Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 440

Galactic Princess is the unofficial Millenium Falcon-battling sim

In a galaxy far far away, namely France, a team is hard at work on Galactic Princess, the awesome-looking spaceship management strategy game on Kickstarter. My first thought was that Stars Wars nostalgia must surely be running on fumes by this point. But then the 80s kicking-ass-and-taking-names music kicks in, and you get a glimpse of the storm trooper-esque laser battles in the cryogenics room, and all is forgiven. The game brings to mind FTL and Rymdkapsel in that it’s a real-time strategy game about the ins-and-outs of keeping a spacecraft and crew well-oiled. But the war is raging in the micro and the macro scale: you fend off the invading crew while massive starship-on-starship battles go down. This one looks like a lot of fun.

Michael Brough was asked about “indie scene,” responds with pull-quote of the millennium

In a recent interview, the always-astute Michael Brough, maker of the outstanding 868-Hack, was asked what he thinks of “the state of the indie scene.” His response was doused in irony, pretty much dispelling the idea of an indie scene, and is the smarted thing I’ve read all day. 

Really, it's kind of paradoxical to talk about a scene defined by independence—how someone's doing doesn't have much direct bearing on how anyone else is. Obviously we're not literally independent (and I don't think it's healthy to imagine that we are); we can and do support each other; but it's people in so many different situations making so many different things that it doesn't make much sense to me to discuss it as a whole. Some are doing well and some are struggling, some are making things that interest me and some aren't, business as usual?

I just adore how he starts with a logical argument about the inherent contradiction in the term “indie scene” and then goes on to blow up the whole idea. His point is apt, and echoes something our own Jon Irwin wrote last year. 

img via Bit of Alright

Bobsledding is officially the worst Olympic sport, because math

We don't often analyze the design of sports as closely as other types of games, but taking a closer look at some of the games at the Olympics suggests that maybe we should.

Ben Blatt over at Slate looked at the statistics for Bobsledding kept by the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation back through 2005 and found that for all four-man, two-man, and two-woman bobsled competitions, the leading team after the third of four runs has won 100% of the time. These odds are up from 70% after the first run, and 85% after the second. This means that the game is pretty much decided only one-quarter in, which kills all suspense. Ben proposes to somewhat alleviate this issue by making all Bobsled races only two runs long instead of four, which would allow for a slightly greater chance at an upset. 

That's a much more reasonable suggestion than throwing tons of blue shells, which is how I usually cause an upset during a race.

Irrational Games goes to that big cloud city in the sky/out of business

They've been, uh, raptured.

Naughty Dog to those who think The Last of Us is too violent: Get over it

The Last of Us is an ice-cold, hopeless, and harrowing bloodbath through an ugly, post-infected America, and one of the best games of recent years. It’s also been the source of controversy, with some critics complaining that it was too grizzly and violent. All this moralizing momentarily caused the game creators to strip any violence whatsoever from from the new DLC Left Behind. Then they thought about it and went: naaah. 

Here's Neil Druckmann’s spoiler-heavy explanation of why violence is in fact crucial to his vision: 

What if there were no infected in this game? What if there was no combat at all in this additional chapter? And we feel like we would lose something that's really integral to The Last of Us, which is that contrast. The giraffe sequence works because of all the horrible things you've done and experienced in the Winter section. Otherwise I think the giraffe sequence would feel pretty flat without the surrounding bits to it. 

The ending works well because, as Joel, you've done really horrible things in that hospital. Maybe we could argue about the number of encounters, or how many enemies should've been in the hospital, but we definitely feel strong that there should've been a fight, a kind of murdering spree to get to Ellie, because that says something about Joel and what he would do to save someone he loves. 

So, they’re using violence as part of an artistic statement, which is totally legit, as we’ve seen in the films of Takashi Miike, and Chan-wook Park, and early Scorsese, and a few hundred others. That's the fine company The Last of Us deserves, not the exploitative zombie-killing fellowtravellers it has in the videogame universe.

OFFS3T's photo puzzles help you appreciate Earth's natural beauty

Picture seriously imperfect. 

Oniken blasts out of Brazil and the 90s

Making something new in the retro field.

Harmonix is making a rhythmic FPS with plenty of dubstep

Rock Band developer Harmonix has been venturing out into new territory since the music-instrument-game craze fizzled, jettisoning a wall of plastic guitars at your local Best Buy. Announced yesterday, Chroma is the most unbridled departure yet: a rhythm-game and an FPS with a Tron-like battle arena and dubstep. Yes, that is a sentence you just read. 

“How the fuck does that work?” you may rightly ask. Well, guns and characters are dedicated to different music genres, say hip-hop or free jazz. They shoot sequences of musical notes, presumably based on which buttons you press. Ultimately it comes down to killing dudes with dubstep melodies, which is about the worst fate imaginable. But let's not forget the dubstep gun was the best part of Saint's Row 4. It’s a wild outlier of a premise, but if anyone can pull it off, it’s the extremely creative guys and gals at Harmonix. 

Watch the teaser below and enjoy immensely when the lady with the arm cannon shoots the guy with the dubstep gun.

How gaming glasses could turn the average Call of Duty player into a killing machine

Inside the future of cheating. 

It's President's Day, so watch your back for motorized patriots

We're observing the federal holiday. See you tomorrow!