We pull the trigger on our Xbox 360 controller, which is actually shaped like the trigger on an assault rifle. Signals are sent to the controller, then to the system, and within milliseconds our on-screen avatar pulls the trigger on his assault rifle, which is actually shaped like the trigger on our Xbox 360 controller. Digital bullets stream from the barrel spraying towards the digital character cowering
Tactical RPG Blackguards is out now, as this hexy launch trailer proves
Well I said Blackguards would be releasing in January, and I was (just about) right: Daedalic's turn-based, tactical RPG is out now on yer actual Steam.
on yer actual Steam. To coincide with the release, a combat-heavy trailer has been released into the wild. See spells fly, and baddies get incinerated after the break.
Blackguards is an unusually dark game from traditionally pointy-clicky developers Daedalic, which makes sense as they're the current stewards for the grim Dark Eye universe. We went hands-on with the game back in March, so it's probably changed a bit since then. If only there were a demo to - oh wait, there is.
Test Chamber – Cloud Strife's Grand Super Smash Bros. Debut
With yesterday's final Nintendo Direct dedicated to Super Smash Bros.
, we learned not only that Bayonetta and Corrin from Fire Emblem will be joining the roster but that Cloud Strife is now available to download. I'm joined by Kyle Hilliard in this Test Chamber as we test out the troubled youth's fan-service-packed moves and the new stage set in Final Fantasy VII's Midgar. Then, even though we promised that the last time was the final time, we rekindle the fan-favorite eight-player Smash matches with our interns Marcus Stewart, Joseph Knoop, and Parker Lemke. These eight-player matches are an ongoing "multi-part series," so you can find episodes one, two, three, four, five, or six, by following the links.
Check out the video below to see Cloud Strife in action.
For more Test Chamber, click the banner below, or check out our hub.
How Spec Ops: The Line attempts to shock jaded, desensitized gamers
We pull the trigger on our Xbox 360 controller, which is actually shaped like the trigger on an assault rifle. Signals are sent to the controller, then to the system, and within milliseconds our on-screen avatar pulls the trigger on his assault rifle, which is actually shaped like the trigger on our Xbox 360 controller. Digital bullets stream from the barrel spraying towards the digital character cowering
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Our Verdict
Masochistic stat-chasers will find much to enjoy, but Blackguards varied combat is no substitute for a fully-formed RPG.
Much of my time in Blackguards was spent waiting. I waited for my turn, as enemies slowly plodded around hex-grid maps. I waited for tactical diversity, yearning to unlock the more interesting attack options. Mostly, I waited for earnest fantasy stereotypes to finish performing their questionably accented dialogue and unlock the next fight.
Based on The Dark Eye pen-and-paper rule-set, Blackguards is a turn-based RPG so focused on combat that it's more fantasy XCOM than fantasy Fallout. At the start the character you've created is convicted of murder. Escaping from prison, he or she must team up with a band of roguish misfits to figure out who – or what – was really responsible. Yet that mystery isn't much more than a flimsy tool to link each battle.
Most of the game is spent staring at hex-grids, painstakingly moving up to five characters into position to activate a selection of ranged or melee attacks, spells and defensive stances. It's engaging but clunky, controlled via a sluggish interface.
The encounters are imaginative and varied. Each map has a different layout and usually a smattering of interactive objects. Stacked crates can be pushed over to crush enemies, swamp gas exploded, levers activated for potentially deadly effects. The best of these let you cleverly subvert the battle space, turning a fight against overwhelming odds into a satisfyingly achieved advantage.
Those victories are hard fought. The difficulty means you'll see many of Blackguards' maps multiple times. Regularly, I found myself cursing the random chance attack rolls. The slow pace of combat makes such repetition frustrating, especially when, thanks to luck, otherwise sound tactics result in a restart.
The rest of the game takes place entirely in menus and in towns, presented through animated point-and-click screens that play like the world's least satisfying hidden object puzzle. Can you find the covetous dwarves? Yes, because there's an icon over their heads.
Each town visit is accompanied by the same basic actions: heal, equip, sell, upgrade. In the second chapter, the game goes so far as to abandon the linear questing entirely, instead taking you on a gladiatorial sojourn of wearying back-to-back sortees. Things finally open up in chapter three, but even then, you're only really choosing how many extra side quests you want to fight.
Such singular focus is almost admirable, but it means there's little to engage you between combat. The best tactical games enhance their action with difficult decisions that give a sense of purpose to battles. However, this is where Blackguards' underserved RPG elements do the most harm. Its idea of a compelling conundrum isn't to choose the fate of the world, or even your squad, but whether you should spend 200 points on a marginal stat increase to shortsword proficiency.
Details
Expect to pay: £30 / $45
Release: Out now
Developer: Daedalic Entertainment
Publisher: In-house
Multiplayer: None
Link: www.bit.ly/Blackguards
The Verdict
Blackguards
Masochistic stat-chasers will find much to enjoy, but Blackguards varied combat is no substitute for a fully-formed RPG.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Phil has been PC gaming since the '90s, when RPGs had dice rolls and open world adventures were weird and French. Now he's the deputy editor of PC Gamer; commissioning features, filling magazine pages, and knowing where the apostrophe goes in '90s. He plays Scout in TF2, and isn't even ashamed.
We recommend By Zergnet
Franchise Follow-Ups No One Expected
Every once in a while a game comes along that catches people off-guard.
Every once in a while a game comes along that catches people off-guard. Whether they’re good or bad, unexpected games are always interesting to explore and discuss, especially when they’re part of a long-running series. Whether it’s because the games differ greatly from their predecessors, or weren’t how anyone expected the series to continue, these are some of the most surprising follow-ups in the video game world. First up are the pleasant surprises.
Fallout 3
The Fallout franchise started its life in the hands of Interplay as an isometric, tactical-RPG. Unfortunately, Interplay eventually spiraled towards bankruptcy after a series of big projects were canned, one of which was Fallout 3. Not to be confused with Bethesda’s open-world epic, Interplay’s Fallout 3 was codenamed Van Buren and canceled when Interplay laid off most of Black Isle Studios’ PC development team in 2003. When Bethesda bought Fallout from the ailing company a few years later, many people assumed the team would either finish Van Buren or start from scratch; after all, a tech demo of Fallout 3 had already made its way into the wild, showcasing just how close the game was to completion. Instead, Bethesda did a little bit of both. Fans of the series got Fallout 3, but it wasn’t exactly what they envisioned when Black Isle Studios was hard at work behind closed doors. It’s not a bad thing that Bethesda took the series in a new direction though, as their version of Fallout 3 is easily one of the best RPGs from the last generation.
Battlefield: Bad Company
The Battlefield franchise has always had a large PC following, having originated on the platform in 2002. However, in 2008 the series took a sharp turn with Battlefield: Bad Company. In concept alone, Battlefield: Bad Company wasn’t actually that surprising. Call of Duty had proven the viability of both the console segment of the shooter genre and strong single-player campaigns the year prior. Meanwhile, the PS3 and Xbox 360 were technologically outperforming PCs, and Battlefield’s strongest market was shrinking as the online features of consoles finally caught up.
The surprising part of Battlefield: Bad Company was how good it ended up being. The game recently made the top five in our listof the best Battlefield games, along with its sequel. However, nothing in DICE’s track record suggested they were capable of turning out anything close to that level of quality for consoles. Their previous endeavors in the space were shaky at best, including things like the dog-eared port Battlefield 2: Modern Combat and the GameCube version of a terrible licensed Shrek game. Bad Company fell on the complete opposite end of the spectrum though. Its campaign was witty and well-formed, its technology far surpassed anything DICE had previously created, and its multiplayer Gold Rush mode was excellent.
Hyrule Warriors
Hyrule Warriors is the strangest departure Dynasty Warriors and Nintendo have taken in years. Dynasty Warriors is a niche franchise, and in most cases its spinoffs are bad. Nintendo is already conservative with its major franchises, rarely handing them off even for things like Capcom’s well-regarded Legend of Zelda games, so seeing it associate a hallmark brand with an inconsistent series was rather strange. That the game ended up being good enough to receive mostly positive reviews, including an 8 from Game Informer’s Kyle Hilliard, is a welcome surprise. Hyrule Warriors struck a chord with its blend of action and fanservice, and even though it’s not perfect, fans snatched it up at a rate that had Nintendo crediting itfor increased sales of the Wii U.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Everyone was excited to jump back into the shoes of the world’s greatest super-spy following hands-on time with the now infamous Tanker sequence prior to release. Sons of Liberty seemed set to deliver on what fans were hoping for, with numerous gameplay and visual refinements tightening up Solid Snake’s stealthy adventures. There was a problem though: Snake was missing in action. Though Solid Snake was still involved during the opening sequence and as the hardly-subtle Iroquois Pliskin, newcomer Raiden took center stage as the player-controlled character. Perhaps the most devious bait-and-switch the industry has ever seen, Metal Gear Solid 2 made fans furious at the time. In the years since its release, Sons of Liberty has been regarded as unexpected for another reason. While the original Metal Gear Solid was certainly full of weird things, the series didn’t introduce its craziest elements until the A.I.-fueled final act of Metal Gear Solid 2.
Majora’s Mask
It’s rare to see a Zelda game get a sequel of any kind. There have been a lot of spiritual or stylistic successors, and Nintendo has attempted to chronologically order the series, but for the most part each release exists in a vacuum. The most surprising exception to the rule is Majora’s Mask. Despite being a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time, the game completely changes how Link’s approaches his quest. Instead of leisurely exploring Hyrule, players are forced to race against the clock as a freaky moon descends towards the planet’s surface. The game also came with a massive shift in tone that, when paired with the repetition in its design, produced one of the most divisive entries in the entire series. We love Majora’s Mask here at Game Informer though, having awarded the original a 9.75and the remake a 9.25, so it’s safe to call it a pleasant surprise.
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
A Realm Reborn shouldn’t, by any logical measure of how the MMO space has operated over the past decade, exist. In a world where the crippling weight of MMO development cycles are enough to bankrupt studios and grind ambitions into paste, Square Enix somehow rebuilt one of the behemoths from the ground up and ended up with a good game. To top it all off, A Realm Reborn’s predecessor wasn’t just bad, it was one of the biggest MMO disasters to ever hit the open market. Unplayable for large swathes of the community at release, the original Final Fantasy XIV never got fixed over the two years it limped along prior to its shutdown in late 2012. Rebuilding the game ended up requiring more than just fixing problems, as Square Enix translated the entire game to a completely new engine. Despite the massive amount of money sunk into it, A Realm Reborn received a fairly warm reception, was credited with helping pull Square Enix out of a fiscal nosedivein early 2014, and recently surpassedfour million registered users.
Up Next: The not-so-pleasant surprises.
Daedalic's Dark Eye-set RPG Blackguards delayed to January 2014
This is a good week for delaying games, it seems.
This is a good week for delaying games, it seems. We've already had Watch Dogs and The Crewpushed back to the scrag-middle and scrag-end of 2014; now Daedalic's Dark Eye-setturn-based RPG Blackguardshas met a similar fate. Admittedly, that's one game you might not have been following too closely, so here's a link to our previewfrom earlier in the year.
You might be more familiar with Daedalic for their visually sumptuous adventure games, such as Deponia, Memoria and The Whispered World - Blackguards will be their first tactical RPG as developers. Speaking about the delay, via press release, Senior Producer Kai Fiebig stated that "all the time we've gained now will be used to put as much effort as possible into improving the game. We'll optimize performance, implement new features and also polish the visuals," - which is pretty much exactly what you'd hope.
Blackguards will now launch in January.
10 Gameplay Mechanics That Completely Changed Our Favorite Series
As a game series ages, new ideas are introduced
to keep the franchise
fresh.
As a game series ages, new ideas are introduced
to keep the franchise
fresh. Some concepts flop or are forgotten while others flourish. A select few
even manage to redefine the way players engage with that series. Here’s a list
of mechanics that accomplished the latter for their respective properties.
Spin Dash – Sonic the Hedgehog (Introduced in Sonic 2)
Anyone who’s ever booted up Sonic 1 after
playing the subsequent entries knows how jarring it is to revisit it because of
the absence of the spin dash. The maneuver became the most effective method of
instant propulsion, getting the blue blur up and around platforms quickly and
easily. Before that, Sonic had to build a running start that took seconds
(basically forever in this series) to get the lead out. Spinning is also handy
as a semi-invincible form of travel, efficiently taking out enemies that lie in Sonic's path. As far as we’re concerned, Sonic wasn’t truly about speed until he
started revving up the spin dash.
Tranquilizer Gun – Metal Gear (Introduced in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty)
Metal Gear emphasizes silent, clean infiltrations,
so this useful weapon quickly became a godsend upon its introduction. Instead
of having to always carefully circumvent enemies, players can fulfill their
trigger-happy tendencies and just shoot them down without making a racket or
feeling like a murderer. The Tranquilizer Gun is a prime case of having your
cake and eating it too, and may as well be grafted to Snake’s palm as it’s
remained one of the few must-have items in the series.
Economy – Assassin’s Creed (Introduced
in Assassin’s Creed II)
One of Assassin’s Creed II’s most engrossing
aspects was, surprisingly, building up Ezio’s Monteriggioni
Villa. Since then, every Assassin’s Creed has included a form of economy, from
purchasing property to sending recruits to fulfill contracts in other lands.
The prospect of earning extra dough to unlock and upgrade additional
headquarters greatly incentivizes side-activities. I remember going out of my
way to earn enough dough to buy every piece of artwork and weaponry to display
in my Assassin pad. Best of all, owned establishments generate perpetual
income, creating a strong hook to amass more property and, in turn, money.
Super Combo – Street Fighter (Introduced in Super Street Fighter II Turbo)
One of the most dramatic additions to Street
Fighter II during its long phase of updated installments was these special
attacks. Filling a meter while fighting allowed world warriors to unleash a
devastating super attack, giving them a strategic ace-in-the-hole to work
towards instead of just hitting each other until someone lost. The Super Combo
is irreplaceably woven into fabric of Street Fighter, appearing in every major
entry since. The concept has also taken various forms in other fighting games,
like Mortal Kombat’s X-Ray attacks.
Sliding/Charge Attack – Mega Man (Introduced in Mega Man 3 & 4, respectively)
It would take three games before the Blue Bomber
gained two of his most invaluable maneuvers. Sliding bestowed players with a
needed form of evasion in a game known for lobbing tons of projectiles at
players. It also facilitated more creative level design, such as narrow
passages accessible only by sliding. Mega Man’s Charge Shot provided a
powerful, built-in weapon capable of annihilating foes quicker. In Robot Master
battles, the Charge Shot’s powerful wallop makes it an effective backup option
when you’ve exhausted the chosen special weapon’s ammo.
For more game changing mechanics, head to page two.
Metal Gear Solid HD Collection launch trailer barely encapsulates why MGS is awesome
For the last decade you’ve probably heard much about Metal Gear Solid, and pretty much everything is true. It’s simultaneously unchained artistic brilliance, ridiculously convoluted, full of weird jokes, has some of the best graphics of its console generation, and barely makes sense if you think about it. Something that singular deserves to be celebrated (on top of the games just being fun to play
Daedalic's Memoria out today, looks promisingly beautiful
Daedalic's got a pretty good pedigree in the mostly barren land of adventure gaming—its last release, Night of the Rabbit , was a wistful journey full of frogs wearing classy little hats (really, how could the softhearted animal lovers making up the PCG team say no?).
, was a wistful journey full of frogs wearing classy little hats (really, how could the softhearted animal lovers making up the PCG team say no?). The developer's new game is the "fantasy-crime" story Memoria, which looks a heck of a lot darker than the rest of their back catalog, but is certainly no less intriguing.
You'll play two characters, 500 years apart—whatever could an ambitious princess and a humble bird-catcher from different eras have in common? I don't know, but I'm happy to just get lost in all those gorgeous fantasy landscapes while digging around for the answer.
Memoria is set in that universe of The Dark Eye. No, not that Dark Eye. And not the Poe-inspired Dark Eye, either. We're talking about the Chains of Satinav, one of Daedalic's previous adventure games, which was home to such locales as the dragon-built temple Draconia (which we'll get to explore once again). A special promotion heralds Memoria's release, granting it a 10% discount to $18 on Steamfor the next week. The Longest Journeywas the last game whose fantasy beauty awed me this much—hopefully it'll live up to my now-solidified expectations.
Why Silent Hill belongs on PC
It’s a goddamn Resident Evil renaissance.
It’s a goddamn Resident Evil renaissance. In recent years Resident Evil 4 has been remade for PC(it works this time!), Resident Evil 5’s Gold Edition came to Steam, the original from 1996 received another HD remaster, and next year Resident Evil Zero will arrive on PC as well. It’ll be nice to have the option to replay that one without having to date someone who owns a GameCube. But happy as I am to see so many classic Evils that are Resident getting spitshined for a platform I don’t have to hunt for memory cards to use, there’s a part of me wishing it was Silent Hill receiving this treatment instead.
Silent Hill’s beginnings owe a lot to Resident Evil. It was initially conceived by Konami as an attempt to replicate the Capcom series’ success outside Japan–the nods to American horror like Jacob’s Ladder and Stephen King’s story The Mist are there because Silent Hill was intended to appeal to the US market, but they came filtered through Japanese sensibilities and were all the weirder for it. Silent Hill’s surprisingly coherent mythology takes the traumatic backstories characters in American horror fiction routinely suffer from and uses them to inspire its monstrosities, grounding them in psychological suffering.
That was best demonstrated by Silent Hill 2, still a fan favorite, which was ported to PC in 2002. Having played the PS2 original and the HD remake on 360, the PC version is easily the best. It has the bonus level that lets you play as side-character Maria, missing from some versions of the original, and the ability to quicksave. You might think quicksaving would make it less frightening, but what’s scary about Silent Hill 2 is its oppressive atmosphere, not the the worry you’ll get killed and have to re-do a bit.
The PC version also has better textures. You’d expect the 2012 HD remake to have the best visuals, but in rolling back the town’s famous fog to show off an increased draw distance it revealed some distracting failures. The lonely sequence in which you row across foggy Toluca Lake wasn’t as eerie when I could see the water below was a plain white untextured expanse, and monsters weren’t as frightening after I saw one spawn and fall into place as if flung from a catapult.
It’s a shame then that the PC version is so hard to find nowadays. It should be right there on GOG or Steam where I can gift it to my friends, with cloud saves and modern controller support so I can re-install whenever I feel like keeping myself awake all night. But at least Silent Hill 2 got a PC release in the first place, which is more then several other highlights of the series have managed.
The original, for instance, never did. It may have clunky translation and voice acting even by the standards of Japanese games, but that only enhances the first Silent Hill’s resemblance to a B-movie and its ability to surprise you once the backstory starts being revealed, like garish wallpaper flaking away to show the history of bloodstains beneath. Although re-released on PSN, that original game has never been remastered. (Meanwhile the original Resident Evil had two director’s cuts, a GameCube remake, and then a PC remake of the GameCube remake—who, me, jealous?)
It was re-imagined though, into 2009’s Shattered Memories, the best of the series not made by the original team. Its lead designer was Sam Barlow who also created Her Story, and its first-person psychiatric interviews are an obvious resemblance—although here you’re the interview subject. The rest of the game was third-person and one of few to use motion controls effectively. Though given a late-in-the-day PS2 release it was best on the Wii, where the Wiimote doubled as your torch when investigating dark places and your phone when receiving voicemail messages. (They echoed out of the controller’s tiny speaker when held up to your ear, which was intensely creepy.) During chase sequences you used the motion controls to shove enemies off and yank furniture down to make obstacles behind you, while whipping yourself in the face with the cord if you’re as clumsy as me.
Demos for virtual reality games like Edge Of Nowhere make me think the third-person sections of Shattered Memories would suit VR, and newer motion controls–minus my old enemy, the cord–would be a definite improvement. The other reason I’d love to see Shattered Memories remade for VR is that it’s one of the least scary Silent Hill games, and the ability VR has enhance scares might actually kill somebody if applied to something as terrifying as P.T.
Being less scary isn’t a weakness, though. Shattered Memories trades the oppressive fear typical of the series for a rise-and-fall cycle of tension, pacing its chases out with areas in which you’re safe. Knowing the relief you feel at each escape is temporary and the return of its shifting monsters is inevitable means Shattered Memories evokes dread rather than terror, making you worry about things that aren’t there rather than surrounding you with leathery twitch-beasts forever.
Another Silent Hill we never saw on PC was 2012’s Downpour. Hardly the best in the series but also far from the worst, it transformed the town into an open world that would be at home on PC. Remove the transitions between suburbs necessitated by old hardware and you’d have a seamless Silent Hill worth experiencing. Although the main storyline was goofy, Downpour was full of sidequests that surpassed it; it’s basically the Elder Scrolls: Oblivion of Silent Hills. Among the highlights was a quest triggered by a “Have you seen this child?” poster for a missing girl. Go to her address and you find out she was autistic and her mother had set up a system of colored ribbons she could follow to and from school. Follow the ribbons across town and you’ll uncover one of the most chilling stories any survival horror game has told.
We may never get to play Silent Hills, the recently canceled sequel, on any platform. Still, having access to some of the best of Silent Hill’s old glories would be a consolation—and also mean I could finally get rid of all the consoles I keep just to play them on.
Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate detective cases guide
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Daedalic's newest adventure, Night of the Rabbit, released on Steam
A top-hatted boy with dragonfly wings, forests that glow oddly of their own accord, and parties attended by bespectacled animals?
A top-hatted boy with dragonfly wings, forests that glow oddly of their own accord, and parties attended by bespectacled animals? Night of the Rabbit is looking like the most whimsical, dreamy thing PC gaming has seen in quite awhile. It's out today on Steamfor $20.
The German studio has called Night of the Rabbit its "biggest adventure game so far." Them's big words, given Daedalic's pedigree in crafting old-school-inspired point-and-clicks. You'll play wannabe magician Jerry, who's followed by a white rabbit into the realm of Mousewood and other fantastic places. Claiming to clock in at 20 hours, Night of the Rabbit promises both light-hearted giggles and thought-provoking twists in a coming-of-age story. Many of the suit-wearing, party-attending rodents apparently have their own backstories too, which are included as in-game bonuses.
Exclusively on Steam is the Premium Edition, which comes with the soundtrack and eight "audio stories" for an extra $5. You can also get the normal edition on GOG. Full details on the adventures with friendly frogs and happy hamsters can be found at the Night of the Rabbit website.
Silent Hill 4's creepy apartment recreated in Unity
Silent Hill 4 has its share of problems—being a mangled Silent Hill game cannibalised from another project will do that—but its first-person sections set in a spooky flat/apartment were terrific .
. In contrast to the creaky third-person monster-bashing and puzzle-solving of the rest of the game, these moments felt quietly, unsettlingly real.
More people need to revisit the idea, obviously, and Moonville Entertainment's Dennis Giesler and Vjaceslav Tissen kind of have with this impressive Unity demo. It's not playable by the rest of us, for probably obvious reasons, but it looks exactly as I remember it from Konami's game, albeit with higher resolution assets and less sluggish movement.
As the YouTube description puts it, "the modelling, texturing, programming, sound design and video editing is all selfmade", and you can find 1080p screenshotsat the link.
Slightly tangentially, Allison Roadis a thing you might be interested in. (Thanks, IndieGames.)
Mastering Blade Symphony: part two
This diary series was written for the UK magazine last summer: issues 268 and 269, to be precise.
Welcome to part two of our Mastering Blade Symphony diary. In case you missed it, here's part one.
This diary series was written for the UK magazine last summer: issues 268 and 269, to be precise. The game has been updated several times since then, so long-term Blade Symphony players may notice a few discrepancies.
Previously: Having crashed my Blade Symphony rating, I picked up my rapier and began my attempt to reach the Master rank—occupied by the top 1% of players. After a few initial defeats, I climbed out of Steel and gained a place in the Diamond league.
Two other Phalanx foilists are duelling in The Street, a rainy stretch of road in some unnamed Far East city. One is Diamond league, the other Steel—but the lower-ranked player is dominant. I duel him once, and lose both rounds. He simply makes far fewer mistakes than me. I overreach with each of my combos, trying to land one more hit than I need to and get punished for it with aggressive balanced lunges and sideways heavy sweeps.
Then I duel his previous opponent, the Diamond league foilist. I’m 653rd in the world, he’s 691st. It’s as closely matched a fight as I’ve ever had, and it’ll determine whether or not I climb any higher.
I go aggressive, landing a few forward jabs before receiving the same in return. Then I overextend, leaving myself open for a heavy lunge that hits me right in the chest. He follows up with a full fast string and the first round is over.
I’m cagier at the beginning of the second match. I evade his lunge but fail to connect with a sideways parry and run right into his ‘washing machine’—the twirling blade attack that can follow a balanced lunge. There’s a window to counter so I take it, landing a full fast string of attacks.
He comes back with the lunge, and I walk into it again . Then he leaps into an aerial attack that I don’t expect, right back into fast stance, and it’s over. I’ve been soundly beaten by somebody on my own level.
It’s a huge blow to my confidence. I consider blaming the time of day, the amount of coffee and practice I’ve had. I consider quitting the server and going to find another Diamond to fight. For whatever reason, I stay in the duel queue.
I find myself facing him again after he defeats the Steel-ranked foilist, who subsequently switches out for Judgement and a longsword.
Round one. He lands the second part of his fast string and I do the same. We’re each playing sloppily: going only for the fast hits, taking as much damage as we deal. Spamming like this isn’t exactly the hallmark of players in the top 6%, but we’re each too wary of the other’s heavier attacks to commit to anything else. Eventually the parries—and the round—go his way.
I think about this diary, and how it would be a pretty terrible story if I lost my Diamond rank as soon as I’d gained it—if the moral of the story is ‘actually, you belong in Steel after all’. Losing this match, I think, would be enough to put me there.
My lunge connects at the beginning of round two. I roll sideways instead of immediately following up and then land a charged, jump-cancelled thrust. I follow up with fast strikes, then another lunge, and then a parry and more blows. He drops and I’ve lost no health. OK, I think. I remember how to do this.
Another lunge connects with my sternum at the beginning of round three but I manage to land my entire combo—lunge into fast, parrying him to the side and jump-cancelling another fast strike. He hits me again but we’re both low on health, and neither of us wants to overextend. I feint forward then roll back, charging up a lunge that he fails to anticipate this time. I take the game, and restore some of my rating.
A new Diamond joins the server while I’m holding the duelling ground—a longsword-wielding Ryoku. I’m able to keep my distance and needle him in the first round, evading his attempt to land a heavy reverse sweep that I’d have a hard time blocking. He walks into a sideways heavy attack that opens him up for another combo, and it’s enough for me to take the first round. I’m feeling good.
I am wrong. He utterly destroys me in the second round, landing a grab that does a huge amount of damage and casts me to the ground. I roll sideways and come up into what should be a devastating lunge—the game shows my sword travelling entirely through his body—but no damage is registered, and I take his full heavy string of attacks after that, and again after that. It’s over quickly.
The Night Of The Rabbit hands-on: a gentle new adventure from The Whispered World devs
"Jerry, do you remember what I told you?"
"...nothing is impossible?"
"And soon it will no longer sound like a question when you say it."
Daedalic's new adventure, The Night Of The Rabbit , isn't exactly the kind that sets out to recreate the genre.
, isn't exactly the kind that sets out to recreate the genre. It's more... oh... the point and click equivalent of slipping into a nice warm bath. Traditional down to the tips of its paws and whiskers, the slice of the game I've played is a thing of charm and quiet beauty. In time, it likely turns into a story with drama and darkness and saving the universe. For the early section I explored, it's simply a bright summer jaunt in a world with a little magic left to discover.
"You're Jeremiah, a 10 year old would-be magician who sounds like a child but doesn't quite talk like one."
You're Jeremiah, a 10 year old would-be magician who sounds like a child but doesn't quite talk like one, bemoaning the end of the summer holidays. He lives in a small house in a wood scattered with fairy mushrooms and carved rock animals that hints real fairies and mystery may still twinkle somewhere within, though for now, the biggest surprise is that they're actually just a little patch of unspoiled magic with a view out onto a grubby, grey expanse of supermarkets and apartments. It's almost a reversal of Miyazaki style - a wrong road taken sending unwary travellers stumbling into the real world.
For now though, there may not be much fantasy, but there is magic - at least, the magic of the world seen through the eyes of a small boy with an active imagination. There's talk of crows, which might just be a concern for the farm on which Jeremiah lives, but which are brought up just a few too many times for that. There's the Owl Wall that separates the two figurative worlds. And then there's the radio, which may or may not just be a joke, but manages to get a laugh out of an interface tutorial by framing it as morning calisthenics, complete with instructions like "Imagine a mouse pointer. Move it to the radio..."
"This summons the Marquis de Hoto, a smooth talking giant rabbit"
What's not imagined though is a mysterious letter, which literally appears out of thin air with instructions for a ritual involving chalk and black powder and carrot. This summons the Marquis de Hoto, a smooth talking giant rabbit who knows everything about Jeremiah, and invites him to become his apprentice. There's a certain Doctor Who vibe to it, though instead of travelling through time, the rabbit steps between worlds through trees that go deep enough to connect the universe together. Through this one, the woods look the same, but the town that was once a McDonalds life support system is now a village of adorable talking mice where a magician's apprentice can earn his stripes with nobody making jokes about him stealing Professor Layton's spare hat. And, apparently, be home before dinner.
"One puzzle involves making a leprechaun smash himself in the face with a rake"
Playing the preview code - just the start of the game - it's tough to guess how things will progress. It's extremely slow moving, though that's not necessarily a bad thing. Jeremiah reacts to the world with cheer and a smile, and an endearing sense of childlike adventure. This isn't an all-out comedy, though it does have its jokes and a generally amusing attitude, from Jeremiah's obsession with fictional animals to suddenly randomly complaining in a conversation that nobody ever seems to ask him any questions.
The beautiful environments are also helped by a number of little details, like the way locations are simply marked as ??? until visited, and the hint system/object spotting hotkeys are in-game magic spell that only get handed out when the Marquis introduces Jeremiah to his new world. It doesn't hurt either that while the world is cute enough to be potentially dangerous to diabetics, up to and including having a town called "Mousewood", there are hints of darker things to follow - not least that one puzzle involves making a leprechaun smash himself in the face with a rake, followed by trashing his house.
And of course, both rabbits and marquises do have a tendency to be tricksters...
Night of the Rabbit is due out at the end of May, and these are the boring jokes people will use when it does: "Hare Raising Adventure", "the characters rabbit on", "we didn't encounter Bugs". Zzz. For more info, check out the official homepage.It feels like a game that's primarily going to appeal to old-school adventurers in search of a mild challenge rather than draw a whole new crowd, but with no little amount of style or artistry ready for anyone who cares to drop in for this trip down the rabbit hole.
Konami apologizes for causing "anxiety"
There was uproar earlier this month when reports began to surface that Konami had adopted a "mobile first" strategy to new game development.
There was uproar earlier this month when reports began to surface that Konami had adopted a "mobile first" strategy to new game development. "Our main platform will be mobile," Konami CEO Hideki Hayakawa said, according to a NeoGAFtranslation of a Nikkei Trendy interview. "Mobile is where the future of gaming lies." Startling stuff, if that was what Hayakawa had actually said.
It wasn't. We updated our reportwith a more complete translation the same day it ran, but Konami is clearly still trying to get the word out that it's hasn't abandoned traditional game platforms. Those early reports "lacked the necessary context and caused unrest within our key stakeholders including our community, members of the press, our partners, and our fans," Konami PR Director Jay Boor explained in a message sent to Ars Technica. "Konami will continue to embrace the challenge of creating entertainment content via different platforms; across not only mobile platforms, but for home consoles, arcade units, and cards, to meet the changing needs of the times."
The fully translated interview does include the phrase "mobile first," but went on to clarify that it doesn't mean the company's focus will be purely on mobile games. "Our aim is to continue to build up a comprehensive portfolio of console, arcade, and card game titles for each IP while also making the best possible use of the mobile devices that accompany our customers in their daily life, thus expanding the limits of entertainment and appealing to more and more customers," Hayakawa said. "So if our business to date has operated like a string of individual stores, then this revised approach makes us a major department store."
Boor apologized for the "great deal of anxiety" caused by recent events at Konami, including the "mobile first" interview, a major organizational shakeup, the cancellation of Silent Hills, and the apparent split with Metal Gear mastermind Hideo Kojima. He also reaffirmed Konami's commitment to the Metal Gear and Silent Hill franchises, saying, "We have nurtured them with care over many years since their inception, and will continue to produce products for both franchises, but we are not currently at a stage where we can announce the path these future titles will take."
2014 Personal Pick — Blade Symphony
Chris Thursten's 2014 personal pick
My pick of the year is Blade Symphony —Jedi Knight multiplayer brought into the modern era, with formalised rankings, deeper swordplay, and a slick lobby system.
Along with our group-selected 2014 Game of the Year Awards, each member of the PC Gamer staff has independently chosen one game to commend as one of 2014's best.
—Jedi Knight multiplayer brought into the modern era, with formalised rankings, deeper swordplay, and a slick lobby system. I love it, despite stalling in my long journey to be not-terrible at it. The one-on-one competitive format is less common on PC than it is on console—StarCraft being one notable exception—and getting some of that intimacy and depth here is very welcome. There's nothing like the feeling of anticipating an enemy play, parrying, and landing the blow that ends the match—all while others watch, waiting to face you. The fantasy being realised here is a very specific, very compelling one.
While not quite a perfect simulation of swordfighting—it's more like a simulation of cinematic swordplay—Blade Symphony's mechanics are deep enough to showcase real expertise (or its absence). It's a mixture of Street Fighter-style interactions between moves (hit windows, cancels, counters and so on) and a degree of fluidity provided by 3D freedom of movement. This creates a strange verisimilitude—you feel like you're really engaged with another person, even as you bash sci-fi swords together. Duels can be elegant or brutal, dexterous or messy. They have personality, and that's a big win for any competitive game.
I spent most of my time with Blade Symphony shortly after release, but it's still a viable prospect for players picking it up today. This is, perhaps thanks to the game's complexity, a small community, and that's one of the things I enjoy about it. It reminds me of the time I spent online in my teens, when you saw the same people regularly enough that making friends on a TF2 or Counter-Strike server (or, indeed, a Jedi Knight server) was possible, even likely. The personal feel of Blade Symphony's combat accentuates this: you get to know people by the way they fight. In my time on the ladder I gained friends, rivals, tutors and tutees. I'll always be grateful to the person who schooled me out of my dependency on foils, and the Master-rank player who stuck with me for 22 rounds until I finally beat him.
This is a difficult game, but one that rewards your investment of time and energy with a sense of being a real presence in the game's competitive environment. The built-in global ladder is a big part of that. Climbing into the double-digits of Blade Symphony's leaderboard was almost certainly my most gratifying gaming moment of this year. (I've long since slipped down, of course.) More importantly, the game understands just how to present this information. I defy anybody to watch the opening sequence of a duel, where the contestants face off against each other, their names and ranks broadcast on title-cards, and not want to get involved. I suppose there may be people who've never fantasised about climbing the ranks of a global swordfighting league. I really don't understand them, though.
It's Christmas. Would you like a free game? Of course you would! Thanks to our friends at Playfire, you can get a free Steam keyright now . Follow the link for full details.
The Night of the Rabbit, a new adventure game from Daedalic, coming May 29
Earlier this week, German studio Daedalic Entertainment announced that The Night of the Rabbit (formerly known as "The Rabbit's Apprentice") will release internationally on May 29, and called the game its "biggest adventure game so far."
The puzzle-adventure stars a 12-year-old boy who dreams of being a wizard (didn't we all?), and borrows at least a little from the likes of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia—the premise has the boy meet a magic, scheming, "elegantly dressed" rabbit who whisks him into a fantastic world.
The puzzle-adventure stars a 12-year-old boy who dreams of being a wizard (didn't we all?), and borrows at least a little from the likes of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia—the premise has the boy meet a magic, scheming, "elegantly dressed" rabbit who whisks him into a fantastic world. Rabbits man, they're often magic, usually scheming, and always dapper.
We expect to see The Night of the Rabbit on Steam and GOG, where you can find other Daedalic adventures, such as Chaos on Deponia. Below are a few more screens—you can really see the power of Daedalic's integrated high-speed charm generation engine.
Mod brings Silent Hill scares to Half-Life 2
While it's not a remake of Silent Hill, the Alchemilla mod drags tons of the game's atmosphere, dread, and overall creepiness into Half-Life 2 .
. There's an abandoned hospital full of locked doors, darkened hallways, foreboding sounds, and hellish imagery to explore, if you've got the nerve.
This mod is an adventure game: there's no guns, melee combat, or monsters to fight. Explore, glean information from notes and messages, find missing keys and tools, and solve puzzles as you make your way through a multilevel hospital that becomes progressively more creepy and disturbing as you go.
The mod looks great: yet another fine use of the Source Engine that makes you forget you're using the Source Engine. The environments are wonderfully detailed, spooky, and dripping with dread (and sometimes blood). Occasionally a bit of Half-Life 2 shows up, but for the most part it's an complete transformation.
The puzzles are of the sort we're familiar with. A flooded basement needs draining before the power can be turned on, but there's a valve missing. There's a keypad on a door: scour the building for a code written in a note, or solve a number puzzle to learn the answer. Locked doors are common and keys can be gathered by careful searching or solving more puzzles. Despite their familiarity, the puzzles are still mostly fun and challenging, and they all involve creeping through the rooms and corridors looking for clues and bracing yourself for scares.
There's plenty of tension and dread. Some of it is subtle: a sound from behind a door or around a corner, a spooky operating room, the creak of a restroom stall door as you open it. Sometimes the horror is a bit more obvious, in the form of corpses or gore splattered on the walls. Knowing there's no monsters to fight seems like it should defuse some of the spookiness, but it really doesn't. I spent most of my time convinced there'd be something horrible waiting for me behind the next door. There are a couple instances where you can die, so make sure to save your game every now and then.
This mod is obviously aimed at Silent Hill fans, but I never played much Silent Hill and I still enjoyed it. I think if you're a fan of horror in general there's plenty to enjoy in the few hours it takes to play.
You can download Alchemilla at moddb.com. It comes with it's own installer, and after restarting Steam you'll see it in your game library.
Blade Symphony update to add control point capture mode
Blade Symphony developer Puny Human plan to slice up their game, only to stitch it back together with a new mode attached.
Blade Symphony developer Puny Human plan to slice up their game, only to stitch it back together with a new mode attached. The "Control Point Update" is due out later this week, and will add a team-based capture mode to the duelling sword-'em-up. The update is detailed in a new video.
The new mode works much like Battlefield's ticket system. You'll lose tickets if the opposing team holds more points, or if someone on your team is killed. The first team to shed all their tickets will lose the match.
Three control point maps will be released, with one, Sequence, requiring points be captured sequentially. Players will also be able to create their own maps.
Puny Human says the mode is being treated like a new game unto itself, with different fighting balance than that found in the standard duel mode. Fights are designed to be faster, and all attacks will do 50% more damage.
It sounds like a fun aside to the main meat of duelling. I doubt control point will become the community's main mode, but as a free addition, it should nicely bolster the options of an already great game.
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On The Level: Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill is a faded photograph of a town.
Welcome to our new regular series, On The Level. Every week Andy celebrates a great map, level, or location from a classic PC game.
Silent Hill is a faded photograph of a town. You can see the traces of life, but they're faint, indistinct. People lived here once, but now it's a dead place, swallowed by fog and infected with some terrible evil. There are sights you'd see in any American town—school buses, gas stations, red fire hydrants. But also things that are alien and inexplicable. Cavernous cracks in the road, cryptic poems scrawled in blood, and that dense, pervading fog, which swirls and chokes the empty streets.
It's scary because it's normal. We look at Silent Hill and we understand it, which makes the parts that don't make sense even more surreal. Filmmaker David Lynch is known for his marriage of the mundane and the otherworldly, like the shadowy forces lurking in the woods around the idyllic town of Twin Peaks. This is an obvious influence on Team Silent, who built on this idea by making the town itself the source of the evil. There are pages of backstory about why Silent Hill is like it is, but none of it really matters. All you have to know is that this is a place where sinners are lured and judged.
Like all evil places, Silent Hill has a dark and storied history, remnants of which can be found scattered around the town. The games never force you to learn its history, but curious players can piece it together by reading notes and exploring. We learn of a plague that wiped out many of its earliest settlers, a brutal Civil War prison camp, and multiple cases of people mysteriously vanishing around Toluca Lake, the large body of water around which the town is built. It's never explicitly revealed why the town is such a lodestone for darkness and calamity, but the Native Americans considered it a sacred place before it was violently colonised by European settlers in the 17th Century.
While there's something strangely serene about the fogbound streets of Silent Hill, the shift to the Otherworld, heralded by the eerie wail of an air raid siren, is anything but. Here the town is plunged into darkness and transforms into a mutated, rust-caked shadow of its former self. Any Silent Hill fan will know the feeling of dread that comes with that siren. The Otherworld is overwhelmingly bleak, with the sound of pounding, grinding machinery filling the air and shapeless lumps of flesh strung up on bloody barbed wire fences. In comparison, the 'real' Silent Hill almost feels peaceful.
It's no surprise that some of the worst places in Silent Hill are hospitals. The town seems to feed on pain and suffering, of which these old buildings have had their fill. The transition from the town, where the whistle of the wind is constant, to the stark silence of a building interior is jarring. As you creep through the dark, your flashlight making long shadows dance around the room, the echoing sound of your footsteps is deafening. The games feel like they're covered in a thick, sickly layer of grime—a result of Team Silent's masterful art direction and texture work. Spend long enough in one of these rotten, forgotten places and you'll long to be back on the monster-filled streets.
Silent Hill is a place I think about a lot. It's one of the most evocative and atmospheric settings in games, and sadly wasted on a series of increasingly underwhelming sequels. Although Team Silent obviously borrowed many of the series' most striking themes and visuals from other sources—including, famously, Adrian Lyne's brilliant horror film Jacob's Ladder—they took them, twisted them, and made their own beautiful, monstrous masterpiece. With Team Silent gone forever, I may never go back, but I'll always have that faded photograph of the town in my memories.
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Comments
Our Verdict
Blade Symphony's duels are electrifying and intimate, more than making up for a lack of content.
need to know
Price: £11 / $15
Release: May 7
Publisher: Puny Human
Developer: Puny Human
Website: Official site
Multiplayer: Online & LAN
By Will Uhl
The cascading waterfall in the background doesn't distract me from my opponent as I dash and twirl, dancing for my life. My character, the acrobatic assassin Pure, has only managed to land a few glancing blows, while the towering juggernaut I'm fighting, Judgement, has devastated me with only a few well-placed strikes. I'm buzzing around him like a fly around a bull as I try to figure out a way out of this.
Whereas he wields the basic longsword, I chose the katana, which removes my ability to block, but strikes twice as hard after swords clash. I disengage and move several meters away—he wants to finish this, and the wide berth I've given him is the perfect opportunity.
I begin glowing as I charge up a heavy blow. He lunges towards me. Suddenly, I release my attack just as he lashes out with a quick stab. Sparks fly as our steel clangs—he recoils, but my attack follows through, emptying his health bar. As his body floats in the waterfall's pool, he types “good fight” into chat. I bow, and return the sentiment after my hands stop shaking.
That sense of respect is prevalent in Blade Symphony's community. Civility among anonymous online players is itself an anomaly, but to have a sense of honor be the norm is unheard of. There's a deep intimacy in the duels that's rarely found in other games.
Traditional fighting games typically have a roster of two dozen fighters, but Blade Symphony lets you mix and match between four characters and five sword types, all of which stand out against each other. Battles take place in 3D arenas, and while there are a number of extra modes, such as two-on-two and Hero Mode (which pits one superpowered swordsman against the rest of the server), the most memorable matches come from formalised one-on-one fights.
In most competitive games, there's a significant distance between you and your opponent, either from behind an iron sight or some top-down abstraction. It's easy to focus on yourself in these circumstances and treat other players as glorified NPCs. However, when you have to dance within spitting distance of just one opponent, everything else is stripped away. To make an inch of progress, you have to make yourself vulnerable. Few things are truly safe in Blade Symphony, and when one particularly poor decision can mean paying with half of your health bar, carefully analyzing your opponent is critical.
You can change your tactics depending on their character and sword of choice, but the most defining factor is always the player. Though understanding how the matchups work is undeniably important, figuring out how to exploit the gaps in their expertise is infinitely more useful. “How will they react if I do this? Do they know how to counter that? Can I get away with this?” It's science with swords at a breakneck pace: form your hypothesis in the passing moments between clashes of steel, then put your theory to the test.
Those brief pauses are what defines the game's depth and intimacy. Most fighting games reward constant action, but the moments in Blade Symphony when both players step back and observe are some of the most tense in fighting games. That ceaseless psychological war of baiting, reacting, and examining the opponent occurs in many of the best competitive games across all genres, and this one does it with style and finesse.
The music completes the atmosphere and sense of tension. Traditional Japanese strings, piano, and throat singing capture the desperate drama of Blade Symphony's swordfights, while ambient bells and chimes give match spectating a meditative tranquility. It's absolutely worth a separate purchase for any soundtrack enthusiast.
The game's weakest point is simply a lack of variety. Mathematically, there are 20 unique combinations of characters and weapons, but not all combinations play that differently, and some are rarely seen. More are working their way down the pipeline according to the developer, so this issue may lessen over time.
In just about every other area, the community has been able to pick up the slack, thanks to a thorough integration with the Steam Workshop. All weapons have six or seven skins, and each character has a small handful of masks, both of which are earned by winning ranked duels. By comparison, the community has already produced over 200 custom skins and models (of predictably varying quality), as well as new maps, game modes, and an enhanced tutorial, all of which are lacking in the base game.
Even with all of these crowdsourced improvements, there still isn't much to do when tired of duelling. The other game modes are largely underdeveloped and rarely played. However, the saving grace of Blade Symphony is that its duels are thoroughly, distinctively, and consistently exhilarating.
The Verdict
Blade Symphony
Blade Symphony's duels are electrifying and intimate, more than making up for a lack of content.
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Final Fight: Double Impact on its way, also includes Magic Sword
Capcom%26rsquo;s upcoming Final Fight: Double Impact is like their %26ldquo;HD Remix%26rdquo; of the original Final Fight. The game will include online co-op play, better graphics, and everyone%26rsquo;s favorite post-op transsexual, Poison. Guy, Cody and Haggar are all in there too, but come on, you know you%26rsquo;re more interested in this: Above: Bet your swimsuit area's mighty confused right
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain multiplayer revealed in new video
Most of this video has been floating around for a week or so now, but things get interesting at the 17:00 mark.
A five-minute look at the Mother Base multiplayer in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Painhas been revealed, demonstrating how Snake will sneak into other players' bases and steal their dudes.
Most of this video has been floating around for a week or so now, but things get interesting at the 17:00 mark. The original trailer ends with a simple "thank you for watching," but IGN's updated video, released today, shifts to a segment of multiplayer action in which Snake skulks around another player's base, bypasses security systems and makes off a bunch of stuff—and a couple of guys, too. The trailer touches on how players will be able to upgrade bases with the addition of gun cameras, laser sensors and UAVs, and also demonstrates how the "phantom cigar" can be used to accelerate time.
There's a bit of a Blood Dragonair to the whole thing, minus the knowing irony, but I'm hopeful it'll work out despite some of the inherently silly bits. And as IGN notes, the ability of players to interact with one another suggests that other, more directly PvP multiplayer modes could be on the way as well. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, according to this tweetfrom MGS mastermind Hideo Kojima, will be out near the end of 2014.
The week's highs and lows in PC gaming
Every Friday the PC Gamer team scan their memory banks to identify the incontrovertibly best and worst moments of the last week.
Every Friday the PC Gamer team scan their memory banks to identify the incontrovertibly best and worst moments of the last week. Then, when confronted with the sum total of human ecstasy and misery, they write about PC gaming instead...
THE HIGHS
Tyler Wilde: Not crying wolf
Episode four of The Wolf Among Us came out on Tuesday, and not only is it good, it arrived just a month and a half after episode three released. I hope Telltale sticks to this newly speedy schedule. Four months passed between the first and second episodes, which is way too much time for those of us who like keeping up with the series as it happens (and are as forgetful as I am). Waiting for the whole season and binging is nice, but playing episodes at release gives me the opportunity to discuss them with people who also just played, and that's part of the fun for me.
Evan Lahti: Arma marks a million
Arma 3 quietly crossed the 1 million markthis week. Not to cheerlead for a franchise I love, but it's a signal of PC gaming's health that a game with a reputation for being impenetrable and graphically demanding has done this well in less than a year. When I say health, I don't mean simply in terms of the number of PC gamers on the planet, but how open-minded and curious many of us are about new experiences. It certainly makes me want to write about Arma more. And try its silly new kart racing DLC.
Chris Thursten: Rising through the ranks
I've been playing Blade Symphonysince it came out, but I've been having a great time with it this week. After an initial run of success I managed to totally tank my global ranking - down from 600 to about 22,000. In the last couple of days I've crawled back up, and I'm now sitting at 742. To get there I've had to totally rebuild how I play, how I respond to opponents, and how I make sure I'm in the right mindset to win my duels. As a fencing dork and someone who used to be obsessed with Jedi Knight, I'm in heaven. Providing that the community stays active, it's shaping up to be one of my games of the year.
Cory Banks: A welcome delay
It's not often that I'm happy about a delay, but Valve pushing back the Steam Controller until 2015is, honestly, a good thing. We have not been all that impressed by Valve's controller prototypes—I thought the first one was okay, but Evan really dislikedthe second one. It's good that Valve's hearing that feedback (and the feedback of other users, too), because getting this right might be the single most important part of the company's SteamOS initiative.
It does, unfortunately, mean that we likely won't see the full launch of SteamOS this year, either. But I'd rather wait than have to suffer a crappy controller.
Andy Kelly: A new home for horror
I played two hours of The Evil Within this week, and it's everything I hoped it would be. It's no secret that I love Resident Evil 4, and as you can read in myhands-on preview, it feels like its spiritual successor. A lot of horror games on PC these days are little more than elaborate games of hide and seek, but Mikami's game has systems to exploit and opportunities for creative play. Rather than go for cheap scares, the team at Tango Gameworks seem to be focusing on tension-building. Like the Resident Evil games did so well (the good ones, anyway), you always feel like you're right on the edge of running out of ammo. If they can keep this up throughout the whole game, and it doesn't do that thing where you suddenly become so powerful and overloaded with supplies that it's no longer scary, it could be great.
Tom Senior: When hackers play hide and seek...
If you're going to nab ideas for your open world adventure game, Dark Souls is a good place to go. So I keep thinking as I experiment with Watch Dog's1 vs 1, hacker vs. hacker multiplayer mode, which lets players invade other games for a round of hide and seek. You jump from manipulating predictable AI enemies to facing a living, thinking human being with hopes, dreams, and infuriatingly good hiding skills.
I found one opponent by wrecking up a crossroad. I dispersed the NPC crowds with some warning shots, hacked the traffic lights to create a traffic jam and then started scanning from car to car. I was 91% hacked when a sports car launched into reverse just metres ahead of me, and sped off into the distance. I tried to shoot out their tyres, but they successfully fled the scene. I got points for stopping the hack, my opponent got points for escaping. We both walked away with a story to tell—great stuff. This sort of encounter bodes well for games like The Division, with its strong multiplayer focus.
Nikkei report depicts Konami as a super grim place to work
Between the cancellation of Silent Hills and the ugly collapse of its relationship with Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima, 2015 has been a rough year for Konami.
with Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima, 2015 has been a rough year for Konami. Based on a recent Nikkeireport, translated by Kotaku, it's actually even worse than that if you work there.
According to the article, Kojima Productions is now known as "Number 8 Production Department," and that computers in that part of the company are not connected to the internet, to prevent communication with the outside world. Most Konami employees don't have their own email addresses, but are instead assigned randomized addresses that are changed every few months in order to prevent headhunting. Cameras in the halls monitor employee movements, and those who take too long for lunch are shamed by having their names announced to the entire company; employees who are no longer "useful" in game development roles are assigned jobs as security guards, cleaning staff, or at a pachi-slot machine factory.
Things started to go downhill, according to the report, after the launch of the mobile game Dragon Collection, which was a big hit—and, more to the point, a big moneymaker with low production costs. That kicked off the shift to the " mobile first" strategy we heard about earlier this year, when CEO Hideki Hayakawa described mobile as "the platform which is closest to our customers."
At the same time, the report claims that the production cost of Metal Gear Solid 5 now exceeds $80 million, a not-unheard-of budget, but astronomical for a company aiming for a more lean operation. Interestingly, that ties in with a report that surfaced last week, via NeoGAF, in which Metal Gear Solid composer and singer Rika Muranaka said Kojima's free-spending ways were a major factor in the split between him and Konami. She later clarified that she doesn't actually know why he left, although seemed to stand by her initial reasoning.
"What [Kojima] loves is to create the best game possible for the fans. His focus was concerned on that of creating what will be a masterpiece," she said. "Konami, on the other hand, is a business that is focused on budget and profit. So I simply expressed that maybe that has something to do with it... Konami is a business, and they have to look at things from a business standpoint and not just from a creative side. Creativity is important, but so is keeping your business afloat."
Konami apologizedto its fans in May for causing "anxiety," and also clarified that it wasn't entirely focused on mobile games, but for fans of Konami's AAA output the Nikkei report will do little to allay the sense that something isn't quite right inside the house that Snake built.
Grid 2 trailer shows the twisted metal of Demolition Derby
It's Friday afternoon and, while that's no guarantee of where (or when) you'll be reading this from, as far as I'm concerned, it's a time for relaxing.
It's Friday afternoon and, while that's no guarantee of where (or when) you'll be reading this from, as far as I'm concerned, it's a time for relaxing. And what better way to enjoy the end of the work week than with a bunch of cars smashing all up into each other?
Alternatively, what better way to take out your still-working frustration, than with a bunch of cars smashing all up into each other? That's what you'll get with Grid 2's Demolition Derby update, which has now been trailerated.
The Demolition Derby update, which you can read about here, is out now.
It's far from the only "cars smashing up into cars" action we've had recently, either. Bugbear's crunchy Next Car Gameis still crowdfunding, and alpha physics thing BeamNGstill looks gorgeous (and deadly). Seriously, look at it:
Physics!
Australia classifies its first R18+ game
Citing consumer advice of ‘High impact bloody violence’, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge comes to Nintendo's console with full limb dismemberment along with pockets of new content. “Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge contains violence that is high in impact because of its frequency, high definition graphics, and emphasis on blood effects,” said Classification Board director Leslie O'Brien. Prior to January
Kojima's name scrubbed from MGSV: The Phantom Pain box art
Back in March, Konami took steps to dim the visibility of Hideo Kojima's involvement in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain by removing his name from marketing materials.
from marketing materials. It was the result of a not-entirely-happy split between the two, and while it was perhaps a predictable move, it was still ugly in its hamfistedness. And despite the negative reaction among fans who felt that Kojima has been treated rather shabbily throughout, Konami isn't easing up.
As picked up by the eagle-eyed NeoGAF, Konami has freleased the final box art for MGS5TPP, and it's missing a key feature that was present on the previously-distributed placeholder art: the words "A Hideo Kojima Game." The art on GameStop, Amazon, and Steamstill carry the Kojima name, but it's been scrubbed from images on the Konami website, as well as the official box art images.
By all appearances, the move is the culmination of an effort to assert Konami's "control" over the Metal Gear franchise, and comes despite a joint statementreleased in March in which the two parties did their best to put a positive spin on the situation. It's impossible at this early stage to predict what sort of long-term impact the acrimonious split will have on the future of Metal Gear, but right now there doesn't seem to be any question that Konami is making an absolute mess of it.
As for Kojima, his time with Konami seems just as clearly to be at an end. What will he do next? Andy (the other one) shares his thoughts on just that question in the wonderfully timed and succinctly titled, What Will Hideo Kojima Do Next?
(Forgive the console box. Because we are Heralds of the Digital Era (or something), box images bearing the PC logo aren't available.)
Grid Autosport announced, is a "descendant" of the TOCA series
Over the years, it's become increasingly difficult to summarise the various Codemasters racing series.
Over the years, it's become increasingly difficult to summarise the various Codemasters racing series. There was a time when each game's "thing" was obvious. You had Colin McRae Rally, which was a rally game, and TOCA, which was a touring car game. Since then, we've had the DIRTs, which were about rallying, skidding ostentatiously around corners and Americans, and the GRIDs, the focus of which seemed to be "stuff on a road".
Now, Codemasters have announced Grid Autosport, which aims to focus in on a single, specific idea: racing fast cars very fast around racing tracks.
"GRID Autosport aims to move the series back in line as a more authentic racing game," writes Codemasters community manager Ben Walke. It's an interesting announcement, in that it almost reads as an admission that the series has slipped beyond the expectations of their fans.
"On release of GRID 2, I think it's fair to say that through listening to you guys and a after a substantial amount of reflection, we hadn't quite achieved everything we set out to do," Walke writes. "We're proud of the game, really delighted with some of the great reviews for it, but we're not above admitting that we made a few decisions that perhaps we shouldn't have, and perhaps moved some of the aspects of the game too far away from our core fanbase."
It's clear that with Autosport, Codemasters want a game that acts like a true descendant of the TOCA series, with a focus specifically on motorsport. There are five 'disciplines' planned, including Touring Cars, Endurance and Street Races; and the handling is being re-tuned for a more sim-like experience. "It's definitely not a full simulation – we want it to be authentic, not clinical – but it's more towards that end of the spectrum than before," writes Walke. "If anything, we believe the handling is actually one or two steps further towards simulation than Race Driver: GRID."
Head over to the Codemasters blogfor a detailed report on their plans for the new game. Grid Autosport is due out on June 27th for PC and consoles.
What will Hideo Kojima do next?
Kojima's cameo in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes.
After 28 years, Hideo Kojima’s relationship with Japanese publisher Konami is pretty much over. His first job with the company was in 1986, working as a designer on a colourful platformer called Penguin Adventure. Then, just a year later, he lead development of the first ever Metal Gear for the MSX, and the rest is history.
No one really knows what happened between Konami and Kojima, but there seems to be some bad blood between them. Shortly after news of the split broke, the company removed all traces of Kojima’s name from their website. He’s still overseeing the last stages of the development of Metal Gear Solid V, which is due for release in September, but his other project, Silent Hills, has been unceremoniously cancelled.
Kojima was something of a golden goose for Konami, and it’ll be interesting to see how they fare without his shiny eggs. But what will he do next? He can’t make Metal Gear games anymore—the license firmly belongs to Konami—so he’ll have to try something new, if he does anything at all. Here are some paths he might take.
Defect to another publisher
The Kojima name holds a lot of weight, and he’s probably being inundated with offers from other publishers to make games for them. Would he ever do it, though? Starting his own studio, Kojima Productions, felt like a bold statement of independence—telling Konami that, yeah, you can publish my games, but I don’t need you to make them.
He could follow in the footsteps of someone like Shinji Mikami, becoming a sort of gun for hire. Since leaving Capcom, Mikami has developed games for Bethesda (The Evil Within), EA (Shadows of the Damned), and Sega (Vanquish). Kojima could start his own studio and adopt a similar strategy, shopping games around. But at this stage in his life, with as much influence as he has, he might want more autonomy.
Go indie
Kojima starting a self-publishing indie studio could be hugely exciting. He’s one of the most daring, creative game makers around, and I can only imagine what he’d come up with if he was freed from the shackles of the big publishers. Being Konami’s star developer, I imagine he has a fair bit of money, so he’d be able to get something like this off the ground. If not, he could always turn to Kickstarter, where he’d have no trouble raising money.
We’re seeing more and more ‘AAA’ developers leaving major publishers and studios behind to make indie games, from The Long Darkto The Magic Circle. There’s a huge market for them, especially on PC, which gives people the freedom to make any game they want. In this environment, Kojima would thrive. He probably had more freedom than most while working at Konami, but he still had investors to appease and suits looking over his shoulder. Doing his own thing, at his own pace, could result in some really amazing games.
Make movies
According to Kojima’s Twitter bio, 70% of his body is made of movies. His love of cinema is well known, and the Metal Gear series is renowned (or perhaps infamous) for its long, indulgent cutscenes. So it makes sense that he might turn his hand to movie-making. He has fans in Hollywood—he’s mates with Guillermo del Toroand Nicolas Winding Refn has comparedhim to Stanley Kubrick—and Korean director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Snowpiercer) says he’s always wanted Kojima to direct a film.
Kojima definitely has a flair for the cinematic, although game design has always been his strong point, not direction. Still, I reckon he has a great film in him. I can see him teaming up with someone else, as a producer or writer, rather than leading his own feature. I’m sure Guillermo del Toro will happily bring him on board for a future film. A Metal Gear Solid film is reportedly in the works, although I don’t think Konami would be happy with Kojima working on it after their acrimonious split. Which is probably for the best, because I don’t think even Kojima could make a Hollywood video game spin-off watchable.
Retire
Kojima turns 52 in August, which is by no means old, but maybe he’ll just retire? I don’t think so. He’s a creator, and creators never want to stop creating. Kojima will always be working on something until the day he dies. If he doesn’t want to make movies or games, he could always write a book—which would probably be the longest book ever printed. There’s no way Kojima is just going to disappear. Whatever he does next, you’re certain to hear about it. He won’t be bowing out of the limelight anytime soon.
Of all these possibilities, it’s Kojima going indie that I want to see the most. It would be a poetic reflection of the story of Big Boss in Metal Gear: a warrior (game designer) disillusioned by his paymasters, leaving to form his own renegade army (indie studio), free from the meddling of the government (publishers). Let’s just hope Konami haven’t been secretly running their own Les Enfants Terriblesproject with his DNA. He’ll probably never make another Metal Gear Solid game, but The Phantom Pain is shaping up to be something pretty special, and a fitting swansong for the veteran developer.