Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 462

New PBS Game/Show looks at the most anticipated games of the New Year

If 2014 is anything like last year, there’s two things you can count on. Miley Cyrus will continue to haunt us, and we’ll play many, many videogames. Aside from the Miley thing, you’re in luck, because there’s plenty of games to be excited for in the upcoming, eh, 362 days. From the head-scratching landscapes of Jonathan Blow’s The Witness, to the clanking steel mechas of Titanfall, to what may be the most Canadian game ever created, we take a gander at some of the year’s brightest prospects in this week’s episode.

Check it out and let us know what you think in the comments!

PixelJunk Eden is the Internet's new favorite game, now that it costs less than a value hamburger at Wendy's

File this one under the debate on whether cheap pricing devalues games. You may know Q-Games, the makers of beautiful, rave-y, visually-mesmerizing games. A few days ago, when the price of their game PixelJunk Eden was lowered to $0.99 on Steam, it sold astonishingly well. In fact, it sold so well that the company earned in eight hours as much dough as they had made in their entire 13-year existence. Yes, a double-take is the appropriate response.

This fits in with the ongoing debate about how we value games. Here, the developer is being rewarded not for the merits of their game alone, but because it’s generally considered a good play and because they priced it cheaply. As game-guru Ian Bogost wrote five long years ago, “I contend that iPhone players are not so much dissatisfied as they are confused: should one treat a 99¢ game as a piece of ephemera, or as a potentially rich experience?” 

Looks like we’re still in that bind. Is Q-Games' newfound largesse a sign of them getting due recognition, or just a bunch of people hoarding something they will never play? Hard to say, but I know what I’ll be playing this weekend—for a few minutes, anyway. 

The power glove of Street Fighter being play-tested in NYC

Over the summer, when I spoke to Kaho Abe about the potential for costumes as game controllers, she showed me her awesome spiked, laser-cut foam glove. Now we have this video showing off the gauntlet, a.k.a. “The Shredder,” in action. 

Right about the 1:10 mark, following the segment on tetrahedral featherlight spacesuits (for real!), we find some kids strapped down in gloves and power-packs blasting what looks like blood cells, which I suspect are fireflies. It’s still very prototypical, but the field of wearables as it stand is more about exploring possibilities at this point. Abe eventually wants to incorporate the device into a fighting game, which she described to me as akin to Street Fighter, but which I imagine will end up more like her street game Hit Me.

While the benefit of fashion on gaming may not be obvious, Abe thinks it’s a natural progression. “Fashion tells stories. Combine that with technology and you start to think about what happens when costumes turn into game controllers,” she says. And considering that most game peripherals are tacky pieces of plastic I keep hidden in my closet, a little tailoring would be nice.

The puzzler Inoqoni takes a trip through the looking glass

“And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be.”

LARPing for testosterone-soaked Call of Duty fanatics is coming

Currently raising funding on Indiegogo, Overwatch is the mobile app that uses features from videogames such as Call of Duty to augment the pain, fear, and jubilation of shooting someone, or getting shot in real-life. Real firearms are’t involved, so no worries! 

The aim of the project is to make paintball more like deathmatch by adding FPS staples to pretend war zones. For instance, unlocks, voice chat, and a map which displays GPS coordinates will enhance the experience of getting pegged in the buttocks with a paintball bullet. Watch for it at the 1:05 mark. 

What we love about this project is that it’s essentially live-action-role-playing for the middle-aged Battlefield multiplayer set. This could prove that LARPing isn’t only the domain of the Tolkien nerd, but is a viable game form outside the world of Darkon. We have no idea if this will catch on, but we’re seriously hoping that it does, if for no other reason than for that sweet iPhone barrel mount. Now drop and give me 20.

Daniel Benmergui's Ernesto is Candy Crush Saga meets Rogue

Latin American game maker Daniel Benmergui is known to tell a good yarn. You know, ludonarratively speaking. In fact, our recent profile of him exotically referred to him as “Latin storyteller!” So it seems his quick, short, new game Ernesto is the story of med-kits, and bat country, and El Dorado, and strategically moving across a board so that you attack only enemies that are weaker than you to level up.  

Whoa, wait a second. On second thought, that doesn’t sound like a narrative at all. It sounds like a loot-loving browser game that mixes the trappings of a dungeon dive with the pick-up-and-playability of Candy Crush Saga. Yep, I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. You should play. You know you want to.

Ubisoft and the evolution of second screen gaming

Early adoption has its risks.

The Atlantic wants to rejigger every major sport. Should we do the same for videogames?

Sports are fast-paced and exciting, except when they’re not, so says The Atlantic in this piece suggesting how to fix things.

Take football, for instance:

The thing about watching football is that you don’t actually watch much football. A Wall Street Journal study found that, on average, the ball is in play for just 11 minutes each game.

And here’s the articles suggestion on how to fix basketball:

The NBA could re-weight the game by changing the way it calculates league standings. Teams should get three points for winning a game, and one point for winning a quarter. If Team A wins all four quarters, it’ll shoot up in the rankings with seven points. If Team B wins three quarters and chokes in the fourth, it’ll still get three points.

Maybe videogames, too, are ill-designed. As Jamin once pointed out, games are too damn long. (A size doesn’t matter joke would be too easy.) With games like Metal Gear Solid 5 touting an open-world 100 times larger than its prologue, they don’t seem to be getting any smaller. I'm sure I'll play it, and I'm sure I'll never finish it as well. There are workarounds like quick-travel, which let us leap from one side of the map to another in the blink of an eye, but at the same time that can ruin a game. Should games cut to the point, getting the repetitive stuff out of the way? Or is mastering a skill set by repeating actions over a long duration the reason we play? What do you think?

Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God is a recipe for acquired tastes only

You’ll be sweating bullets.

There are an awful lot of titles from our Best of 2013 list on the Steam sale today

Yeah, the holidays are the time for giving and being with the family. But the day after the holidays is the time for splurging on deeply-discounted Steam games and bunkering down in your room playing them. 

Quite a few excellent titles can be had for less than the price of lunch, including some we were very high on when doling out our end-of-the-year honors: Saints Row 4, Bioshock Infinite, Stanley Parable, Tomb Raider. Give ‘em a go. Trust us!