New Games |
- Review: Silent Hill: Downpour
- The MML3 movement has kicked off a weapon design contest
- Contest: Win an Xbox 360 and Max Payne 3!
- GDC: Sony shows markerless, cardless AR tech on Vita
- GDC: Reviving MechWarrior with the CryEngine 3
- Review: Abobo's Big Adventure
- GDC: James Gunn on making Lollipop Chainsaw
- Forums, we have them: March 2012
- Blades of Time update: Mission Successful
- The DTOID Show: GDC 2012 Wrap-up!
- GDC: Interview with the indie team behind Nous
- Sup Holmes is back! Luc Bernard talks game development
- BEST DAY EVER! Dj CUTMAN made a Power Blade mix for me!
- brentalfloss be a-hippin' and a-hoppin' to Thief
- Code of Princess for 3DS delivers a swift ass-whoopin'
| Posted: 11 Mar 2012 03:59 PM PDT Silent Hill 2 is my favorite videogame of all time, and it is possibly due to this that I have had a somewhat tempestuous relationship with the series ever since. My desperation to see Konami's classic horror series reach the narrative and atmospheric heights of its first sequel has led to great frustration with the games that have appeared since. I cannot deny that I bear a great resentment toward more recent Silent Hill games. Homecoming disgusted me; I felt Shattered Memories was a travesty; and while I found Origins to be surprisingly spooky, I can't say it engaged me to any great degree. With each game, I hoped for the best, and came away furious. With this in mind, I'll admit that I was prepared for disappointment with Silent Hill: Downpour. In fact, I was ready to despise it, especially after a particularly bad E3 demo. You need to know this, so you can understand just how remarkable it is that I beat Downpour in two sittings over the course of a single day, and was captivated the entire time. Silent Hill: Downpour (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 [reviewed]) Silent Hill: Downpour tells the story of Murphy Pendleton, a convict with a bad reputation and a seemingly violent streak (though to say more would spoil it). As we join him, he's on a prison transfer for reasons unknown, but has the grave misfortune of passing by Silent Hill on the way. As one would expect, the transfer bus meets with an unhappy accident, crashing in the woods and freeing Pendleton. Naturally, all things happen for a reason in Silent Hill, and as Murphy fights his way through the supernatural town, he realizes that someone -- or something -- knows about his private life and is intent on forcing him to face his past. While fans of the series know many of its tricks by now, and the plot twists seem incredibly familiar, Downpour still crafts an engaging story populated by intriguing characters. Pendleton is by far one of the more charismatic protagonists we've seen in a while, and as more of his history is revealed, it's hard not to sympathize with the path he eventually took. At various junctures in the game, minor "moral choice" moments influence the outcome of Murphy's journey and ultimately decide what kind of person he is. A series like Silent Hill is faced with a constant pressure to evolve, as many of the things that once made survival horror scary are considered obsolete and undesirable by modern standards. With that in mind, it is interesting to note how many contemporary concepts Vatra Games has ignored. Combat is unwieldy and inelegant. There are moments where fixed camera angles limit the player's ability to see too far ahead. Exploration takes center stage, with only a vague map to rely on and no compasses holding hands. Downpour is as close to old-school survival horror as a mainstream retail game has gotten in a long time, and could possibly be allowed to get away with. Fortunately, it does just enough to not feel too outmoded, making the slightest of compromises to skirt the line between acceptable and disagreeable. Pendleton moves like a modern videogame protagonist would, without the wild forklift-truck turns of old-fashioned horror characters. Fixed camera angles exist only in select areas, with a user-controlled view for the bulk of the journey. Modern conveniences such as one-button item heals and an on-screen inventory menu remove much of the hassle of supply management. By implementing these concessions, Vatra has made for a less stuffy, awkward experience while still maintaining many of the things that lent classic survival horror titles their power. The town of Silent Hill is not exactly an open world, but there's a little more freedom here, with many houses that can be entered and paths to be uncovered. These environments are not part of the main quest, often containing their own little side missions that can be safely ignored. Most of the optional houses have self-contained back-stories and unique puzzles to solve, with extra supplies as a reward. In this regard, the game is more akin to The Legend of Zelda than Grand Theft Auto, providing an incentive to explore without creating a sandbox. The best part of these optional areas is just how much extra flavor they lend to the mythos of Silent Hill. From the junkie who stole from his neighbors to the woman who dealt with monsters in a mirror, there are many urban legends to uncover, and they regularly provide some shudder-inducing scares. It's an interesting dynamic: although exploration can yield fruit, Vatra has done an amazing job of making Silent Hill a genuinely terrifying place to inhabit. Monsters are swift and merciless, while ghostly police cars patrol the streets, blasting out threatening sirens and encouraging the player to hide. Should they be spotted, a pack of brutal creatures will spawn. Then there are the moments that lend Downpour its name -- thunderous storms that drench the roads and cause enemies to become more aggressive. Subway tunnels make travel more efficient, but be warned that the town of Silent Hill is more oppressive than ever. It's not much better indoors, either. Downpour's intricate interiors are stunning in their spookiness. Murphy's journey will take him through a subterranean tourist attraction, a twisted orphanage, and a demented apartment complex full of intense set pieces and truly terrifying seqeuences. One moment Pendleton will be stuck in a prison cart, dragged through a mocking representation of his old jail. Another moment, he'll be on a rail car, with creatures howling at him from rocks as an automated narrator explains the history of Silent Hill's old mine shafts. Downpour brings back that "ghost train" feeling of classic horror games, where grand set pieces and unnervingly atmospheric arenas are punctuated with the occasional self-indulgent jump scare. It's an intricately crafted roller coaster created by a studio that clearly respects the series and remembers what used to make horror games great. Silent Hill's "Otherworld" regularly makes appearances, shoving players into a Hellish and gruesome parallel dimension. These sections usually herald a chase sequence against a glowing red light that pursues Murphy and drains his life whenever it gets too near. Players will need to run like crazy to escape this entity, hammering buttons to knock down objects in order to slow the pursuer and making snap decisions about which direction to turn as doors slam in Pendleton's face and moaning torsos spit their intestines across corridors. While these sequences can be very intense, they all too frequently rely on trial and error, forcing players to replay sections until they learn the correct directions to turn and the right moments to pass through a trap. Another grievous flaw with Downpour is its insistence on forcing combat into the endeavor. The combat system is old-fashioned and consists mostly of sluggish hack-n'-slash attacks. This wouldn't normally be an issue, since combat's been designed to represent the flailing attacks of an untrained human being and encourages flight over fighting. Yet the game too frequently forces players into situations where combat is practically a necessity, pushing one to deal with a horrible, unrefined system that was never improved because it was never supposed to be crucial to survival. It doesn't help that weapons -- including solid steel wrenches and fire axes -- break after only a few hits, requiring players to run around looking for something else to shatter. The lack of a targeting system is another nuisance, with Murphy perfectly happy to swat the air next to a monster... as opposed to the monster itself. For this reason alone, much of the game's final act is miserable, as it attempts to become more beat-'em-up than horror game -- complete with respawning enemies. This last chapter of an otherwise thrilling journey is an exercise in pure frustration, and threatens to ruin the entire journey. All of the combat's clunky imperfection would have been fine had it remained a last-ditch option for players in a bind, but it seems the developers ran out of steam toward the end and attempted to hinge everything on sub-par melee scenarios, just to shunt players toward the end credits as soon as possible. It pains me to say that the bestiary is not exactly enthralling, either. Gone are the perverse animated Giger paintings that infested earlier games; gone is the sickening symbolism that past monsters brought with them. Instead, Downpour prefers rather literal and infinitely more mundane beasts, such as mutant prisoners and giggling ghost women. So much imagination went into Downpour's environments that it's a little disappointing to see an unvaried host of humdrum adversaries that could easily have populated any other game. They can be capable of providing a fright and are certainly intimidating in numbers, but they're disappointingly ordinary all the same. One expects a higher class of nastiness in Silent Hill. At the risk of complaining too much, I should also add that Downpour would have benefited from a way to distinguish between weapons and other items, such as med kits or notes. An icon flashes for everything you can pick up, but it's the same icon no matter what type of object it is. This proves problematic because Murphy can only carry one weapon at a time, which leads to exasperating moments where he keeps dropping a fireaxe and swapping it for a ketchup bottle. Using another button for non-weapon pickups, or at least a separate on-screen prompt, would clear up the confusion. All these stated blemishes are quite significant, and your tolerance for them may vary, but Silent Hill: Downpour ends up doing so much right that it's difficult to let the bugbears spoil the whole show. Silent Hill hasn't been this powerful in a long time, and it's truly wonderful to see the series in the hands of a studio that actually gets it, for the most part. It certainly stumbles along the way, but this is the closest Silent Hill has come to its roots in a long, long time, with Vatra retaining the old survival horror elements that work while discarding most of the ones that don't. It is a remarkable balance between new and old that reminds me why I loved this series so much in the first place. Special mention must be made for the soundtrack, which comes courtesy of Daniel Licht. In short, it seems that the perfect successor to Akira Yamaoka has been found. Licht's blend of latin sounds and sinister industrial pounding couldn't feel more at home, and it was a genius move to bring the Dexter composer on board. Skeptics will have their cynicism washed away during the game's interactive title sequence, where Licht sets the tone with an utterly sublime tune. When it's not forcing a sub-par combat system on players, and when it allows itself to be as imaginative as it can be, Silent Hill: Downpour is a stylish, slickly produced, beautifully foreboding game. As haunted cop cars roam the streets and unseen women cry in darkened basements, few players will absorb themselves in this eerie adventure with their nerves intact. You'll get around eight hours of gameplay for your money, and more than that if you choose to explore Silent Hill fully and complete the side quests. For the true fan, Downpour also provides more than enough incentive to replay it, just to enjoy the peaks of its thrill ride once again. It does not approach the triumphant creative heights of earlier games, but nevertheless manages to keep its head well above the pitiful lows that recent installments have sunk to. All told, this is a return to greatness for a classic series, proof that there's life in the old town yet -- provided that a studio with the proper respect for it is allowed to work its magic. Once again, it's a very good time to have a bad time in Silent Hill, and I couldn't be happier about that. |
| The MML3 movement has kicked off a weapon design contest Posted: 11 Mar 2012 03:00 PM PDT If nothing else, you have to admire the dedication of the "100,000 Strong" movement. Ever since last year's cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3, this group has gone through great lengths, spreading the word at New York Comic Con and other venues, in the hopes of convincing Capcom to resume the game's development. The Facebook page is just now approaching 64,000 "likes" -- not quite as fast as the organizers may have hoped -- and there's no guarantee that Capcom will budge even if the elusive 100k number is achieved. Still, considering the topsy-turvy state of the game industry lately, with publishers' testing the limits of consumer goodwill, a fan-driven, long-shot effort is one of the few things we can safely stand behind. To drum up some enthusiasm and just have a fun ol' time, the movement organizers are holding the "Get a Weapon! The Mega Man Legends Weapon Contest" for Capcom-Unity Devroom members (registrations were never closed, so new members can join at any time). The rules are simple: design a cool, useful, and unique weapon for Mega Man Volnutt's arm and render it in any medium, from 3D modeling to clay to written word. As long as you are over 18 (13 for the US) and living in the US, Canada, or UK, you can submit up to three entries here from now until March 29. The best entries will win either Legends Perler Bead sprites, a copy of the Mega Man Tribute art book, or a spiffy Mega Man Volnutt figurine. A number of ideas have already been submitted, some which I've added to the gallery below. Will this contest turn any heads? Who's to say. At the very least, the Capcom community staff is giving a thumbs-up in approval. It's a fun activity to spread a little joy and awareness. Share the love! |
| Contest: Win an Xbox 360 and Max Payne 3! Posted: 11 Mar 2012 02:00 PM PDT GameStop is offering Max Payne fans a chance to get their names immortalized on a tombstone in the GameStop exclusive pre-order bonus map, Cemetery, in Max Payne 3. Just head over to GameStop's Facebook page, watch the Max Payne 3 trailer, and then answer a trivia question to win a chance to get your name featured on a tombstone. While you're entering GameStop's giveaway, why not enter our contest where you can win a copy of the game? Oh, and did I mention you can also win a 250GB Xbox 360 too? Thanks to GameStop, we're giving away both of these to one lucky winner and to enter, you'll just need to Tweet the following to enter: "RT & follow @GameStop & @Dtoid to win a 250GB Xbox 360 and #MaxPayne3! http://bit.ly/y8Rx0f" You have until March 11 to enter, after which we'll be picking one random person to give the Xbox 360 and Max Payne 3 to. Contest is open to anyone with a US based shipping address the prizes can be sent to. Good luck! |
| GDC: Sony shows markerless, cardless AR tech on Vita Posted: 11 Mar 2012 01:45 PM PDT On the GDC show floor Sony showed several working examples of Magnet (working title), a new series of demos showing off augmented reality technology that does not require AR cards or any other type of special markers to function. Instead, cameras look to patterns in real world objects to create their own markers. We saw this tech at work in a demo where a PS Vita camera was pointed at an intricate floor rug. We could see tiny little mapped marker points, plotted on the screen in real time as plus signs. After mapping, users could drop a rubber duck anywhere I wanted on the rug, and then move around it with the Vita to view it at all angles. In another demo we were able to use the front and rear touchscreens to freely warp the carpet, with the scanned object becoming a freely warp-able texture. Another demo called AR Hockey used objects on a table to instantly create a two-player air hockey table game. The Magnet tech is just at the demonstration stage now, but these and other demos point to augmented reality usage that is a bit more powerful than the card-based options that Vita shipped with. Plus, not having to carry cards around would be nice. |
| GDC: Reviving MechWarrior with the CryEngine 3 Posted: 11 Mar 2012 12:00 PM PDT I was a pretty big fan of MechWarrior back in the day. I kind of have a thing for mechs, and I thought it was really awesome. What little kid wouldn't want to blow up giant robots with lasers and missiles fired from other giant robots? Still, it's been a long time since we've had a proper MechWarrior game. At GDC, I sat down with Piranha games -- current holders of the MechWarrior license -- to check out their new Free-to-play title, MechWarrior Online. MechWarrior Online (PC) MechWarrior Online takes place about two decades after the original title. All of the factions and all of the planets that have been established over the 27 year franchise will be present in some capacity, and planets will shift alliances based on in-game events. The use of CryEngine 3 gives some pretty substantive graphical improvements, with the level of detail looking amazing -- it definitely adds a lot to the package. If you fire a laser at another mech, for example, the metal will slowly melt and pour off. Some of the ground and tree textures aren't quite up to the models of the mechs and some of the other environments, but it is still a marked improvement over anything else in the rest of the franchise. Piranha has been focused on trying to replicate the feel of many of the older games in the series while expanding combat and role-based combat. Players will be organized into lances which have four players each, and multiplayer allows up to three lances per side (grand total of 24 giant death machines on the field). The team also demoed some battles between several different classes running from the small and light, all the way up to the biggest frame in the game. They've been working on the viability of all classes, such that tiny 25 ton dudes will be competitive and useful in play against much larger pieces if played effectively. Unfortunately, while I watched the game played for some time, I never got my nerdy little hands on it. It looks good, and I have some genuine interest in seeing how this will turn out, especially given that this is yet another hardcore "freemium" title. Look for the full release sometime this Summer. |
| Posted: 11 Mar 2012 11:30 AM PDT The NES era was a special time for a lot of us. Many of the staff here at Dtoid will always have a certain attachment to the period, myself included. Abobo's Big Adventure is a tribute to all those who grew up with the gaming gods of old. This free Flash game is quite fun and funny, definitely well worth a trip down memory lane.
Abobo's Big Adventure (PC) Abobo's Big Adventure is a minimal game, a tribute to the NES generation in which everyone from Donkey Kong to Ryu Hayabusa makes an appearance in some form or another. Focused on punishing difficulty and an assumed proficiency on the part of the player, Abobo is a juxtaposition of the modern and the classic, a tangential parody of the youth and innocence of the NES era that melds grotesque physical comedy (read: poop rockets and bloodsport) and the simple gameplay of times long past. Drawing purely from the comedy of anachronistic allusions, Abobo constructs a caricature of everything about contemporary video game culture and feels like nothing less than a snarky shot at the 21st-century gamer. In my experience, a delicious cocktail of allusion and parody are the highest form of comedy. They necessitate prior experience and knowledge as well as engagement and immediate reflection upon the consumed work. Abobo fits right in that niche, tapping into the collective experience core gamers have with the NES. In much the same way that Greco-Roman art can be said to be the foundation of Western culture as a whole, the monomyth of the gamer would be the marriage of Mario, Mega Man, Metroid, and more. It is an aspect of our culture that we all share to some degree, even if the days of the NES weren't our own. While never quite reaching the comic brilliance of Portal or Psychonauts, Abobo has more than a few "laugh out loud" moments. More often than not, however, it warrants a mild "heh." Solidly constructed in general, the game still steps into the realm of excessive too often (like the aforementioned poop rockets). It was originally made as a free Flash game for Newgrounds and has that classic Newgrounds toilet humor. It fits the audience well. Stepping outside the allusions, Abobo doesn't have much depth, though in this instance, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Controls are very simple -- you move with the arrow keys and execute techniques with "A" and "S," effectively using the keyboard like an inverted NES controller. Actions are context-sensitive, as the levels are a wildly varied smorgasbord of 8-bit staples. You can go from fighting down Double Dragon alleyways, questing through a penis-shaped Zelda dungeon, and touching gloves with Punch-Out's Little Mac. Playing just like their respective sources, from a mechanical perspective alone, the stages are damn near perfect. While often a bit too hard for my tastes, they never veers into the realm of absurd (see I Wanna Be the Guy). The title relies on technical skill, not raw trial and error, so if you die, it is your fault. This, like everything else, feeds into the theme of evoking nostalgia for an adult gaming audience. Then there are the boss battles, glorious indulgences in third-generation gaming that amount to simple tests of skill. The 80's aesthetic is matched with gusto, placing the protagonist side-by-side with engines of unbridled nostalgia. Clocking in at around two hours, Abobo manages to pack a lot of content in a very small space -- each of the eight levels contains several dozen references to the NES. Though I realize that the game is meant to throw the audience into the wayback machine, I also realize just how far games have come since then. Even if you are only playing for challenge, there has been a resurgence of modern games that are better in nearly every way (e.g. Super Meat Boy). This isn't to say that Abobo is bad, but it isn't as good as other, newer-feeling games. Still, the experience as a whole is unique and definitely worth a look, especially if you grew up the late 80's or early 90's. Its referential humor is fun and not something that can be found anywhere else. Abobo's Big Adventure is a competent, very short but sweet throwback to our Golden Age. The referential humor and absurd juxtaposition of modern sensibilities on older mores is great, but it's all been done already and better. The game does nothing wrong, in the strictest sense, but it just doesn't have that "pop," that "wow" that leaves a truly lasting impression. That said, it is free, so if you're a gamer on a budget or someone just looking for a few yucks, it's definitely worth it to follow Abobo on his journey, at least for a little while. |
| GDC: James Gunn on making Lollipop Chainsaw Posted: 11 Mar 2012 11:00 AM PDT
Max Scoville caught up with super famous movie director James Gunn where they talked about everything Lollipop Chainsaw. It's a really revealing interview as we get to see that James was all about working on the project. I was especially surprised by how the script was pretty much all done by James himself. Between James' writing, Akira Yamaoaka's music and Suda 51's gameplay, I think Lollipop Chainsaw is going to turn out amazing. |
| Forums, we have them: March 2012 Posted: 11 Mar 2012 10:00 AM PDT Put on your wizard hat and cloak of invisibility, it's that magical time where we invade the front page to remind you all that Destructoid has Forums and they are glorious. Don't believe me? Take a look at all the crazy shenanigans that went down last month. After being reborn from the ashes like a phoenix, the Who the hell are you?! 2.0 thread has spawned its very own forum meme, Crotchtoid. Basically it's exactly what it sounds like and has already lead to its own artistic movement as seen in the header image. Thanks to ZombiePlatypus for bravely posting a picture of his crotch to get us started, although his motivation for doing so is shrouded in mystery. Speaking of good old ZP, that guy sure does a lot for us, including pushing the limits of acceptable post counts. Behold the breathtaking celebration of his 20,000 posts. Who will be next to reach this epic milestone? I guess we'll just have to wait to find out. Of course it could be hard for anyone else to hit 20,000 posts when we're all busy playing Mass Effect 3. Come share your love for the final installment of Bioware's epic space opera in our Mass Affection Thread. This is also a great place to make some multiplayer buddies so you can take it to the Reapers in style. Maybe instead of venturing into the Forums you spent last month playing around with your PlayStation Vita. Well, grab your PSN name and unite with other vita owners, for better or worse. Got some impressions of your time with the Vita that you are dying to get off your chest? Share them here. This just in, Epic-KxDtoid is the worst gamer in the world. Think you can sink below his level? Click the link and share your greatest gaming sins. Had a game you were super excited about get cancelled right out from under you? Fandango is here to share your grief. Forum new guy, Deathsoldier11 showed off some of his mad woodburning skills. That's gotta be worth a Creative Endeavors Badge. What's that? You want more badges? Well you've come to the right place! This month we are finally unveiling the much anticipated Dtoid 6th Anniversary Badge in honor of Dtoid's (and boss-man, Niero's) birthday, March 16. Fun fact, I always remember Dtoid's birthday because it is the day after my son's. Anyway, here's the badge. How do you get your hot little hands on this sweet Final Fantasy homage? Come by the All About Destructoid section of the Forums and find this year's birthday celebration thread. Follow the instructions contained within and post your results to be part of Dtoid's big day. If you're planning to go to PAX East this year then it's time to start planning how to best maximize your time with the Dtoid community. The PAX East 2012 thread has all the information you need to meet up with the best gaming community in the world. PAX is a life-changing event where bromance is born so don't miss a second of the excitement. Some other stuff probably happened, but I've had a cold for about 3 weeks and my medicine makes everything a little fuzzy. Thanks to everyone in the Forums for being awesome and contributing to what makes this place great. Happy Birthday wishes to Niero and the whole Dtoid Community, let's make the next 6 years as amazing as the first. Be sure to join us next month when Mxy introduces you to his anatomically correct Transformer puppet collection and some more things will happen, most likely. |
| Blades of Time update: Mission Successful Posted: 11 Mar 2012 09:45 AM PDT We did it, guys! |
| The DTOID Show: GDC 2012 Wrap-up! Posted: 11 Mar 2012 09:00 AM PDT
Did you catch today's live Destructoid Show? We're all thoroughly exhausted from GDC, but Hamza Aziz, Jordan Devore, and Conrad Zimmerman were good sports and stopped by the studio for some good old-fashioned video game discussion. Today's topics include EA's big reveal of SimCity V, Medal of Honor Warfighter's debut trailer, Doug Lombardi's recent comments on the future of Steam hardware, and Peter Molyneux's sudden departure from Lionhead Studios. Later in the show, we discuss some of our personal highlights from GDC, including Juliet Starling cosplay, Fallout's post-mortem presentation, and finally getting to play Quantum Conundrum! |
| GDC: Interview with the indie team behind Nous Posted: 11 Mar 2012 08:00 AM PDT
Awesome Shark Volcano, the team behind the IGF nominated Nous, was able to take some time with me after the Game Developers Conference was over to talk a bit about their game, Nous. We covered everything from the history behind Nous' development, to how they approached the art and audio design. The team even admits to stumbling through a long road of multiple failures before finally arriving at their IGF worthy design. Check out the interview, and then play Nous for yourself. Destructoid: What is Nous about? Brett Cutler, Game Designer: Nous is a top-down action game inside an AI that’s going insane. Nous can’t figure out what it’s for, and it constantly switches personas -- incompetent shrink, abusive drill sergeant, suicidal robot -- on its spiral down. The player’s choices and playstyle shape the character that emerges. What is the history behind the development of the game? Jason Meisel, Graphics Programmer: We began in May 2010. We wanted to create the most “awesome” game we possibly could; we even went around asking people to name the most awesome things they could think of (spiders, bears, motorcycles, and bears riding motorcycles were all very common responses.) However, we soon realized that wasn’t working out. We created tons of prototypes that involved different gravity-based mechanics and gameplay styles. We then shipped the first playable version of the game based on one of those prototypes. We kept creating prototypes, reaching even farther into things like sidescrollers and bullet hells. It wasn’t until Brett pitched Nous that we stopped focusing on gameplay and began focusing on the experience of the game. What inspired the design? BC: Failure. Every milestone we had a different game -- we kept prototyping and throwing it out. We went through so many desperate changes, searching for a great idea but we never found it. We did the only honest thing and poured that frustration and searching into the game itself. How did you arrive at the final mechanics and theme? BC: In the end, we took what was good enough and built up the narrative. The illusion of talking to and influencing this program drove the final design and the last few months of work. How did you approach audio design? BC: Nous needed to sound like a computer in pain -- the SFX are electronic screams. We wrote a lot of original music but in the end relied on a computer -- we used super-slow-mo versions of classical music tracks and ambient electronic tracks to build the world inside Nous. What influenced the art direction? Pohung Chen, Producer/Physics Programmer: A lot of it was due to the lack of art production power. We went with simple abstract shapes because that is within our artistic ability. We then just relied heavily on graphical effects to make the game look interesting and unique. I think it really helps that a lot of players feel very saturated with the super-realistic, high production value art style that many big titles go with today. So seeing a game stripped to bare minimum essentials and still have a visually interesting style is refreshing. How did you achieve the visual aesthetic? JM: When we switched our thematic direction to Nous, we knew we wanted to leverage our graphics technology (which had already been built up to a large number of effects at that point). However, it had to be in a way that we (as programmers) could accomplish ourselves. We decided to make the game more abstract, and I created simple 3D meshes that could be patterned, lit, and moved in interesting ways. We applied particle effects liberally, and iterated on the environmental art a ridiculous number of times. Finally, I created many different glitching and distortion effects that, in tandem, made the visuals much more interesting. Why did you choose to go with a narrative driven game? BC: Nous has a lot of text, and I didn't mean it to be that way. But it ended up being the best way to communicate. When the game wasn’t working, when we hated just not being good enough -- those are real feelings. Narrative ended up being the only clumsy tool I had to get through and reach people. What challenges did this present and how did you tackle them? JM: As the focus shifted towards narrative, it became more clear that a large portion of players just wouldn’t appreciate what the game was doing. We originally wanted Nous to come off as mocking the pretentiousness of “artistic games”, but to be effectively poignant, it had to become just as pretentious! We decided to focus on those who would enjoy the style of game it was becoming; the haters were a hopeless cause. We finished with something that people either love or hate, but the former seems like it’s a large enough group that we did what was best. What did you take away from your IGF experience? Treb Connell, Technical Director: I was incredibly impressed by all the indie games, especially the submissions for the Nuovo awards. They helped me reconsider what a game can be and what effects it can have on a player. I hope that these games motivate developers to think outside the box. I know that I’ll be trying to. JM: IGF was incredible! It’s an incredible feeling to have developers you admire be impressed with your work. I’ve been becoming a bigger and bigger fan of the indie community over the past few years, and being in the same pavilion as all these truly awesome games and developers was an huge honor. I’ve never really felt like a part of the industry, but this week I’ve felt right at home. Where is the game available to play? TC: It’s available for free on WhatIsNous.com |
| Sup Holmes is back! Luc Bernard talks game development Posted: 11 Mar 2012 07:45 AM PDT [Destructoid's Director of Communications Hamza Aziz asked Jonathan Holmes to make a show called 'Sup Holmes?' so that Destructoid could later sell a t-shirt that says 'Sup Holmes?' on it. This is that show. Miss the live recording? Check out the new episode here, pick up past episodes in podcast form, subscribe to the podcast feed, and find more episodes here.] He everybody! Welcome back to Sup Holmes? There's Crystal and lunch meat in the fridge. Please welcome yourself to it. Luc Bernard is our guest this week. In case you didn't know, Luc and Destructoid go way back. We've had good times. We've had bad times. We've even had alright times. This time will outdo them all. This is time going to be the best. We'll be talking to Luc about what it's like to go from working on the art for some cell phone games at age 14 to running your own company, what he thinks of the recent "scandals" that have set the videogame community a blaze, how much the gaming press has to do with over-sensationalizing that brand of gaming news, his relationship with Russel Brand, and much more. So hit the jump and join us! The show goes like at 1pm PST/4pm EST. See you soon!
|
| BEST DAY EVER! Dj CUTMAN made a Power Blade mix for me! Posted: 11 Mar 2012 07:00 AM PDT Ever since I started posting Dj CUTMAN's chiptune mixes, the man has been wanting to express his appreciation for my help, so he offered to remix a game track for me. What was I going to say? No? Naturally, I accepted his offer! He asked me which game I'd like to have sampled. I tried to think of a title that doesn't get much exposure, and then it hit me -- Power Blade! Don't remember Power Blade? It was an action platformer for the NES in which the hero wielded a sick-ass future boomerang. I have a close, personal history, not so much with Power Blade, but with the original Japanese version entitled Power Blazer. Blazer was a fun if highly flawed Mega Man clone, but it's nonetheless one of my favorite games of all time. When it was brought over as Blade, the game was completely overhauled with new character sprites, new stage layouts, more responsive controls, and faster gameplay. One thing that remained unchanged during the localization was the phenomenal soundtrack by Kinuyo Yamashita, composer of the original Castlevania, Mega Man X3, and more. It's almost criminal how good this music is. An hour ago, CUTMAN emailed to let me know he had finished the track. Sampling the audio directly from the NES, the eponymous "POWERblade" is everything I could have hoped for and more. Seriously, listen to it after the jump or download it from SoundCloud. It starts off fairly unchanged from the source track, but about 17 seconds in, sh*t gets real! CUTMAN, thank you so much for making this magic happen! I owe you a beer or ten! POWERblade by Dj CUTMAN [SoundCloud]
|
| brentalfloss be a-hippin' and a-hoppin' to Thief Posted: 11 Mar 2012 03:00 AM PDT
The rare times when brentalfloss writes a "With Lyrics" for a PC game, I have a brief moment of shock as I think, "Holy crap! He knows machines other than Nintendo's exist!" I'm just yanking his chain, of course, but such an uncommon event frightens a sheltered child such as myself. You scare me, music man! Anyway, his latest song tackles one of his favorite game series, Thief. It's a hip hop arrangement that isn't afraid to show Thief's successors like Assassin's Creed their place. It's not my favorite song of his, and it doesn't sound as well produced as some of his more recent ones. Then again, it could be that I'm just not all that familiar with the source material. Or I could still be mad about that cruel, cruel prank he played. Thief WITH LYRICS [YouTube] |
| Code of Princess for 3DS delivers a swift ass-whoopin' Posted: 11 Mar 2012 12:00 AM PST
Code of Princess discussion is usually reserved for Holmes o'clock, but with the Daylight Savings time change, everything is out of whack. Up is down, 2+2=fish, and I'm talking about Code of Princess. When we last met our heroes, the April-targeted brawler had just earned itself some online multiplayer. The torchbearer of the Sega Saturn's Guardian Heroes' spirit, Code of Princess is looking to be just a grand ol' time. I mean, check out the oodles and oodles and oodles of characters you can select from for the game's competition mode! You can play as seemingly any minor enemy from the game, a feature that I personally haven't seen since Dragon Ball: Advanced Adventure on the Game Boy Advance. After the jump are a couple more videos I've scrounged up that showcase the co-op mode and a few other heroes. Give 'em a look before filing Code of Princess next to Senran Kagura in the file cabinet marked "3DS brawlers that Japan is selfishly hoarding." "Code of Princess" Competition Mode Play Movie [YouTube via GoNintendo]
"Code of Princess" Adventure Alongside 4 Friends Play Movie [YouTube via Nintendo Life]
CODE OF PRINCESS CO-OP [YouTube] |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Destructoid To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
