Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 407

SXPD is part digital comic, part racing game, all very pretty

The trouble with reading digital comics if you also play games is that you’re always choosing between, say, playing Hearthstone or reading Fables on your tablet. SXPD, as we see in this 30 seconds of footage, asks, "Why limit yourself to one or the other when you can do both?"

The offering is not so much a fully mixed breed as it is two like things welded together, with distinct segments where you play and other segments where you flip pages. The best part looks to be how the art of the game (which features space troopers who drive hovering jet skis) borrows the visual flair of the comic, resulting in stylish black-and-white-and-red graphics that remind me of MadWorld for Wii. 

The game is coming to iPad only.

The swanky Atari game Kayne would play

The most upscale game of Breakout ever has been spotted at Louis Vuitton’s online shop. This is totally the way to play Atari while drinking rosé and sunbathing on yachts. The game is part of their campaign to promote their line of pricy, checkered-patterned, calfskin iPhone and iPad cases, in tandem with a cool, posh stop-motion advertisment inspired by retro games. Sure, it’s just your standard game of Breakout with all the ball-bouncing and power-ups; but it’s also Breakout played with fine leather goods standing in for the paddle and blocks, which makes it worth ten times as much. Right?

Not so fast. Unlike the cases and handbags which will cost you an arm and a leg, the game is completely free, and you can play it here.

Microsoft's robot assistants will follow your every move

Yeah, but does it know how I like my coffee?

This is what Jet Grind Radio would look like if made by the French

Hover is like Jet Grind Radio without the best part, which is the skateboards, of course. It is plainly Jet Grind Radio Frenchified with the urban sport of parkour. But we should probably give them the benefit of the doubt for replacing the famed four-wheeled decks with a grind-rail riding pair of feet because the cartoonish, purple and black city traced with pink electricity scintillating from your sneakers simply looks to die for. Another reason why traceurs trump skaters in this case is because they can pull off flips and long jumps you could never dream of justifying on a half pipe.

The Kickstarter is just getting warmed up and already the goal is in sight, which goes to show that people really loved their Dreamcast.

Will wearables overcome the hideous history of videogame peripherals?

From the Power Glove to the Oculus Rift, gaming wearables are defined by unwearableness.

FRACT OSC isn’t a synthesizer or a game. It’s both

The triumph of the middle way.

2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil is big, inclusive, and boring

A game of pomp and pomp.  And pomp.

In Grave, the only thing scarier than your imagination is what comes out at night

Grave is a game that understands there are multiple kinds of fear. One is more a feeling of anxiety, which you will find in games with eerie surreal landscapes but without much action, or upon entering a Wal-Mart. Then, there is a much more nocuous, immediate kind of fear, where you feel your life is threatened and your fight-or-flight reflexes kick in—also, like entering a Wal-Mart. 

Well, Grave ties both those types of fear in a pretty little bow with its day-night cycle, which actually sounds horrifying and not pretty at all. The way it functions is that during the daylight the desert is bizarre and barren and relatively safe. But when the sun goes down, the freaks come out, and you’d do best to stay in your homestead and cower. It's much like Minecraft, or any game with a similar dial, but with the intent of scaring you and leaving severe emotional scars. 

The game sounds pretty cool and is set to come to Xbox One, if it survives the final night cycles of its Kickstarter campaign.

The perfect games to give dear ol' mom for Mother's Day

Games a mother could love.

Heavy machinery is super-talented at Jenga, apparently

Jenga is a game that requires finesse and a steady hand, unless of course you are playing with a stack of 600-pound wooden blocks. Then, heavy machinery is called for. Enter Cat’s excavators, which are, for the mechanically uninformed, huge construction trucks equipped with claw arms. This real-life game of Jenga was put on by Caterpillar, making it a surprisingly playful bit of advertising. Watch and be impressed at how mammoth machines that weigh a few tons and are used for ripping up earth are still, deep down, toys.