New Games |
- Rovio launches Angry Birds Space...Needle!
- MY BOI! Roasted Octorok is a meal fit for a hero
- The DUST 514 and EVE connection begins with the clones
- GameStop no longer wants your GameCube trade-ins
- Pitch an eShop game, Renegade Kid will make it for real
- Correction: 1C's Men of War and King's Bounty not F2P
- Preview: Sieging dungeon gates in Confrontation
- The dark secrets of Cheetahmen revealed!
- Dust 514 to get expansion in 2013, PS Vita application
- EVE players can use in-game currency to buy a GTX 560
- Review: Silent Hill HD Collection
- CCP's World of Darkness is not dead, just like a vampire
- The Daily Hotness: Ryu's a bit bitter
| Rovio launches Angry Birds Space...Needle! Posted: 24 Mar 2012 02:00 PM PDT Called it. Rovio really is the best at space. Since Thursday, my fellow Seattle residents and I have been privy to one hell of an Angry Birds display: a pre-launch Red Bird hanging off the side of the Space Needle, complete with "orbital slingshot". Marking the debut of Angry Birds Space, there's no word on how long the promotion will last, but if you ask me, it should go on forever. You know what usually passes for art in this town? I once went to a park where a "sculpture" was a metal file crate sitting in the grass with a chair next to it. Compared with that, a giant inflatable red bird is an improvement. |
| MY BOI! Roasted Octorok is a meal fit for a hero Posted: 24 Mar 2012 01:00 PM PDT "I'm so hungry, I could eat an Octorok!" VIGIDEN, the ScrewAttack partner show dedicated to Onion-style fake news stories, has taken a taken a break from hardcore journalism to demonstrate culinary magic. Of course, you can't actually prepare the meal demonstrated in the video linked below, but I'm sure someone could concoct a close approximation. Something about purple food just looks so gosh darn appealing. When was the last time you ate something purple, huh? Or blue for that matter? And candy doesn't count. Maybe Octorok tastes like Starburst. It could! Who's to say? VIGIDEN - BYTE TO EAT: ZELDA'S LEGENDARY ROASTED OCTOROK [ScrewAttack] |
| The DUST 514 and EVE connection begins with the clones Posted: 24 Mar 2012 12:00 PM PDT
EVE Fanfest 2012 wrapped up today, and as in previous years, CCP ended their final presentation with a sexy new cinematic trailer. Here we see the different forces discovering how to send ones own mind into a cloned body, even at the moment of death. War rages in space in EVE, and now on the ground with the endless supply of cannon fodder through DUST 514. We'll have a preview and more video of DUST 514 for you very soon. |
| GameStop no longer wants your GameCube trade-ins Posted: 24 Mar 2012 11:30 AM PDT Looks like your friendly neighborhood GameStop will no longer be accepting your last-gen Nintendo merchandise. Following a similar move in 2009 for the original Xbox, the retailer will be suspending their trade-in programs for GameCube games, systems, and accessories beginning April 2, 2012. Considering the fact that I acquired a large part of my beloved GCN collection from bargain bins, the move is saddening though far from unexpected. With the recent launch of the PS Vita and the Wii U looming on the horizon it makes sense that GameStop is looking to clear up some shelf space. That said, if you have a copy of Bad Boys: Miami Takedown or something similarly terrible you want to get rid of, you best do it soon. |
| Pitch an eShop game, Renegade Kid will make it for real Posted: 24 Mar 2012 10:00 AM PDT Have you ever had a great game idea but lacked even the slightest means of making that dream game a reality? Of course, you have! I have those thoughts all the time, but all that work is just such a big turn-off. I wish I could just be the "idea man" and have some other poor schmucks do all the heavy lifting for me. Well, now I can... I mean... YOU can! Competition organizer GAMEscribe has teamed up with Dementium and Mutant Mudds developer Renegade Kid for the pitchWinPLAY contest. Starting tomorrow, March 25, and running through September 1, entrants can submit a pitch for an original side-scrolling platformer. In addition to $5000 cash and other goodies, the grand prize winner will have his or her game turned into a legit 3DS eShop title developed by Renegade Kid using the Mutant Mudds engine. Now, doesn't that just kick twenty different kinds of ass? There is an entry fee required -- I'm assuming it's to help with the game budget as well as to avoid stuffing the submission box. If you enter by April 13, the fee is $20; by August 1, $25; and by September 1, $35. You must be over 18 to enter, but at least the contest is open to folks outside the US. You can find more details and a full list of prizes at the link below. pitchWinPLAY [GAMEscribe] |
| Correction: 1C's Men of War and King's Bounty not F2P Posted: 24 Mar 2012 09:00 AM PDT A recent preview I wrote (published earlier this week) regarding 1C Company titles contained misinformation on two of the three games featured, Men of War: Condemned Heroes and King's Bounty: Warriors of the North. In this piece, it was originally stated that both of these games would be released as free-to-play titles, when they are in fact retail releases. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for any confusion this might have caused Destructoid's readers, and for any issues this has caused 1C Company. |
| Preview: Sieging dungeon gates in Confrontation Posted: 24 Mar 2012 08:00 AM PDT Based on the tabletop wargame, Cyanide's Confrontation brings the fantasy world of Aarklash to the virtual realm. The over-productive French studio which used to primarily work on the Cycling Manager series has diversified itself with some promising, yet flawed, titles in recent years. Confrontation is their latest effort, and a departure from the style seen in A Game of Thrones: Genesis, Game of Thrones, and Of Orcs and Men. Confrontation (PC) Following a lengthy introduction cinematic featuring perhaps the most entertainingly serious narrator of the past decade, you find yourself in the ravaged world of Aarklash. There is a war going on (peacetime sucks for action games) and your noble Griffin forces are battling the evil Scorpions for one reason or another. Confrontation is somewhat of a bastard child of Baldur's Gate and Dungeon Siege, using the active pause role-playing combat system of the former and the pace of progression through levels of the latter. With four characters under your command, and a wealth of characters to choose from in the full game, you can customize your force to fit your play style as you wish. Many characters fall in the typical tank, priest, mage, rogue, and other class categories, which helps to give you a basic idea of what the hell you're doing.
Similar to Baldur's Gate, simply selecting all units and right-clicking on one enemy in a group of enemies will quickly lead to at least one party member's death. In many cases, you need to pause the game (spacebar) and select your individual heroes, followed by utilizing their special abilities and spells to give you the necessary edge in battle. Abilities and spells cost energy, which comes in the form of SP, FP, and MP. MP (Mana) regenerates at a steady pace, while FP (Faith Points) regenerates faster when the hero is surrounded by allies. In practice, it means you can cast one or two spells at the start of a battle, with additional tactical options becoming available again depending on what classes you have in your squad, and how your squad is positioned. These games can be immensely fun and satisfying to fun to play, especially when it's a PC title that throws as many micromanagement options at you as you can handle. Confrontation does seem to be lacking in a few key areas that would've made this a surefire hit, however. Disregarding the slightly aged graphical prowess available on even the highest settings, Confrontation insists on offering you a wealth of tactical options and menus without providing you adequate means to use them. While the F1-F4 keys let you swap between characters, and the same hotkeys are bound to each character's individual abilities, it can be hard to distinguish between both your own characters and the abilities they have. Sometimes one ability has to be cast on an ally to provide a buff, and another ability that looks similar is in fact an offensive spell you need to cast on an enemy target. Likewise, you start out with a team that quickly gains access to quite a few area combat buffs, but what they actually do and how they affect how combat plays out isn't always very clearly communicated. This problem of a lack of clarity is found elsewhere in the UI, too. The character sheet and inventory menus seem thrown together without much thought for best practices in usability, and there are a lot of aspects to tailor for each character. Then again, for those who will end up dedicating themselves to Confrontation, the amount of customization available might be a boon. Each character has two weapon sets (melee and ranged, essentially) to fit their position in a squad. Sometimes the terrain doesn't allow for open battle, forcing you to think about which characters to swap to ranged weaponry in tight quarters. Chests can yield weapon and armor points, which let you upgrade one of your character's proficiencies. Do you want to focus on melee or ranged weaponry? Shields and defense or swords and offense? Physical damage reduction or magical armor? These decisions are made by choosing upgrade paths as you level up, offering a deep customization system for each hero. When leveling up a character, many of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons type of primary attributes can be increased. Wisdom and Intelligence are somewhat representative of the priest and mage attributes you might be familiar with, but they work slightly different in Confrontation. Both attributes provide bonuses to different types of colored magic -- schools of magic if you will. Depending on whether you are building a support character whose focus is on casting buffs, or an offensive mage focusing on offensive magic, choosing the right attributes to level will likely end up being one of the most important aspects for your builds. Of course, specific skills can also be upgraded as you level up to increase their power. Confrontation offers some interesting ideas by taking this approach to customization depth, providing a potential for a good amount of replayability and freedom to choose and create your ultimate squad of badasses, and seemingly offering hours worth of leveling and upgrading your heroes to perfection. It's just a bit of a shame that it doesn't quite look the part for this day and age, and that many of the UI and control systems prevent you from smoothly progressing through series of fights. Despite this sense that the foundation of gameplay systems is solid, you can't help but feel like the title could have used another year of polish to make it more accessible to play, and more enjoyable in the process. Like with Cyanide's A Game of Thrones: Genesis, there are some excellent ideas here while the execution is less worthy of praise. With the release date coming up in two weeks, there's a tiny chance that things may have been vastly improved over the build used for this preview, albeit not a very large one. Confrontation is worth keeping an eye on if you are a lover of the genre who is willing to overlook the game's faults in favor of some hardcore top-down RPG action, but it will probably have limited appeal outside of its niche audience. |
| The dark secrets of Cheetahmen revealed! Posted: 24 Mar 2012 06:30 AM PDT
It's been a while since we shared an episode of GameTrailers' Pop Fiction, which discusses rumored tricks and glitches in various videogames then tests their validity, Myth Busters style. The latest installment is quite special -- it concerns everyone's favorite sh*t NES game with the kickass music, Cheetahmen II. Be prepared to receive an unnecessarily detailed technical explanation as to why the game prevented players from advancing past the fourth level. A surprising amount of research was done to explain why Cheetahmen II and its predecessor Action 52 were pure garbage. How necessary was all this fact-finding? About as necessary as trapping the Angry Video Game Nerd in a room and forcing him to play the game on threat of death. Pop Fiction Episode 22: Cheetahmen II [GameTrailers] |
| Dust 514 to get expansion in 2013, PS Vita application Posted: 24 Mar 2012 05:54 AM PDT Dust 514, CCP's upcoming free-to-play PS3 first-person shooter MMO, will see an expansion in 2013 that will bring new features inspired by direct fan feedback from this weekend's EVE FanFest in Reykjavik, Iceland. At a keynote presentation, Dust 514's executive producer, Brandon Laurino, revealed the following details for the expansion:
Details on an upcoming Dust 514 PS Vita companion app were also revealed during the keynote. It's currently under development for a 2012 release, with the tentative name Dust 514: Neocom. The application will allow access to the game's market, skills systems, mail, chat, and star maps. CCP is also evaluating further PS3 possibilities, like realtime PS3-to-Vita gameplay. |
| EVE players can use in-game currency to buy a GTX 560 Posted: 24 Mar 2012 05:05 AM PDT NVIDIA and CCP announced at the CCP keynote today that EVE players will be able to buy a GTX 560 high-end graphics card with in-game currency. How much will this cost players? Just 20 PLEX, and that includes shipping too. In-game currency to buy a real world good? It's pretty crazy, and something I hope to see happen more. [Editor's note: As some readers point out, you use real money to buy PLEX, but you can also use the in-game currency, ISK, to obtain PLEX as well.] |
| Review: Silent Hill HD Collection Posted: 24 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PDT It's been tough as a Silent Hill fan, watching Konami poison what once was the reigning champion of the survival horror genre. Even if you enjoy some of the sequels and spin-offs that have been produced over the years, there's no denying that the credibility and prestige of the series is all but dried up. We still have Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3, though. Two of the greatest videogames ever made, and the finest pair of horror classics you could hope to play. There's absolutely no way Konami could mess up the simple task of compiling these two fine titles into an HD collection, right? That's what I used to think, anyway. Silent Hill HD Collection (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 [reviewed]) First of all, Konami must be brought to task for naming this "Silent Hill HD Collection," as it implies a reflective body of work representing the series' past. As seems to be common with these reissues, the original game that started it all is nowhere to be found. Given its availability as a standalone PSN download, it's almost understandable that it would be left off the disc, but what cannot be overlooked is the complete lack of Silent Hill 4: The Room. Even if this disc was supposed to reflect just the PlayStation 2 games, the "collection" is incomplete without the fourth entry. It doesn't matter if you liked that game or not -- Konami made Team Silent rope it into the Silent Hill universe, and it seems ironic that the publisher would deny its existence now. Not to mention, the title has its fans and, for all its flaws, deserves a place on the disc. Still, one can almost see why it was left off. After all, Hijinx Studios wasn't competent enough to correctly port two games, let alone possess the capability to handle three. Frankly, a disgustingly terrible job has been done with this package. Silent Hill 2 is especially bad, as the visual "upgrade" actually looks worse than its PlayStation 2 counterpart. The game's contrast has been altered to make everything unnecessarily darker, while its claustrophobic fog effects have been removed almost entirely. Not only does this diminish the atmosphere, it exposes a number of graphical errors that the effect existed to hide.
It's common knowledge that the fog of the first Silent Hill was an ingenious response to the technical limitations of the era. Team Silent couldn't render a huge town in an expansive world, so it enshrouded everything in an obscuring haze to cover up what couldn't be rendered. Though not so necessary on the PS2, it did mean the developers wouldn't have to create environments with significant draw distances. Without that fog, one can see where parts of the game world have not been finished and were left to end in nothingness. This is especially notable during moments near Toluca Lake, where the water can be seen abruptly ending, as if it flowed off the edge of the world. The boat sequence toward the end of the game looks absolutely horrific, not just for the previously stated reason but also for the lack of water texture as well as the guiding light in the distance that now looks like a star drawn in a child's cartoon. Silent Hill 3 looks far better, to be fair. The sequel was already less reliant on fog and significantly better looking than its predecessor, so this appears to have been an easier port job. The game's deeper color scheme, with its focus on black and red, looks especially good in HD, and I'm glad that at least one game on the disc isn't visually inferior to its decade-old counterpart, though problems have been noted with lacking shadows. I can't personally say I found the game quite so bad to look at. Nevertheless, sound issues permeate both games. In Silent Hill 2, the audio randomly skips in outdoors environments, and both games struggle to keep the sound consistent whenever a character uses a bladed weapon -- the Great Knife in Silent Hill 2 and the katana in Silent Hill 3. While the Great Knife is only useful for one boss fight, the katana is an all-but-essential part of Silent Hill 3's melee arsenal, and to have audio cutting out almost every time it hits something is unbelievable. In both games, there's a bizarre crackling that randomly occurs on the save screen, sound loops during sections where it shouldn't be (ruining one of my favorite jump scares in Silent Hill 2), and unlocking achievements has the nasty side effect of crippling the frame rate of cutscenes to the point where I've had to skip them. Underneath the pathetic mess, these two games are still the shining examples of survival horror they always were. Silent Hill 2 remains my favorite game of all time, with its disturbed characters, gripping story, psychological symbolism and legitimately distressing environments. Silent Hill 3 is still an intense, stressful, ghost train of mind screws. While Silent Hill 2 is my favorite, Silent Hill 3 is the better videogame, and some of its grisly "Otherworld" environments remain the scariest, most downright sickening digital locations I've had the sweet misfortune of visiting. Naturally, both titles have aged. The loose combat system and sometimes excruciatingly slow place are things modern videogames would struggle to get away with. The controls are as dodgy as ever, even when switching over to the criminally underutilized "2D controls" that simulate modern analog movement, and the menu system is needlessly fiddly. Nevertheless, I can still play and adore these games today and remain thoroughly absorbed in a pair of gorgeously grotesque titles, the likes of which have not been seen before or since. In a seeming bid to sidestep awkward situations with previous voice actors, both games feature new voices. Silent Hill 2 has an option to switch to the old ones -- included as a result of fan outpouring -- and the traditionalist in me prefers them. I feel the new actors significantly alter the tone of each conversation and have a tendency to overact and draw out their lines. Eddie's new voice, especially, has lost its sense of growing agitation and instead settles on an annoyingly breathy beach bum impersonation. Silent Hill 3 has no option to use original voices, which is a mixed bag. The supporting cast has all been given significantly better actors this time around, with Douglas' no longer sounding like Louis Armstrong, Claudia's losing her shrill whine, and Vincent's having some actual strength in his voice. Main protagonist Heather, however, has lost a lot of the natural energy and personality that made her such a fan favorite character. In the original game, Heather actually sounded like a teenage girl in a nightmarish situation. The new voice sounds more like someone trying really hard to do an impression of a teenage girl, and the insincerity is clear as day. It's not terrible acting, exactly, but it takes away a huge amount of Heather's authentic personality, which in turn undoes a lot of the story's emotional impact. One horrible side effect of the added audio is that the new actors struggle to match the lip movements of the characters, and as such, vocals sometimes end up horribly out of sync with the visuals. There are also times when some words have been altered or skipped entirely, the importance of which will depend on how much of a purist you are. Specifically, two lines have been rewritten while other words have been left out of certain sentences. Because nobody bothered to alter the subtitles, all the changes are as clear as day. With Silent Hill HD Collection, I was hoping to spend my review waxing nostalgic about two of my favorite games of all time. I would have loved to talk about how James Sunderland is such a breathtaking protagonist. I would have loved to mention the perverse body horror that snakes its way throughout Silent Hill 3's eldritch world. So much about these games holds up today, and even playing them on this collection, so much genuine brilliance to shine through to remind the world how horror games used to look in their glory days. Instead, I've had to spend the review talking about what a dreadfully sloppy job has been done with the porting. No matter how engaging these games still are to play, there's no escaping the fact that the games on this disc are significantly inferior versions, and for Konami to fail at publishing enhanced versions of such old games is a total embarrassment. While newcomers won't notice the missing visual elements, such broken audio is tough for anybody to forgive, while old school fans will be left feeling insulted by what a significant downgrade the "HD" version of Silent Hill 2 is. Konami has long had a habit of mishandling its properties, buts the inability to treat even these classics on the Silent Hill HD Collection with a modicum of respect is staggering. The disc feels like a rushed and sloppy cash-in, squirted out to exploit fans who have stuck with the series through years of drivel. It does a disservice to two amazing pieces of interactive art and spits on the legacy of what once was the crown jewel of an entire genre. Incomplete, glitchy, and visually degraded, Silent Hill HD Collection is Konami's greatest insult to the series. |
| CCP's World of Darkness is not dead, just like a vampire Posted: 24 Mar 2012 04:45 AM PDT Chris McDonough, Senior Producer on World of Darkness, told audiences at EVE FanFest today that "reports of our undeath have been greatly exaggerated." CCP had a bit of a rough time last year, and news on the upcoming MMO has been somewhat scarce, but McDonough said that the game is still under production, and that they'll only release new information whey they can show something that can live up to the legacy. CCP's Atlanta offices have 55 people working on World of Darkness. They've built a staff of AAA developers that have worked on just about every MMO in recent memory. McDonough says that they've been spending this quiet time working hard, doing things like creating tools, designing gameplay, and shaping the story and art. The development team even held an in-house two-week beta of an early version of World of Darkness running, with feedback from that session rolled back into their work. Several slides of gorgeous concept art were shown at an afternoon session at FanFest, all being quite dark and some showing a bit of nudity. The presentation wrapped up with a short demonstration used the World of Darkness graphical engine to show off the game's gritty, modern city setting. Very few new details on gameplay were revealed during the session. We know that the game will first focus on vampires, and will only move onto other monsters of lore when they've perfect them first. Darkness will feature hand-to-hand combat, though some weapons will be involved. Finally, it was revealed that game will be set in multiple cities across in a unified world, and players can fight to become princes to take control of them. McDonough admits that that CCP has been a bit divided, and that development practices have not been at their best, but now they've refocused, and are now hard at work. As of now there's no release date for World of Darkness, though we were told to expect more information on the game later this year.
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| The Daily Hotness: Ryu's a bit bitter Posted: 23 Mar 2012 04:59 PM PDT
Yeah, it seems most people didn't like Ninja Gaiden, but that doesn't make Ryu any less of a badass. This was definitely Epic Mickey 2's day. Beyond that, Mass Effect 3's getting a face-fixing patch, the Adventure Time DS game is a thing, and more happened on 3/23. Destructoid Original: Previews: News: |
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