+ stages and challenges the game contains, in any way your imagination can think of.

The example in this E3 demo is one of the most badass things I've ever seen:

He makes Cthulhu. He makes God. He gives god a skateboard. And a shotgun. He makes them fight (to make it an... even battle?!) I'd be incredibly worried if a kid put in "Cthulhu", but seriously... Awesome? Yes.

Boycott Left 4 Dead?

2009-06-07T14:28:00.002+01:00

LSTAR: In the time following its announcement, there's been some negative sentiment building up about the impending Left 4 Dead 2. I'm going to write a bit more at length about what I think went wrong, at some point, but I'm in a bit of a hurry today, so I'll let Boycott Hitler handle your enlightenment.

Kawa-E3 - Mindthinks

2009-06-01T20:29:00.005+01:00

LSTAR: Just finished watching this E3's Microsoft Conference. So. Much. Stuff.

Shadow Complex - Looks like a great "Epic" mix of Castlevania, Bionic Commando and Spelunky!

Splinter Cell - Looks okay. Never been a fan of the series, but the way they present information on the world is so goddamn stylish!

Modern Warfare 2 - Really. Long. Climbing Sequence. I don't know... It looks polished and pretty and everything, but something about this whole franchise recently has been rubbing me the wrong way. I loved Cod1 for its freshness even after so much Medal of Honor. For the way it made you feel vulnerable. Just another mug in a fancy uniform. I still haven't quite got used to the Cockney wiseguys fighting infinite waves of respawning Russians with Ice-Pick-Fu.

Left 4 Dead 2 - !!!!!!!!!! (Plus, who the Hell are these Hicks!?) P.S. That better be a Southern Gentleman at the end there!

Halo: ODST + Reach - ODST looks like your standard run and gun adventure, but with a plot a little closer to Medium than Halo. Wandering through a dying city, stumbling upon significatn objects lets you relive the experiences of the soldiers who came before you. Odd.
Reach is, I'm guessing, the new MMOFPS project in disguise.

Final Fantasy XIII - One of the things I liked about VII when I was replaying it recently was the way it merged battles with storytelling at some points. This looks to take it a country mile further, seamlessly springing from CGI to ATB and back again. Plus, incredibly shiny.

Alan Wake - Finally, after so long it looks like it's just around the corner, dated for Spring of 0'10. I like the way you have to melt the Shadow-shield away with your flashlight. And the narration. And the flares. And the whole "Previously Seen On American TV" style. The Axe-tossing villagers (Mountain bandits? 20th Century time-travellers? I don't know...) reminds me a lot of Resi 4.

Hideo Kojima - The Hideo Kojima on stage with the Microsoft Reps? Too good to be true? Maybe. Looks like we won't be getting MGS 4, but a new entry in the franchise called Rising. Raiden looks to play a starring, and the new tagline "Lightning Bolt Action" probably hints at a change of pace from Old Man Snake's sneaky sneaking. I predict lots of jumping about, slow-motion and slashing metal things in half with swords.

Natal - Prenatal, postnatal, Project Natal... I'm about 50/50 over whether that was futuristic Wizardry or a pile of Marketing Bullhocky. The Attractive Teens (tm) in the advert didn't help much, but the live demonstrations... Other than some strange contortion in the Avatars, the live demonstrations looked like this could even work... Looks like Microsoft could be about to show Ninty where to stick that Wiimote.
Well, except that "Milo" bit. To me, that looks like pure Molyneux Bullhocky, but I wouldn't mind being proven wrong.

And that was the first presentation...

Men on the Cheap. Again.

2009-05-30T17:00:00.000+01:00

LSTAR: I didn't make anywhere near enough fuss last time Men of War was on sale. This time round, in celebration of GamersGate's recent redesign, MoW is 60% off, bringing it down to a quite reasonable £10. Time to set things straight...

Sequel to one of my favourite RTSs of all time, Soldiers: Heroes of WW2, MoW is a repackaging of some of the more recent entries in Russia's Outfront series of tactical RTSs, adding more units, maps and general gleam. MoW's genius is that it doesn't have to resort to "Experimental" and speculative units to make its encounters interesting. Through a mix of physics, environmental destruction and direct unit control MoW makes even the most derivative of Tank battles into a tense and entertaining thrill ride.

Men of War ups the ante on its predecessors in almost every way imaginable; better AI, visuals, writing, more units for each of the 4(5) factions; America, Britain, Russia and Germany (along with Japan, when the next patch hits). The only feature that really lacks compared to Soldiers is the voice acting. In Soldiers, units spewed out relatively convincing drivel that's so hilariously out of place it really deserves a post all of its own. In MoW the accents make it hard to take even the best prepared briefing seriously. It's as if the Quality of writing is weighted against the Quality of voice acting on some kind of ridiculous aural see-saw...

The real star of the show is Direct control, allowing you to swoop down and take on the roll of almost anything on the battlefield, from a 300mm artillery piece, to a humble rifleman or even a fighter plane. Although still seen from overhead, the controls become more like the WASD of an FPS than the click and drag of an RTS, hijacking the AI and changing the course of a battle by nailing a perfect shot or cutting off an enemy retreat. Or, incompetantly driving over a mine and flattening a charging line of friendly infantry.

The environmental and physics effects are also more like those seen in modern shooters than any RTS. Ice cracks sending tanks sinking into the depths, fire spreads from house to house in cramped villages while explosive shells flip halftracks on their sides and turn infantry into paste. The game is also meticulously detailed with hundreds of different units and vehicles. Heck. There's 7 variations of the SdKfz alone... With the depth of research that's clearly gone into MoW, it really makes you wonder how the team let it go on sale with such an uninspiring name. But then, 1C seem to have made this their specialty in recent years...

I should probably add here that the GamersGate version uses StarForce DRM. Unlike 90% of the blogger community, I really don't give a piss. If it bothers you that much, run a SF Removal tool. Or, ya' know, deprive yourself.

To close, if you only buy one bizarrely esoteric RTS on my say so this year, make it this one.

Snaaaaaaaaake!

2009-05-27T18:25:00.002+01:00

LSTAR: !

Kojima's teaser site for his upcoming project has began flashing a most handsome mug! This, along with other flashing symbols could spell an inbound MGS5 or another PSP instalment, depending on how you interpret it.

So we know it's going to be Metal Gear... But what form will it take? Guess we'll find out in 100 hours.

Also, the Badge on the Beret reads "Militares Sans Frontier". Saucy!

Mad Cat vs T36/85

2009-05-23T14:34:00.004+01:00

LSTAR: It's not so long ago I was thinking to myself, "Hey, wouldn't a Battletech mod for Best Way's fantabulous Men of War be awesome?"

Guess what...?

TRICO: Cat eagle... rat... bat?!

2009-05-20T16:11:00.002+01:00

Shed: So, after waiting long time for some details, the new Team Ico project has been partially revealed (or maybe not at all if this isn't legit.)

Considering Shadow of the Colossus featured 1 man (+ horse) against 16 huge bosses, it was to be expected that they might try to invert the odds in the next sequel. Here we see an Ico-like boy befriending some sort of giant cat eagle rat bat creature, which he obviously has some control over. Potentially this could mean removing the barrier that was ever present in the previous games- unclimbable structures.

Here we see the CERB (Cat, Eagle, Rat, Bat, natch) climbing a fair bit, and letting the boy reach greater heights. In Ico we played a boy attached to a fragile woman, a very immobile set-up; in SotC we played a grown man attached (loosely) to his horse, a speedy but not infallible set-up. In TRICO, we seem to play a little boy attached to a giant creature, who (along with obviously being fast) can climb structures and allow us to reach places otherwise unreachable. It'll be interesting to see how they adapt the level design of the game to match this new ethic.

As for the trailer itself, I'm not entirely sold. The style doesn't seem as developed and dark as Shadow of the Collossus, or as developed and beautiful as Ico. Of course, this could be NICO syndrome; simply Fumito Ueda's original pre-rendered view on what the concept of the game is, not necessarily what it will finally look like. However, the game has been in development for a number of years now: releasing the original Beta video would be a strange move.

Some of the trailer is a bit odd, but interesting. Feeding the CERB griffin thing barrels of what; food, wine?! Can it see in the dark? Is that what the reflective pupils are all about?

One specific part of the video looks like in-game footage: when the boy is clinging to it's rat-tail as it climbs onto a ledge. If that IS in-game, it looks a treat, whereas some of the model textures (the tattoos on the boys arms) leave a bit desired.

Overall it could be good, potentially great, but we need to wait and hear what the Team have to say on the matter. And see if they release anything any more tantalising...

Also- it seems the fan community's speculation on the original advertised image was right... not bad, you guys!

Band Meme - The best Bands Never Made

2009-05-19T17:29:00.003+01:00

LSTAR: Here's a little Meme-game for today...

1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Quotations Page and select “random quotations”
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together (or paint)

"Mon petite choufleur..."

2009-05-17T16:33:00.007+01:00

LSTAR: I'm not quite sure how they're keeping this up, but each "Meet the Team" video Valve releases blows everything that came before straight out of the water. This is how you make a trailer.

What I wouldn't pay to give the L4D Team a chance...

Oh Hell No

2009-05-15T23:27:00.004+01:00

LSTAR: Next week's Team Fortress 2 update, in addition to bringing a few new toys for my favourite class, is also making things ever so slightly easier for the bane of my existences to do what they do best.... Yup, Day 4 of the Sniper Update has been revealed to be... The Spy Update!?

While anything that results in more Spies is generally a "bad thing" in my books, the new gizmos do indeed look rather funky. The Dead Ringer resurrecting the "play dead" ability of Team Fortress Classic's Spies, and the Cloak and Dagger letting Spies stay cloaked indefinately, so long as they stand perfectly still, depleting only when they decide to move. Fine by me!

Dozens of Spies battle dozens of Snipers beginning next Tuesday, as everyone else stands aside looking confused. Better school up on your Moscow Rules!

ConcertWatch: Andrew Bird at Oran Mor, Glasgow

2009-05-15T03:10:00.001+01:00

Shed: Bird strode on stage like a youthful Bruce Campbell when I least expected it, and when I turned he was playing his violin. On it's side. Like a ukelele. Strumming away, he just didn't seem to care- yet the music that emerged from the instrument was so well rounded and crisp, like an autumn thermal, it really didn't matter how he played it; this was quintessential Andrew Bird. Lovely whimsical folk genre bending and songwriting.

Throughout the basic but elongated set Bird only used three instruments (with, surprisingly, no bandmates at all); his violin, his electric guitar, and his mouth. However, out of sight was an obviously complex set of sampling machines, lending him the abillity to record and repeat any musical segment he chose from one of his instruments. Other artists have used this to some degree; KT Tunstall's original performance of Black Horse featured her looping her own voice and harmonising with it, whilst a seperate looped drum beat she had recorded earlier played in the background. Bird's use of the technology was a little more complex. Many of the songs were stretched to twice their normal length, him drawing together multiple parts recorded on his violin or from his whistling. Even the structure of the songs was often unique- a multi-layered introduction segment that faded out was suddenly drawn back in during a chorus, as if some invisible band had just suddenly erupted into motion, filling out the whole backdrop to the tune. A couple of songs in particular had him pull off some amazing feats: play a two bar riff on the violin, loop it immediately, harmonise over the riff fluidly, loop the harmony, then play a bassline over them and loop that also- in the space of ten seconds you had a chamber orchestra style backing track for his honeydew voice to sing over, all with one violin.

It was an extremely impressive show, but the use of such technology comes with it's vices. A couple of times he mistimed his sampling (or maybe the sampling machine mistimed him), and he had to start a song over. To his credit, he shook his head with distain at the machines each time, causing the audience to laugh, and then started again without errors. No harm done. The music itself was fantastic; seeing the legendary musician live was considerably better than listening to him on record. You got all the little details this way: being able to watch his fingers as he trilled virtuostically on the violin, or examine his pinched face as he slid into an epic whistling part halfway through a song. Not a single note was missed throughout the entire show. What suprised me most was his lack of pretention, his easiness with the crowd and his music- he came across as a restrained but cool guy. His character shone through the stage setup too, with the symmetrical doubled Gramophone heads he dubbed "Spinny" (because they spun whenever he hit a certain pedal) perched behind him, and a red hue cast accross the scene. His between-song chat was quiet but quirky, explaining some of the history behind songs on Armchair Apocrypha and Noble Beast, although there could have been more of this conversation. The latter half of the show seemed to drag a little: the relatively few songs were very long, and there wasn't quite enough variation in the instrumentation to keep the punters' attention. Even though the arrangements were excellent, I felt my interest starting to wan at a few points.

The show stripped down some of his more complex tunes, and added more depth to some of his simpler tunes in a fantastic, nearly symphonic, style. Songs like Dark Matter shone through in this arrangement; the music being beautiful then the song being wonderful once he had started his drawling vocal expedition. We got better singing than on the records, better violin than on the records, and (in some cases) better arangements than on the records,
but the same strange off-beat lyrics and overall Birdian impression as on the records. Great atmosphere, great sound, and (even if it became a bit much by the end,) a great show.

Dot. Dot. Dot.

2009-05-13T12:24:00.002+01:00

LSTAR: Wow... I mean, just... Wow.

Yuss!

2009-05-11T17:54:00.002+01:00

LSTAR: Only one question remains... What the Hell's a "Thiaf"?

Zeno Clash is Demo

2009-05-02T15:16:00.003+01:00

LSTAR: A demo for Team ACE's First Person.... "Thing", Zeno Clash has been put up on Steam. It's worth trying out, and I myself quite enjoyed it. On the downside, any eagle-eyed folk looking over my Steam-page will probably have seen that I only spent 4 hours playing it over the past 2 weeks. Why so little time for such a beautiful and interesting game? Because that's how long it took to finish it...

This should be a good chance to see if it's worth 15 of your Earth Pounds, but take my advice; wait for another 50% off weekend.

Now All We Need Is a District 9 Rule 34...

2009-05-02T15:03:00.003+01:00

LSTAR: Immigration Control, Aliens and a Big-Ass Space Ship? Now this could make for a very interesting movie...

I really like the "Documentary Interview" style of the first half of the trailer. So long as it doesn't devolve into a modern-day reimagining of V...

And I can't help but feel I've seen that Bug before...

Oh Otacon... How could you...?

2009-05-01T17:37:00.003+01:00

» Click for... SNAKE!? SNAAAAAKE! «

LSTAR: He'll never live that one down!

In related news, Hiimdaisy's webcomics are the Bee's Knees. Go read 'em.

1st of May

2009-05-01T17:34:00.001+01:00

LSTAR: First of May people! Uh... Probably best not to play this one at work...

"That's it! I quit!"

2009-04-27T14:08:00.004+01:00

LSTAR: I... Wait... What... Huh...?

I feel as if I've just been run over by a bandwagon.

Red Faction: Guerrilla Demo

2009-04-27T12:42:00.004+01:00

Shed: Volition and THQ have revived 2002's remembered-but-not-appreciated Red Faction for the third time, a little late to the party, onto the current generation. With the power of our machines these days, the often disappointing 'GeoMod'- the original tech that allowed in-game world destruction- can be fully realised. I remember the irritating moments in the original games when you realised how generally limited the destruction was. You'd only be able to destroy certain types of walls, or certain windows and furniture. For the first few moments of the new demo of Red Faction: Guerrilla, I encountered almost no destruction. But that soon changed, and some great times ensued.

Initially it seemed as if someone had taken the style and protagonist from Mass Effect, tweaked the controls, and removed the RPG segments. The world had the same tint, the models were slightly higher res (with no pop-in), the only real difference was that none of the NPC's reacted to you aside from GTA-style random comments, although this is understandable considering the open-world nature of the game. It all seemed solid, and I was given the objective of going and stealing a mining mech from a nearby EPG base.

When I entered combat however, it was clear that while this was like Mass Effect without the RPG components, the combat was incredibly solid, and more importantly, fun. You have a customary cover system which is functional but not essential, a good inventory system, and weapons that are all useful. I actually found the remote detonation charges handy and fun to throw about, unlike in similar games like Mercinaries 2; where I just didn't bother and shot stuff with my machine gun. Guerrilla seems to have found a perfect balance, from what I've seen: the amount of health you're given is just enough to make things tense, the strength of your enemies and the importance of your aim is just right, and of course, everything looks and feels great.

GeoMod 2.0 first reared it's wonderful head when I swung my rifle at a soldier who was trying to hide next to a bunker wall. The rifle butt made contact, but during it's swing it also collided with a ridge on the wall, a crack appeared and a chunk of the wall slid out slightly. I took note, and beat the soldier to death, before turning my attention to the wall. The detail was astounding; by hitting the wall repeatedly, it would crack more and more, bits falling off here and there (if you whap out your awesome hammer bits go veritably flying), crumbling realistically. As you proceed and the combat gets more and more explosive, GeoMod is displayed more and more- never blatantly, but realistically. An ore processing building won't collapse fully unless you really work at it, but when it does, damn does it feel good.

I can't recommend trying the demo enough, it showcases small scale small-arms gunfights, a mech beating session (no weapons, just the abillity to swing and sweep your huge arms and destroy shit) surrounded by countless enemies and vehicles, and a driving and shooting section that rivals many I've played in other games. The physics of vehicles and ragdolls flying around as you blow shit up/ fling shit around is just so damn thrilling. Not to mention pretty pretty. Go check it out boys.

GameWatch: Killzone 2

2009-04-20T01:25:00.001+01:00

Shed: Almost six years in the making, and the sequel to Guerrila Games’ well-received shooter Killzone has arrived. If you’ve seen the game at all, you’ll know what to expect: the iconic Helghast army we repelled from planet Vespa in the original are now defending their own turf with brutal conviction, and Guerrilla have created a simulation of small scale gritty conflict unsurpassed in viscerality. The excellent introduction feels as if it’s come straight out of Starship Troopers, we meet Rico and Sev (the player character) watching Helghast propaganda as they and Vespa prepare for the two week journey to the planet Helghan, then in epic space-opera style we follow the invasion force of carrier ships across the system to the planet that war and industry is devouring, all as the tyrant Scolar Visari performs his vindictive speech condemning the ISA and idolising Helghan mettle. It’s thrilling stuff, and it becomes more so as you sink your trigger fingers into the game.

Killzone 2 is a game about killing. As the name suggests. And much killing you will do. Shooting the Helghast accounts for almost 100% of the KZ2 experience, and while this might sound monotonous, the variety in weapons, environments, and enemy types keep things generally fresh. On top of that however, shooting something in KZ2 isn’t like shooting something in other games. Where Call of Duty 4 has smooth and light responsiveness to a bullet ripping into flesh, and Gears of War 2 provides a chunky gore and meat-ridden blast, Killzone 2 has the most responsive and realistic “death system” I’ve ever experienced. There’s a slight slowness, a rubato that other games always miss: when a bullet hits something in Killzone it will reel backwards or shudder perfectly- a shot to a man’s gut will emit a realistic burst of vivid blood, cause him to groan or cry, and he will step back clutching the wound. Where another game might do this in between half a second and one full second, Killzone gets the pace perfectly, a few seconds of shock and pain in the reaction to your shot. It gives you time to take it all in.

The graphics and physics engine of course, back this up entirely. The dark and murky cities and locations you go on Helghan are always wondrous to behold, and the level of detail is persistent to all scales. Muzzle flares cause perfectly toned flashes, everything in the vicinity momentarily casting an eerie shadow against surfaces beyond; explosions throw dirt and smoke in everyone’s eyes after a violent shockwave cascades through the area, knocking over panels and crates, sending enemies flying. The enemies might ragdoll excellently after a pseudo-animation, or they might hit the ground still conscious, and groan to their feet cursing, still clutching their rifle. It’s the most cinematic game I’ve ever experienced, from flying through the polluted Helghan sky on the ISA air-to-ground vehicles (almost agoraphobia inducing), to the distorted deep Cockney accents of the Helghast Stormtroopers as they throw a frag at you and shout “Catch!” The atmosphere is nearly perfect from start to finish (and I’d argue is perfection at a certain penultimate section), and the gameplay itself, although possibly a bit slow, is also incredibly cinematic.

On that note, not everyone will enjoy the gameplay of Killzone 2. This is a sacrifice for the extreme cinematic style that Guerrilla has achieved. It’s not the controls specifically, it’s just that the sheer heaviness of the response and movement seeps with inertia and takes quite some getting used to- some may be turned off entirely by this aspect. Simply aiming at someone can be difficult due to your aim swinging slightly with every movement and aim tweak. Usually after a level or so the controls start to feel more natural, and by the end of the game you might find yourself running and gunning with chugging ease, rather than stumbling and spraying with impatient effort. Sometimes it actually seemed easier to fire madly (but accurately) from the hip instead of aiming, sighting, and getting a good bead, although this does usually only work in certain close-combat situations (it also entirely does not apply to multiplayer, where good aim and ironsighting is essential). Otherwise the controls are great, with little quirks that are well implemented: turning the controller with six-axis to turn a valve like you would in real life; or using six-axis controller movement to tweak your aiming with the sniper rifle for the perfect shot. A simple and usually effective cover system is also present, the trigger used to crouch can also lock you onto a vertical surface for cover, letting you lean out in an extremely cool manner. Sometimes it’ll lock you onto a surface you don’t want to, or prevent you from firing due to something sticking out in front of your gun, but in most cases the system works fine.

This heavy and visually pleasing control ethic creates a bizarre sensation that pervades throughout Killzone 2- it feels like you are not entirely in control. This also seems to have put some people off. Of course, you are in control; Sev would be immobile if not for your deft fingers, but you feel totally in the game world and looking through Sev’s eyes. A tie exists between you and the character, and subsequently the world; wherever you look, it’s really Sev looking, wherever you fire, Sev is firing. There are moments in the game when the illusion collapses- sometimes it’ll be transparently a simulation, other times you’ll feel in touch with Sev (seeing your shadow do exactly what you imagine you are actually doing for once), and other times you’ll forget all about it and shoot the hell out of stuff. It’s the sheer depth of detail that gives Killzone 2 this quality, it’s the closest thing to being a movie in terms of sense of character, time and place that we’ve seen so far. If it was real film footage it would only look slightly off- it would also be an occasionally cheesy, gritty action movie, but a cinema experience nonetheless. For the first time I’ve felt like I’m almost in a movie, it’s a truly new feeling to experience in a videogame.

Naturally it’s not quite there yet. Small things pin it down to ‘simply a game’, for example weapons momentarily shining white to display they’re useable. If you look at a dead body in KZ2, it’ll almost look real; the lighting, the texture, the blood effects- then by his dead hand a gun randomly flashing bright white just ruins it. A small point, but considering you’ll never see an unusable weapon on the ground, it’s pointless. The AI in the game is generally excellent, although occasionally it’ll lapse into stupidity, immediately destroying the impression that they’re actual soldiers and turning them into just interactive models on a screen. This does nothing to the joy and satisfaction you’ll get killing them, but is still alienating on occasion. Mostly the AI is disturbingly smart, moving and covering realistically, even sometimes flanking you and finishing you off; it’s clear Guerrilla have done a lot of work in this department. The plot is also a bit simple, but still conveys a message and story effectively. I personally love the characters, although I know people who don’t. I found Sev’s professional gruntish quietness cool, and Garza’s relaxed banter easy to relate to; unlike say Marcus Fenix’s ridiculous pricky badassness and Dom’s bi-polar “quiet funny guy/ emotional nut” routine.

Ultimately, Killzone 2 succeeds at being a smooth and brilliantly detailed piece of gaming, nearly the true game equivalent of an action blockbuster movie. The multiplayer stands in very good stead although it hasn’t drawn me in much- taking the unlock system of CoD4, but improving it and adding interesting functionality, for example, combining classes. Still, it’s the single player that stands out for me, there are a selection of moments that made me think “holy crap, this is the future” as I was playing. From a soldier throwing a grenade into a room I’d never seen them throw one into before, shattering the entire place, wooden blinds and boxes shuddering and collapsing as if from an earthquake; to butting a trooper with my rifle, knocking his helmet off, and watching him clutch his exposed bald head with one hand in surprise, raise his other hand as he does this, and riddle me with bullets; to me and a Helghast beating each other, retreating, shooting at each other till empty, then me quickly taking out my magnum and accidentally hitting his head and downing him in one hit, him letting out a cry and me feeling a twinge of guilt. The crown jewel of the game is the penultimate level; a battle towards a building, and hands down the most incredible battle I have ever taken part in through all my years of gaming. Hundreds of enemies and allies, the sky red with anger, chaos and screams as teammates and foes fall alike, sheer war and conflict, and the most thrilling level I’ve ever played in a game. I do not exaggerate.

Some may have issues with controlling the game, and the tackiness of some of the story content; but for those who can appreciate it, enjoy the most cinematic game made to date.

Hey, You've Got Arthur C. Clarke In My Gundam 00

2009-04-15T21:41:00.005+01:00

LSTAR: And so yet another Gundam series draws to a close... But what's this!? References to both A.C.C.'s classic Childhood's End and 2010: Odyssey Two?

This, and the foreshadowing of the mysterious "Dialogues with Jupiter" is way out of Gundam's normal ballpark. Sure, we've had lasers and robots, with the occasional Genetically Modified supersoldier, but never Aliens, as far as I remember.

What ever are they planning...?

Demigood

2009-04-14T21:58:00.002+01:00

LSTAR: Stardock's latest multiplayer-focused RTS effort, Demigod, has been released over a month early after American retailer GameStop broke street date. Looks like Stardock figured "What the Hell" and released it over their Impulse store as well.

Demigod can be had from Stardock themselves for about $40, or, if you can wait for the other major retailers to follow suit and trample the original release date of the 29th of May, you can save a little bit with ShopTo's £17.99.

It's looking quite nifty, and why yes, that is a Giant CastleMan with a MegaHammer firing arrows from his battlements; why do you ask?

Deal o' The Week - Far Cry 2

2009-04-14T21:52:00.001+01:00

LSTAR: Far Cry 2 was a thoroughly decent game. Pretty sights, easy on the machine, chunky action. When I saw that the Fortune Pack (Far Cry 2 + The First Round of DLC) was on Play.com for a tenner (71% off) I was sure it was a typo. Seems it isn't. Niiiice.

Every Night, The Same Old Dreams

2009-04-11T17:19:00.007+01:00

LSTAR: Here's the first gameplay footage of Bioshock 2. My thoughts? Nothing particularly special on show.

The opening Big Sister "chase" scene looks painfully scripted, and nothing we haven't seen a dozen times before. When it was first described to me, I imagined the Big Sister playing a roll something like Nemesis back in Resident Evil 3. An immortal villain, following you from location to location, a constant threat, thwartable only temporarily. Of course, there's nothing to say that Big Sisters goes through the entire game, leaping out from behind assorted debris when you get within 2 feet of her... That would be a bit silly.

Again with the room of endlessly respawning Splicers, the combat looks much like that seen in Bioshock. Plasmids, weapons and physics. Smooth as its predecessor, but the only new stuff on display is the Rivet Gun and Drill Lunge riposte Big Daddies are so fond of.

On the plus side, something that translate slightly better through 5 minute trailers perhaps, is the slightly higher level of shiny Rapture seems to have acquired over the course of its decline. The watery effects, both sheen and submergement, look a good deal better than they did in 'Shock 1. Also nice seeing a familiar face...

Overall, I'm pretty confident that 2K can pull together something to rival 'Shock 1, just so long as it doesn't fall victim to the ever-present scourge of BigBudgetSequelitis...

Man, I remember when a Big Daddy was just a big car with a missile launcher... Those were the days...

Shed: The Big Sister sequence is probably entirely "game intro segment" footage, that would explain why he only has the Big Drill and no 'mids, and it seems so scripted. It'll be the bit where the game sits back and shows you the deal with the Big Sis. Just like how at the start of 1 they sat back and showed you Rapture. The way they spoke about it in the PCG article/interview was that the Big Sister would be in some scripted sequences, but that she also would follow you, and once you reached a certain amount of Adam/ Lil Sis harvests, she would come for you constantly. Judging the entire Big Sis experience from this undoubtedly scripted part of the game isnae really fair.

The only really noteworthy gameplay on show was the fact that he could combo up the 'mids and weaps simultaneous, aside from that it was indeed same old same old. The Drill move was pretty rubbish, but chances are that the lunge is a specific attack, and you can just rev/stab with the Drill also. The level design overall, however, looks quite a bit more tight: I was digging the dark corridors and easier-to-understand double level plaza more than most stuff I saw in BS1 (hah, BS). After all, the whole thing is by the guy who did the Shalebridge Cradle.

I'm On a Boat... It's Pretty Awesome

2009-04-11T00:24:00.004+01:00

LSTAR: Ahh, the Lonely Island, with their seminal, Rap deconstructing ways...

Sail on, brothers...! Sail on...

GoG Spring Deal 1 - The Freespace Collection

2009-04-10T23:03:00.004+01:00

LSTAR: SHN favourite, GoG.com are currently running a Spring Sale, offering 25% off various (already silly cheap) thematic Game Bundles. There are a few decent choices here that nobody should ignore...

Freespace 1 (And Expansion) + Freespace 2 = $8.98

Once upon a time, Tie Fighter was my favourite game ever. In the cockpit of an Imperial Fighter craft you saw the conflicts of the Star Wars movies through from a pretty unique perspective. Instead of rehashing the movies' stories, Tie Fighter featured missions and stories more akin to the myriad of cannon novels of the last couple of decades, especially the arcs following Grand Admirals Thrawn and Zaarin.

As such, it's not hard to see why I'm more than a bit fond the Freespace series. The Freespace games took Lucasarts' work and ran with it, featuring bigger battles, bigger capital ships and all that in a fresh new Universe. For a warm-up, the game pitches the Terran Alliance against the alien Vasudan Empire in a bitter 14-year struggle. After a few introductory missions, the two sides are reluctantly and hurreidly forced to settle their differences when the arrival of the Shivans puts both their races' survival in doubt.

While the player takes to the skies in everything from nimble interceptors to lumbering multi-megaton bombers, the real stars of the show, especially in the sequel, are the magnificent Capital Ships; Cruisers and Battleships each one bristling with more flak guns and firing laser beams big enough to eat a starfighter whole. Even with the immense power of that Capitals, Freespace is a universe in which Fighters are an important and versatile part of any fleet. If you've ever seen an episode of Babylon 5 or Battlestar, you'll know what to expect.

Where the Freespace games really shine is atmosphere (somewhat ironically perhaps, given the setting). In between each mission is a short cutscene detailing current war events, followed by a voice-overed briefing. Unlike Tie Fighter's somewhat stale briefings, Freespace's intros are full of character, new COs welcoming you to squadrons, giving you a little background and generally going above and beyond simply reading out what you'll be doing in the next mission. More than just a series of entertaining skirmishes, Freespace really makes you feel part of the squadrons you're assigned to, sharing their elation and despair as battles are fought, plans are formed and, inevitably, collapse horribly over the course of the Great War.

It'd probably be wise to note that Freespace 2 is now Open Source, a veritable army of eager coders making certain that the game is just as system taxing and graphically intensive as it was on the day of its launch, adding all kinds of fancy graphical techno-buzzwords as well as supporting a large number of new Campaigns and Mods. You know, in case you have any free time left after finishing the original campaigns.

The Open Source Installer can be found here, lowering the dificulty of Open Sourceifying your game from "Mind Numbing" to "Tricky".

Half-Life: It Can Be Done

2009-04-09T22:26:00.003+01:00

Shed: What makes the Half-Life series so brilliantly unique is it's narrative style. From start to finish you witness events through one set of eyes: your own (with Gordon Freeman, the main character, as proxy.) Speculation has always been rife over how a Half-Life film would be done- would the whole thing be filmed from a first-person perspective ala the games? Or would a more usual style be used; letting the story and universe create that Half-Life feel?

Recently we've seen 'Escape from City 17' (mind to put video's into HD or HQ), a surprisingly good amateur short about two rebels fleeing from post-Citadel City 17. The acting wasn't bad, the filming was excellent, and the special effects were very decent, especially for an amateur film. Now, apparently, Valve have picked up the show to be produced professionally; a miniseries entering development. Nice.

Whilst perusing some of IGN's video's I happened accross Half-Life 2: What's In The Box? Now this was exciting. Seemingly a short film set in the HL2 universe, it showcased how not only is a first-person film feasable, but how it is easily possible. Check her out.

The Original video is here. An eerie but cool viral marketing campaign no doubt. That's how those things always go. Irritatingly, contrary to what IGN says, the project seems to have no actual ties with Half-Life, yet the sound design and atmosphere are, in places, exactly the same. IGN's version seems to have some more sound effects (like the 'energy depleted' Half-Life sound bit). The whole thing is apparently a Netherlands film test for post-production special effects, and they are some of the best effects I've seen (aside from the crumbling brick shed which is a bit rubbishy). Check her out.

Tools I Use: Spotify

2009-04-09T13:57:00.004+01:00

LSTAR: Becoming ever more paranoid that Corporate Hackers are monitoring my interweb traffic, Spotify is an Oasis of safe, legal music amidst a sea of irrational worries.

Sure, it may not have the most complete catalogue, often opting for only a band's newest and most popular material, and the free service is interspersed with the occasional Radio-style advert, but the buffering is lightning fast and the vaguely iTunes-esque interface is largely functional (unlike its stylistic inspiration...). The sound quality, while hardly lossless, is decent to good as well, averaging at about 160 kb/s.

In addition to basic music playback, a recent version added support for Scrobbling (what a great word...) to your last.fm account. It's also possible to maintain collaborative playlists with other users, via a shared playlist URL, and an Android and iPhone client is reportedly in the works, allowing you to temporarily save tracks to your device to be played back at a later date, with or without an Internet connection.

Registration is currently open to UK residents, with Americans still waiting for an official way to access the European project (short of a proxy server, of course).

I might add, that while Spotify's Streaming Service is perfectly legal, what actually happens to the music while it's running through your System Mixer is anyone's guess...

A Shadow on the Silver Screen?

2009-04-08T23:34:00.004+01:00

LSTAR: I love Video games. I love Movies. Video game Movies...? Not so much.

Anyone who's hung around here for longer than about a week should know that we're pretty fond of Team Ico's artsy masterpiece Shadow of the Colossus. A lone young man, you wander a sparse wilderness, alone except for your horse, trying to find and defeat 16 enormous stone idols. Why are you there? Who is the Girl you're trying to resurrect? The game is largely dialogue free and wonderfully open to interpretation, prompting fans to write oodles worth of plot analysis.

Thus, I was pretty shocked to discover a movie adaptation in the works. Helmed by Kevin Misher, probably best known for his work on The Scorpion King, perhaps the world's most pointless prequel, and written by Justin Marks, scribe of the recent Street-Fighter trainwreck, The Legend of Chun-Li... Well, let's just say my hopes aren't particularly high.

2009-04-01T19:06:00.001+01:00

Hiding in Plain Sight

2009-03-31T14:29:00.001+01:00

LSTAR: Just had to post this before Shed got to it...

Anon Domini

2009-03-30T22:39:00.003+01:00

LSTAR: Don't know about you, but I'm pretty terrified right now.

Well, either that or laughing my ass off.

On The New TIG Project

2009-03-30T03:16:00.004+01:00

Shed: Anyone who has dipped their toes in my taste of videogames will know that Team Ico's Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are my favourite videogames of all time. Star mentioned to me the other day that Fumito Ueda, the man with the original vision for these two games, made a couple of very thin statements about the 3rd game from Team Ico Group. Delving into the TIG Blog showed a quote from the man that, in my mind, concretes the third project, as previously quoted, as going to be "really, really, good".

The quote comes from Ueda's thanks for the "Special Contribution to Visual Arts" award; the TIGroup winning over the likes of Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid.

"Thank you for this award. When we started working on ICO ten years ago, we faced many challenges because we wanted to create something which did not exist. We are now facing a similar challenge with our new project. Please wait a little more, we are sure you’ll like it very much. Thank you again."

Squeee!

Got a Lot of Good Things on Sale Today, Stranger...

2009-03-29T16:09:00.011+01:00

LSTAR: And you won't even have to buy them at a high price!

The final item in Ubisoft's week-long Steam sale is the Ubisoft Classic pack, and it's a right cracker. Far Cry, IL-2, Dark Messiah and Beyond Good and Evil, all for ₤8.99...

Far Cry was the defining "High-Spec Shooter" of my adolescence. Jaw-dropping graphics, realistic AI and the first time I was forced to compromise graphical settings to get a playable frame rate...

IL-2 Sturmovik is a brutally realistic flight-sim set over World War 2 era Russia. It, set next to Operation Flashpoint and Silent Hunter in my mind, is one one of the all-time best Combat Simulators. Even better, the 1946 pack contains several expansion packs, featuring new materials. The titular 1946 pack itself features some gloriously anachronistic Jet prototypes from an alternate history in which the war last until, you guessed it, 1946.

Beyond Good and Evil is an excellent adventure game. Beyond Good, you might say. A lot like the equally excellent Psychonauts, BG&E is consoley without being unsophisticated, and features combat without letting it bog the story down. With a sci-fi photo-journalistic element, it's a lot like a typical Zelda game, mixed in with a little... X-Files is the only thing that comes to mind, but that's not quite right...

Dark Messiah, while not a true classic, in the same sense as the other games in the pack, is still a heck of a lot of fun. I've waffled on this before, so I'll keep it brief. Still the best Fantasy Chuck Norris simulator to be found on the PC.

I was excited that a lot of these games would be coming to GoG soon, for $6 $10 each, even if seeing Far Cry in a bargain bin still gives me a Semi-Demi-Mid-Life Crisis... At ₤9, this pack is a pretty wise purchase for anyone with a PC made in the last decade.

Go Forth and Multi-Buy!

OnLive: Us too-cheap-to-be-PC-gamers are TOLD!

2009-03-24T16:12:00.005Z

Shed: Here's a quicky pre-work post for you.

A good while back there was a Rock, Paper, Shotgun blogpost about the possibility of server-side videogame processing; the concept being that instead of your own desktop/console/whatever rig handling the processing power, your internet connection would ferry some huge trans-world servers powered images to your monitor. Basically, you can run Crysis with a MacBook, low-end PC, or Television.

I was pondering the concept just the other day, and it seems Kotaku just threw down a post on it. Things look much further ahead than anticipated- a pseudo Xbox Live GUI? A whole set of Developers and Production studios already online? A little box thingamajig you can plug into your TV- with bluetooth capability?

Looks like my lack of PC gaming days might be coming to a soon end, sons and daughters...

LSTAR: This kind of technology has been available for quite some time now. For free even (albeit with a limited resolution).

StreamMyGame lets you StreamYourGames from a more powerful computer to a laptop, netbook or even a PS3. Although, this still requires you to have a powerful computer in the first place, the Broadband system allows ISPs to setup up precisely the kind of service OnLive is tentatively describing.

Yes, Crysis worked okay. No, I didn't try it on a MacBook, because a Mac client isn't available yet.

Here's a video of Crysis being "run" on an 800Mhz Turion laptop.

The main advance OnLive is proposing, is a centralised server and a unified GUI. Unfortunately, I find it next to impossible that the service could run without hefty monthly fees, or without waiting times, if the Server hardware is unable to meet demands.

Just when I think I'm out... They PULL ME BACK IN!

2009-03-23T21:23:00.005Z

LSTAR: I must confess, over the weekend I was considering buying Assassin's Creed. "Nah", I said to myself. "Better not. I mean, it's only so long before they do a Steam deal on it."

Guess what?

Yeah, not only is AC 50% for the next 24 hours, but there's going to be another Ubisoft 50% deal. Every. Day. This. Week... Xeno Clash... Oddworld...The Indy game sale... Now this?

Someone has clearly looked at the research behind the Steam offers and sales increases and decided to... well, cash-in isn't anywhere near a strong enough term... There is a fine, fine line between "Too Much of a Good Thing" and Strip Mining... Thank God, they've already used up Rainbow Six and the Ghost Recon packs a few weeks back...

Personally, I'm hoping for Prince of Persia, Sturmovik 1946 and Brothers in Arms. Or maybe some crap games, so I won't have to buy them... Yeah, that'd be nice...

"Why won't you just die?"

2009-03-23T15:00:00.005Z

LSTAR: Rockstar have finally confirmed the third installment in the Max Payne series with a big teaser page showing a slightly beardier, slightly more scarred Max.

The good news, of course, is that there's going to be more Max. The bad news? Remedy, developers of both the original Max Payne, and sequel The Fall of Max Payne, are nowhere to be seen, off developing the mysterious yet alluring Alan Wake. Development on MP3 (catchy acronym, eh?) is slated to be handled by Rockstar Vancouver, the studio that brought us Bully.

Story details are scant, except that MP3 will be set in a new city, "far removed" from MP1 and 2's New York, and feature Max "as we’ve never seen him before, a few years older, more world-weary and cynical than ever".

Colour me interested...

Shed: So one of my favourite game series' of all time is getting a long-deserved update, and from a fairly spot-on developer too. Not half bad. Knowing Max, the new location will probably be Barrow, Alaska or something...

Hopefully they'll be able to pull of his world-weary ways as well as Remedy did. Remedy's real skill seems to be in writing; they can make characters and situations seems so bleedingly real. Alan Wake is looking to follow that pattern. I feel an A.Wake post coming on...

Zeno Cash

2009-03-19T19:38:00.005Z

LSTAR: ACE Team's crazy-insane looking First Person Beat'em'Up Zeno Clash is 50% off for the next 24 hours, bringing its price down to a very reasonable £7.50. 1 hour's wage. Hell, you probably won't miss that when the game's released in April.

Willing to take a gamble on an obscure Indie title? I sure am, based on what I've seen so far.

Here's hoping!

Dynasty Warriors: ... Gundam?! ... 2?!

2009-03-17T03:05:00.006Z

Shed: Since frickin' when?! I feel a rental coming on...

LSTAR: I've always like the idea of these types of games. A mish-mash of Gundam continuity suits (62 in this iteration) and more Zakus than you can shake a laser-stick at. DW:G1 was mostly panned by the press, but 2 has already had some decent reviews from the respectable Japanese Famitsu. But then, they are Japanese.

3... 2... 1... AGENTS ARE... GO!

2009-03-16T22:04:00.003Z

LSTAR: Those chaps at Mega64 are very wise. Very wise indeed...

Outlander: The Winning Mix?

2009-03-16T21:11:00.006Z

LSTAR: Take 40% Beowulf, 20% Lord of the Rings, 10% Predator and a dash of Aliens for grit, and you've got yourself the recipe for Yet Another Monster Movie, Outlander.

'Lander kicks off when Space marine Kainan crash lands on Earth in the 8th Century AD, bringing with him some kind of "Terrible Alien". With the help of the local Vikings, only he can stop the creature from doing to Earth whatever it did to his homeland. 'Nuff said.

While I'm hardly expecting the movie to make me reevaluate my relationships or sort my life out, I am predicting lasers, sword-fights and more than a few explosions. Interestingly, pretty much all positive and negative reviews I've seen so far mention "Cheesy Acting, Crappy Special Effects and Straight-faced Silliness". Sounds like my kinda movie! Well, either that or complete crap.

Now, while the whole "Sci-fi in a primitive world" thing has been dealt with pretty thoroughly in other mediums, (WH40K, Classic Doctor Who and arguably the whole Predator franchise come to mind), it is pretty original for cinema. And it should be nice to finally see a movie where man doesn't turn out to be the real monster.

Plus, is it just me, or have the last 3 posts been abut movies? Didn't we used to play games here or something?

MovieWatch: Surveillance

2009-03-16T17:43:00.006Z

Shed: Surveillance is probably the most intelligent slasher flick you are ever going to see. Directed by the daughter of the notorious surrealist master David Lynch, one Jennifer Lynch returns to film making to create an intense, hard-to-read thriller, with the internal dark center of a hardcore slasher flick.

The opening scene is obviously a leaf out of David's book; a brutal and dark murder scene with a dread-enducing deep synth drone over the top, a truly disturbing sequence showing the madness and indiscriminate visciousness of the infamous killing duo that are slashing a path through America. It's a little disappointing that this real darkness is not shown again to this extent- only hinted at throughout the rest of the film, but it still is very effective and thematically important sequence.

This theme that is touched upon is, of course, "surveillance", or simply what we see and how we read into it. A large majority of the film is two FBI agents interviewing and observing the three witnesses to the serial killer's most recent crime: a likely corrupt cop, a pretty-faced junkie, and a little girl. They respectively lost their partner, their junkie fixer, and their entire close family in the incident, which is gradually revealed through the three individuals personal accounts of what took place before and during the event. Almost every character is suspect as potentially one of the murdering psychopaths, all having their own sinister unknown motive and seemingly random behaviour, and none of them quite observing the same angle to the killing they all had a view to.

With performances as good as these, it really is a challenge to figure out each of the characters motives and hidden secrets. From Pullman's intimidatingly edgy and fidgeting Agent Halloway to Gayle's extremely hostile Degrasso, every character has their own key vices and simple madness, unerringly performed by the casted actors. We see how the witnesses all cover up the truth of what they were doing before the incident, and the anxiety they try so hard to cover up when in front of the fuzz. When the killers do make their eventual appearance, their insanity is frighteningly realistic; driven and excitable, but with some kind of obscure logic operating beneath their actions, their history is left entirely to the audience's speculation. They could just be proverbial "damaged goods", or they could be driven by their love for one another, colliding and growing through one-upmanship killing and sexual extravagance. Or it could just be how they connect, on a level which just doesn't make sense to the people they encounter.

Smelling strongly of The Homecoming, the film leaves you with a collection of characters and scenes to comprehend and read into, along with very drawn out and bloody sequences of violence. Reading into what you can tell from people by how they behave and what they say, Surveillance is a rich and well filmed collision between the thriller style of "The Usual Suspects" and the psychotic slasher style of "Natural Born Killers": quite possibly the most realistic and intelligent slasher flick you'll ever see.

Tank Russia

2009-03-16T15:09:00.002Z

LSTAR: Stalin vs Martians... It's the kind of concept that could only really come out of Russia. Mixing the romantic highs of the Soviet motherland with the undeniable talent modern-day Russians have for spicing up the once stale RTS genre.

Perimeter gave us insane transforming unit mechanics and the concept of land as a resource, Soldiers gave us direct control of our units, and Stalin vs Martians looks set to give us... "Stalin as a playable unit - a huge colossus, five times higher than any other creature. Just like it was in the real life".

Whatever you can say about the quality of gameplay (admittedly briefly) visible in the recent "Dance Commander" trailer, Dreamlores' hearts are clearly in the right place.

'72

2009-03-12T19:49:00.006Z

LSTAR: Went to see Gran ~~Turismo~~ Torino today. Yet another great Clint Eastwood helmed movie that makes it clear that there's more to the guy than Old West Action. Basically, it's the story of a bitter old Korean war vet who is able to overcome his isolation by connecting with a Hmong family and intimidating young punks like you (no respect these days...).

I think Shed pretty much nailed down the movie's outermost layer by describing it as "watching Old Snake trying to play Shenmue".

Shed: His gritty voice and phrasing was almost exactly the same as Hayter's Old Snake. Moments like "Plenty of beer right here," looks in the beer cooler, sees the lonely ice, "...Son of a bitch." Such an old badass.

Excellent film though; clearly Clint's decades of experience in the film industry has paid off in dividends as he turned his weathered hands to film making. The film doesn't weight itself down with overthinking or focus, it just forwards the plot and character from scene to scene, telling the simple story of a man who's preconceptions of non-white American culture are gradually turned inside out.

My only gripe is that the film ended the way these highly emotional dramas always do; with the death of a key character. It's almost as if after a very restrained, realistic narrative, the film maker feels he needs to shock the audience with a death at the end, to make it seems all the more realistic and add pathos; although it never does. I now expect this to happen when watching any film in this vein; it's become a trope! "Okay, one of our characters has to die to make it a credible conclusion, uuuh THIS ONE". Gran Torino is by no means spoiled by this: it's a fairly appropriate death. Still, I feel it would be more original if someone didn't die for once; I've only seen a couple of stories that have done the death of a key character right, and they were both novels.

They're the best of friends!

2009-03-10T00:58:00.004Z

"John can give you cancer
and can turn into a car"

Shed: Nuff said. (Note: more serious blogging coming soon)

LSTAR: I'm pretty sure this video has officially "done the rounds", but it has to be said that it's "made of win".

Slate.com had some alternate-reality reimaginings of Watchemen a while back. Nothing spectacular, but I would desperately like to see Michael Cera play the comedian. Or, well... Anyone other than Michael Cera again.

There's Something In the Sea!

2009-03-07T19:45:00.005Z

Shed: Uhm... My bad.

This is, in fact, the first steps of Viral marketing and hype for Bioshock 2: Sea of Dreams. Not Spongebob Squarepants' Second Coming. The site doesn't work for me, but feel free to peruse.

LSTAR: Fixed hyperlink and picture, etc. Have you tried looking at the site with a decent browser? Or upgading to Flash Player 10?

BioNuts might also be interested in the first pictures of the Big Sisters, lithe child-grabbers set to play a part in 'Shock 2.

Touchtastic Shooting Action?

2009-03-05T17:32:00.005Z

LSTAR: I'm sorry Snake, but this looks more than a bit... well, "meh".

What ever happened to sneaking missions?

Empire Total War?

2009-03-05T00:16:00.002Z

LSTAR: Stressful: Total Mare, more like.

There is a lot of content and a heck of a lot to keep track of. Three simultaneous campaign maps (Europe, India and the Americas), navies, research, diplomacy, recruitment, a compendium of new unit types, and to top it all off, the tactics of land battles have been turned on their heads completely. And the tactics of Naval battles are brand new.

On the plus side, boats are awesome and my men are laying siege to London. Take that, ya Limey scumbags! Vive la France!

H.A.W.T.

2009-03-04T20:15:00.012Z

LSTAR: While I was waiting for the new Chronicles of Riddick demo to download, I figured I'd stick the Flight-Sim-Snob part of my personality into a cupboard (the part that's protesting that if a game doesn't have at least 5 variants of an archaic Russian prop-plane fighter, it's not really a sim) and give the demo for (Not) Tom Clancy's Angry Plane Simulator, H.A.W.X., a go. Here are my thinks.

Loved

It's Got Words and Everything!: H.A.W.X.'s near-future story line puts an array of Paramilitary Corporations (fast becoming the bread and butter of the console world) in control of national defences across the globe, traditional State-Sponsored Armed Forces having been phased out in favour of their flashier brethren. That's a concept in and of itself that could launch one of the books Mr. Clancy seems so fond of writing, and although I doubt prose is going to be the centerpiece of the game, quite a few interesting lines were thrown out over the course of the demo about the Philosophy and Morality of war.

Fly Candy: While there's no shortage of games on the 360 that look great, H.A.W.X. is one of the few that qualifies as spectacular. Switching off your engines and falling 200 feet before making a 2 second 180-degree turn before kicking on your afterburners and dodging a hail of missiles, while not the kind of thing you'd see in IL-2 every day, is pretty damned awesome.

Computer can do that!?: With a double tap to wither the right or left triggers you can switch your plane between Assisted and Unassisted flight modes. In Assisted mode, safety features prevent you from dropping nose-first into a mountain and allows you to make use of the nifty E.R.S. system that paint light-gates in the sky, helpfully nudging you into that perfect intercept course, or preventing you from wasting your missiles on buildings full of innocent civilians. In Unassisted mode, all the safeguards are disabled, letting you make full use of your plane's capabilities for faster acceleration and high-precision turning. Unfortunately, there's no HUD assistance, and the queer long-distance cinematic camera looks good, but is pretty useless for actually hitting anything. It's pretty interesting deciding when each mode is most appropriate in a midst of combat.

Hated

One Dimensional: While H.A.W.X.'s maps look pretty good from 8000 feet, closer to ground level it's painfully obvious that almost everything except for Skyscrapers, Bridges, etc. are completely flat and more than a little pixelated. Sure, IL-2 may not have anything as ambitious as a recreation of Rio (De Janeiro, presumably being too much for the XBox crowd...), but at least there, anything you can see is modelled in 3D.

Guys...?: With new bombers, boats and tanks showing up every few minutes to keep you on your toes, H.A.W.X. certainly gives the impression that you're taking part in a combined-arms battle, and not just a high-altitude duck-hunt. Unfortunately, your supposed allies on the ground rarely pipe-up to say anything other than to remind you that you still haven't destroyed all those pesky tanks. Even if it's not modelled in game, it would be nice to hear a little more battle-chatter from the ground-pounders. Or even, I don't know, them actually destroying a tank themselves? God forbid they should have to earn their pay-cheques!

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by H.A.W.X. I went in expecting a Flight-Sim dumbed down, but found an arcade-shooter, like Starfox, writ-large. Given the number of more anticipated games coming out over the next few months, chances are I'll almost certainly neglect to pick it up initially, but then again, H.A.W.X. is following the dirt-cheap trend of modern PC Games and I have been hankering for something to test my new joystick on...

H.A.W.X. is available on the 20th of March and features P.L.A.N.E.S.

"Weapon, Weapon!"

2009-03-03T22:08:00.004Z

LSTAR: I'm not quite sure what's going on here, but it seems that a supposedly Portuguese, probably Japanese guy, by the name of Steve, is trying to learn English via the medium of YouTube. Bit bizarre really, but at least we finally learn why Mario hates Goombas so damn much. Apparently they "Break he's window and... and... uh... bite mother's pizza."

On a side note, this was my first Mario game, on the old-fashioned, clunky, steam-powered GameBoy. So many weird memories...

64 Centuries Years of Halo... And Counting

2009-03-03T17:15:00.005Z

LSTAR: A post on Bungie's site today went through a few numbers for us. You see, the Billionth game of Halo 3 has just been played, and assuming the average game last about 3 minutes, that clocks up to over 2 Trillion seconds (2,023,153,340,764 seconds, to be exact), or 64,000 years worth of effective man-hours. Pretty impressive.

Then consider that this only includes games using Matchmaking.

Then consider that Halo 2 has almost 800 Million games on record.

...

Oh boy...

Quite Contrary

2009-03-03T14:25:00.003Z

LSTAR: This is is probably the best LitleBigPlanet level I've seen in forever, courtesy of the fine chaps at NeoGaf. It's an almost pixel perfect remake of Contra, down to the corridor-perspective sections, boss fights and even music. Mightily impressive. In fact, the only thing wrong I notice is the way Sack Boy isn't dying constantly. I'm sure I remember Contra being a lot harder than that...

Road Wrestler

2009-03-02T16:04:00.005Z

LSTAR: Street Fighter, even more so than other Beat'em'ups, has been an enigma to me. Sure, I played a couple of bouts of Street Fighter 2 with my cousins back when I was in single digits, but not enough to learn the names of the characters or even any decent combos beyond button mashing.

When I was a kid, we played Tekken. Not sure why, but I think it might have had something to do with the cyborgs, ninjas and laser-sword-toting robots from the future.

In any case, something makes me feel that even with an Unlimited pass to the cinema, I won't be bothered to go see the new Street Fighter movie. Street Fighter IV, or ' II Turbo HD Remix, on the other hand... Just maybe...

GameWatch: Noby Noby Boy (PS3)

2009-02-25T00:02:00.004Z

Shed: We've been "looking foward to" Noby Noby Boy for quite some time now, and last Thursday I finally got my hands on the little fella when it was released on the mighty-fine Playstation Store. From the information we'd attempted to gleam from various press statements and video footage, we had no idea what the game itself actually entailed, but now I can safely say, it's this:

Relaxing.

And almost nothing else.

The video above is my first attempt at using the Noby Noby Boy movie recorder, whereby you hold the Square button and record some footage (with the option of either saving it to the PS3 HDD or uploading it to YouTube when it's finished). As you can see, the results are pretty confusing, and the reactions it garners from others also show much confusion.

But really, it's pretty simple. When you load up the game for the first time, the little Fairy leads you through the basics. You play Boy; a friendly character who you can manipulate in various entertaining ways. You move his front body chunk with the Left analog stick, and his back body chunk with the right. You can make him stretch and contort with this method. With the shoulder buttons you can make his respective body chunks do several things- tap the triggers quickly to make the chunks flap their little appendages and fly; press them down once to make the front facial part gobble things up, or the rear end tense and fire the digested items in question out his little pink bottom; or hold them to make the two body spheres "resist", getting smaller and barely moving.

In essence, this is the gameplay in its entirety. The game will never set you any objectives (the Fairy actually makes a blatant point of this), and you don't progress through stages in the same sense as you do in other games, but more on that later. The actual fun of the experience/game/"thing" comes from interaction with the game world. When you begin, a level is randomly generated. You literally have no idea what you're about to see, aside from the obvious fact that the Noby House (the main menu) will be there, and it will be on a green block of land that is the game stage. Everything else on this flatland is randomly generated, you might encounter a veritable forest of trees with smiley faces, maybe a little town with people and wild boars roaming around it, maybe a plateau of jumping frogs, or maybe (as I experienced in that video) an insane parade of spinning topesque gears. Once you're over the initial shock of your new unique level, you can start having a stretch in it, relaxedly exploring the habitat; bending Boy through the holes in a lone-standing wall, making people jump on your back en masse whilst enjoying the super-relaxing acoustic guitar track.

After a while you start developing your own little challenges- trying to string together all the toroid clouds in the sky, attempting to get two people onto a camel's back before getting the camel onto your own back- the scope for plain simple mucking about is very wide, and takes a satisfying amount of interaction to explore. It's all fun if rarely challenging, and still provides surprise and joy even when you think you've seen everything.

Of course, after a while of having the ultimate chill session, you might try to escape from your little world, but the only way to do this is to zoom the camera out (done with a hold of L1 and a tilt of the controller), and keep zooming it. You'll have the revelation that this little stage of yours is in fact inside the planet Earth, floating in space. What's more; there's a lion like Sun poking his head through a hole in the top of the planet, and the rear end of a pink Boylike thing hanging over the earth also, its body stretching off into the depths of space. If you try to follow where this exceedingly long pink body leads, you can't. It obviously goes on an extremely long way. This pink creature is Girl; the being that the Fairy (and seemingly everyone) is in love with, and that Boy stretches for. See, after a session, if you fly up to the Sun, you get the opportunity to upload your stretched length to Girl via his lovely three-dotted lion face. This means that the length you've stretched, since you started or last gave it, is uploaded to Girl's length, which only grows when people on the Playstation Network add to it. At the moment, Girl is somewhere around 400,000,000 meters long. That entire length developed and worked for by the players of the game. And when Girl reaches the Moon? Every player connected to the PSN gets a new stage. This will happen every time she reaches a new milestone in her stretch around the solar system.

Thus: a game of seemingly galactic scope and endless random intensity is also the most relaxing game I've ever played. A bizarrely unique approach to gaming; casting aside with the selfish single player progression that's favoured in games almost unanimously, binning the typical methods of level design and linear development, instead turning the focus onto simple play- and the fact that everyone plays. Isn't this what gaming's all about?

"Does Not Represent Actual Gameplay..."

2009-02-23T13:38:00.004Z

LSTAR: Wow... Alcohol? Lumberjackery? Exercising montages? Kung fu? On the merits of this machinima faux-trailer alone I have no trouble naming Theatre of War the best damned World War II strategy ever!

ME2 - KIA?

2009-02-22T22:23:00.004Z

LSTAR: Shepherd's dead!? The Normandy's hull turned into Geth!? Interobangs!?

Mass Effect 2, Bioware's snazzy console-RPG sequel, just got a slightly untraditional teaser trailer, beginning as it does with a game-over screen.

I'm a little reluctant to accept that Shepherd's really dead, especially in light of Bioware's recent comments in regard to progression between the games, but it is strange that they went for Killed in Action, as opposed to the much more comfortably ambiguous Missing in Action.

And then again, the documentary mentions that ME2 will explore the questions of "what it means to be alive", synthetic life and crossing the boundaries between the synthetic and organic. My bet? Geth hybridisation.

Shed: So maybe, so soon after seeing the first Human spectre, we'll see the first Spectre that's a synthetic artificial organism?

Keita Takahashi: Making Acid Unnecessary Since 2004

2009-02-16T13:52:00.007Z

LSTAR: Of all the way of New Indy titles hitting the PS3, Noby Noby Boy has always been the one that most intrigued me. Mainly because of how downright bizarre it looks, and because it's coming from the brains of the man who brought us Katamari Damacy (Na-naaaaa, na-na-na-na-na-na! Na! Katamari Damacy!), Keita Takahashi.

On the bizarre aspect, it seems even its creator is struggling to define just what Noby is...

"Basically players can control and stretch Boy, the main character of the game. As players stretch Boy, the lengths to which he grows are uploaded to a persistent character known as Girl, who grows at the same rate as the combined length of all the players in the world. Girl starts at Earth and expands around the solar system. When Girl reaches a new milestone in the solar system, new areas are unlocked as playable stages for everyone around the world."

Lol wut?

What. The fucking. Hell.

Sweet Trouser Jazz

2009-02-13T23:43:00.003Z

LSTAR: Mr Scruff is cool. Almost... too cool...

Holeee Awesome

2009-02-13T21:09:00.005Z

Shed: Man oh man. I thought Kratos versus a cyclops was awesome by itself. Throw in this location for said versus match... I'm creaming myself.

Left 4 Free

2009-02-12T09:17:00.005Z

LSTAR: Contrary to my cynical musings of last week, Left 4 Dead's survival Pack will be released free of charge on both PC and 360.

Fortunately my speculation on "Survival Mode" were closer to the truth, with the new gametype challenging up to four players to survive for as long as possible on 12 maps. Whether these maps will be brand new maps or individual entries in the existing campaigns is still unclear. I'd say a safe bet would be tweaked versions of existing maps.

The "Two Full Campaigns for Versus Mode" bit is also unclear, but given Valve's position on Dead Air and Death Toll (the campaigns currently unavailable in Versus) being "unsuitable for versus mode" I'd like to hope for new campaigns, but it's impossible to tell at this stage.

The pack is still vaguely scheduled for Spring '09, so Valve Time is in effect.

Where's Megaman? x2

2009-02-10T22:40:00.005Z

LSTAR: Thinking about awesome Nintendo games, I just finished Megaman 2 on the old NES emulator, and just in time! In one more year it won't be relevant... In its honour, here's some YouTube guy imagining lyrics to its opening sequence.

I'm pretty shocked, to be honest. Sure, I know a couple of awesome NES games, but I was always under the impression that true console gaming started with the SNES and the 8-bit sprite. Megaman was surprisingly compelling and absurdly entertaining for the level of technology on display.

On a sidenote, I'm pretty sure this is exactly what the inside of E.E. Doc Smith's head looks like...

Flogging a Dead [Space] Horse

2009-02-09T20:17:00.002Z

LSTAR: Murmurings from EA suggest that Dead Space is the next Horror game to see an ill-advised Wii port. Is this really Nintendo's master plan for reconnecting with the core gamer? Inferior versions of action/horror games, years after the originals shipped on more powerful consoles?

Come to think of it, when was the last you time you played a truly outstanding, original (that means no ports, franchises, rereleases, etc.) game on a Nintendo console?

Okay, okay. RE4 Wii was pretty good, but then, that game was pretty hard to screw up...

Dead Rising 2 for all (except Wii owners)

2009-02-09T17:56:00.016Z

Shed: About a year ago I heard people mentioning a sequel to CAPCOM's brutal classic Dead Rising, set in Las Vegas. One guy in particular was very adamant about this, although I was still sceptical (not to mention hopeful of course) of his word as a source of info. Now, following a little bit of viral marketing on CAPCOM's part, we have confirmation for Dead Rising 2. And it's gone multi-platform, to the glee of many.

Set in Fortune City, Dead Rising 2 sees the player returning to the Zombie-ridden USA. That's right; several years after the conclusion to the original, the zombie outbreak has spread uncontained across the states. Frank West has yet to make an appearance in the released screens- all we have for now is some funny looking goof in a yellow bike jacket, although notice how uncartoony his features are in comparison to Frank West's bestial chin/nose combination. The gameplay seems completely untarnished- still showing some good, clean, zombie bashing fun.

With a fucking giant mobile-phone.

LSTAR: Come on... Fortune City? Screenies full of Fruit Machines? Vegas by any other name, man...

But yeah, "New Guy" does look pretty angry. It's a bit of a change from Frank's "Que Cera, Cera" attitude to Zombie Survival situations. Given Dead Rising's spirit though, I cannot imagine being confined to the bike jacket for more than about... oh, 10 minutes (notice "Businessman" clothes shop, visible in second screen). Plus, that Giant Mobile is giving off major Trigger Happy TV vibes.

From what we can see, the priceless "Hitting Things With Stuff" formula seems to remain pure, but is it just me, or do the zombies look a bit less.. rigid? They all seem to be flopping about at random angles? Euphoria, maybe? Now that would be awesome.

Shed: The zomb's do look pretty smooth, not all following the same 3-4 movement patterns like in the OG; probably just very suped up animations. Considering they're talking about having 1000s of zomb's onscreen, Euphoria on that scale would be incredible, but painfully unlikely. Unless they seriously toned it down, to just slightly cooler rag's or such. In which case HELLYEAH. But still unlikely.

Musin' on Music: A Little Too Early, A Little Too Late

2009-02-09T17:56:00.011Z

LSTAR: Tell me, how is it that when one of my favourite artists releases a Christmas Album called "Astral Inter Planet Space Captain Christmas Infinity Voyage", it takes me until February to even hear about it? Man, it's too late to even enjoy it properly now...

Dark Was The Night, on the other hand is a compilation album that sounds (and hopefully, will sound) like purest awesome, but isn't out for another week. If there's one thing worse than arriving late, it's arriving way too early. On the bright side, that is one intense list of contributing artists...

» Click to Expand... THE PAGE! «

*Rubs hands in anticipation*

Shed: I was reading about this compilation in the Skinny the other day. Does sound fairly intense. Allegedly if you like the music of even one of the featured artists; every track on the album should appeal to you. Hand rubbage indeed.

I R Spoiler Test

2009-02-05T23:26:00.006Z

» Click to Expand... YOUR MIND! «

Disband of Brothers

2009-02-05T20:12:00.009Z

LSTAR: In one of the most shocking events to hit the Eve Online community in its 5 years of existence, Band of Brothers, one of the biggest and most powerful alliances, employing over 3000 pilots, has fallen at the hands of their nemeses Something Awful's GoonSwarm aided by a treacherous BoB director.

In the span of a few short hours, 99 entire Star Systems, an entire quarter of Eve's Universe, reverted control to Neutrality and were left vulnerable to the advances of... well, pretty much anybody. The next few days should make or break whatever the Alliance becomes (Goonswarm, adding insult to injury stealing the name "Band of Brothers" itself, along with spacefleets and money) depending on how much of their former territory they can resecure before everyone else in the cluster tries to move in.

Funny, how this war, lasting years and seeing the deaths of countless thousands on both sides, finally ended without a single shot being fired...

In yet another blow, Goonswarm intend to publish the private forum used by the BoB management bigwigs. Should make for fascinating reading. We live in interesting times.

Goonswarm, I salute you!

EDIT: Here's a Before/After GIF.

LSTAR:Here's Mittani of Goonswarm going over the events of the last couple of days in his own words.

Back 2 Dead

2009-02-05T19:27:00.003Z

LSTAR: Hooray! According to a Valve press release, Left 4 Dead is scheduled to be revitalised later this spring with a major piece of DLC, referred to as the Survival Pack.

Contained in the Expansion will be 2 full campaigns, compatible with versus mode, along with a new Survival gametype. Although details are scant at this point, I would hazard a guess at Survival being a timed defence gametype, forcing the players to defend a fortifiable location, such as the farmhouse at the end of Blood Harvest. Of course, that's just me ~~wishing~~ speculating.

On the darker side of speculation, the fact that the Survival Pack is being heralded by Valve as DLC, as opposed to the "updates" we've seen for Team Fortress, along with the fact that a simultaneous release on PC and 360 is implied, I'm expecting this pack to have a price tag of at least $10...

And, of course, I've been wanting a reason to post that picture for aaaaages...

Red Dead Revolver meets GUN in Fall Sequel

2009-02-04T20:59:00.007Z

Shed: Rockstar's cult Spaghetti Western action shooter, Red Dead Revolver, is getting a sequel come Fall this year, Red Dead Redemption; and from the looks of things, it's had GUN's open-world style of gameplay developed into it.

Hopefully this sequel will kill two proverbial bird's with one proverbial stone, giving us a Red Dead sequel and a GUN sequel. From Sam Houser of R* Games, quotes such as: "The seamless combination of breathtaking beauty and intense action, all woven together with strong plotlines in a massive vibrant, rural environment is mind-blowing," suggest it could be a reality. I never actually played Red Dead (although it's cool Eastwood swagger and cinematic action was notorious), but I did play, and thoroughly enjoy Neversoft's free-roaming westerner GUN.

GUN took a decent, if not original, Western action plot, pseudo-RPG gameplay, a fairly large open county, not bad horseriding, and pretty excellent gunfighting if you played it the right way- and patched it all together in an almost seamless manner. The game's only shortcoming was it's taut length and slightly fantastical ending. If the new Red Dead looks to be another classy Western Shooter- instant buy.

LSTAR: Yeah, got an e-mail about this this morning. I too, never got round to playing Red Dead. Didn't play Gun either. Did watch Deadwood, though, so my expectations of a, uh, "vibrant" western setting are probably just the kind of thing Rockstar tend to deliver...

Fortress 4 Fortress

2009-02-03T22:44:00.003Z

LSTAR: Anyone who's known me for any length of time will have had me, on one occasion or another, scream at them something along the lines of:

"OMG DORF FORTRESS IS REALLY REALLY GOOD AND YOU SHOULD TOTALLY PLAY IT BECAUSE IT IS FREAKIN' AWESOME AND THERE WAS THIS ONE BIT WHERE THIS FISHERMAN AND THIS CROCODILE, RIGHT...?"

Now complying to my incessant demands has become a little easier, with Captnduck's video tutorials. Now, I'll warn you, these things are comprehensive. 4 hours long comprehensive.

Not something you want to watch in one sitting, but perfect for, say, sticking on a PMP and letting captn's not-unpleasant Dutch accent wash over you, whenever you feel the urge for some enlightenment.

'Fortress is without a doubt the most rewarding game I have ever had the pleasure to experience, and it is only looking to get better. Heck, the updates for any given week are usually more feature-packed than most full games... Come on and invest some time in Toady's creation, and hey, Left 4 Dead will still be here when you get back.

Left 4 Fortress

2009-02-03T15:03:00.002Z

LSTAR:So weird, so fitting...

Highlights for me include the "KA-BOOOM" pipe-bomb and the Tank's "RUN Cowards!"

Good stuff.

Shed: "Achtung Pyro!"

Dae You Sex Free?

2009-02-02T00:39:00.015Z

Shed: Okay, so the first slivers of detail for Deus Ex 3 are creeping out here, and it's looking to be a disappointment in some respects and an... appointment in others.

Disappointment = More focus on action and real-time events (Deus Ex 2?)

Appointment = C'est a prequel. We get to play through how this world got so gosh-darned messed up. Those few with nanotechnology augmentation becoming empowered, those without it claiming injustice- conflict.

Original, although very sketchily translated article is here, and suggests some interesting- sometimes surprising- features, for example; a cover system. Say whaaaaat? Yah-huh, it's even been compared with Rainbow "Sorry I'm a bit dull after a while" Six: Vegas. Freakazoid.

So far I'm really digging the almost Die Hard concept of the "Commandos" versus the building, and you. And the idea that, before nanotech had risen to awesome, folks were using funny bio-plastic mechanisms instead of limbs (that look just like normal limbs). Nice.

LSTAR: Not sure about this being a "first look". Pretty much all of this stuff was in the PCG:UK of last November. And not is pseudo-Czech. And they had sources for the quotes.

On the plus side, the whole Auton aesthetic is pretty nice, and they do have Pacotti on board as a story consultant, but the mixing of first-person and third-person views, the consolidation of the Skill and Aug systems and the "Futuristic Renaissance" art-style seems to fly in the face of both DX-1 and 2 screaming "Console Shooter with RPG elements".

Deus Ex was amazing. Deus Ex 2 proved that we really don't need to retread this ground. Eidos have got some serious hard-work ahead of them if they hope to convince me that this is going to be worth picking up...

Shed: I meant a first look in terms of Story and gameplay direction- as far as recall collects, the PCG:UK special just had some pics and a couple of tiny details- we didn't know who we were playing (this Adam Jensen character), that it was a prequel, what the gameplay focus would be, or any other details on the actual game. The Czech article goes into detail about augmentations as well. I suppose you could argue this isn't a literal "first look" seeing as, yep, PCG:UK were pretty much there already ^^ otherwise it's pretty fresh.

EDIT: Holy nutbox! Check out Deus Ex's IMDB score!

LSTAR: Yeah, it mentioned all those things, only in more detail. Well, except for the stuff about AJ having an apartment with memoirs in. I'd quote the 3-page feature, but this is already making me seem like a jerk. Let's keep things constructive.

You notice that the mark on ~~Gordon Freeman~~ Adam's head reads "S:AJ8"? 8? B!?
On the IMDB score, impressive... That's significantly higher than the top scored movies. Still, that is only from less than a thousand voters, compared to half a million.

6th Alliance Tournament: News From the Front

2009-01-31T01:44:00.003Z

LSTAR: You probably don't know this, but Eve Online's 6th Alliance Tournament is well underway. This is a pretty big event, where all the biggest Empires get their disposable cash together, send a team of their best pilots into Jovian space and fight it out for glory and fabulous prizes.

This year, commentary is going out live over Eve radio and subsequently over YouTube. In this qualifying round, the Gallente Factional Warfare Team, the Federal Defence Union (boo! hiss!) absolutely dismantle Idle Empire's team with brutal efficiency... Geez... I'm glad I didn't sign up... Those guys mean serious business...

Day 1 and Day 2 matches are already up, featuring more spaceships than you can shake a laser-cannon at, and the commentary makes for pretty interesting listening, even if it's tough making anything out of the low-res videos.

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: A Bit of a Review

2009-01-30T23:50:00.011Z

LSTAR: I recently finished Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, so I feel obliged to write-up a little review of it for this here blog.

Dark Messiah casts you as Sareth, a young apprentice to some old guy who may (or may not) be a wizard (this is never properly resolved), who is asked to perform various tasks by various voices that live in your head. You may, or may not be destined to destroy the world, but that part's pretty much up to you. Although a bloodthirsty first person dungeon crawler is a bit of a departure from the dry RPGs of the series' early days, the game does contain both Might and Magic. No Heroes, though. Just Mass Murderers and Necromancers.

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic... The Second Coming? Or just a bit Messy? Let's find out.

Loved

Boot To the Head: Dark Messiah features a wide variety of spells, weapons and gadgets to get you by. Thing is, you don't need any of them. The most powerful attack is with you from the very beginning in the form of the humble leather boot. Almost nothing that can be accomplished with a dozen sword strikes or a well-placed arrow can't be handled much easier and more satisfyingly with a well placed boot. By the end game, you're storming through castles kicking Orcs into piles of barrels, Vampire Knights into stakes, Ghouls into fiery pits and everyone else into each other. Plus, it leaves you feeling a bit like some kind of fantasy Walker Texas Ranger.

This is an Orc. Seriously guy, drop the staff and kick him off a cliff.

Specialization is for Insects: Unlike its console sibling (which was nominated for this most dubious award...), Messiah on the PC doesn't cast you into a single role, instead letting you pick and mix skills from the sneaky, smashy and arcane skill paths. I ended up going for a mainly melee build, picking only the spells and skills I thought sounded entertaining.

"It's a Trap!!!": Dark Messiah's levels are filled with more traps than a Transvestite Convention. Everything from swinging chandeliers to rolling Indiana Jones style boulders to flaming spike-pits are present and modelled with the Source engine's robust havoc physics, and everything perfectly placed to be set in motion against their builders. Improbable? Yes. Appalling Dungeon design? You betcha. Fun? Absolutely.

*Ching!*, *Clang!*, *Shraaang!*: If there's one thing Messiah gets right, it's the melee combat. Which is lucky, I suppose... Otherwise 70% of the game would be a bit rubbish. You've got your parrying, power attacks, disarming, beheading and, of course, kicking. Condemned meets Oblivion, basically.

Let's Get Physical: When Sareth moves, you can tell he's going somewhere. When you strafe the camera leans on it's side; when you run it bobs up and down; when you climb a rope it lurches wildly. The only thing that beats it in terms of kinaesthetics would be Mirror's Edge, a game that trailed it by over 2 years.

Totally Boss: Usually the weak-spots in these types of games, (ones that critics like to attack for massive damage...) are the Boss Fights. Dark Messiah, luckily, has lovely bosses. They fall into two main categories. The really big monster that you have to kill: Epic. And the even bigger monster that you have to escape from while it tears the entire map into teeny tiny bits and knocks over buildings: Even epic-er.

Hated

Save the [Made Up Word] of [Made Up Word] from the Vile [Made Up Word]: Messiah's plot is downright nonsense. You're trying to take a crystal to a magic island to get a skull that belonged to a Dragon, who wasn't actually a Dragon, to smash it. Then there's some stuff about necromancers and epic history and all that. Bottom line, so long as you don't let it get in the way of kicking Orcs in the face, it's not that big a deal. You do turn out to be the son of the Devil, though, which is pretty metal, I guess. [Not a Spoiler: It's in the goddamn title]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHHHHHH

Arachnophobia: The Spiders that start showing up about half-way through the game are evil incarnate. I mean, you're the Devil's own child, but these things are on a completely different scale. I don't really want to relive the experience, so I'll sum it up quickly. Spider bites are poisonous, draining to 0 health in a minute or so. You only get about a dozen Antidotes over the course of the entire game. Yeeeeeeaaaaaah. Plus, you can't kill them with your boots.

They Are Legion: Some points in the game feature eternally respawning garrisons that come at you in wave after wave until they've worn you down to nothing. I guess the idea was that you'd sneak past them, avoiding the fight entirely. That's a little bit tricky when you've put all your skill points into Strength and ignored stealth entirely. Worse, there are some encounters that only seem like endless spawns, when in fact you have to take down 6 waves of giant frickin' spiders without any prompting or explanation from the game whatsoever...

It's pretty surprising how divided the Critics were over this game. For my part, I enjoyed it a lot. The combat is well realized, the game-world detailed and the enemies mainly satisfying. Other than some of the more frustrating enemies, like spiders and ghouls, and the typically obtuse fantasy bull, there's nothing really off-putting about the game. I was compelled to stick with it to the end, and indeed, I'm quite tempted to do a second run-through, trying out some of the other powers and picking the other moral pathways.

Bottom Line: A rip-roaring, swash-buckling fantasy romp with intense action and good scope for replayability, not even taking into account the multiplayer component. And at £6 on steam, you could do a heck of a lot worse.

I JiMP

2009-01-26T20:29:00.004Z

LSTAR: We got chatting about this on LIVE ~~today~~ the other day, and, well... To say this song is seminal would be an understatement of monolithic proportions. MONOLITHIC.

Banker Scum Absconds With ISK

2009-01-25T19:04:00.004Z

LSTAR: While surfing the spacelanes a few weeks back, I came across a somewhat novel concept. Eve Banking: A chance to invest a sum of ISK (Eve's currency) in a player-owned corporation. Sounds like a win-win situation, right? They get huge sums of money to invest in research, construction and other types of property and you get a tasty percentage.

I passed up the opportunity to invest figuring that it was only so long until the money went walking. Guess what? It already has in Dynasty Banking's case.

Dynasty's Investment Manager Xabier left the corporation last week, taking over 80 Billion ISK in coin and asset with him. To put this into real world terms, that translates roughly into 4000 American Dollars. Ouch.

While Chairman Manalapan has issued a statement attempting to quell panic and reassure the ~~gullible~~ concerned public that Dynasty are still able to return their investments, the Corporation has been left in disarray with multiple senior members stepping down from their positions and over 15 Billion ISK worth of investments already being demanded as refunds.

Interestingly, in communications with Xabier, Massively.com have discovered that the value of the heist has already increased by over 25% due to the way in which it was invested. On one hand this reinforces the validity of Investment Banking as a source of income, on the other this whole affair is going to make the general public less willing to invest in future.

Me? I'm going to blow up some spaceships.

Eric Wareheim's Latest Directorial Masterpiece

2009-01-25T17:39:00.005Z

Shed: After the slightly disturbing nightmarish gameshow holocaust that was his video for MGMT's "The Youth", [Tim and] Eric Wareheim's first music video of 2K9 is an astounding success. Phantom Planet, of The OC themetune "California" fame, and no a bad indie pop band at all, got Eric on the case of their new single 'Dropped'.

Also note Eric's fine cameo at 3:08

New NHL 2K9 Footage

2009-01-23T15:35:00.001Z

Shed: Wait a minute, this isn't a video game. Who knew that tie breakers and disaggreements in Ice Hockey were handled by pugilism?! Truly awesome.

BRUCE CAMPBELL IS SAM AXE

2009-01-23T14:47:00.003Z

Shed: HOW DID I NOT KNOW OF THIS BEFORE. MUST WATCH.

I Never Thought I Would Be Disappointed...

2009-01-20T17:02:00.008Z

LSTAR: ... to see new Cowboy Bebop. That is, until I heard that emotionless robotoid and all-around shiny man-thing Keanu Reeves will be playing the lead part of Spike in an upcoming live-action Holywood adaptation of the hit series.

Now, for the purpose of this post, I'm going to assume that it's going to be impossible for them to pull this off well, so... I'm so sick of great intellectual properties being resurrected and blinged out with stars, only to be dragged through the mud as nothing more than a cynical grab for the opening weekend box-office moolah! Grumble.

Shed: Nice background there. EDIT: On the SeHaNe banner... Not so much...

LSTAR: Yeah, it took ages to get all the Question Marks in place. EDIT: Fine! I will make a new banner! Geez!

Oh yeah, and in completely unrelated news, Roland Emmerich, of Godzilla and 10,000 BC, has been selected to direct a film adaptation of Asimov's Foundation novels. Swell. Best known for his disaster and spectacle movies, you can rest assured that he is the perfect choice to direct Asimov's... slow-paced, pseudo-historical dialogue-filled books. Ohwaitaminute...

In a World...

2009-01-19T13:52:00.006Z

LSTAR: ... where everything is really fucking weird... Some fucking weird shit will happen...

I saw Team Ace's Zeno Clash pop up in Steam news today, so I decided it was time to have a gander at their trailers. So far, their Source-powered brawler is looking very interesting. Well, interesting in that it seems to be a cross between Condemned and the Flintstones with little bits of Riddick and Rayman thrown in for good measure.

Maybe it's just that I've been playing through it recently, but the Dark Messiah (the Source engine's other melee fest) influence seems pretty strong. I'm hopeful that Zeno Clash's use of melee combat could be a lot more effective than Messiah. Here, the aim seems to actively be "hitting weird things in the face", whereas in Messy, you were allowed to hit things in the face, but usually the game gave the feeling that it wanted you to just tip-toe around things.

In any case, both the weapon and creature designs seem... inspired, and the physics implementation seems pretty tight. Team Ace themselves, seem surprisingly helpful, actually responding to questions, so, I remain hopeful.

Shed: Does something about this whole style and look not remind you of Ice-Pick Lodge's new title Tension (that's apparently out already?!?!). The whole 'totally-fucking-surreal' style of it, canny with Pathologic too.

Zeno Clash is scheduled for a Q1 '09 release in the Steam Store and should retail for about 20-30 Dollars. Support the Indie Community, yada, yada.

Multi-Multi One-Man-Bands

2009-01-15T18:50:00.003Z

LSTAR: Used to be a day where you couldn't open YouTube without being flooded by people playing the Zelda theme on home made Ocarinas, or some crap. Now? They're multiplying. Rapidly. In the same window. Right before your eyes.

Kudos to these people (persons?) for combining so many minor talents at once.

The first one? Ever so slightly bland.

The second one is exceptional.