Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 467
December 23, 2013
After 50-something versions, psychedelic Nowhere will fry your mind
Nowhere is about, well, I’m not exactly sure. The last time I heard of the game, back in spring, it had a cyberpunkish, post-singularity vibe. That was alpha 54. The new trailer has gone beyond that, showing cities of the future transformed into growing, biological detritus. Maybe what we’re looking at is the outskirts of cyberspace, but who knows. Just imagine your favorite Trapper Keeper as a kid and you’ve pretty much got it.
Whatever Nowhere is, it’s not likely to be the same a few months from now, as the game has been one long, strange trip of radical iteration. It actually started out as Project Ginshu in 2012, a series of rapid prototypes in tribute to Alexander Shulgin, the batty grandfather of the club drug ecstasy. The first games were no more than simple puzzle-platformers, but, as you can see, the neon-outlined polygons of the early days have grown in scope and majesty since then. The studio say they plan to have their chemically-induced sandbox completed by 2015, but we suspect development to be fully taken over by autonomous bots before then.
Persona Q makes us wonder if there’s any genre these millennials couldn’t improve
Over the weekend we got our first peek at Persona Q, the spin-off of the RPG series about battling demons and going dutch. The game, as expected, looks great, with a so-cute-it-has-to-be-Japanese art direction, and health meters you can gleam for a second that look suspiciously like those from the dungeon-crawl Etrian Odyssey.
Q, as you may remember, was announced as part of a deluge of Persona-related gaming news, including Persona 4: Dancing All Night, the tongue-and-torso-twisting Persona 4: The Ultimax Ultra Suplex Hold, and, of course, Persona 5. The question is: is this too much of a good thing?
This buckshot approach to franchises is something we’ve seen a lot of lately coming from the land of the rising sun. You can think of Nintendo’s recent junket, where they showed Link retrofitted in the unfamiliar feudal territory of Dynasty Warriors. The idea seems to be that beloved characters positioned in different scenery and new types of games can make up for a dearth of brilliance.
The cynical way to look at it is that this seems like a safe way for publishers to hedge their bets on financing games. But then you realize that Persona games have excellent soundtracks that will lend themselves well to a music game; that summoning fallen angels is actually a pretty cool addition to a fighting game; and that Koromaru will look simply adorable as a cutesy puppy. It’s just playing to its strengths.
Breathtaking Arma 3 mod proves government-financed videogames are a good thing
Okay, so this military training program isn't really a mod. But close enough. BISimulations, otherwise known as Bohemia Interactive, the creators of ARMA 3, have released this mighty impressive trailer showing off the visual technology of VBS3. Among the countries who will use the software to train soldiers in the classroom include, you guessed it, the United States, who, according to the press release, has selected it to be their flagship computer game. Ahem, I mean training program.
Often what we talk about when we talk about militaries financing videogames is that the medium is being used for potentially unethical purposes, like, you know, killing folks. But perhaps what we ought to be talking about is how the deep pockets of an army’s coffer can propel the medium forward, which we can see clearly in VBS’s procedurally generated foliage. After all, nations do need well-trained militaries. And games have reached a point where the budgets are astronomical. These kind of industry crossovers could be a good thing. For instance, just imagine what collaborations in fields like artificial intelligence would lead to. Yep, my thought too, the singularity.
December 20, 2013
Every toy you wanted for Christmas distilled into one ludicrous boardgame
The aught's ADD meets spirited 80's awesomeness.
Do Oculus Rift’s early adopters dream of a virtual reality afterlife?
Probably not. But the other day Aeon Magazine published a pretty creepy article, 3,500 words in length, speculating on the possibility of an afterlife which is entirely computer-simulated. So, basically, the singularity. The author’s thought process flows from the old question: if we could upload the content of our minds into a computer, wouldn’t we, like, live on forever? The way he describes it sounds kinda like The Sims, which isn’t so bad, considering the alternative is being stabbed with pitchforks for eternity for trying to become an immortal computerized demigod.
The author Michael Graziano, a neuroscientist by trade, goes on to explain:
If you die and are replaced by a really good computer simulation, it’ll just seem to you like you entered a scanner and came out somewhere else. . . . This vision of a virtual-reality afterlife, sometimes called ‘uploading’, entered the popular imagination via the short story ‘The Tunnel Under the World’ (1955) by the American science-fiction writer Frederik Pohl, though it also got a big boost from the movie Tron (1982).
I saw that one. I know what happens if you fall off the light-cycle. Not exactly my idea of spiritual bliss. If we get lucky, though, VR heaven could be like any videogame:
It’s already possible to programme a video game in which players move through a maze of four spatial dimensions. It turns out that, with a little practice, you can gain a fair degree of intuition for the four-dimensional regime… To a simulated mind in a simulated world, the confines of physical reality would become irrelevant.
Actually getting to this out-of-body-wonderland is the tricky part. The thing is we’d need a complete brain scan. None of the current options quite do the trick: genomes, neural maps, psychic readings. And also this would require the development of virtual environments we actually want to spend forever in. Valve, Gabe, Palmer Luckey of Oculus Rift, we’re counting on you for eternal life.
Joe Danger Infinity has some serious Nintendo mojo going on
Yesterday a new Joe Danger was revealed to the world. Coming to your iPhone “real soon,” it has been confirmed, is Joe Danger Infinity, the latest entry about popping wheelies on a stunt bike.
Personally, I couldn’t be more excited, which is a little surprising, given that the guys at Hello have been birthing Joe Danger games like they’re an Amish family. Usually, I’ll bemoan sequel-itus by the third or fourth iteration, but for Joe, I’ll gladly make an exception. There’s something intangible about jumping bikes and careening from lane to lane that just doesn’t get old, no matter how many times you do it.
Nintendo is the other company that comes to mind who can churn out the same formula, seemingly forever, and it always turn out great. Case in point: we’re now on the eighth Mario Kart, count 'em, and I see no signs of fatigue. It seems Joe Danger possesses that same magic, so go ahead and insert obvious joke about playing it for infinity here:
These lost Tale of Tales prototypes offer a fascinating peek into the creative process
Say what you will about Tale of Tales—the best known and ostensibly pretentious art game house from Belgium. For ten years they’ve been making games that challenge our expectations. On their anniversary, they are opening the cellar and giving away, for a small donation, experiments and prototypes that never saw the light of day. These include canceled projects, missing scenes, demos, and an early build of Fatale which added first-person wind controls. We don't know how the wind-control would work, but perhaps that's why it never made it into the game.
Given the studio’s reputation for poetic, disturbing, experiences that may or may not fall under your current definition of games, there is certainly a strange appeal to playing this lot of lost games. But the real value is that we get to look behind the scenes and see the creative process in action. This is something the average player rarely if ever sets an eye on.
Take the prototype version of The Path, which is actually started as a mod of their previous work about fauns in the woods The Endless Forest; or reflect on the inherent weirdness of the inherently weird iPhone game Vanitas being repackaged as a casual match 3 game. The collection is full of curios that capture the unexpected alterations that happen in the process of creation, so take a gander at the cutting room floor.
New PBS Game/Show counts down the biggest ideas in games in 2013
It’s been a great year for games. So for our special end of the year Game/Show, we’ve brainstormed the brightest and boldest ideas of the past twelve months. Of course there have been moments we’d rather forget (we’re looking at you, Resolutiongate), but overall 2013 was a melange of technical innovation and social change that makes us optimistic for 2014.
A few trends we love that made the list? Women uniting into a force to be reckoned with, narrative designers becoming the hot new thing, and bots fighting each other so we don’t have to. Phew! Oh yeah, new consoles came on the scene. But did this year mark the end of the dedicated game machine as we know it?
Watch the episode to find out, and let us know what you think in the comments!
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