sSSSsss, BOOM: meet C418 - the gleeful, childlike personality behind every noise in Minecraft
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Dan ‘C418’ Rosenfeld can’t resist saying what remains unsaid.
During a livestreamed interview at GameCity 2013, he shared a couch with Gone Home’s Steve Gaynor. Gaynor had offered some insight into the creative bankruptcy of AAA development, and conversation had paused for a moment. Into this clearing of natural contemplation skipped C418.
“Looking at you, [well-known AAA studio]” he added, grinning to camera.
This is Minecraft music man C418 in a nutshell - a mischievous, adolescent force for indie, cast into a spotlight he’s still adjusting to.
What: Valve are apparently beta testing Free To Play, their Dota 2 documentary
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No Valve project these days seems even remotely similar to the last, but they’ve always managed to to twist and reshape old, learned techniques to fit the new thing. There’s not much a Dota 2 documentary can learn from Half-Life’s weapon-feel or Left 4 Dead’s procedural narrative, granted - but it turns out it can benefit from the process Valve learned through Dota itself: the long beta.
255 days after first sending out beta invites for Free to Play, Valve have told users on the Steam Translation Server to expect another two or three day beta for the film - after which it’ll be released.
Still breathing: Killer Is Dead Nightmare Edition coming to PC with "tactical" mode on May 9
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Killer Is Dead is a game set in a world that resembles a near-future version of ours, but isn’t (any resemblance to places living or dead, etc). You, The Player, take on the role of a very, very busy executioner with a glam-rock name: Mondo Zappa. You work for the Bryan Execution Firm, run by a cyborg named Bryan.
Your right arm is glued to a Japanese sword. Your left is made of guns. Deep Silver call them “interchangeable weapons”, by which I think they mean you can swap them out. And if you're not sold by now, Killer Is Dead probably isn't for you.
Why are Deep Silver talking about Killer Is Dead again? Because they’re releasing Suda51’s latest slice of batshit for the PC, at long last.
Dice with death in SNOW's Winter Olympics slopestyle run
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After just returning from a trip to some freezing, snow-clad mountains, I’m becoming rather intimate with my radiator and some hot chocolate, but some people can’t get enough of the bloody snow. Case in point: folk seem to be rather into this whole Winter Olympics thing I keep hearing about.
SNOW, the open-world skiing and snowboard Early Access title, has just received an update, “Fochi 2014”, with a new run for slopestyle shenanigans. Not knowing much about winter sports or skiing, I had to ask Tim what slopestyle was. I leave his definition here for you in case you are equally out of the loop. “Slopestyle is where they push men and women down hills with ramps and rails on them, and see if they can fly/die.” Crikey.
Take a look at the run, below.
PlanetSide 2's Amerish gets a facelift and the mission system gets tweaked
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PlanetSide 2’s Amerish continent is about to leave surgery with a facelift. SOE’s crack team of cosmetic surgeons have been busy implementing the lattice system - changing base layouts and adding six new outposts - and fiddling around with the mission system for the whole game.
The first update is due out on Wednesday, according to Shacknews, overhauling Amerish, and a second update will drop a week later, bringing changes across all of PlanetSide 2.
Murder on the dance floor: kill with wubs and riffs in Harmonix's Chroma
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If you don’t think music is violent is dangerous, you’ve obviously never been a short, bespectacled person in the heart of a mosh pit. I have been that person. It’s like being flushed down a toilet lined with spikes and elbows.
Dance Central never really captured that sense of danger and impending death, which is maybe why Harmonix have decided to - along with Hidden Path Entertainment - create Chroma, a free-to-play, music-driven, multiplayer FPS.
Bound By Flame is an RPG about a horny chap burning things
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If you’re possessed by a demon, chances are you’ll have an interesting week. You never hear about people being possessed and then just going and reading a good book or taking the dog for a walk. Exorcisms, violence, loads of vomit: that’s what possession is all about.
In Bound By Flame, it’s a mercenary who has been possessed by a demon, a flame demon to be specific. So you know there’s going to be some shenanigans. The mercenary can choose to embrace the demon inside of him, becoming more powerful, or he can reject it and stay on the path of being a hero.
Being one of those ARR PEE GEEs, there’s a lot of combat, gear and levelling between choosing to be a goody two-shoes or BFFs with the Devil, and you can slap your eyes on a video detailing all those things below.
La-Mulana 2 Hits Kickstarter Goal, Buys Developer Curry
By Graham Smith on February 17th, 2014 at 4:00 pm.
To certain audiences, La-Mulana is the Japanese indie platformer that crossed Indiana Jones with Metroid. To me, and I suspect a lot of other people, it’s one of the games most responsible for inspiring Spelunky. That puts it in Wasteland territory, in my head; it inspired a thing I love, and so a lot of that love transfers.
La-Mulana 2 was announced in September, popped up on Kickstarter last month, and has just hit its target
Read the rest of this entry »
No Longer Silent: Ten Minutes Of The Witness
By Graham Smith on February 17th, 2014 at 5:00 pm.
The Witness is Jonathan Blow’s next game, so it makes sense that it be filled with brain-teasing puzzles. It makes a little less sense to me that those puzzles be mazes, which appear on screens littered around its colourful island environment. How do the screens and the world interact?
There’s ten minutes of new footage below, as recorded by YouTube user NukemDukem at a preview event last November. It shows the game’s opening and introductory puzzles, and it certainly looks interesting.
Final Chapter: Eschalon Book III Out, Demo Available
By Adam Smith on February 17th, 2014 at 6:00 pm.
Eschalon isn’t a Spiderweb series of traditional RPGs, with an isometric viewpoint, turn-based combat and free-stylin’ character customisation. If you were to watch a video you might think that was the case but Eschalon is actually a series of traditional RPGs from Basilisk Games. It features an isometric viewpoint, turn-based combat and free-stylin’ character customisation. The third and final entry has been a long time coming, and now that it’s upon us, I’m forced to consider replaying the previous games so that I can play the trilogy back-to-back. They are quite long though and my time is short. I’d strongly recommend the games to anyone hankering for slow-paced pen and paper style roleplaying, and you don’t have to start from the beginning – there are recaps for latecomers. The trilogy is available at a discount until February 28th though. Just sayin’. Also, demos.
Unreal Engine 4 – Inside Unreal “Visual Effects” Part #3 Focuses On Explosions
Epic Games has released the third part of its ‘Inside Unreal’ series in which Epic’s Francois Antoine and Zak Parrish give a behind-the-scenes look into the Infiltrator real-time demonstration to show how artists can build a 3D volume texture explosion using Unreal Engine 4 technology. Enjoy! Continue reading
Get Even – Memory Overkill Would Blow Up X360/PS3, Small Location Fills 2GB of VRAM
Get Even is a project that promises to bring something new to the table. The game takes advantage of large-scale, real-world scanning to create expansive and lifelike environments. As the team has already noted, this 3D scanning technology is combined in Get Even with advanced lighting effects to create a stunning and believable world that pushes the boundaries of the genre. However, it appears that this new tech will push the boundaries of memory usage in games, and this memory overkill would blow up these consoles after inserting the game disc. Continue reading
Skywind – Morrowind Mod For Skyrim – Northern Ashlands Environment Showcased
The team behind Skywind – a mod that aims to bring Morrowind to Skyrim’s engine – has released a new video, showcasing the – almost finished – Northern Ashlands environment. Even though this environment is at its final stage of creation, YouTube’s member ‘SquallyDaBeanz’ claimed that many models are place holders and the ash will be further darkenend. Enjoy! Continue reading
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