Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 409

Sony candidly admits H1Z1 is pretty much DayZ

When Sony announced their online zombie game H1Z1 last week, everyone's first thought was that it sounded exactly like Day Z. But it’s refreshing to hear Sony being so upfront about how the game wears its influence on it sleeve, instead of the typical PR newspeak we usually hear. 

When pestered with the question of how their zombie apocalypse game differs from THE zombie apocalypse game, John Smedley of Sony Online said, in essence: well, not very much. “Not going to give some politically correct dodgy b.s. answer,” he told Reddit, a crowd who has samurai skills at cutting through bullshit. He went on to say that Day Z is a brilliant game who came up with the concept first; that “we’re another Zombie Apocalypse game.”  

That said, there are some dissimilarities from Dean Hall’s anti-altruistic computer game. According to him, H1Z1 will feature crafting and player-driven economies and the ability to build forts and strongholds, which should give players something to do aside from stalking each other like prey. 

New PBS Game/Show asks what your favorite game genre says about you

Say you gravitate to surreal exploratory adventures, but avoid survivor horror games like the plague. The tactical wargame is your jam, but JRPGs are not your cup of tea. Do the types of fun we enjoy tell us a deeper truth about our meat space selves, aside from that we should never ever attempt handling a gun in real-life? 

This week’s episode plunges the depths of our gaming personalities, as Jamin turns to the theories of Marc LeBlanc to find out what makes players tick. And as a fun bonus: cosplayers at PAX East telling us what the worst games of all-time are. Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of Big Rigs hate.

WHY NOT's silliness has a dark secret

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These futuristic gloves let you make music by waving your hands

Imogen Heap is a kinda folky, kinda electronic, almost shoegaze-y pop artist who has developed a pair of futuristic musical gloves. Watching her play with her Mi.Mu gloves reminds me of someone playing a theremin, sans the theremin, of course. In a way they remind me of Imitone, Evan Balster’s musical tool that lets you control midi-instruments simply by singing to your computer. Both inventions were created with the intent of freeing musicians from the tyranny of having to hunch over a laptop, because that just doesn’t seem very musical.

You can see these e-textiles in the motion at her ongoing Kickstarter campaign.

The true enemy in Moebius: Empire Rising is mundanity

Test your patience in the name of science and history.

Don’t give up on Nintendo’s weird, wonderful Miiverse

Or: How Nintendo learned to stop worrying and love the Internet.

How Heroes of the Storm began its life as a cooking game

Game director Dustin Browder recalls the the strange origins of Blizzard’s MOBA.

Space Invaders, Missile Command, and other classics painted in fresco

Just in time for Easter, these regal fresco paintings inspired by the videogames of yore are now showing at Kim Foster Gallery on 529 W 20th Street in New York. The show, called Genesis, is the artistic outpouring of Dan Hernandez, a man whose love for classic arcade games is only equaled by his love for Italian Renaissance murals, apparently. 

Much of his art looks like something out of a Medieval cathedral or manuscript, but modernized with bloody, game-y pop art. On one canvas, you see a saint with nimbus throwing fireballs Mario-style, while right below him there are holy men throwing down the gauntlet a la Altered Beast. Others portray unholy hives of Space Invaders swarming the sky, and cherubim raining down missiles.

See more of Hernandez’s mix of the sacred and profane here.

Via Boing Boing

The sci-fi thriller Caffeine looks horrifying, unlike actual caffeine, which is great

As I’m writing this I am running on caffeine the same way that a Hummer H1 “runs” on gasoline. Caffeine to me is this beautiful substance that lets me be a writer. So when I heard the words “support Caffeine on Indiegogo” I am totally into it.

Australian game developer Dylan Browne, on the other hand, must have had a bad experience with caffeine. Browne's Caffeine is a sci-fi horror game where you play a young boy who wakes up alone on a caffeine mining space station. Being alone on a space station would certainly drive me from "alert" to "freaking-out" levels of awareness. Browne's game has a lot of polish on it: it looks deeply spooky and atmospheric and I really want to be on that space station but I also want no part of it. Good atmospheric horror needs that push and pull.

The follow-up to the wonderful, slept-on Forget-Me-Not is headed to the Vita

There is a sequel on the distant horizon for Forget-Me-Not, coming to PS Vita, where it can take advantage of that pristine little screen. In case you haven't been introduced, the first was an iOS favorite from a few years ago—a grind-heavy roguelike disguised as a broken arcade game crawling with twisty, crawly, slimy, square things. I thought it was exquisite. It also made our 2011 High Scores list.

The new game looks pretty similar to the previous, which is a good thing. You look to be eating dots and unlocking doors and avoiding hostile insects as you plunge deeper into randomly drawn labyrinths on a neverending quest for lemons and cupcakes. What made the first great was that it felt like it would glitch out at any moment because there were just so many chaotic processes running on-screen, with centipedes bumping up against each other, and exploding 8-balls, and spinning flowers, and ladybugs running away with your key.

You can get a gist from the below Vine.