New Games |
- The Daily Hotness: Why are you up there?
- Spongebob will never stop rolling
- CCP offers an EVE Online apology, winter expansion tease
- Ni no Kuni PS3 to digitally include that impressive book
- When eroges get motion controls
- RAWR! Beasts collide in Square Enix's MONSTER x DRAGON
- Obscurity: A lost and hidden world
- Apple co-founder Steve Jobs dies at age 56
- Streaming NieR concert announced for later this month
- SpaceChem added to the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle
- Capsized coming to Xbox Live Arcade in December
- GameStop offers chats with NASCAR drivers as prizes
- Live show: Grinding souls on Mash Tactics
- Review: Driver: San Francisco
- Robin punches some pricks in Arkham City trailer
- The ten biggest asshole videogame wizards EVER!
- Amazon Assassin's Creed Revelations pre-order: Free DLC
- Ubisoft on Kinect: 'Simple gestures are what people want'
- Review: Orcs Must Die!
| The Daily Hotness: Why are you up there? Posted: 05 Oct 2011 04:59 PM PDT Sadly, it was announced today that Team Bondi, the guys behind L.A. Noire, will be shutting down their doors. L.A. Noire was going to be released on PC later this year, so I haven't even had a chance to play the game before the studio is closed! Hopefully Rockstar still releases the game on PC, or I'll be a very sad gamer. Today we've got a new episode of Podtoid (which Jim claims is the most offensive one yet), a look at Rage for the PC, the iPod Touch is the most popular mobile gaming device, how you can win $100, some cool new trailers, and a review for Driver: San Francisco. News: |
| Spongebob will never stop rolling Posted: 05 Oct 2011 04:00 PM PDT SpongeBob and THQ have had a scarily successful career in the realm of videogames, and their reign of yellow terror shall continue with SpongeBob’s Surf & Skate Roadtrip on November 8th. If you can't tell, the game will involve surfing and skating and SpongeBob. Surf and Skate will primarily be a Kinect title, but a DS version is in the works. I find the DS version interesting considering that THQ is already putting SpongeBob on the 3DS. The Kinect version is going for the augmented reality approach, as players will simulate the act of skating through 12 different environments. THQ is taking some pride in the fact that this is going to be the first skating game on the Kinect as well. |
| CCP offers an EVE Online apology, winter expansion tease Posted: 05 Oct 2011 03:00 PM PDT Even as an outsider peeking in, it's been odd seeing such back-and-forth drama surrounding EVE Online. Fans have been disappointed by developer CCP's actions in a few areas, as well as by what's been said in response to criticism. CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson offers an apology and explanation -- one that promises a brighter future -- in an official blog post. "Somewhere along the way, I began taking success for granted. As hubris set in, I became less inclined to listen to pleas for caution. Red flags raised by very smart people both at CCP and in the community went unheeded because of my stubborn refusal to allow adversity to gain purchase on our plans. Mistakes, even when they were acknowledged, often went unanalyzed, leaving the door open for them to be repeated." In a separate post, CCP reveals it's shifting the team's emphasis back to core spaceship gameplay. Check out the work-in-progress list of winter 2011 expansion features for yourself. While having open discussions like this can sometimes backfire, I frequently think it's the way to go. |
| Ni no Kuni PS3 to digitally include that impressive book Posted: 05 Oct 2011 02:00 PM PDT
Perhaps the saddest part about the lack of news on Ni no Kuni getting a DS release outside of Japan is that we're missing out on the absurdly cool -- and equally lengthy -- included "Magic Master" book. It's not a complete loss, however: Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch will give PlayStation 3 players in-game access to a digital version of the book. Not quite as fun to flip through or flashy as the real deal, but it's a compromise nonetheless. What would John Waters say? Ni No Kuni’s Magic Book Is An In Game Item On PlayStation 3 [Siliconera] |
| When eroges get motion controls Posted: 05 Oct 2011 01:30 PM PDT According to Maniac, the Japanese developer Tech Arts is working on a title called 3D Custom Girl, which will be released at the end of October. The women present in the game cover pretty much every single Anime cliché in the book. The eroge will come with a USB-peripheral, shaped like a vulva, called the “USB-Onacon” that allows you to control your more intimate interactions with the virtual characters of the game. Are you done re-reading that last sentence over and over again? Good! As you may have guessed by now, that controller has the form of a vulva. The game together with the peripheral costs around 90€. You can check out the slightly not safe for work website and give the game's demo a try -- minus the motion controls of course. |
| RAWR! Beasts collide in Square Enix's MONSTER x DRAGON Posted: 05 Oct 2011 01:00 PM PDT With a title that reminds me of those awful yet glorious B-movies, Square Enix has collaborated with Yahoo! Japan on a new active-time strategy MMORPG called MONSTER x DRAGON. It's actually their second collaboration -- the first being the free-to-play, browser-based warring states simulation game, Sengoku IXA -- and this game is being made to keep the 600,000 players they've acquired since that release. MONSTER x DRAGON is also to be a browser-based title with real-time strategy, trading card games, and the ability to fight with up to one hundred people at any one time, all included without a necessity to install. You, the player, will leads monsters and challenge people for battle over Square Enix's most favorite thing in the world: crystals. Like in any RPG, they'll be plenty of monsters in design and in the skills they acquire. There will also be gigantic monsters you can manipulate, and use them to fight alongside other comrades as a team to collect even more crystals. Square Enix is saying that the interface is simple enough for a simulation RPG that anyone can join in. Beta testing starts from October 13th, and if you want to join in, open a Yahoo! Japan account and register on the game's official site. The game itself is due to come out in Japan sometime this winter. Square Enix's/Yahoo's New Browser Game - MONSTER X DRAGON [Game Watch] [JP] |
| Obscurity: A lost and hidden world Posted: 05 Oct 2011 12:30 PM PDT [For your Bloggers Wanted assignment last week, you were asked to write about a game you thought was relatively obscure; one that a lot of your peers likely hadn't played or even heard of. Today, Kyle MacGregor (the artist formerly known as Cadtalfryn) would like to tell you something about a browser-based online game called Hiddenworld, which you can even play for yourself since it's still online. Kind of reminds me of Legend of the Red Dragon from my BBS days! Want to see your own blog on the front page? Write a blog on the current topic: Villains. -- JRo] Online gaming has changed a lot over the past fifteen years. Before Steam, the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, hell even SegaNet, I was plugging telephone wires into my computer and getting my game on. It didn’t seem odd at the time, but I was playing a free to play MMORPG on a 56k modem – years before genre juggernaut World of Warcraft was even a thing. I’ve played this game on and off for years. While it has certainly undergone numerous changes, it retains a classic feel. The game is very much the same today as it was in 1997 – despite the arrival of technically superior competitors with widespread appeal. It’s become one of the oldest persistent browser-based games in existence – a text-based roleplayer by the name of Hiddenworld. While I can largely attribute my deep hatred for grinding to this game, I look back on it with fond memories. Sure, it might’ve taken me a half an hour a day for nearly a year to reach level one hundred. There was a lot of work involved, but the competition and community made it all worth it. Much like Destructoid, my love for Hiddenworld came from the dedication of its users. Instead of multiple servers filled with faceless thousands Hiddenworld is a single game populated by a few dozen familiar faces. Some are loved and respected by the masses, others feared, some even hated. It’s strange to think a somewhat basic turn-based RPG with such clear limitations could have such a devout following. New players will spend their first few days in the game beating up rats with sticks and staves in the forest outside of town, where they’ll earn experience and the gold necessary to buy new armor and weapons. They’ll bribe innkeepers to attack sleeping players where they lie. Then they’ll head off to the dorms to murder individuals too cheap to buy a room at the inn. Eventually they’ll head to player-owned banks to deposit their daily earnings and decide where they themselves wish to spend their night. Before long they’ll be roaming the world in search of new equipment and monsters to kill. They’ll form teams with other players, hunt down rivals, and slaying their hated enemies. Soon enough they’ll run for public office, control town finances, achieve nobility, claim lordship over provinces, exile players to the wastelands, and perhaps even reach the game’s highest honor – Knighthood. There are only five Knights in Hiddenworld, each a respected player that has been voted in by a majority of experienced players. They act as the game’s caretakers, moderators, second only to the game’s revered, godlike, creator and his appointed council of Guardians. In recent times these have become highly sought after seats of power. Factions have formed with the sole purpose of uprooting those in office, and replacing them with one of their own. About six years ago an organization called the Alliance formed on one of the game’s many fan sites. We met in secret, plotting to overthrow those in power. A small number of players with a large number of alternate characters that effectively ran the game. They had formed teams, organized, taken control of nearly every province, elected themselves Knights, and were so numerous that no single person could challenge them. The Alliance had a leader that was a master orator. A man who didn’t need power himself, because he could twist, control, manipulate others to his will. Any person that would cross him would be met with the organization’s attack dogs. They’d find you, grasp control of your home province by whatever means necessary and exile you. I eventually left the Alliance, finding their tactics rather repugnant, only to be branded a traitor. Leveling a character can prove difficult when whatever move you make leaves you in the wastes, a place where you seldom can progress. By this time the Alliance had become so powerful, so organized that no-one could truly challenge them. Myself and a team of other dedicated players that found themselves caught in a war between these two great forces formed a third faction, The Deviants. We had no clear goal outside of self preservation and revenge against all those that would cross us. It was an interesting time. At one point or another each faction would be the dominant force, politics being the only real difference – that and how dirty they’d be willing to play to survive. I held Knighthood for a short time, what a political scandal that was, and eventually became one of the game’s most powerful players with my trio of level one hundreds, ranked killers, members of some of the finest teams in a larger association of rogue players, discontent with both the ruling class and those that had risen up against it. I’d eventually fall away from the game. The game had become so interesting, so compelling that when the politics died down anything less than what had become the new normal was almost boring. Players started gravitating to high definition game consoles and World of Warcraft. It was technically the same game. In fact, it was better. Incremental additions and the increased interest of the players for so many years led to some definite improvements, but people were slipping away. I’ve recently returned to Hiddenworld, finding a shadow of its former self. It never had many players, a few hundred dedicated members at most, but never have I seen it so sparsely populated as now. I sometimes think about going back and playing. It is still the same game after all. And free to boot. But you can’t ever go home. I caught lightning in a bottle. It’ll never happen again and I’ll never do it justice recounting those legendary days, but I can cherish those memories and occasionally check back in and reminisce with the few that are left. If anyone's interested give it a try. I'd even be willing to help you through the basics if you drop me a line. |
| Apple co-founder Steve Jobs dies at age 56 Posted: 05 Oct 2011 12:26 PM PDT Steve Jobs, a man who changed the digital world forever, died today at age 56. Jobs had been fighting pancreatic cancer for several years, which had made it hard for him to continue on as Apple's CEO. He resigned from that post on August 24, 2011. Goodbye, Steve. You will be missed. |
| Streaming NieR concert announced for later this month Posted: 05 Oct 2011 12:00 PM PDT Maybe you had trouble waking up at 4:00 AM to catch Square Enix's streaming SQ Party LEVEL1 concert that took place last week. I managed to tune in along with 3,000 others to hear remixes from across Square Enix's classic game franchises, and even though I was tired for the rest of the day, I think it was worth catching the performance. The event was apparently popular enough to warrant a follow-up, and Square Enix has announced SQ Party LEVEL2 -NieR NighT- for Friday, October 28, returning to the Studio 2.5D venue. |
| SpaceChem added to the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle Posted: 05 Oct 2011 11:30 AM PDT Ha hah! Excuse me whilst I rub my hands in delight at being proven right (for a change); a few days ago I mentioned that if you were still on the fence as to whether you should buy the latest Humble Bundle, you could wait a little longer and there might be another game added to make it even more value for the money. Well that's what has happened with the puzzle title SpaceChem now added to the bundle, taking it to seven full games with the pre-order of Splort and the prototype Jack Claw. Okay, I know it's not really surprising that another game has been added to the bundle but it's great news nonetheless. |
| Capsized coming to Xbox Live Arcade in December Posted: 05 Oct 2011 11:00 AM PDT 2D action platformer, Capsized, is crash landing on Xbox Live Arcade this December. The game was initially released on Steam in April and developer, Alientrap, has been working with indiePub to bring the game to new platforms. XBLA users are in for a treat. You take control of a stranded astronaut on an exotic, rather dangerous, alien world. Using elements from first person shooters, traditional platformers and physics games, you'll shoot, fly and grapple around this deadly alien landscape. Once you explore over a dozen non-linear levels in the main campaign there's still plenty left to do with Co-Operative, Death Match and Survival modes. Also included is a Time Trial and an Armless Fighting mode. In case you are concerned about your ability to play the game without any arms, worry not. You just don't get guns, you can keep your limbs. As an added bonus XBLA users get their own exclusive levels, improved graphics and DLC. It's going to be 800 MS Points ($10) and you will thank yourself for spending it. |
| GameStop offers chats with NASCAR drivers as prizes Posted: 05 Oct 2011 10:45 AM PDT Did you know that GameStop offers phone calls with NASCAR drivers as prizes for loyal customers? I had no idea, until I was scouring the retailer's PowerUp Rewards page to offload the silly points I'd acquired over the months. While I picked up a handsome Saints Row: The Third gold USB stick, I noticed the odd prize. For 60,000 points, customers can choose to have a phone call from NASCAR racer Joey Logano. I have no idea who he is, but I imagine that the toothless members of my local community are more than familiar with him. "Yes, this is a real phone call from Joey himself, not just a pre-recorded message," promises GameStop. "Discuss racing highlights or even gaming favorites. Past redeemers have reported that Joey sounds even nicer on the phone than he appears on TV! Plus, the PowerUp team will send you some cool racing items, just for being a loyal PowerUp member. Are you ready to bring home the checkered flag?" Well, are you ready!? Personally, I'm more tempted by some of the hilarious garbage that the store is clearly trying to offload from its warehouse. Things like Zelda flip-flops and cardboard cutouts of Michael Jackson are the true prizes. |
| Live show: Grinding souls on Mash Tactics Posted: 05 Oct 2011 10:30 AM PDT [Not sure what Mash Tactics is? I've included a classic highlight to show you just a glimpse of what you've been missing, you daft fool! You can see all of Destructoid's previously aired live shows in our archives.] Today, Mash Tactics is playing the spirit-crushing RPG Dark Souls, a game that is sinisterly designed to punish. Jon Carnage, a man known for his pile of rage-torn shirts, claims to have breezed through the comparably difficult predecessor Demon's Souls. You'll have to tune in to see how this plays out. Mash Tactics airs Monday through Friday at 4pm Pacific. Watch Jon Carnage let loose with off-the-wall humor and discuss the issues of the day in the live chat on Destructoid's Twitch.tv channel. Also, there are videogames being played. Join us for your chance to win prizes, talk to industry guests, and witness all of the glorious antics. |
| Posted: 05 Oct 2011 10:00 AM PDT Driver has been around for a long time, despite never really enjoying the kind of mainstream success that other open-world games such as Saints Row and Grand Theft Auto have. Of course, it doesn't help that the series has had a very poor critical history. The original Driver was well received, but it all went downhill from there. In the face of some massive open-world titles on the market, Driver: San Francisco definitely needed a drastic overhaul in order to stand out. An overhaul is certainly what it got, although I don't think anybody could have predicted what Ubisoft Reflections had up its sleeve. Driver: San Francisco (PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 [reviewed]) To say Driver: San Francisco delivers a swerve is to put it far, far too mildly. Everything starts off quite normally, as John Tanner and his partner Tobias Jones have to track down the recently escaped criminal Charles Jericho. Unfortunately, Jericho is able to outfox the wisecracking cops, smashing into their vehicle with a truck and sending Tanner into a coma. What happens next goes beyond the realm of sensibility and kicks off one of the most deliriously stupid videogame plots in recent memory. I do not mean that disparagingly -- Driver: San Francisco's story is thoroughly ridiculous, but it's so refreshingly unique that one can't help but admire the foolishness. Essentially, Driver: San Francisco is what would happen if Quantum Leap and Jacob's Ladder were both turned into the same videogame. As Tanner flits in and out of reality, he becomes an astral projector, able to "shift" into the body of any driver in the city and continue his pursuit of Jericho. It's bizarre, to say the least. This ludicrous premise sets the scene for a game that's all about manipulating traffic to achieve one's ends. The actual missions are straightforward at heart, but the ways in which they can be completed are quite unlike anything played before. For instance, if your job is to chase down a fleeing criminal, you can possess oncoming traffic and steer it into your prey. You can also switch between multiple cop cars, jockeying for a better position as you stay on a target's tail. During the course of the game, some absolutely brilliant ideas are presented, showcasing a remarkable amount of flexibility from what looks like a shallow gimmick. To leave a vehicle, one simply taps a button, where they'll have free rein to whiz about the city in a first-person perspective. Pushing back on the right stick allows Tanner to climb to greater heights, getting a better view of the city and as the story progresses, he can zoom out farther. Fundamentally, the system works, but I found that traveling across the city took far too long. Zooming in and out is sluggish, especially when Tanner reaches the greatest height possible, and traversing the map to reach mission markers is a slow and boring trundle. Once behind the wheel, things are a cocktail of fun and frustration. The various races, chases, stunts and time challenges are thrillingly innovative and well designed, but the cars control pretty awfully for the type of game Driver: SF wants to be. I'm of the mind that if you go for arcade-style, fast-paced, action-oriented driving, you don't want "realistic" cars that skid around everywhere, but those are the types of cars Driver uses. It's not uncommon to spin out at even the slightest nudge, a problem that is quite common thanks to awful NPC AI and oncoming traffic that actively steers into you. Likewise, the game also enjoys cheating. Of particular note are races, which feature rubber-banding AI to a disgusting degree. Driver seems to deliberately make races unfair in order to force you to use the shift mechanic and cheat back, but it doesn't stop it being annoying. The biggest issue is that the AI is designed to give the computer the greatest advantages while hindering players at every turn. For example, if you race into first place, then shift out of the car to possess oncoming traffic, the CPU will instantly slow down and allow enemy racers to drive past unchallenged. This is especially galling in races where you need to make two cars finish in first and second place. As soon as you leave one car to get the other in position, it will deliberately slow down. The only way to win these races is to possess NPCs and break every opposing car, which defeats the point of it being a race. This can happen in chase sequences as well, with Tanner's car happily slouching behind and allowing an enemy to escape while you're busy trying to stop him with other vehicles. It seems like a needlessly frustrating ordeal, especially since the car handling is already challenging enough. These moments of vexation, however, are punctuated by some vastly entertaining and very stylish missions that do amazing things with the central idea. Whether you're possessing traffic to make them perform stunts in front of a film crew, or shifting around the city to destroy criminal cars before they find and smash a sensitive vehicle, there's some amazing gameplay that you just won't find in any other game. Driver: San Francisco has plenty of content, too. Although the main campaign can be blasted through in a matter of hours, there's a ton of optional missions to undertake and garages where new cars and gameplay upgrades can be purchased. You'll be able to spend psych points -- earned by doing just about anything in the game -- to enhance Tanner's powers, letting him ram into other cars or boost at super speeds. There's a lot to play with, for those who want to take the time. There's a multiplayer mode, and Ubisoft won't let you forget it. I am sure the publisher wants to make its "Uplay" online pass a big hit, but it could stand to not spam me with notifications every time I boot the game up. Annoying customers into putting the code in is not a very friendly thing to do. Nevertheless, the multiplayer is a pretty fun little experience. There are multiple game modes such as Tag, in which players have to touch each other to become "it" and stay untouched as long as possible, or Trailblazer, in which players fight to stay within the stream that flows behind a fleeing car. Each match is preceded by a short qualifier challenge to determine what position all the players start from, and these can range from seeing who earns the most points for jumping, to who can smash the most objects in a street. Like with most online modes these days, there's an experience system, where players can earn extra upgrades to their powers and new personal icons. Ranking up is also required to unlock all the game's match types, which isn't an idea I'm particularly fond of. The multiplayer is fun for a while, with emphasis on a while. The match types make very clever use of the game's shift mechanic, but the ideas are only clever once, and you don't really need to play for much more than that in order to squeeze the maximum amount of fun from the experience. There's a two-day trial that players can use in order to try the multiplayer before entering an online pass code, and those two days are more than enough time to experience everything as much as it needs to be experienced. One defining factor of San Francisco is its sense of style. With its licensed cars, excellent soundtrack, and shamelessly silly narrative, Driver: SF has a very personal charm, not to mention plenty of silly humor. It's a game that knows just how stupid it is, and fully embraces the fact, rather than ever attempting to take itself seriously. Sadly, it's not a very visually impressive game. It's certainly not ugly, but the textures and effects are rather flat and dull, with only the vehicles having any sense of visual flair. Driver: San Francisco is a good laugh, and deserves immense praise for its ingenuity. It is sadly let down by some sluggish navigation and annoying vehicle controls, not to mention some severely imbalanced AI These issues hold back the experience, but certainly don't stop it delivering a solid amount of fun. Fans of open-world experiences who want to try something new will find exactly what they're looking for here, provided they can forgive the needless hassle involved. |
| Robin punches some pricks in Arkham City trailer Posted: 05 Oct 2011 09:30 AM PDT
If you pre-order Batman: Arkham City from GameStop, you'll get access to Robin as a playable character in a set of challenge areas (Edit: My apologies for the confusion. In North America it's a Best Buy exclusive. Elsewhere, Robin is at GameStop). If you want to see if the Boy Wonder's worth your time, check out this video. It'll show you everything you need to know. Arkham City is almost upon us and we're pretty damn excited at Destructoid. Personally, I'm most eager to see if Scarecrow's actually made it in. |
| The ten biggest asshole videogame wizards EVER! Posted: 05 Oct 2011 09:00 AM PDT Yesterday I posted a list of the ten most awesome videogame wizards of all time. But, like anything in life, for every awesome wizard that stands by you, ice staff in hand, as you battle a chimera, there is an asshole wizard that does nothing but throw fireballs at you as you try to climb a cliff to rescue a damsel in distress. Ugh. To be honest, I don’t like to use the word “asshole” a lot -- it is rather harsh (although it is really fun to say). But I don’t know how else to describe these wizards. “Jerks” just doesn’t seem to do them justice. They are evil, manipulative, annoying ... well, assholes. When you read the list I think you will agree. ASSHOLES!
Okay, seriously, nothing annoys me more than fighting the Wizzrobes in the original Legend of Zelda for the NES. Not only do they fight you in giant groups, they teleport all around the room so quickly, that it is almost impossible to dodge their spells and hit them before they disappear again. UGH!
Wait, you had an indirect hand in [SPOILER]'s death?! YOU DICK!
The nasty ice wizard makes an appearance during the very first scene of classic movie Big, as main character Josh Baskin confronts him while playing a fictional computer game. Click here to try out the short, nostalgic game for yourself and see exactly what makes the ice wizard such an ass. Thermal pod? Really?
The first race against Wizpig during the final levels of Diddy Kong Racing is SO FREAKIN’ HARD! AHHHHH! SCREW THAT PIG WIZARD!
Remember Grover Dill, the lackey to Scut Farkus’s bully in the 1983 comedy A Christmas Story? That is Kamek in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island: loud, obnoxious, mocking, but afraid to actually fight for himself. Every time he confronts Yoshi at the end of every fort or castle, he just uses his magic to mutate an already existing, seemingly helpless enemy. And once this new boss grows to screen-filling heights, Kamek just flies away, laughing.
The eerie music. The strange, twisted house held up by chicken legs. A cryptic rhyme. A timed fetch quest. Being turned into a frog and boiled alive. Confronting Baba Yaga in Hero’s Quest is challenging, tense, and absolutely terrifying.
Possessed by Ultimecia, Sorceress Edea in Final Fantasy VIII is an evil, if misunderstood, villain. But her inclusion on this list is more because of a personal experience than anything. The first time I played through Final Fantasy VIII, I had not drawn a lot of magic or upgraded my weapons. I pretty much did nothing but build up my summons until they were remarkably powerful. It seemed a good idea at the time ... Later in the game, when Ultimecia leaves Sorceress Edea and enters Rinoa, I could no longer use my summons, as they would always attack all and harm Rinoa (something you must avoid at this point in the game). Because of this, I couldn’t beat the game, and had to quit after 30+ hours of playing. I have never forgiven Sorceress Edea since ...
Do you remember the first time you walked into the secret room at the back of Hyrule Castle, only to see Agahnim zap Princess Zelda into the Dark World? Oh, that really chapped my hide! And, is it just me, or did it take you the longest time to figure out you had to reflect back Agahnim’s attacks when fighting him? Oh, it is just me? Whatever, Agahnim is a jerk.
Maybe my second most feared videogame character of all time, the wizard Manannan from King’s Quest III makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up just by typing his name. During the first, extended part of the game, if main character Gwydion is caught in the wrong room, with the wrong item, or in the wrong location, Manannan (who randomly appears) will kill him instantly, forcing the player to restart or load up an old save file. Yup, it is as brutal, scary, and infuriating as it sounds.
Anyone that has played Kid Icarus knows there is no other character hated more than the dreaded, horrible, massive asshole Eggplant Wizard. Not only is the Eggplant Wizard really hard to kill, but getting hit by one of his projectiles turns Pit into a defenseless walking eggplant, a state that can only be cured by finding a hard-to-locate nurse. Oh, and did I mention THE NURSES ARE ALWAYS SO FAR AWAY?! I don’t hate a lot of things. I hate the Eggplant Wizard.
----- What do you think? Out of all the evil, annoying, nightmare-inducing wizards, did I choose the ten biggest assholes? What other magic-using jerks do you think I missed? Compared to yesterday’s list, are there any wizards that should switch places? And are there any videogame wizards that fall on both lists? Awesome assholes? Magus from Chrono Trigger, maybe? Sound off in the comments! |
| Amazon Assassin's Creed Revelations pre-order: Free DLC Posted: 05 Oct 2011 07:45 AM PDT If you pre-order Assassin’s Creed: Revelations at Amazon you will get a bonus in-game outfit: Altair's clothing. This news comes from a tweet shared on the company’s official Twitter account. This exclusive Altair outfit single-player skin allows Ezio to try on the gear his predecessor wore. I'm assuming he sent it to the cleaners first. I'm thinking of the sweat, blood and straw. The code for your outfit will be emailed within two days of your shipment, says Amazon. The Amazon item page features a video that shows you what this outfit looks like in the game. [via Greyviper] |
| Ubisoft on Kinect: 'Simple gestures are what people want' Posted: 05 Oct 2011 07:15 AM PDT This is the second holiday season Microsoft's motion-sensing Kinect device has been on the market, and Ubisoft has a huge push for Kinect-enabled games lined up for the season. Ubisoft SVP of sales and marketing, Tony Key, had a lot to say about Kinect in a recent interview with Gamasutra. Ubisoft has their own view of how Kinect games should be built and marketed, and it seems they're fully aware of the device's limitations. "The fact is that the simple gestures are what people want out of a Kinect right now," said Key, responding to a question on why Ubisoft Kinect titles feature conservative movements. "We're not all ballet dancers, we don't have perfect control over our bodies and stuff. So I think simplicity is what makes the game more appealing in most cases." As for core games, Key says that one of the reasons they don't have core gamers for the Kinect "is because of the time and intensity it would take to try and match exactly what a controller does." One core game that will see Kinect functionality is Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, shown at E3 this year. But it seems that is more of a test run for the motion tech. "The gunsmith is an added benefit [to Ghost Recon] that Kinect can bring. Building Kinect functionality into a core game is still something we're all toying with, because we still have to decide how does it really improve the experience? If it doesn't improve the experience, then what's the point? The gamers won't support it anyway." |
| Posted: 05 Oct 2011 07:00 AM PDT Lately we've seen so many twists on the tower defense genre that it almost feels like we should come up with a better name for it. Anomaly Warzone Earth turned you from a defender into an attacker, while Sanctum added first-person co-op gameplay. Then there are the more third-person action-RPG variants, such as the upcoming Dungeon Defenders. Orcs Must Die! shares the most of its mechanics with the latter, but trades cooperative play for a wealth of content. It does so with a genocidal smile and a hearty chuckle, and behind its back it hides a mace to smash your head in if you expect to simply breeze through yet another tower defense variant. Orcs Must Die! (Xbox Live Arcade [reviewed], PC) Orcs Must Die! centers around a stubborn and incompetent Warmage apprentice who, unfortunately for everyone involved, ends up being the realm's last hope in defense of the unending orc hordes. Sadly, everyone else who was capable has already died. Story be damned, Orcs Must Die! is about orcs that must die, and die they will. As the apprentice you'll run around a level with your magical crossbow and a customizable mix of weapons, magical artifacts, and traps. If you want to take the direct attack approach, you have the option to place some slowdown traps and then hack, shoot, zap, freeze, or burn your foes to bits. Should you die, however, you'll be reborn at the "Rift" you have to protect, at the cost of five Rift points (i.e., health points). While the direct attack option is there, you would be an idiot to just run in hacking and slashing in a tower defense game -- even if it's a variant on the genre -- without paying at least some attention to how you are going to use your 17 traps and survive. The traps in Orcs Must Die! are about what you'd expect from a game set in a medieval fantasy world. (That is, if you spend a lot of your time thinking about ways to kill orcs in such a world, and who doesn't?) Spikes, arrows, giant swinging chains, burning coals, wall blades and grinders, and even catapult pods that propel orcs into pits of doom all make an appearance. Some traps can only be placed on the floor, while others fit on walls or on ceilings. This means you have to design a path of death by keeping in mind how the orcs are going to approach your Rift, thankfully indicated by small blue lines that keep flowing from the level's entrances. Barricades can divert the path of incoming waves so the enemies walk over skewering and burning paths, get ground by giant blades, then stomped to bits by a giant crushing ceiling panel, only to finally get shot in the face by a volley of arrows from a wall trap and by the archer defenders you placed on high walls. It's a marvel to see the resulting carnage of your work -- and gore can be turned off for the faint of heart. Meanwhile, you have your trusty crossbow to deal damage from a safe distance. Every consecutive shot further decreases its accuracy, but a well-placed headshot instantly kills any type of enemy except the fearsome giant ogres and gnoll hunters. Walking around does nothing to impact your accuracy, however, so within half an hour you find yourself timing your shots in a rhythm of headshots, thinning out the horde while your traps hopefully do the rest. If enemies do get past you and your traps -- and they will -- using the alternate fire of your crossbow will stun enemies in a small area so you can take them down before they reach the Rift. Likewise, magical artifacts will have a direct attack like a fireball or a bolt of chain lightning, but their alternate fire will lay waste to anything that passes through an area for about five seconds. These alternate attacks also cost you almost all of your slowly regenerating mana, making it a tactical option for orc genocide or a field of death to lay down at one entrance while you focus on another one. When everything goes according to plan, and all orcs, gnolls, shamans, and other enemies go along with your designs for their imminent demise, Orcs Must Die! is a blast to play and at the start of the game it's even a bit easy. The first few levels introduce you to the basics and each new level unlocks a new trap or magical artifact to use, but it's all relatively painless to play through. A couple of levels in, this changes dramatically. Some levels will ramp up the difficulty immensely, making you pass a level by the skin of your teeth or simply failing it altogether. Most of the difficulty stems from having multiple paths to deal with, without knowing where the first wave will come from and without the resources to either defend both paths or barricade one of the paths to divert or stall a wave. The next few levels can be a breeze to finish without losing a single Rift point, only to be followed by yet another ridiculously hard level. It does help you to rethink your strategies and to learn more about your traps' strengths and weaknesses, but the pacing of the difficulty can be absolutely brutal at times. As you progress, you'll also gain access to Weavers, sorceresses who are really little more than unlockable skill-trees. You can only choose one to support you in any level, but more often than not it pays off to invest in the bonuses to traps and archers, spellcasting, or personal buffs, respectively. Because you need to choose which traps and items you want to use at the start of a level, with no option to swap them out once you've placed your first trap, and because you only have a limited amount of slots to assign, the amount of puzzle pieces to solve a really hard level can be daunting at times. You need to choose the right tools for the job, choose the right Weaver (if you choose one at all), manage your resources correctly so no wave will overwhelm you, and continuously keep scoring headshots with your crossbow. With so many options and so many ways to approach a level, it borders on overwhelming more often than not. For some reason the game never tells you what the next wave will consist of, nor does it tell you from what direction they will come next, which can lead to some trial-and-error planning when it could've easily removed that out of the equation. There's little more frustrating than reaching the last wave without a scratch, only to find out you were ill-prepared for a bunch of giant ogres that take forever to manually take down, while a small group of orcs runs past you as you fight and sneaks into your Rift to ruin your score. Similarly, sometimes you can block off a path with barricades to funnel multiple waves into one long path and sometimes the orcs will destroy these barricades and flush through, but the game doesn't clearly tell you when that is the case. Despite some frustrations with several difficulty spikes, Orcs Must Die! will start to grow on you. All the traps you unlock are yours forever, making it fun to go back and earn more "skulls" in levels you previously only barely passed. These skulls in turn can be used to upgrade traps, making you be better prepared for levels yet to come. When you finish the game's 24 levels, pressing "Continue" will simply show you a cutscene to end the story. The game then immediately puts you in the first level on the even more challenging Nightmare mode. You might think it will be a breeze to run through the first couple of levels, and at first it does feel rather easy, but soon enough you'll start to run into trouble yet again as progressively tougher waves break themselves on your defenses. While Nightmare mode's difficulty provides more challenges and more content due to the new waves for levels you previously played, the scores for these levels have a single leaderboard regardless of difficulty. Even just playing the first level on Nightmare put me near the top of the leaderboards -- simply because at the time there weren't a lot of people who reached that stage yet -- and despite not caring about my score on the normal Warmage difficulty before, I was suddenly paying close attention to it. If you aren't a score-mongerer, then Orcs Must Die! isn't going to change that, but the leaderboards do tempt you to replay levels and improve your strategies just because you know it's possible to do better. Moreover, between the new waves and having all your traps at your disposal, Nightmare difficulty essentially more than doubles the game's regular length. There is a lot to Orcs Must Die!, even if all you do is play through a few dozen levels creating the ingredients for the world's biggest orc stew. The game can sometimes be punishing to a fault, but if you are up for the challenge it's never impossible to beat. While Orcs Must Die! can be a fun and challenging romp on the default difficulty for most players, mastering Nightmare difficulty adds so much more for tower defense enthusiasts that it becomes well worth the 1200 Microsoft Points if you're looking for a meaty downloadable game in this genre. Alas, it is a bit disappointing that there is no co-op mode when the game with its multiple waves and paths feels made for playing together. Below its cartoony surface and morbid fascination with killing orcs in as many brutal ways as possible, Orcs Must Die! is a surprisingly deep and challenging game that begs you to delve into it and slaps you until you do it right. The occasional difficulty spikes and the wealth of tools at your disposal may overwhelm some players at times, but fans of the genre can sink their teeth in enough content to keep playing it for hours on end. For the latter kind of players, any of the gripes with frustration caused by trial-and-error designs will vanish in the face of the sheer amount of time you're going to spend fully completing it -- and the fun you'll have as Orcs Must Die! tempts and taunts you. |
Podtoid 170: Thirst World Problems
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