Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 105

Right on: Cuphead’s 1930s-style animation will exist beyond boss fights

The fine folks behind Cuphead have their own E3 announcement and it’s a doozy—their 1930s-animation-inspired game will have platforming elements.

That may not seem like a lot, but before now, Cuphead had been touted exclusively as a boss-rush game. One-on-one battles against large enemies that didn’t give you a break were showcased, including fights against a large pirate named Captain Silver, and an angry carrot. It did a brill job of combining the golden age of Disney with confined run-and-gun challenges.

you jazzily shoot down mushrooms with finger pistols

However, as said, at E3 this year, on show is a new element to the gorgeously handcrafted animation that they’ve been working on—vibrant and hectic platforming. Watch carefully as you jazzily shoot down mushrooms with finger pistols before the game’s announcer gives you an excited “Bravo.” You can watch four minutes of multiplayer, couch co-op, platforming action below, as well as the aforementioned boss fight against an enraged carrot.

The game has a real emphasis on authenticity to the 1930s aesthetic, and the game feels like it was crafted with the same techniques and tools used in that time period. Attack animations are comical poofs of smoke, characters move in exaggerated and floppy manners like older cartoons, and brass instruments ring out in a jazzy jaunt. If you couldn’t tell already, we are very, very into this game.

Cuphead is set for release in 2016, for PC and Xbox One.

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Enzo, a new arcade game that’ll spin you right round, baby

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Enzo (iOS)

BY WILD ROSE GAMES

All you need for a compelling arcade game is a couple of lines and a circle. Alright, strictly speaking, Pong‘s (1972) ball was a square, but the point still stands. ENZO is the latest quickfire high-score chaser to prove it. It’s climbed the ever-growing tower of arcade games that have come before it and managed to provide a unique, if familiarly frustrating, challenge through its austere use of geometry. The task is to guide the path of light beams as they bounce around inside a circle by sliding your finger across the screen to spin the circle. The catch is that different colored light beams cannot cross paths—if they do, it’s Game Over. And yet to score points you must ensure that light beams of the same color do cross paths. It’s a game of quick reactions and tight angles that should suit anyone who’s a deft hand at speed pool.

Perfect for: Arcade addicts, pool players, commuters

Playtime: Seconds per round

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We try to form opinions on everything that happened at E3 – Part Two

Every group has a clown. Here, at Kill Screen, we have two. Coincidentally, they are called Zach (Budgor) and Zack (Kotzer). We love them very much. Which is why we sit them down in front of a screen and force them to watch everything that happens at E3, trailer after trailer revealed before their tired eyes. Imagine that scene in A Clockwork Orange (1971), the one in which the Ludovico technique is demonstrated—it’s exactly like that. They scream at the videogame horrors, we put the drops in their eyes, they continue watching the videogame horrors. The following is Part 2 of what they managed to write down in between the yelling this year.

(Read Part 1 here)

God of War  

ZB: There’s a surprising amount of grace to this for a new God of War thing, especially in the animation. The dialogue is a little rougher, but I can’t act like I’m not excited for more absurdly violent trips through The Myths. Where did Kratos get a nice strong son though? Where’d he get that grizzled little boy?

ZK: I’m actually confused if this is a a new Kratos or the old Kratos who got a EURail pass after successfully killing every myth short of Narcissus and the Fraggles.

ZB: This is the first game in the Sony presentation to feature a dead ol’ wife, FYI.

ZK: I am a gamer, not because I don’t have a wife, but because I choose to have many die off-screen.

Days Gone 

ZK: You know, at a certain point I’d just give it to the zombies. Those doorframes look like snakes in a peanut can. They are clearly more prepared than I, though perhaps as they should be, because they also seem to have the resistance of a gummy bear.

ZB: This is unquestionably more zombies than we have previously been able to render in videogame history. That is a fact. The live Sony orchestra is also putting in some goddamn work here, making this way more interesting than I think it actually is.

ZK: That is because they are not zombies they are balloons. The player just accidentally strolled right by one zombie whose head wasn’t in the game. How do we even know they want to eat this biker? This could be one of those Hard Day’s Night (1964) things and they all just want this human gas station sunglasses rack’s kisses and autographs.

ZB: These zombies don’t appear to be attacking the main character at all. Are they?

ZK: This game looks like a visualization of Twitter.

ZB: This is the second consecutive game to prominently feature a dead ol’ wife. Executive producer Christopher Nolan, am I right? Okay, okay, everyone, stop clapping, let’s move on.

Resident Evil VII 

ZK: Hello friends did you like the PT game?

ZB: I’m shamelessly into this. Found footage? Texas Chain Saw vibes? They’re hitting my buttons.

ZK: How long have they been sitting on merging the numerals into the “VIL” ‘cause I’d wager this goes back to Nemesis.

Death Stranding

ZK: And… when there was one set of footprints in the sand? That is when you carried me between the rotting fish [sniff].

ZB: The idea of Norman Reedus being anyone’s muse—as he appears to be Hideo Kojima’s—is hilarious. The idea that Kojima thought of him (and him alone; “Cast: Norman Reedus,” the credits say) for an Evolution-style surrealist vignette of a guy with c-section scars beholding five divine figures above a ravaged sea is even more hilarious.

ZK: To be fair, Kojima the cinema fan either likes action movies or likes movies because they remind him of action movies. So it makes sense that Kojima’s Tippi Hedren is a performer who, despite being without clothes, truly looks naked because he isn’t holding up a crossbow to his greasy face.

The Last Guardian

ZK: I’m glad Sony is on the same page as us and this trailer is little more than a release date. The E3 version of asking if your roommate is on top of job hunting.

ZB: I am not crying, and I don’t plan on crying, but yes, I will take a tissue.

ZK: If the enemies are going to strut like a diving bell suit running after Shaggy and Scooby-Doo I hope there’s a chase scene in a hallway with 20 doors.

ZB: There are two feather puppies. Will one of them die to fulfill the promise of the title? I really hope not!

ZK: Why stop at one!

Spider-Man

ZK: Wh… a white emblem?? Is Sony (Films) really this dedicated to goofing this up? Civil War handed them a perfectly slam dunk Spider-Man costume and then they, what, accidentally right clicked the fill tool?

ZB: I suspect this is a movie tie-in, but they’re smart enough to leave off that branding.

Pokémon Sun and Moon

ZK: I have changed a lot in my life, but one of the few constants is that I do not care about the first two hours of a Pokémon game.

ZB: The presenters let a battle screen linger for like five minutes to show off the dynamic camera angles, which mostly looked like a von Trier-esque experiment in letting a computer direct the scene. Pan across Rowlet’s face; cut to closeup of Rowlet’s eyes; wide shot of Rowlet; profile shot; low-angle shot of Rowlet; back to wide shot. Experimental cinema circa 2016.

ZK: I’m worried that this dry marathon is only making people hate Popplio more and I must defend my beautiful candy-nosed baby.

ZB: Both the guy and girl have dumb outfits, but the guy’s mid-calf pants with the huge red cuff are especially stupid.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

ZK: Looking at this new Link I feel like Mr. Burns yelling at Don Mattingly. Also, I like that we got a duck pond shot. Right after the giant skeleton.

ZB: Parts of this look so nice! And then other parts look like weird placeholders, which maybe they are. But when I think “new Zelda” I don’t have fucking crafting at the top of my list.

ZK: Can you even imagine the internal protests over the change to the formula?

ZB: Lots of stoic men in tailored suits quietly stewing in boardrooms, teeth clenched. One adjusts his glasses with careful nonchalance but inside his mind is sheer blind panic: the formula must remain pure. He knows this. He also knows no man can stand up to the passage of time. Perhaps—no, no. He blinks. Perhaps it is time to change. If a mountain can be shorn down over thousands of years do not be the mountain be the wind be the rain be the snow he thinks.

ZK: Miyamoto presenting slides of various apples as each exec fails to lift up so much as a finger.

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Pan Pan gets you lost in the prettiest parts of space

You’re riding aboard your spaceship—maybe you’re enjoying an in-flight movie, and everything is going reasonably well. Then it isn’t. That wasn’t supposed to happen. But it did, and you’ve crashed on a remote planet. Good luck with that. Now your job is to get home. Or is it?

That is the central tension in Pan Pan, an upcoming game for PC and Mac from Spelkraft, to be published by Shelter (2013) creator Might and Delight.

damn, isn’t the planet nice

On the one hand, it is quite clearly a game about returning from the planet on which you’ve crashed. (Think 2015’s The Martian, but with the aesthetics of 2014’s Monument Valley) The gameplay—a series of puzzles, really—is designed to get you to that end. But damn, isn’t the planet nice. As you move about, a gentle soundtrack by Simon Viklund flickers in the background. It’s a big upgrade on Waze. It directs you to your destination, but really doesn’t tempt you to get there. What’s the rush?

Maybe you want to get back to your ship because it looks like an ice cream cone. That is a reason, albeit not the greatest of them. Everything looks reasonably delectable in the Pan Pan trailer and one wouldn’t bet against there being a gelato-shaped hut around every corner. Maybe space is hospitable to life after all.

To an extent, all games are about the journey as opposed to the destination. When you get there, it’s over. On to the next one. In Pan Pan, this structural dilemma takes on narrative form. Atmospheric gaming, in the able hands of Spelkraft, becomes another way of saying there’s no rush, take in the scenery, enjoy the music. There are puzzles to solve and places to go and you can get to that eventually. Or not. It doesn’t really matter. You aren’t lost; you’re where you want to be.

Find out more about Pan Pan on its Steam store page. It’s due out for PC on August 25th.

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We Happy Few thinks you should maybe go off your meds

Among the many titles shown off as part of Microsoft’s press conference on Monday was We Happy Few by Compulsion Games. The demo opens with the player character looking up from a candy apple red microfiche reader and straight into a giant clock that reads FRI 9 OCT 64. Meanwhile, he is muttering in an English accent over what sounds like remembered screams and emergency announcements. All of this is to say very quickly that We Happy Few is set in a dystopian England with a strong Fallout-esque retro-future vibe. To top that off, I was delighted to learn that the specific fictional town in which the game takes place goes by the alarmingly twee name of Wellington Wells.

The sleek mid-century design, though—like the porcelain masks worn by Wellington Wells residents—is hiding something more sinister underneath: big slogans on walls say things like “Happy is the country that has no history” and “it’s never too late to have a happy past,” and the Kickstarter page vaguely hints that in order to survive the German Occupation of Britain during WWII, “the Wellies all had to do A Very Bad Thing.” As a result, much like in Aldous Huxley’s 1931 novel Brave New World, people in the world of We Happy Few are kept in line with a drug, in this case straightforwardly called Joy.

Joy plays an integral role in We Happy Few, and it serves as a regular reminder that without a chemical assistant, the player cannot fit into this society. The player’s main goal is to escape this society and never take Joy again—the way it meddles with emotions is sinister and hides darkness and brutality. But the decade that gave us Brave New World also brought such innovations to the treatment of mental illness as electroconvulsive therapy and the lobotomy, so it’s safe to say that our perspectives on mental heath have changed since then. According to the World Health Organization, we know that one in four people on Earth will be affected by mental illness at some point in their lives and two-thirds of people with mental illness never seek professional help.

“why don’t you just be happier”

It’s true that there’s a lot of societal pressure to show off only the happiest of emotions—we post our smiling group photos to Facebook, and there’s a solid chance I’ve heard the line “Oh my lord, he’s a downer,” in my actual life. A lot of the stigma towards mental health issues leads people to casually question its validity, or to leave out the mentally ill so they don’t have the chance to bum anyone else out—but for every “why don’t you just be happier” there’s usually a “don’t your meds make you feel like you’re not yourself?”

40 percent of Canadians between 6 and 79 take prescription drugs. In the US, it’s closer to 70 percent and these numbers are often presented with the argument that we’re an overmedicated society, whether because parents don’t know how to make kids behave or because drug companies can advertise directly to consumers. On the other hand, these prescriptions are supposed to represent doctors working with patients to figure out what drugs work best and in what quantities for their specific needs, and in her 2010 book We’ve Got Issues, Judith Warner argues that actually, on average, children are undermedicated in the US because of the inaccessibility of mental healthcare for poorer families.

This context means that a character being made to regularly take a drug to stabilize her mood can’t really be kept apart from our understanding of mental health. And for a game where the bad guys want you to have fun and not dig too deep, I hope that through engagement with its systems, We Happy Few presents the complicated issues it deals in with more than a milligram of nuance.

You can visit We Happy Few’s website for more info. It will be available through Microsoft Game Preview and Steam Early Access on July 26th.

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Tyranny will let you play around with the cruellest politics

What happens to the world after war? Obsidian Entertainment’s upcoming role-playing game Tyranny is interested in exploring that dilemma. Taking place in a fantasy realm sat right in the middle of the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, the game begins after the evil dictator Kyros the Overlord has united the world under his grasp. Players take on the role of a Fatebinder, destined with restoring order to the lands in the wake of the largest war the region has ever seen.

But the Fatebinder isn’t an outcast, barely scraping by a living in the lowly Kyros Empire. No, unlike such RPGs as Dragon Age: Origins (2009) and Fallout (1997), the Fatebinder serves on behalf of the Overlord, wielding a significant amount of power at her command. She can engage in diplomacy, violence, cruelty, or a mixture of all three at once. The world is at her grasp, and as a force aligned with evil, she has the option to be as fair as she so deigns.

what kind of evil holds its grasp on the throne?

“We didn’t want you to be the ‘errand girl of Evil’. If you were just a grunt or a lackey, your ability to influence or change the world would be limited, and your responsibility for the fact that evil won would be reduced,” Tyranny director Brian Heins said in the game’s debut developer’s diary. “This required us to design our quests and content to reinforce this at every turn. We didn’t want you being approached by random NPCs asking you to rescue their cat from a tree. Your choices shape nations, and the quests had to reflect that.”

Indeed, there’s much to shape within Tyranny’s world. Factions remain divided in the aftermath of the Overlord’s victory. Villages struggle to build a sense of stability in their community while recuperating from the war. Depending on the backstory that the player chooses—which, according to PC Gamer, can shape the structure of entire villages—the entire course of the game can change drastically. Conflicts emerge and disappear based on the story the player creates from their world, leading to a realm of possibilities to navigate as a Fatebinder.

“Ultimately, RPGs are about the choices players make,” Heins wrote. “With Tyranny we wanted to focus our efforts on making the world react to player choices—both in game systems and in dialogue.” Indeed, Tyranny is fascinated with choice. What options are available for a ruler managing a post-war region? How does the past affect the present’s stability—or lack thereof? Tyranny frets over these questions, allowing the player to tackle the world any way they choose. Of course, it’s clear that evil reigns in Obsidian’s new world; the question is, what kind of evil holds its grasp on the throne? Tyranny will let the player fill in the blank.

Tyranny is due out for PC in 2016. Find out more about it on its website.

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Dive into ABZÛ’s beautiful ocean world on August 2nd

ABZÛ has pinks, it has blues, it has greens, it has oranges. It has whales, jellyfish, angler fish, and dolphins. And all of it is going to flourish on your PlayStation 4 or PC on August 2nd. I can’t frickin’ wait. 

This is a game especially for those who, like me, have a penchant for underwater levels in platformers. Ignore the terribly annoying ones in Crash Bandicoot 2 (1997) and focus on the musical joy and liquid flow of supreme underwater levels like Rayman‘s “Sea of Serendipity.” ABZÛ seems to have crystallized those levels and then melted them into a large and unarguably beautiful ocean world. Understanding how this has been achieved comes easily once you find out that the team behind ABZÛ is led by Matt Nava, who was previously the art director on thatgamecompany’s Flower (2009) and Journey (2012).

Just look at this thing and, just as important, listen to the soundtrack provided by Austin Wintory (who also did the music on Journey):

Aside from swimming with schools of fish and chasing curiosity between tiers of coral and wiggly weeds, exploration in ABZÛ will have us pursue the traces of an ancient civilization. About halfway through the E3 trailer, the swimmer encounters wall paintings depicting people carrying golden treasures. The title of the game offers further insight into what these paintings are all about. “Abzu” is the word for the Mesopotamian concept of the “primeval sea,” which was believed to reside in the void space beneath the underworld. These paintings could possibly be of Mesopotamian origin.

discover whatever remains at the seabed

It is perhaps these dark waters that the game will be luring us towards as we swim downwards. You might see evidence of this in the progression of the trailer, which starts in the upper reaches of the ocean where light and color shimmer and bloom, but ends up moving down into darkness. You can see near the end of the trailer that man-made (or alien-made?) structures feature too, with a large triangular gateway opening up for the swimmer.

As I’ve said before, it could be that ABZÛ ends up touching on the kinds of monsters and myths that H. P. Lovecraft did with his Cthulhu mythos, or it could continue with its peaceful manner as we descend its liquid layers and discover whatever remains at the seabed. Whatever the case, we are only a couple of months from finding out where it will take us now.

You can find out more about ABZÛ on its official website. It comes out for PS4 and PC on August 2nd.

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Bound brings a much-needed dose of ballet to the videogame lineup

Alongside the newest edition of God of War and a horror VR title, Sony Santa Monica talked about a smaller, quieter game at their E3 Conference. Bound is a 3D narrative platformer set to release August 16th.

Bound doesn’t look like any other game currently out, both in terms of its unique take on low-poly minimalism, its usage of color, and the movement of your unique main character. There’s an easy connection to be made between the effort and work of ballet and game design, in terms of their difficulty and craftsmanship. Both require years of practice and a certain poetry of movement, and at their most well crafted they can seem effortless. Bound takes that comparison and makes it reality through balletic moves and choreography.

Movement in Bound is its own language

That it calls to mind modern dance is certainly no accident. The gameplay trailer that premiered at E3 showcased a series of movements that demonstrated emotion as well as simple transport. Fear is shown as a bodily motion, a quick twist that dismisses natural realism for expression. The character doesn’t simply walk, she shuffles and spins.

Movement in Bound is its own language as the character twists and turns through open fields and down crumbling ledges. It’s lovely and understated, and in a year where E3 seems dominated by games whose innovation is in what manner you shoot another person, it’s a welcome distraction.

Bound is set for release August 16th on PS4.

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Please make Spider-Man good again

Monday night’s PlayStation press conference at E3 brought a dizzying number of reveals, many of them catching people completely by surprise: Days Gone, Death Stranding, God of War, and… Spider-Man? Definitely didn’t see that one coming! Do I dare confess my excitement about yet another Spidey game after I actually spent $60 of my hard-earned cash on Beenox’s godawful TheAmazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) for the Xbox One?

Look, there was a time when Marvel’s friendly neighborhood cash cow meant something more than another ugly, unplayable movie tie-in. When the first Tobey Maguire flick landed in 2002, Treyarch released what can best be described as a fairly decent game that I enjoyed completing.

a comics fan can dream, right?

But, when it came time for the sequel? Spider-Man 2 (2002) was nothing short of a bona fide masterpiece—a vast open-world Manhattan, fleshed-out campaign mode, collectible items, and all kinds of fun side quests. Not to mention that it was endlessly replayable. And let’s not forget Web of Shadows (2008), either, which serves as further proof that fun, easygoing Spidey narratives within a large urban environment are still full of potential.

It might be a hard sell for some folks, given just how disappointing The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was, but this PS4-exclusive title’s got Insomniac Games at the helm. Insomniac’s storied portfolio includes everything from Spyro the Dragon (1998) to this year’s Ratchet & Clank, and all the parkour action and zip lining in Sunset Overdrive (2014) shows they know how to combine fast combat and fluid movement with an open-world cityscape.

“We love building big games, with incredible gameplay, deep stories, and beautiful graphics,” says Insomniac creative director Bryan Intihar. “Spider-Man is one of the most iconic and well-known characters in the world, and we’re thrilled to be given the responsibility to create a brand-new, authentic Spider-Man story.” Not much is known about the story yet, and it may well serve as a tie-in of sorts to the forthcoming Sony-Marvel reboot Spider-Man: Homecoming, but a comics fan can dream, right? Even if that huge white spider insignia is pretty atrocious.

Please, Insomniac. Make Spidey good again.

Insomniac’s as-yet-untitled Spider-Man game will soon be swinging its way to the PS4.

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Steep will let you cheat death by never risking it in the first place

Listen. Me and heights? We don’t have what I’d describe as an amiable relationship. If you try to shuffle your house party on to the roof, I’m going to be the square making a case for couches and kitchen access. And the surge of GoPro stunt videos? I think the only reason I can white knuckle through them is because their very publication guarantees the daredevil survived. If you live your life in a flying squirrel suit just to thread the needle of a rock formation that’s the result of centuries of climate and sediment conditioning, and not designed as playground equipment, then you do you. And for the rest of us there is Ubisoft’s new extreme sports game, Steep, inspired by such acts of bravery, minus the risk of flattening your skull into the flat dimensions of a Pog.

Announced during Ubisoft’s E3 keynote, Steep is an extreme sports title that wears its GoPro and Red Bull sponsorships on its sleeves, skis, and parachutes. The trailer carries testimonials from base jumpers, paragliders, and other thrill seekers who don’t know I busted both of my legs in an accident the first time I ever hit the slopes. On the bunny hill.

terrorizing the mountain until their apprehension by Scooby-Doo

Whereas games like SSX and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater pursued specific goals and racing, Steep’s main priority is something more nebulous and popular in the real world: bragging rights. A cross-section of why athletes film themselves and why videogame players record themselves, Steep is all about executing death-defying stunts and immortalizing them. Players can review their trips down the mountain, with skis, snowboards, and a variety of gliders, freeze time, position the camera and record. Players can band together, friends or encountered strangers, using their preferred gravity-powered method of mountain transportation, for group shots. If you’re especially proud of your work you can bookmark them and challenge other players to recreate them.

Steep seems to be designed for the players who want to stream and share, who want an audience, who feel the same desire as the daredevils strapping cameras to their forehead, minus the athleticism and odds of landing in the trauma ward. Steep is a game that could not have existed a few years ago. Point rewards do seem to be in place, if sharing and boasting isn’t satisfying for you, and players can customize outfits. In one preview we see characters dressed like a sasquatch and a hollerin’ clown, both terrorizing the mountain until their apprehension by Scooby-Doo.

If Skifree (1991) doesn’t have high enough stakes for you and actually rocketing down the side of one of Earth’s rocky nipples with death genuinely watching from behind the pillowed trees is too terrifying, Steep is due this December.

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