One of the opening night parties at Austin GDC was held at the Arthouse, which is currently housing an exhibit of gaming related art that ranges from 8-bit inspired to some truly abstract pieces. Reset/Play is showing in Austin through November 2nd, and is well worth a visit. Eddo Stern's Best...Flame War...Ever... (King of Bards vs. Squire Rex, June 2004) is worth the trip alone. It recreates an online flame war between two EverQuest gamers with sound and animation, and runs for about 14 minutes. Truly amazing.
Another impressive piece in the exhibit is Andrew Galloway's How to Play World of Warcraft, which features two huge video images showing closeups of the mouse and keyboard of a gamer, and those are flanked by huge blowup images of ASCII text guides for the game.You can see both of these pieces in the gallery below, or read more about it at the Arthouse main page.
Gallery: Reset/Play - a Party for Texas Games
[Much thanks to Amaze Entertainment's Rodney Gibbs and SXSW's Linday Muse for the invitation]
The director of the small team, Tadashi Iguchi, revealed in an interview with MTV Multiplayer that there's an initiative at Namco to revamp the company's "masterpiece games" -- more specifically, he mentions that he's interested in "making games that players who liked games in the 80's will enjoy." A humble suggestion for the team: Pole Position. Don't think, Iguchi. Just do it.
Taking a cue from Peter Molyneux's Fable II review, The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai's developer, James Silva, took the opportunity to review his own game before its release. Silva declares that it's inexcusable for his game to have 2D graphics. 2D is "by definition" not HD and is "completely inadequate at capturing our imaginations." He also notes there are glaring omissions from the game like Blades of Chaos, a reasonably sized manskirt, nudity and a boss the "size of a large building." Silva's final verdict on his own game: 1/10.
OUCH! Well, we'll have to do a metareview on The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai when it eventually releases to see if the critics agree with the developer's harsh treatment of the title. We can only expect Silva will now put some actual work into his game after giving it such a harsh review.*
*We pity the fool who doesn't see the tongues firmly planted in cheeks regarding all this. [Via X3F]
Today while wandering the busy PAX show floor, we came across The Behemoth's Art Director Dan Paladin and Lead Programmer Tom Fulp, pulling them from their PAX duties (selling goodies and talking with fans) for a quick chat about Castle Crashers. We learned the truth behind the Castle Crasherssize limit / delay controversy, a bit about their DLC plans, their feelings about the community's enthusiasm and even the secret to unlocking a few new game characters. We also ask about the game's Xbox Live issues and learn that their team is diligently working on a patch for release as soon as humanly possible. Full interview after the break.
Warning! There's an expletive-filled trailer below for the film Nerdcore Rising. It also features people binge drinking Yoo-Hoo, just so we have full disclosure. If you haven't heard about the movie before, it's a documentary that follows MC Frontalot on his first national tour as he goes from South Carolina to last year's PAX, where he was captured on film by our own Christopher Grant.
Nerdcore, which is trying hard to become its own genre of music, features songs about everything from Dungeons & Dragons to 8-bit video games, and the film explores what that's all about with Frontalot, his band, and several other Nerdcore artists. The film premiered at SXSW in Austin earlier this year, but PAX gets the goodness of the first-ever west coast showing of the flick this Saturday at 4pm. Head below the break to see the special PAX trailer for the movie, created by director Negin Farsad and MC Frontalot himself.
This has to be one of the most incredibly overproduced game trailers in existence. It's like SEGA and BioWare hired the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack producer and forced him to write a full-blown soundtrack for Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. Sonic has never had so much fanfare, especially on such a small system.
Zack nailed this in his hands-on impression, and the gameplay backs it up, but it looks like you could have dropped any ol' characters into this real-time RPG. When we hear the name Sonic, we tend to think hyper-speed running and gold rings flying all over the place. Call us old fashioned.
Still, this trailer is sure to wake you if you're in that end-of-the-week coma.
The Spy Hunter movie based on the Midway arcade hit that we talked about more than a year ago is hitting the skids, crashing through the guardrail, and plummeting off the cliff that is called "development hell" in Hollywood. Looks like director Paul Anderson (W.S., not Thomas) is being taken off the project, which will spin it out into limbo.
You can also read Latino Review's review of the script right here. They seemed to like it, saying it was better than The Fast and the Furious 3 ... which ain't saying much. In fact, the best thing Spy Hunter has spawned as far as filmed entertainment goes is the Pontiac commercial above. If any of the game sequels had looked like that, we might still be playing them.
Now, we ask you... is this such a bad thing? Sure it had Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson attached to it, and John Woo was supposed to direct it at one point. However, it's had a slew of different writers and now with two director replacements, do we really need a Spy Hunter movie? We hope no one hits "Continue" on the Spy Hunter movie, and that it just dies a merciful death. What say you?
Last night was the opening night shindig for the latest i am 8-bit show, and it was by far their biggest event yet. We arrived early as part of a press event to mill around and quietly take photos, but by 9PM the place was packed with people checking out the art, listening to the whomping sounds of Computer Jay, DJ R-Rated, and Leeni (check her out in the Pac-Man dress, along with her 8-bit tattoo). There was a massive line of people outside waiting to get in, and it had turned into the hottest ticket on Hollywood Blvd. Which, yes, is actually saying something.
They had turned the entire storefront of the World of Wonder (didn't they used to make Teddy Ruxpin?) into a huge display, featuring giant Piranha Plants from Super Mario Bros., and they had an old-school setup where you could play games ranging from an NES to a full-sized arcade cabinet, right there on full display to everyone passing by. It probably didn't hurt that some of the Nerdcore calendar girls took up residence here later and played Game Boys and quarter-eaters in their underwear.
Read more after the break, and be sure to take a spin through the huge gallery which shows off the more than 200 pieces in the show, and how crazy the whole scene became.
Much like Cher, Bionic Commando Rearmed has taken something old and freshened it up with the help of modern technology -- but much of the same ol' game is still there, caked under the cosmetic changes. The reviews are swinging in about the XBLA nip/tuck version of the classic '80s platformer and it appears -- for those who can put up with the unrelenting difficulty -- all systems are go: The remake is competent and won't give us the desire to turn back time* and play the original again.
(A warning for many of you: Despite being on Xbox LIVE, Bionic Commando Rearmed's cooperative and multiplayer modes are both offline-only leading some of us here at Joystiq to dub it Moronic Commando or Bionic Command'oh -- take your pick. Seriously, Capcom. That's a deal breaker for a lot of us right there.)
IGN(94/100): "The best elements of the original are back, but have been upgraded to be better than before. The new bosses add a more interesting challenge and the final level is one for the ages. And, of course, the visuals are brilliant. The remastered soundtrack is fantastic as well. From top to bottom, Bionic Commando Rearmed is an incredible game that's well worth owning."
OXM UK(80/100): "[BCR] is unapologetically old-skool, from the inability to jump right through to the spiked pits that bounce you back a few feet minus a huge chunk of your health. Bosses have attack patterns, health pick-ups have to be earned and each level has been designed around blind leaps of faith and tiny margins of error."
EuroGamer(80/100): "Between the multiplayer modes and the Challenge Rooms, there's more than enough innovation to make up for the minor irritations of the retro controls. Far from perfect, Bionic Commando Rearmed is still a much more complete and robust package than either 1942 Joint Strike or Commando 3 and another impressive addition to Capcom's download library."
OXM(70/100): "Rearmed quickly wears out its welcome and devolves into a series of frustrations. Precision platforming is required for almost everything, and failure often leads to death. The latter half of the game is especially unforgiving, although ironically, the end-level bosses aren't nearly as bad as the path you took to get to them. We recommend bringing a friend along in the excellent new co-op mode."
One of the things we made sure to do at E3 this year was to spend a significant amount of time with the IndieCade folks. Then we sat on that info long enough for some of these games to get picked up, have a successful release, come out with sequels, spawn movies, novels, comic books, become part of the general pop culture bloodstream, and then fade into nostalgia, and for that we apologize. Actually, I'll apologize, I did it.
But in all seriousness, a lot of the more fun and innovative stuff we saw at E3 wasn't actually being churned out by big studios and publishers, but being worked on by small groups with tiny budgets and just a love of gaming. Read on to find out all about the IndieCade games that we saw on display, and why you'll want to be playing them now.
Jonathan Blow's Braid is drowning in critical acclaim, just now hitting an average of 93 on Metacritic and becoming the 8th highest-rated Xbox 360 game on the console. The official Braid Blog takes the opportunity to point out that indie developers don't need to make cheap PopCap clones to be successful; if they do something different, their work can be recognized. Yeah? Well, this industry is all about sales so ... how's the game selling on XBLA?
Blow cites VGChartz's ballpark figure of 28.5k copies sold and estimates that the number "seems to be in the right neighborhood" as of last Saturday. Does that mean his struggle with the game's pricing has paid off in a big way? Apparently not. Blow contends that Braid will need to sell a lot more to be profitable but "things are looking promising now." We'll say! Let's put that estimate up against the top XBLA launch figures in a thoroughly unscientific breakdown*:
*(Figures represent sales gathered from the first three days of availability. Blow's ballpark figure was posted on Saturday, three days after Braid's Wednesday launch).
Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball developer Blazing Lizard announced today it expects the title to release September 3 on XBLA for 800 MS points ($10). If short-term memory is kicking in, that date for an XBLA release probably sounds familiar because omni-directional shooter Shred Nebula will apparently release the same day.
Blazing Lizard's Studio Director Chris Stockman tells us PvN will feature two variations on dodgeball. Traditional: Where old-school rules apply and players can't cross the line. Then there's Enhanced: Players will have special moves for the four races in a crazy free-for-all. The four initial races in the game are Pirates, Ninjas, Zombies and Robots -- an additional group (we're guessing Aliens) will be available as DLC a month later.
Whether you're a fan of shmups or wish to throw a pile of dictionaries at us for using such an egregious portmanteau, you could learn a thing or two from DS Fanboy's tribute to the shoot-em-up kings at Treasure. From 1993's Gunstar Heroes (released last year as a Virtual Console title) to this year's Bangai-O Spirits, the piece covers all of the developers' projectile-favored games (sorry Dynamite Heddy fanatics). Click here and get edumucated.
After writing an open letter explaining his fiancée's frustrations with PixelJunk Monsters' difficulty, BPPS writer Ryan Hewson received a response back from Dylan Cuthbert, president of Q-Games, saying help was on the way. Cuthbert had alluded to a major PJM patch before, but now he explains some more details of what's coming to PJM and PixelJunk Eden.
The lord of PixelJunk says PJM will receive a free patch adding Trophies, along with Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert difficulties to the game. Online rankings will maintain the existing difficulty level for fairness -- which we guess is hard? Eden will also receive an expansion pack and may receive a "namby pamby mode" for a more casual experience -- we'd settle for some control mapping functions to seperate silk and jump ... not to mention mapping the instra-drop to a button instead of waggle. No dates on any of this, but we're contacting Sony about some form of ETA.
