Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 370

David O'Reilly's colossal simulator Mountain rises on July 1st

Future forward director and Her videogame creator announces first effort

With the KOR-FX gaming vest, being shot never felt so good

Have you ever thought to yourself that shooters would be so much cooler if it actually felt like you were being shot? No, of course not, because that would involve pain and really hurt. But the KOR-FX (pronounced core-effects) delivers the experience of being sprayed with bullets painlessly, the tactile sensation of haptic vibrations pulsing through your ribcage. It’s basically a rumble-pack for your chest, although the dev makes it clear on the Kickstarter page that technically it’s a different tech. 

Of course, the sales pitch for this thing is that it immerses you in the game, a popular aim among videogame accessories through the ages. The vest is compatible with Oculus Rift and I imagine that’s how the majority of backers will use it. If you wanted to, you could set up a daisy chain of all these immersive peripherals we’ve seen lately, including this vest, a VR headset, an omnidirectional treadmill, a fake automatic weapon that recoils, and a VR motion controller in the other hand. But that sounds like hell. 

Maybe I'll just stick with the vest. 

Photos from urban exploration at foreclosed Neverland Ranch are as bizarre as you’d think

Neverland Ranch was closed by authorities in 2006 after Michael Jackson, who was lying low in Bahrain after being cleared of molestation charges, failed to pay employees. A few years later it went into foreclosure. In the process, the pop star’s private Disneyland degenerated into a ghost town of an estate. 

So of course a team of four urban explorers broke in, took pictures, and drank Jackson’s grape soda. VICE interviewed them, with firsthand accounts and photos of all the strange things you’d expect to see lying around when breaking and entering in Michael Jackson’s house, such as eight-foot-tall oil paintings of the King of Pop.

And, wow, are these photographs gawk-worthy, like the one below of an art piece showing Michael leading a parade of children through a Wizard of Oz-style fairyland. 

Be sure to head over to Vice to see them all. 

Image via Vice

New PBS Game/Show asks if Twitch is actually making us worse at games

We’re all in agreement that Twitch is a beautiful thing. The ability to display your skills while streaming games in front of a live audience on the Internet has proven endlessly entertaining. There’s no denying that. 

But here’s the rub: what if all those eyes intensely glaring at their screens just waiting for you to fail actually makes you worse of games? 

In this week’s episode, Jamin posits the pros and cons of playing in front of spectators. And while at times crowds bring out the best in us, it looks like we’re due for a large upswing in epic disappointments as we enter an always-streaming world.

Watch the episode below, subscribe if you haven’t, and tell us what you think in the comments!

Shovel Knight may be retro, but it’s forward-thinking

The lures and limits of nostalgia.

There's a lot more to No Man’s Sky than drifting infinitely through space

As we’re reminded in this mini-documentary, No Man’s Sky’s universe will be approximately the size of God. Here, project lead Sean Murray of Hello Games talks headily about how the game will let you discover a universe with a limitless number of planets the actual size of Earth. This sounds great from a “look at what our computers can do” standpoint, but won’t exploring infinity get old?  

But don’t be so skeptical. Towards the end of the video, Murray reveals some new details on how the game-y bits will work, and there is very much a point to it aside from drifting through AI-generated clusters of universe. There is actually an overarching mission. Players will start from their own respective planets and proceed to level up their ships until they are strong enough to make it all the way to the center of the galaxy, where something epic is promised to happen, though he isn’t saying what.

But you are also free to ignore that and seek out your own remote niche of the universe if you so choose.

An unlikely partnership forms in LA Cops

On the verge of retirement ...

Photos from Norilsk, the ruined Russian city that’s basically Metro 2033 in real-life

Norilsk was founded as a Siberian Gulag in 1935, and, as you can see in these desolate photographs of the remote Russian city, located in the Arctic Circle, since then things have somehow gotten worse. 

Photographer Elena Chernyshova's “Days of Night - Nights of Day” photo series of this foreboding place, which is shrouded in 24-hour darkness 45 days out of the year, was recently shown at Grand Prix Fotofestiwal 2014. The shots totally capture all the grimness of a post-apocalyptic videogame, like Stalker or Metro: Last Light, except, well, this is a place you could actually visit. 

You’re probably thinking: it can’t be that bad! But just take a look at the photos, as you consider that there’s such a high concentration of sulfur dioxide in the air that the surrounding wilderness is dead.

You can find more ghastly photos on Chernyshova’s wordpress.

Via We Make Money, Not Art

Forget plight in Machi Koro

In a world free of debt and disaster, how well can you build a town?

How Ready Steady Play makes a cowboy massacre adorable

One part Cleese, one part audio design.