New Games

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• Indie Gala's back, this time with more options
• You need to think about playing Hack, Slash, Loot
• The Weekend Modder's Guide: Skyrim
• Location: Home! Sweet...home?
• Skullgirls has a story to it, have a look
• Live show: Hangover is bear-ly clinging to sanity
• Sup Holmes premieres tomorrow holy crap I'm freaking out!
• Rep. William Fourkiller: The dumbest man in Oklahoma?
• Tracks from Bush's Sixteen Stone headed to Rock Band
• Aliens: Colonial Marines graces us with gameplay footage
• The Daily Hotness: Traveler's Truncated Trip
• GameStop's Retro Game Vault is ridiculously stupid

Indie Gala's back, this time with more options Posted: 04 Feb 2012 12:30 PM PST Back in December The Indie Gala threw their proverbial hat in the indie bundle ring. They're back again, but things are a bit different; rather than limit the bundle to a period of time, there's a limited supply of 50,000 copies. There's even more change in the form of tiered pricing rather than the traditional pay-what-you-want model. For a donation in the $1-$5.51 range you'll get 3 games (Critical, Mass Fortix 2, and Bunch of Heroes) as well three albums. A $5.52-$9.64 purchase gets you that plus Roboblitz, Greed Corp, and three more albums. Finally, for $9.65+ you'll be the proud owner of all of that as well as the entirety of the first Indie Gala.  With just over 40,000 copies still available for purchase, there's still plenty of time to jump in on this. You guys have room in your Steam backlog for yet another collection of indie games?

You need to think about playing Hack, Slash, Loot Posted: 04 Feb 2012 09:00 AM PST Indie game dev. David Williamson's newest project was officially released to the wilds recently, and I'm definitely digging it. Hack, Slash, Loot is a turn-based dungeon crawler with an objective that could not be more plain: hack, slash, and loot your way to the end. I just spent some quality time with the demo (available here) and I'm definitely a fan of the grid-based movement and combat. As the title implies, there's loot aplenty with new equipment, weapons, or one-use items - scrolls, potions, and the like - waiting for you around every corner. Dungeons are generated randomly each time you start a quest so it's always a new experience and, much like Binding of Isaac, you can get lucky and things just might go your way or you'll get a particularly difficult draw. In the case of the latter, good luck.  Take a peek at the trailer and screens, give the demo a try, and, if it's your cup o' tea, you can snag the game for $10 for PC, Mac, or Linux.

The Weekend Modder's Guide: Skyrim Posted: 04 Feb 2012 08:00 AM PST This week, I'm not going to be talking about an older game. Rather, I'll be talking about something fairly new: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Now, the game looks great as it is, but we all know the PC can look far better than anything on consoles. With a little bit of tweaking, we can make Skyrim into an insanely hot-looking game. I'm going to skip over all of the reasons of why you should play the game this week, since you'll find tons of people talking about why you should already own Skyrim. I'm just gonna jump right into teaching you how to turn Skyrim into the beautiful game that it truly is. Time: 2-3 hours Difficulty: Intermediate What you need: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 1. We're going to start by downloading and installing the Nexus Mod Manager. This mod manager will let you easily install and remove mods. It will create a folder in your Skyrim install directory called "mods." You'll be able to drop mod archives (.zip, .rar, or .7z files) right into this folder and install them from the mod manager. All of the mods that I am going to show you today can be installed this way. 2. Download and install the Skyrim Script Extender . Copy all of the .exe and .dll files from this download into your Skyrim directory. To make this work properly, you have to launch Skyrim from the "skse_loader.exe" from now on. Make sure you get the newest version, and that your copy of Skyrim is up to date. If a new Skyrim patch comes out it might take a few days for this to be updated to match. It can be a little annoying, but it lets you install more powerful mods. 3. Download and install Skyboost. This helps to increase the game's framerate. Skyrim is a CPU hog, and these files relieve some of the stress on your CPU. Extract the downloaded zip folder, and copy both files from the "bin" folder to your Skyrim install directory. IMPORTANT NOTE: Skyboost MUST match the version of Skyrim that you have installed. If Skyrim gets updated, you might need to delete "skyboost.asi" in order to get your game running again. Just keep checking for a new version of Skyboost if you want to keep using this mod. It's a bit of a pain, but the performance boost is worth it. 4. Download the ENB Series Skyrim Injector. This the mod that makes the game really pretty, and they are also the guys behind the insane Grand Theft Auto IV graphics mods. This is still a beta right now, so once you install this you should keep checking back for updates. Make sure you get the latest version of the injector. If you are running Vista or Windows 7 then you'll need to install DirectX 9 in order to make this run correctly. If you are ambitious, you can edit the "enbseries.ini" yourself. You can find it in your Skyrim install folder. If you are like me and you want other people to do all of the hard work, you can find a ton of nice preset "enbseries.ini" files online. I am currently using Cinematic Lighting ENB. Just replace the existing .ini file with the new one that you download. It's worth trying out different ones because each one can drastically change the way the game looks. 5. Get some mods! This is the fun and easy part. All of the mods I list below can be used together, so you don't have to pick and choose which ones you want. If you want to add more, just be careful that they don't conflict with anything else you have installed. In other words, you can't have two water texture mods running at the same time. I suggest that you stick with this list if this is your first time modding an Elder Scrolls game. Once you have these successfully running, then you can browse around for other mods. Remember, just copy these to your Skyrim/mods/ folder, and then use the Nexus Mod Manager to install them.  The mods: A Quality World Map - With Roads This adds high-quality map textures with roads. It makes navigating way easier and the map screen prettier. Better Sorting This renames items so they sort better in your inventory. Instead of Potion of Extreme Healing and Potion of Minor healing, you'll have Restore Health I and Restore Health V. It makes it so much easier to find things.  Categorized Favorites Menu I hate the way the favorites menu works. It's hard to scroll trough all of the unsorted crap to find the one thing you want. This fancy mod will give you a full-screen favorites menu that is sorted by category. Detailed Bodies This replaces the default skin textures with higher-resolution ones. No, it doesn't add penises or boobies. Enhanced Blood Textures Just some improved blood -- it looks less like strawberry jelly. Enhanced Horse Skins It makes your horses appear as if they actually have fur instead of low-quality plastic! Enhanced Night Skyrim Adds new HD sky textures, and you can pick from a few different styles. Glowing Ore Veins This makes it easier to find ore. I didn't even realize how much ore there was in the game until I installed this mod.  Improved NPC Clothing NPCs will now have nicer-looking clothing with high-resolution textures. Intro Music Replacement by Malukah This replaces the default main menu music with something a little more acoustic. Nicer Snowflakes This just gives the game better-looking snow flakes. Real Ice Tweaks the game's ice. Realistic Water Textures This one replaces all of the ugly water with some much nicer stuff. I recommend that you use the clear and reflective settings, personally. Skyrim Flora Overhaul This replaces all of the textures for trees and leaves. It makes forests look awesome. Skyrim HD - 2k Textures Still a work in progress, but what it does so far is amazing. It replaces tons of the normal low-resolution textures with much higher-quality ones. SkyUI This is my favorite Skyrim mod so far. It changes the game's user interface so it's easier to navigate using a mouse. It also makes the text smaller, so you can see more on the screen at once. KenMOD - Time on Loading This adds a clock to the loading screen. It's nothing fancy, but it is really nice to see what time is when you're playing. I think we all know how easy it is to spend way too many hours playing Skyrim. 5.  Open up "My Documents/My Games/Skyrim". There are two files in here that we are going to edit. The first one is "Skyrim.ini". Open it up with Notepad add "uGridstoLoad=7" at the end of the [display] section. Now open up "Skyrimprefs.ini" and edit these values: bMouseAcceleration=0 bDrawLandShadows=1 bTreesReceiveShadows=1 iShadowMapResolution=8192 iBlurDeferredShadowMask=32 fGrassStartFadeDistance=14000.0000 Make sure you save all of the changes that you make to these files. Making all of these changes may take a little bit of time, and you'll probably have to do some tweaking to get it all running right for your setup, but the investment is worth it in the end. You'll have a version of Skyrim to show off to all of your friends and the console kiddies will be mad with jealousy.

Location: Home! Sweet...home? Posted: 04 Feb 2012 07:00 AM PST [Revuhlooshun takes us to Titan Station and shows us why it's such a powerful videogame location. As always, remember to load your own bloggers wanted responses into the Community Blogs and tag them with the "Bloggers Wanted Essay Response" tag, and you may see your blog promoted to the front page. - Kauza] Probably the most important aspect about the original Resident Evil games, back in the 1990s, was their context. People sigh and groan whenever an old school fan laments about the early days, but there really is something to be said about just how radically things have changed over the years. People forget that you weren't originally some special agent rappelling off a helicopter or punching boulders – you were an ordinary cop trying to keep your head on. You were painfully human, and with that came all of its vulnerabilities. It was from that humanity that the fear and horror of those games originated from, only to be pushed along by a good closet scare every now and then.  But in addition to that, the locations and their settings cemented that context: police departments, hospitals, parks, even a house up in the woods (protip: only madmen live in the woods). Not only were you human, but so was everyone else. Capcom created an image, an environment, that didn’t take much effort for a player to imagine in his every day. You weren’t in some bumfuck village halfway across the globe – Raccoon City could have been any other midsized American town, awkward and overemphasized vernacular aside.  As the series went on, and these average cops turned into military commandos, that sense of familiarity, of playing upon that sort-of everyday American experience (as best as any Japanese developer could), was unfortunately kicked to the curb. And with each following game, the possibility of ever seeing those sorts of environments seemed slimmer and slimmer with each new run-and-gun.  Then I stepped onto Titan Station.  To me, Dead Space is what every old school Resident Evil fan has always wanted: one long survival game wrapped in a big ass puzzle and stuffed with a lot of cheap scares – and one which doesn’t require a two-week crash course in Tank School every time you want to fire it up. Dead Space is the spiritual successor to Resident Evil, whether you, I, Capcom, or EA wants it.  But what struck me the most with Dead Space, and what really ensured that opinion, was the space station inDead Space 2. It's a very exotic, futuristic locale that not many people (read: nobody) can claim to really know firsthand. When you finally catch your first glimpse of what it looks like outside however, you realize you’re in a city. It’s a city that looks like any one you’ve been to, minus the floating-in-space part. This isn’t some far flung research base packed with a bunch of dry science types – ordinary people actually live here.  And now they’re dying here.  That reality is relentlessly enforced each step you take, the game driving it home every chance it gets, as you walk through shopping malls and apartment floors. What was so foreign and alien in my mind – an outer space colony now turned into a butcher shop – suddenly became much easier to relate to as I could see that the basic, fundamental realities of everyday life were still very well entrenched even way off into the future. Every now and then, between the plasma cutter shots and the people screaming for their lives, an advertisement could be heard somewhere overhead. Some sort of catchy melody enticing people to “Buy! Buy! Buy!” That world, inanimate but very human, still persisted through the carnage and bloodshed, reminding you that you weren’t alone in this.  You weren't inside of a vacuum. You were in somebody’s home. And I could see myself living in it.  It was the feeling I got playing Resident Evil for the first time, all the way back into the ‘90s. It was the feeling I got when I drained a bathtub only to find a human body inside. It was the feeling I got reading the journal of a guardsman as he chronicled his descent into madness and dementia. It was a feeling I sorely missed, having only newer Resident Evil titles to play which had largely abandoned that human element to them. WhereasResident Evil 4 had you combing your way through grand European castles, Dead Space 2 threw you into a grade school, gave you a flamethrower, and said, “Here, figure this shit out.” It was one of the most surreal times I’ve ever had in a game, though one which immediately bubbled to the surface when asked to write about this topic – and one which made a great impact upon the overall game itself.  It was that human touch, those human details painted in the background for you to find, that propelled Dead Space 2 over its predecessor. Be they the family photos hanging along bedroom walls, or the toys of a child scattered about a classroom, everywhere inside the game you can find the living remains of the long deceased – the world is brought to life not by the people who lived there, but by the things they left behind. It's one thing to have a location filled with life – one which is very pretty, but also rather static – and quite another to have one that's actually alive (especially one that is full of death).  The first Dead Space, as much as I love it, can feel boringly isolated at times. It just does not have those human shades to it. Hell, it barely has any humans! But, then again, you’re on an abandoned military cruiser – you shouldn’t be bumping into Larry David for a stop-and-chat. With that said: it still leads to an inferior setting when compared to its sequel. It's to be expected, given it's the first child – but boy is it a little less special after you've spent some time with the second one.  It helped that Titan Station was indeed beautifully designed, and that the game allowed just enough of it to shine through the chaos. What sold it though – and what sold the game – were those splashes of the everyday, despite being 500 years into the future. It was the only way anybody could have ever expected the player to relate to the situation, and Visceral knocked it out of the park.

Skullgirls has a story to it, have a look Posted: 04 Feb 2012 05:00 AM PST We've been covering the development of 2D fighter Skullgirls, currently being worked on by Autumn Games and Reverge Labs, ever since its debut trailer back in February of last year. Since then, we've showed you some delightful artwork, picked the brain of the game's creator and creative director Alex Ahad, given you some E3 assets to chew on and played an umbrella-wielding princess named Parasoul who's able to chuck balls of napalm at her foes. Reverge Labs' Designer, Producer and Community Manager Peter Bartholow has shed some more light on what exactly the story in Skullgirls is all about with a new trailer, as well as revealing that the upcoming fighter will feature a tutorial, ranked and unranked online play, an arcade mode and several extra PS3-exclusive Trophies. Peter Bartholow also teased the announcement of the 8th and final character, release date and price of Skullgirls so that'll be something to keep an eye out for.

Live show: Hangover is bear-ly clinging to sanity Posted: 04 Feb 2012 03:45 AM PST [Tune in to Saturday Morning Hangover every Saturday at 10am Pacific for the latest Xbox Live Indie Games, co-op play and assorted hijinks. Hosted by Conrad Zimmerman, Jordan Devore and the lovely Katrina. We have a couch! Come join us live on Destructoid's Twitch.tv channel!] It's Saturday morning once again, which means another batch of Xbox Live Indie Games demos demand our attention. There's some hope in there this week, and I think we're likely to hit one of the better titles right out of the gate with a Voxel Action. What I do know is that there are no releases Silver Dollar Games to torment us. In the second half of the program, we'll check out the new Trenched Iron Brigade DLC, "Rise of the Martian Bear." Jordan and I are both big fans of the original game but have been dying for some Survival mode action as well as the new campaign. And, of course, we'll be interacting with the delightful people in the chat. Why don't you come and join us. Grab a cup of Joe (or the hair of the dog, if needed) and tune in over on Destructoid's Twitch.tv channel!

Sup Holmes premieres tomorrow holy crap I'm freaking out! Posted: 04 Feb 2012 03:18 AM PST Well, that's the plan anyway. I've never done a live stream show before, so it could all go to sh*t at any time, but we're going to go for it anyway. This video was actually supposed to go up yesterday, but that got goofed. Things are already messed up! I can only imagine what other flubs and blunders may happen next. So yeah, Sup Holmes premieres tomorrow (Sunday, Feb. 5th) on Twitch.tv/dtoid and here on Dtoid.com at 1pm PST/4PM EST. It's a live stream talk show and podcast about videogames. It should last about 50 minutes, and it could be great. We're starting of the series with special guest Tyrone Rodriguez, CEO of Nicalis (Cave Story+,  VVVVVV 3DS, Night Sky) and former writer for Tips & Tricks magazine. We'll be talking about the good and bad of "videogame journalism" today, from the perspective of game players, developers, and press.  Jump in the chat and ask us questions, or send a written, video, or audio-style query to holmessupholmes@gmail.com Lets be friends and talk about videogames together on my new dumb show!

Rep. William Fourkiller: The dumbest man in Oklahoma? Posted: 04 Feb 2012 02:00 AM PST I know three things about Oklahoma. It's the name of a musical, it's a state in a country across the pond and now it's somewhere that needs to be protected from the evils of videogame violence! Oklahoma shit eater lawmaker, State Representative William Fourkiller, has Oklahoma citizen's best interests at heart by proposing a 1% tax on violent games. As we all know, taxes based on morality are the only way to ensure the young stay sane. Ignoring, for a moment, that there's no real evidence that violent videogames (or indeed any media) will turn your kids into sociopathic killers, this proposed bill is rather liberal with the word "violent." Since the only way to be sure a game is violent would be to actually play the game and thus risk the mental health of the player, all games that receive a rating of Teen, Mature or Adult Only will be deemed violent games. The brutal, bloody and disgustingly violent Dance Central 2 is an example of the sort of game Mr Fourkiller wants to save you from. Not surprisingly, this is a direct condemnation of videogames specifically and no other media will be taxed more due to this. I don't believe Oklahoma will be truly safe until all evidence of violence is removed from that fine state. Books should be burned, musicians should be crucified and people with the word "killer" in their name should be hung drawn and quartered. Let's get this angry mob started! Oklahoma Bill to Tax Violent Video Games [Time]

Tracks from Bush's Sixteen Stone headed to Rock Band Posted: 04 Feb 2012 01:00 AM PST Now, I'm not a super-huge fan of Bush. I don't even know if those exist anymore. If so, it is probably one of those things beautiful to behold on account of their scarcity, like finding a unicorn in a forest glade on a dewy morn. All that said, Sixteen Stone is a damn fine piece of grungy pop-rock and, next week, three of the more popular tracks from the album will be hitting the Rock Band store. You too can rock out like it's 1994 all over again with "Comedown," "Machinehead" and "Everything Zen" when they release on February 7 individually or as part of "Bush Pack 01" for a slight discount. You guys probably know how this works by now.

Aliens: Colonial Marines graces us with gameplay footage Posted: 04 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST [Update: Well, that would explain why it's old footage. It's an old trailer that Sega uploaded yesterday. Oh well. Watch it again, I guess.] Here's a new trailer for Aliens: Colonial Marines, this time sporting some actual gameplay footage as opposed to CGI. There are plenty of hissing xenomorphs and screaming marines, which is exactly how the universe should be balanced.  This trailer would excite me, except for one thing -- none of this footage is new. Everything in this video has been taken from the demo level shown at last year's E3 (and later shown at PAX). After such a long time, I was really hoping to see something new. The fact that a single ten minutes of polished gameplay has been revealed since the game was announced makes me nervous.  In any case, my Alien fanboyism is still keeping me super stoked, and I hope Gearbox knocks it out of the park. It's got to be better than AvP was.

The Daily Hotness: Traveler's Truncated Trip Posted: 03 Feb 2012 03:59 PM PST I've never really understood the internet's fascination with animal videos. Often enough, they're cute, but I've always been fairly disinterested. This though... this is something else.  The Dtoid show went live at the San Francisco Vita Social Club today, Wesley reviewed SoulCalibur V, Journey is finished, THQ is still definitely in a lot of trouble, and more happened on 2/3/2012. Destructoid Original:  LOL SPORTS: Why I don't like sports games anymore Friday Night Fights: The Simmmpsonnnnns This weekend on Twitch TV: Sup' Holmes? Rhythm Heaven Fever special edition unboxing Community:  Forum thread of the day: The Stock Market Community blogs of 2/3 Reviews:  Review: SoulCalibur V Review: The Simpsons Arcade Game News:  Mortal Kombat Kollection comes to Steam Metro: Last Light delayed to 2013 DoDonPachi Blissful Death coming to iOS Sony: PS Vita does not have any problems in Japan NCsoft's first iOS game is tower defense, free today EA loves COD Elite, wants more subscriptions in games Journey is finally done, waiting on release date Scribblenauts Remix gets a celebratory update The Last of Us takes place in Pittsburgh Twisted Metal delayed and censored in Europe THQ blames $56 million loss on uDraw Escape Plan screens feature leather sheep beasts Wow: Check out these Gravity Daze whiteboard drawings  Dance Central 2 Facebook app lets you track your scores Game changer: NPD to receive Walmart sales data  Madden NFL 13 cover opened up to 64-player fan vote Xbox 360 is now the top-selling console worldwide Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends gearing up for spring PS Vita now playable at over 3,300 GameStop locations Recap: 1st Annual NY Videogame Critics Circle Awards FFXIII-2 levels up, equips Facebook GameStop's Retro Game Vault is ridiculously stupid Offbeat:  This is exactly how you're supposed to play Saints Row 3 Scarface is the highlight of these Arkham City figures Media: Gaia's Moon for DSiWare is a neverending story Game of Thrones' site is overflowing with new content Natural Selection 2 still exists, looks better than ever Here's the arcade opening for Persona 4: The Ultimate

GameStop's Retro Game Vault is ridiculously stupid Posted: 03 Feb 2012 03:30 PM PST Hey, guys! Remember when GameStop used to sell legacy games and hardware? Atari, Genesis, you name it. Those were the days, before the company began swallowing up the competition and ditched the retro wares in favor of almost exclusively cramming used copies of week-old releases down your throat. Wouldn't you like to go back to those simpler days? Fat chance. GameStop has added the Retro Game Vault to its PowerUp Rewards program, giving you the option to use points accrued through in-store purchases towards titles from the SNES, Dreamcast, PlayStation, NES, and more. When you think about it, it's quite similar from Club Nintendo's downloadable games initiative. Wait a minute... no, it's not. Whereas Club Nintendo software is priced at a reasonable 100 or 150 points, easily earned after a couple of retail purchases, Retro Game Vault software is priced like that sh*t is gold. You earn 10 points per dollar spent on new games and consoles, 20 points per dollar spent on used goods, and 20 points per dollar earned on trade-ins. So if you were to buy two used Xbox 360 games at $40 a pop, for example, you would earn 800 points. Sounds like a decent chunk of change, right? How many points does a random game like, say, Double Dragon cost? 32,500. Let me repeat that: 32,500. So in other words, if you were trying to maximize points earned, you would have to spend $1625 on used merch, trade in the equivalent value, or apply some combination thereof. What. The. Hell. Every so often, GameStop runs a special promotion where you can earn extra points on top of whatever transaction you make that day, but let's be real. Reaching the lofty point totals that GameStop has set for its retro catalog is no simple feat. The only people who could hope to earn enough points are the ones who live and die by GameStop's services, who trade in every damn game they ever buy as if GameStop was some glorified rental chain, or who are so loose with their money that they would gladly spend thousands upon thousands of dollars per year on games alone. Even then, because of the high point values of the Vault items, those people probably couldn't order more than two games anyway. I haven't even talked about the selection yet! As of this moment, the only games available are Super Mario Bros., Double Dragon, and Quake III Arena for the Dreamcast. Everything else is either "sold out" or "coming soon." Double Dragon and Quake III are both 32,500 points, while Mario is 43,250. Of the unavailable games, the only one with a price tag is Sim City, and it's marked at 32,440. How on Earth is GameStop even arriving at these values? Who is going to bend over backwards for a fuckin' loose copy of Mario when it can be found on eBay for the price of a family-size bag of Cheetos? And there doesn't seem to be any semblance of consistency when it comes to which games will be made available down the road. In all likelihood, these games are just the leftover shit from the earlier days, but instead of tossing them out, giving them away to employees, or -- God forbid -- selling them, GameStop opted to devise a ridiculous "incentive" program in the hopes that consumers would drive even more business to the store for the sake of "gifts" that could be acquired infinitely more easily and more cheaply anywhere else! Seriously, fuck these guys.

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