Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 311

Is it time for us to disregard the Turing Test?

The definitive test for artificial intelligence may be a little too, well, artificial.

Ragdoll Nazis make Wolfenstein 3D a comical shooter

I like shooting hands. Call it a fetish if you will.

It's rooted in my time spent with Goldeneye 007 for the N64. It was among the first shooters to have body-hit detection, which meant you could aim the reticule at, say, an innocent scientist's hand, fire a bullet into it, and for about a minute (maybe longer) they'd shake their arm around, and hold onto their hand as if it bore a fresh wound. This provided me hours of entertainment between the ages of eight and fourteen.

Rollers of the Realm accomplishes the incredibly strange thing it sets out to do

Become a real pinball wizard.

This hat is the future of hats

Everything changes at the drop of a hat.

Snuggle up and melt a cat in your hot cocoa this winter, you deranged monster

The Japanese company Yawahada specializes in adorable, artisanal marshmallows, but they veer from the norm, coming in flavors like chocolatey tiramisu, cheese tarts, baked apple, and so on. As if wrenched from Kirby's most kawaii dreams, they also make little marshmallows shaped liked cats, which inspires images of curling up on a couch with a cat and a blanket and re-watching season three of Battlestar Galactica to see if it still holds up. 

But it raises some deeply troubling images as well—notably, that adorable cat-like visage slowly fading and becoming featureless as it melts into your dessert, its tiny paws becoming featureless blobs that you eventually nibble off. Your own cat, resting serenely on your lap, eventually looks up in horror to notice what you've done; it stays put in fear that it might be next as you slurp the liquefied intestines of its kind in wintry cheer. Yawahada's site, with troubling alacrity, states (via Google Translate), "You can enjoy I am and various taste eat by dissolving so please try." EVIL IS REAL, YOU GUYS. 

The marshmallows are only available in Japan now, but Swimmingly notes that they should be available internationally soon. 

A wolf in civil servant's clothing

Telltale's detective story was an exploration of dysfunctional government.

Long live Telltale's presumably death-filled Game of Thrones series

Try to say "Telltale Games' Game of Thrones game" three times fast. Or just go play episode one, released today.

Explore Telltale's latest transmedia contribution in part one of their episodic GoT series, out now.

Get your fix of destruction in Where Is My Hammer

Where Is My Hammer lets you destroy a whole house, its contents, and the car parked outside with a large mallet. You can chip away at the structures carefully, causing cracks in pillars so you can sit back and watch as it slides in half before collapsing. Or you can rush in with a red-hot charged hammer, flinging it senselessly as if your name was Jesus and you're breaking up the sinful commerce held in the house of the Lord.

It is a game built for people like me. People who want to break their way through the floor of a game world and re-appear at the top to smash their way through to the bottom again, and again, and again. People who were once known as the kid you do not give the hammer to. My dad learned that the hard way (no, I didn't murder him).

This is why my dad now only buys hammers with metal handles. 

He used to have three hammers that each had a smooth wooden handle. He would have me hold one while completing various DIY tasks under my mother's orders: put up a new fence in the front garden, re-decorate the kitchen, put up a new shed to hold all the garden tools. He sawed and hammered while I leant against a nearby wall practising my thousand-yard stare.

He should have seen it coming given that he, too, was one of those kids at an earlier age. I would get bored. And I had a hammer in my hand. So I would head out into the garden to lay into concrete slabs, wooden panels, the soft mud in the ground; anything that could be hit bluntly with the flat end of a hammer.

I did this so vigorously that all three of those hammers split in half at the handle eventually. I remember how the cracking of the wood surprised me the first time, but became my goal upon the second and third; I'd take breaks between thuds to study the handle for signs of fresh deterioration. This is why my dad now only buys hammers with metal handles.

There's no odd science or complex psychology behind my relishing destruction. It can be explained with a mathematical equation: Boredom + Hammer = Catharsis. It's why I spent most of a summer holiday in Penzance using a large, sharp rock to chip away at even bigger rocks while my parents sunbathed on the beach. And why, after being told to rest by a doctor after being hit by a car, my devotion to the PlayStation One game Trash It!—a game about destroying everything with a hammer in a quest to find a bigger hammer—flourished.

And as I cherished the playful demolition of Destroy Your Home, I find chemical satisfaction from indulging the guilt-free aberration that Where Is My Hammer offers. Except, I have happened upon one gripe. "Everything can be destroyed!" reads the game's full list of promises. Everything, that is, except the hammer.

You can download Where Is My Hammer for free on Game Jolt and itch.io.

Indoor kids rejoice: there's finally a social interaction simulator you can use as practice

Feel better about your social ineptitude with Social Interaction Trainer.

Everything in its right place: a Pokémon Omega Ruby Review

Exactly what you'd expect.