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The Orange Box is already well on top of my list for Game of the Year. Sure, it’s not a game, but what the heck, Portal alone is worth any award heaped upon it, even if you don’t count the excellent Episode Two or the insanely fun Team Fortress 2. With Episode Two wrapping up with a gut-wrenching cliffhanger, fanatics such as yours truly are already salivating over playing Episode Three and Portal 2. That is, provided they are released some time before we die, considering Valve’s infamous release date hijinks.
Talking to Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s John Walker for an interview, Episode Two’s project lead David Speyrer has justified the lack of an Episode Three trailer saying that they are trying something “pretty ambitious” for the project, and didn’t want to overcommit.
Say you really hated the fact that cute, little birds underwent a lot of misery before ending up on your plate as dinner. What better way to make a statement than by going vegan and protesting outside the restaurant day and night, right? Not if you are any bit as innovative and clever as the anti-KFC PETA, where you’d actually come up with a really trippy take on Super Mario Bros. to get your activist message going.
With Super Chick Sisters, a Flash platforming game in the same vein as the Mario titles, gamers get to guide Nugget and Chickette as they go all Mario and Luigi to save Princess Peach, err, we mean, Pamela Anderson from the clutches of the evil Colonel Sanders. What’s really amazing about this little game is not how it chooses to send its message, but how well it actually does it. Spread over five levels, the game is an absolute treat to play even as it takes a couple of sharp pokes at Mario and Luigi, who are suffering from Wiiitis. And oh, in case you want to play as Pam herself, all you gotta do is enter gopam at the main menu. There, now go have fun while I munch on a carrot and thank the stars I am a potato-tarian. Good for me!
Sounds zany, huh? But that’s how BioShock started out apparently, according to senior designer Joe McDonagh, who spoke at length to CVG about his career - selling no-good games for a living, his stint at Lionhead and the really interesting way in which he landed it (think tea leaves, burnt matches and a letter in a bottle), starting his own company and then losing it all before heading over to Irrational to work on BioShock as a senior designer.
We all saw how BioShock was almost never made, but then, it was also a pretty crappy concept at first, according to Joe. A plot that involved an island and lots of Nazis, BioShock almost became Far Cry meets Return to Castle Wolfenstein, before they took the out-there idea of building a game based on Ayn Rand’s principles and what happens when you take it too far.
Read the complete Creative Minds interview at CVG and thank the stars that the game you enjoy is built so because people like Ken Levine, Nate Wells, Joe McDonagh, Melissa Miller and a hundred other dedicated individuals broke their collective backs for years making it so that we could enjoy the romp through the dystopia of Rapture.
The winners for UK’s computer games design festival, Dare to be Digital, as well as nominees for a brand-new BAFTA, have been announced at a special event in Dundee. The Dare to be Digital contest, now running on 8 years, is supposed to be the “‘perfect pathway’ for young talent in the games industry”, with prizes worth £2,500 having been snatched up by Phoenix Seed with Bear Go Home, for ‘Innovation and Creativity’; Carebox with ClimbActic, for ‘Use of Technology’; and Voodoo Boogy with Ragnarawk, for ‘Commercial Potential’. They will now be the only nominees for the BAFTA Ones to Watch awards that will be announced later in October.
With students designing games ranging from cute and cuddly (Bear Go Home), to extreme adventuring (Climbactic) and the obligatory fantasy RPG where you battle enemies, not with swords, not with staffs, but the awesome power of an ancient and powerful electric guitar (Ragnarawk), the 12 teams that participated in the event were subjected to a plethora of poking and prodding by game industry macho-men, including Geoff Heath of NCSoft, Chairman of the judges, who said:
“The judges were incredibly impressed by the quality of the work they saw. All the teams have demonstrated an extremely high level of achievement in the 10 weeks and have clearly benefited from testing their games at Dare ProtoPlay.”
Hit the jump for the official press release, while we await even more goodness at the next upcoming indie game festival.
Wow, time flies when you are having fun. And time is money. So money flies when you are having fun. Especially when you spending over and over on games that, according to GamesRadar, haven’t really changed all that much over the last 10 years, even though (they are very quick to add) you may actually find them enjoyable.
Taking a sharp poke at fanboys who are seething with rage and burning up the Intertubes right now with death threats, the article takes a look at how games like Metal Slug, Guilty Gear, Football Manager, Virtua Fighter, Pokemon, Crash Bandicoot, Street Fighter and yes, even the Nintendo fan favorite, The Legend of Zelda, hasn’t evolved as much the other franchises like Super Mario, Prince of Persia or even (oh boy) Sonic! Trying to fix the situation, the GamesRadar article offers tips to developers on how they can reinvent the games, like maybe making the trip to the third dimension or adding more open-ended freedom to a platformer like Crash Bandicoot (this doesn’t sound too bad, Kameo could do it) or do something innovative with the Wii controller instead of ripping off the gameplay from Ocarina of Time all over again.
Yes, changes are required, and a lot of franchises have tried lots of new concepts - some are hugely successful, like Super Mario, Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, Rainbow Six, etc. whereas others, like Sonic, have blown up in the developers’ faces. While some games lend themselves to a change, it has to be done in such a way that it attract a load of old gamers without leaving true fans high and dry, like Sega seems to have done in the recent years. The best thing to do is to ask the gamers what they want to see change in their favorite games. Chances are that if you sit down and talk to your target audience and long time fans, you will unearth a rare gem among the piles of garbage that will inevitably pour in. Also, game developers have to understand that, sometimes, its best to start a new franchise instead of flogging the dead horse.
Almost as if to counterpoint the whole issue, especially with the Sonic debacle, Sega is now looking to mature games like Condemned 2, Alien and comic book adaptations such as Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Captain America and Thor to help them rise to the top tier of videogame publishers. Let’s hope Sonic can make some dent and rise again in the eyes of his fans with the upcoming Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, and yes, quite possibly, even Super Smash Bros.!
Games that haven’t changed in ten years [Games Radar]
Sega Goes Beyond Sonic [BusinessWeek]
After being pestered every which way by the fans at the Cult of Rapture website, BioShock finally got a Collector’s Edition that includes a “behind the scenes” bonus DVD, a Big Daddy action figure, soundtrack CD and the best damn packaging ever! But sadly, there’s no art book that comes with these Collector’s Edition packs. Not to be outdone, the 2K Team has put up the art book, titled Breaking the Mold, for free on their website.
The 67 page art book, complete with concept art, narratives on various elements of the art and character design and tons of sketches on the creatures that inhabit Rapture, comes in both low and high res versions for your viewing pleasure. And oh, if you thought you knew a lot of about those genetic mutants that roam Rapture’s streets, then you thought wrong, and from what I can see from the art in the book, it looks like BioShock’s mutants can give survival horror nightmares from Silent Hill a run for their money when it comes to scaring the bejesus out of you. Don’t believe me, take a look at this beast. Whatever the fuck it is, I am running the hell away from it if I ever see it in the game. (Click image for larger version)
As you might have already figured, the book has a number of spoilers as well, including one in which the Little Sisters appear to be (holy fuck!) robotic underneath that pale skin (Oops! Sorry for the spoiler!), so you might just want to look at the pictures and not read the words until you finish the game. Or as Ken Levine put it: “No reading, just looking!”
How I hate my stupid 256k connection. Been downloading the BioShock demo since 9 AM and the damn thing still isn’t done. Of course, until I wait for the remaining 31% of the demo to complete, I need something to do. Thankfully, for sorry blokes like me, 2K Boston, formerly Irrational, have released the launch trailer for BioShock, which is, eerily, set to the upbeat tune of Frank Sinatra’s “Somewhere beyond the sea”, even as the video shows off the Big Daddy holding and (comically, yet painfully) shaking the player’s head with just one gigantic hand. Ahh, good times, although I must say, I don’t like the Little Sisters’ red eyes. They were a lot more creepier when they looked like regular, sick 12-year old girls who kept yelling “Look, Mr. Bubbles! Adam!” and “Get him, Mr. B!” Oh well!
BioShock Launch Trailer - HD Windows Media [GameTrailers]
And oh, in case you are a PS3 owner and still wondering if the game will hit your favorite Piano Black console with the Spiderman font on it, well, sorry, chumps. Ken Levine has pretty much stated that BioShock will stay exclusive to the PC and the Xbox 360. Looks like you’ll have to spend money on that shiny PC upgrade after all.
Strangely though, for a game that has been generating tremendous applause ever since it was first announced, it looks like the game almost didn’t get made, according to senior designer Joe McDonagh. Speaking to CVG about the game, Joe said:
“Bioshock was a long time in the making. Ever since System Shock II the team had talked about everything they wished they’d done differently. Ken (Levine) spent years pitching the game to publishers but no one was interested, incredible as that seems now. I joined Irrational in December 2004 and my first job was to get a publishing deal for the game (I worked as the Business Development Director for the first six months). I remember pitching the game to one publisher who later told a friend of mine that it was ‘just another fucking PC FPS that’s going to sell 250,000 units.’”
Just another fucking PC FPS? Looks like BioShock might go the way of System Shock 2, which is probably one of the greatest games ever made in the history of gaming, but sadly, didn’t too well at the market. Of course, one hopes that won’t be the case, since the future of a lot of my favorites, including the “Shock” and the SWAT series depends on Irrational scoring big time with this game. Time for FPS fans and jaded game publishers to take their heads out of their ass and start seeing the quality that’s around them instead of sinking more funds into a brain-dead Need For Speed franchise!