Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 476

Why open world might not be right for The Witcher 3

The new trailer for The Witcher 3 dropped this weekend, and our first thought was: daaaaamn, a reenactment of a Nordic village being massacred has never looked so pretty. Just gazing at the level of nuance present in the dusky prairie, the gothic city squares, the wan light behind the autumnal trees—it really shows off what the new generation of hardware can do. 

The Xbox One and PS4 seem primed to create convincing, beautiful, interconnected landscapes that are bigger than ever, meaning that more games are posed to become, as the trailer touts, “multi-region open worlds.” But is there a downside? 

The previous games in the Witcher franchise are regarded for their tightly-authored stories that could go in several directions, depending on your choices. But with the game bulging in real estate exponentially, you have to wonder if the writers can keep up with the expansion. One possibility we hope doesn’t happen is that the narrative could end up suffering from the sheer size of it, as the choices you make dwindle in significance in the open-ended vastness. We wonder how many franchises will become open-world games to push these systems, and how many will lose what they fundamentally are because of it.

Towerfall Ascension doesn't have online multiplayer and that's OK

Though we go into a swivet whenever the internet is out for over five minutes, some activities just aren’t all that great online. These include physical intimacy (see our awesome article of cybering in Second Life in issue 3), fine dining, and four-player fighting games.

This is why we shouldn’t care that Towerfall Ascension, the so-retro-it’s-medieval melee coming next year to PS4 and PC, doesn’t have online multiplayer. Matt Thorsen of the project tweeted last week, “no online! There is substantially more 1p and 2p content, but you'll need 4 controllers for 4p versus still.” 

Though some have voiced concern, this is kind of a non-issue. We’re not going to go all Sherry Turkle on you and claim that our digital obsession is creating an online society of anti-social strangers who are desperately isolated even though they are connected over fiberoptic cable. But we will say that four-player fighters the likes of Towerfall and Smash Bros. and Samurai Gunn and, of course, STARWHAL (which I now know is a play on the marine mammal narwhals and not unicorn-beaked orcas—thank you Facebook commenter) are just better in the company of three rowdy human beings nudging elbows and getting obscene.  

But you might say that without online you’d have no one to play against. To that we’d say that you wouldn’t be getting the genuine experience anyway, without the friendly and ferocious interactions off-screen. You might say that you already have a really good time playing shooters online. But we’d say that those are different types of games; that they require each player to have their own screen; that four-player fighters originated with Nintendo’s impetus for bringing folks together and in the arcades. You might say you’re weary of this rhetorical argument. We’d say we agree.

Playing War: A New World Algorithm

A meditation on violence, America and videogames.

The Walking Dead Season 2 is closer than you think

By now the first season of The Walking Dead in my memory is a blur of consistent bickering, uncalled for cannibalism, and mobs of white trash that I feared and despised even more than those who had been zombified. This is why I can’t wait for season two. Well, that and because it was an incredible leap in the evolutionary path of the adventure game.

Now that it has been revealed that the much-anticipated followup is coming soon on December 17th, a couple of things have piqued our interest. As you well know, the series uses telemetry data to track the choices you make as you play, and that data will carry over to affect the story in season two. Considering the way things ended, we’re anxious to learn how it will translate. 

Another thing that we’re curious to find out is how the game will be structured. It is known that you will be able to play as Clementine, the little orphan girl than stole the Internet’s heart and turned us all into caring virtual surrogate fathers last year. However, it’s not known if you can play as others as well, as you could in the stopgap 400 Days episode, which fragmented the game into various chapters based around several different personalties, a la Pulp Fiction. There’s a lot to look forward to with this one. 

Fjords is the black metal version of Cave Story

Explore. Destroy. Repeat.

Tearaway really doesn't like guys with beards

Rex Crowle, the lead creative on Tearaway, had a friendly fireside chat with the good fellas at Reddit the other day, and fittingly, this piece of beard-worthy news came out of it. An awesome feature that didn’t make it into the game is beard-recognition. “The gameplay programmer used facial recognition via the Vita's camera to only unlock some doors if you (the player) were wearing a beard,” he typed amidst a swirl of fawning paper-craft adorers. 

This would have made the Vita the first beard-controlled device, but alas, it was not to be, and we couldn’t be more bummed. It seems that facial recognition technology has trouble capturing beards, and while Crowle didn’t mention whether mutton chops, the a la Souvarov, or the French fork was particularly blameworthy, games have a beard problem, and this matter is concerning. 

Is the goatee the final frontier for facial recognition, and more importantly, what possibilities are we missing out on because of it? One could imagine a synchronous game like Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, which requires you to wait for the proper moon phase to advance, instead making you wait until you grow out your facial hair. Someone needs to figure this out.

(Image borrowed from Unwinnable and their incredible photodocumentary on the best beards of GDC)

New PBS Game/Show asks how much PS4 and Xbox One's graphics matter

Seeing is not always believing.

Just because virtual reality can take us to GTA 4 doesn't mean it should

Virtual reality continues to show that man will go to great lengths to supplant himself inside the world of Grand Theft Auto. A batshit but impressive tech demo of one devoted man strapped into every virtual reality peripheral there is makes that evident. In the video, he’s using a locomotion device called the Virtualizer to sit on a park bench in Liberty City, punch out a pedestrian, and run away.

This makes us wonder if our current crop of virtual game environments are places we really want to visit in virtual reality. I was kind of hoping for a fusion of Fraggle Rock and Inception, myself. We’ve already seen the difficulties of adapting VR to the first-person shooter. They move much faster than we actually do, and playing them is like deep sea fishing on choppy waters: there’s a good possibility you’ll get sick. Also important: they’re filled with realistic violence that we are accustomed to when viewing it from the detached perspective of a screen, but could be too close for comfort when virtually swimming in it. 

When I spoke to the guys at Oculus Rift about which games are best for the system, they were quick to insist that the games that work best with their system haven’t been invented yet. That’s what we’re excited for. Although we wouldn't mind taking a stroll in the park.

Is Mega Man the Betty White of videogames?

They’re both old and lovable and have lasers for hands, so.

Porn viewership is up on consoles. Here's why that matters.

we know what you're really doing with your Wiis