New Games |
- Hey, it's Ludum Dare 22 and Minicraft!
- All Zombies Must Die! tomorrow on Mash Tactics
- Pokemon + Nobunaga trailer will poke you in the naga
- Resident Evil: Revelations Raid Mode Undead Stream
- Best of 2011: Totally Random Awards, Pt. 2
- Jade Dynasty gets a new expansion
- Comments of the Week: Danny Glover's House
- BioWare held a grand tour for Kids with Cancer
- Genius! Someone made Deadly Premonition trading cards
- Club Nintendo in Japan gets slick golden Nunchuk
- 25 Days: Win The Baconing on Steam plus swag!
| Hey, it's Ludum Dare 22 and Minicraft! Posted: 18 Dec 2011 01:00 PM PST If you follow the indie gaming scene, you're most likely aware of the fact that the 22nd Annual Ludum Dare, a 48-hour game development competition, was this weekend. A per usual, a theme was given at the start of the event and participants had 2 days to build a qualifying game from the ground up. This year's theme was "Alone." Internet darling Markus "Notch" Perrson decided to livestream his efforts and, as always, it's quite impressive to see it all in action. His offering, Minicraft, takes some obvious bits from its voxelated big brother -- crafting, zombies, slimes, mining -- but it does have its own personality. I wish we could take a look at each of the over 600 entrants, but... damn that's a lot. If you see anything particularly exciting though, let us know below! |
| All Zombies Must Die! tomorrow on Mash Tactics Posted: 18 Dec 2011 11:00 AM PST If you hadn't already guessed, Monday's edition of Mash Tactics is going to extra special. We are going to be playing the upcoming XBLA and PSN game, All Zombies Must Die! live, early, with some very extraordinary guests. Joining us all the way from the United Kingdom, via Skype, All Zombies Must Die! lead designer, Dave Dow, and designer, James Chew will be hanging and taking questions directly from the live chat audience. Oh yeah, and host of Revision3's New Challenger, Anthony Carboni, will joining in on the zombie blasting festivities too. It's a show that's going to be full of many surprises, so make sure you don't miss out. At the very least, stop by to wish Jon Carnage a very happy birthday! Mash Tactics airs Monday through Friday at 4pm Pacific. Watch Jon Carnage and myself, Wesley Ruscher, 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. Watch this space for the livestream embed starting at 4PM! |
| Pokemon + Nobunaga trailer will poke you in the naga Posted: 18 Dec 2011 10:00 AM PST As you may have heard, the greatest videogame crossover ever is hitting the DS next Spring in Japan, care of Koei Tecmo and The Pokémon Company. The vaguely historically accurate Nobunaga's Ambition and the totally historically accurate Pokémon series are coming together with Pokémon + Nobunaga's Ambition, and I couldn't be happier about it. Seeing Pokémon from all five generations team up to battle a Japanese warlord from ten generations ago is such an obviously good idea that I'm not sure why it took so long for someone to make it happen. As you can see from the trailer, all the Pokemon will be fully animated, and will be engaging in some sort of strategy battle system. As for the cast, Gen. 5 legendary Zekrom will be teaming up with Nobunaga, Eevee will be the Pokémon of choice for the game's male and female protagonists, Oichi has a Jigglypuff, some mysterious dude named Kenshin has a Mewtwo, Mitsuhide's going (c)old school with an Articuno, and some mean-looking man named Shingen has a Groudon. Lucky bastards. I'll be buying this game day one, and I hope it leads to new trends in popular gaming. I'd love to see a game about Abraham Lincoln teaming up with Mike Haggar and Socks the Cat to free Oil Man, Jynx, and Panthro from slavery. |
| Resident Evil: Revelations Raid Mode Undead Stream Posted: 18 Dec 2011 09:00 AM PST
Yesterday Capcom held a live stream of their upcoming 3DS title Resident Evil: Revelations, highlighting the joy and pain of the game's co-op Raid mode. The stream is currently off-line, but it has risen from it's grave in this post with nearly an hour of archived footage for you to enjoy. It's interesting to see the tight corridors and small groups of durable, slow moving enemies most commonly associated with the classic Resident Evil games combined with the action-focused co-op combat made popular by more contemporary zombie games like Resident Evil 5 and Left 4 Dead. It looks pretty fun, but I'm glad that Capcom didn't make the whole game revolve around Raid mode, like they did with Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D. I have a feeling that having both a solid, story based campaign and a replayable, addictive online mode will help Revelations outsell it's more arcade-style predecessor. It doesn't hurt that the game looks incredible, (just check out some of the close-ups on the character models at the 11:20 mark) but I'll understand if you don't want to sit through the whole stream. If not, I suggest you just jump around to 15:00, 32:00, and 38:00. That's where you'll see a lot of the game's new monsters, like the disgusting, gaping mouthed blobs, the weirdly cute jumping spiked balls, and some really big, dark zombie dogs. I can't wait for this game to come out. Just a few more months to go! |
| Best of 2011: Totally Random Awards, Pt. 2 Posted: 18 Dec 2011 08:00 AM PST Go to any media outlet this week and they'll be trumping up their best-of-the-year list. We're not so different. However, I wanted there to be a place where staff could sound off on what trends, games, and ideas captured their interest (for better or worse) this year. I asked all the Dtoid staff to provide a mini-rant in the form of a fake award. The results are a bit random. Today, we take a look at the stupidest moment in a game, overlooked gems, and the "best" Skyrim glitch in 2011. Matthew Razak's "Movie That Was Too Much like a Videogame for Its Own Good" Award Normally, we complain about videogames' trying to be too much like movies, but with games' becoming a bigger medium, we see more and more influences from games in film. That's not always a good thing. There's a reason why movies and games are different things, and that reason is because THEY'RE DIFFERENT THINGS. A perfect example of why this should always be remembered is Sucker Punch, which took the plot and goals of a videogame and stuffed it into a movie. A young, sexually appealing girl enters a series of fantasy worlds where she must defeat a series of "bosses" in order to collect a bunch of weapons to defeat her oppressors (in this case, the mental ward she's been committed). Basically, this is a movie about a bunch of fetch quests, which can already be boring enough in a game, but when you give Zak Snyder carte blanche, it gets even stupider evidently. Scenes that should be totally awesome are dull because every scene works like a game's level and not part of a movie. Game plotting is great for games, not for movies. Runner-ups: Battle: Los Angeles, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night, Priest, Cowboys & Aliens, Spy Kids 4D: All the Time in the World Andy Dixon's "Game That's Still Fun to Play Even with the Sound Off" Award (a.k.a. The "Happy Family" Award) Winner: Deus Ex: Human Revolution Gaming in a small house with a sleeping toddler is often an exercise in futility. Paper-thin walls coupled with the close proximity of the "family" room to said child's bedroom make for poor gaming conditions, and they require a very specific type of game in order to appease all parties. Features such as subtitles/closed captioning, easy jump-in/jump-out gameplay, and the ability to pause at any time become more than just boxes to tick on the back of the box -- they become necessities. For these reasons, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a family man's dream come true. You can pause the game in almost every scene, subtitles are enabled by default, and the slow, exploration-heavy pacing means taking a break to soothe a fussy toddler back to sleep won't throw off your mojo as it would in other games. Above all else, Adam Jensen's grating voice acting means your experience may actually improve by turning down the volume! Runner-up: Fapping Casey Baker's "Stupidest Moment in a Video Game This Year" Award Winner: Pvt. Augustus Cole (a.k.a "Cole Train") has a midlife crisis and freaks the f*ck out for no real reason in Gears of War 3 While this year was filled with stupid video game moments, from any emergent (and oftentimes hilarious) glitch that has appeared in a Skyrim playthrough to the "press button to stab rat" sequence in Battlefield 3, I feel that the Cole Train's freak-out moment in Gears 3 is the single stupidest moment in gaming for this year. The biggest issue that comes with this moment, when Cole is revisiting his hometown of Hanover with Baird and Carmine, is that it comes abruptly and ends with no real meaningful ties to the greater Gears story. They decide to take a walk down memory lane through the ol' Thrashball stadium after meeting up with the Stranded, who are instantly willing to help the old celebrity and his pals, but his sudden flashback is both abrupt and of absolutely no consequence to the rest of the story, despite the fact that his behavior puts pretty much everyone including himself in serious danger. Nothing else is ever mentioned of this moment, and the bit of backstory it provides is incredibly shallow at best. Gears of War has never been a series about a deep and meaningful story, but at least Dom's narrative in Gears 2 was created in earnest. Here we have an apocalyptic, end-of-the-world scenario where the Lambent are pretty much destroying every last vestige of humanity that hasn't already been raped and pillaged by the Locusts, and the attention is suddenly shifted to Cole Train's mid-life crisis breakdown because -- boo hoo -- he's not a celebrity Thrashball star anymore. ... what? Jonathan Holmes's "Why Did U No Play This Thing!?" Award Winner: Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP This is one of the best games ever. It's on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, three things that many humans own. Yet, while more copies of Angry Birds have sold than there are people in the United States, Sword & Sworcery fails to become a commercial blockbuster. C'mon people! Don't you like evading death anymore? What about three-eyed wolves or naked bear men? How about games where you don't find out that the main character is a woman until someone tells you? Are you too cool for that now, with your rainbow parties and your Hot Pockets and your Glee 3D movie sing-a-longs? In closing, Sword & Sworcery is better than all of Destructoid's official GOTY nominees, except maybe Portal 2, but probably not. Japanator's "PSP JRPG You Should Have Played but Probably Didn't Even Hear About Because HAHA PSP JRPGs, Am I Right?" Award Winner: Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Japanator reviews editor Hiroko Yamamura says, "Trails was truly the surprise of the year for me. I took a quick glance at the semi-generic looking anime box art and dismissed it for another JRPG snooze fest. Countless fun-filled hours later, you could say that I kind of fell in love. The title shows some of its age, as it is a port of a 2004 PC game, but those shortcomings become distant memories after just an hour or so of play. What you do take away is an addictive, funny, and dramatic storyline filled with some really memorable characters. In year that had some real JRPG snoozers, it would be a crime to sleep on this PSP gem." Runners up: Fate/EXTRA, Corpse Party Fraser Brown's "WTF Just Happened in Skyrim?" Award Winner: NPC madness It might not be as epic as flying mammoths or dragons getting stuck in reverse, but the crazy antics of the residents of Skyrim are a constant reminder of just how buggy yet somehow delightful Skyrim can be. Frustrating as well, oh so very frustrating. Technically I'm cheating, since a plethora of bugs and design flaws went towards making these wonderful buffoons. Followers are, of course, the worst of the bunch. Vanishing without a trace, getting lost on mountains, knocking everything over in your meticulously ordered home, standing on every single trap over and over again. God, they are awful. Yet still, I let them follow me around, but for every NPC that gets stuck or attacks for no reason, there's another with a pot on their head and a shop that's ripe for burglary. So it all works out. Runner-ups: Reversing dragons, flying horses and mammoths, flying player characters, poltergeists/home invaders, chicken crime stoppers Allistair Pinsof's "Japanese Game That Really Should Have Come to the US This Year" Award Winner: Puyo Puyo!! 20th Anniversary More than any other year in recent memory, 2011 seems to be full of promising Japanese games that have been ignored the West. And -- surprise, surprise -- they are mostly for Nintendo platforms. Xenoblade was a shoe-in for this award until the recent U.S. release announcement, which makes me want to draw attention to a different game that has been completely ignored. In fact, most of the series has been ignored in the West. I'm talking about Puyo Puyo, one of the oldest and best arcade puzzle games. Puyo Puyo!! 20th Anniversary is an absolute gem that brings together almost every mode and character that ever graced the series into one giant package. I can't put it down. I wish other Westerners could experience this joyous time-suck of a game. Runner-ups: Akai Katana, Ni no Kuni [DS especially], The Last Story, Pandora's Tower, Xenoblade |
| Jade Dynasty gets a new expansion Posted: 18 Dec 2011 06:00 AM PST Legacy, the newest expansion to Perfect World Entertainment's free-to-play martial arts MMO Jade Dynasty, is out today. Included in the expansion (which, along with the original game is free to play) are two new player classes, gear, seasonal events and a new instance. Perfect World Entertainment is also responsible for Rusty Hearts, Blacklight: Retrobution and War of the Immortals. If you've played any of those and have yet to check out Jade Dynasty, you may want to. Those guys have made some pretty unique and interesting F2P games and I imagine Legacy will have more eye-catching gameplay. Have you played Jade Dynasty? Are you excited about Legacy? |
| Comments of the Week: Danny Glover's House Posted: 18 Dec 2011 05:00 AM PST ZombiePlatypus supplies the goods with the image. So, yeah. All his fault.
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| BioWare held a grand tour for Kids with Cancer Posted: 18 Dec 2011 04:00 AM PST Earlier this year, BioWare offered up a tour of the company's studio as an auction item for the Kids with Cancer Society's Beaded Journey Gala. The "BioWare Experience" was sold off for $15,500, and as a result, a few of the program's children were able to learn a bit about videogame creation, play some Star Wars: The Old Republic, and even design a texture for a Dragon Age character. The pièce de résistance was the opportunity to act out a scene with a few Dragon Age characters. The video above is the result of the kids' work, and it is both friggin' cute and hilarious. Hearing a big burly dude speak with a little girl's voice is always good for a laugh. I'm also impressed by how well they delivered their lines. They could put a few actual voice actors to shame. Good job, BioWare! You made some brave and deserving kids incredibly happy. Kids with Cancer Society of Edmonton at BioWare [YouTube] (Thanks for the share, Zachariah!) |
| Genius! Someone made Deadly Premonition trading cards Posted: 18 Dec 2011 02:00 AM PST Over Thanksgiving, Deadly Premonition super fan Whitney had this crazy idea to make the in-game set of 65 collectible trading cards a real thing. She just got the prints in and... ooooo boy. Even if you haven't touched the game yourself, you have to admit these are pretty damn cool. The fronts are exactly as they appear in the game only with minor corrections, but the backs are completely original and make the cards look like something out of a Magic: The Gathering deck. Whitney is planning on giving a set away in a future contest, but I say she should go all out, run several prints, and sell them. I'm sure she could do great business amongst Destructoid readers and staff alone. My Real Life Deadly Premonition Trading Cards! [Welcome to Greenvale] |
| Club Nintendo in Japan gets slick golden Nunchuk Posted: 18 Dec 2011 12:00 AM PST Nintendo has been doing pretty swell by all accounts as of late, notably in regards to the revamped Club Nintendo and the new games-for-coins program. Of course, the Japanese Club Nintendo will always be a leeeeeeetle bit ahead of our own. While our Club was busy announcing brand new Zelda posters, Japan's was announcing a 600-point golden Nunchuk. However, if you register a copy of Skyward Sword by February 20, the Nunchuk will be discounted to 400 points. This is something that should have been offered in every region's Club, as using a white Nunchuk with the special Zelda-branded Wii Remote just doesn't feel right. One other new item is a 150-point card case that holds 18 3DS games. Of course, that's nothing all too special -- we'll probably get our own 3DS cases in the future. Maybe I shouldn't be bitching too much after getting so much goodness recently, but I just want that Nunchuk. I waaaaaaaant iiiiiit! New Club Nintendo Goodies: Golden Nunchuck and 3DS Card Case [Andriasang] |
| 25 Days: Win The Baconing on Steam plus swag! Posted: 17 Dec 2011 04:00 PM PST Today's 25 Days of Giving tastes like BACON! You can thank the folks at Hothead for that as we're giving away The Baconing for Steam today! That's not all! We're also giving out five Hothead beach towels and five The Baconing shirts with each code we give out. To win one of these prize packs, just leave a comment below with your attempt at a pickup line that you would use on a guy or girl. The catch is that your pickup line must involve the word "bacon" in it somehow. The five best bacon pickup lines will each get The Baconing on Steam, the beach towel and Baconing shirts. You have until 11:59PM CST tonight to enter and contest is open to anyone with a US shipping address the prizes can be sent to. Good luck! |
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