Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 75

An ode to Reinhardt, tortured scion of a broken land

We love Overwatch. So we assembled 22 of our best writers and set them to work—a writer to jump into the skin (or robotic shell) of each character. The result is 22 odes. You can use the “Overwatch odes” tag to leaf through them all, or use the handy list at the bottom of this post.

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Berlin, 1945. Spring has sprung, drawing a bitterly cold winter across Europe to a close. Like a stockyard’s hammer, Stalin’s Red Army has struck crippling blow after crippling blow to the Wehrmacht, and now sits outside the gates of Germany’s capital city. Concerted bombing by Allied forces has already reduced Berlin to ruins. In what remains of their homes, the men and women tremble, certain that the horrors visited on their city will equal the campaign of extermination carried out in the East by the Einsatzgruppen.

But it is not just the external horrors of war that Germany will be wracked by in the years to come. Atop all the devastation that will be dealt to them by the Soviets, you can also place at the feet of the common German folk the knowledge that they—and they alone—were responsible for the most barbaric, nightmarish crime of the entire war. This is the psychic wound dealt to the country’s future generations, the scars of terrible violence shackled to a shame the world will never forget.

Reinhardt suffers from a weight greater than any other character

Bearing in mind that grim legacy, how could you not have some sympathy for Wilhelm Reinhardt, Overwatch’s Renn Faire-attired, mustachioed behemoth?

Sure, Overwatch is set in the near future, but even today, 70 years later, the most popular games emerging from Germany are the neurotically pacifistic Agricola (2007) and Settlers of Catan (1995). Reinhardt, his soul leaden with the terrors his country has both suffered and visited upon others, yearns for an age before machine guns, bombs, and particle cannons. An age where disputes between teutonic chevaliers could be settled with enormous hammers and shouting. “HONOR!” he shouts about every 10 seconds. “GLORY!” he screams, in the intervening time between HONORs.

I love Reinhardt. I love his obsessive drive to anachronize and give meaning to these future battles, turn what is a Sisyphian struggle over an empty parking lot into a brawl between warriors of good and evil. I love that while other characters are equipped with laser beams and freeze rays, Reinhardt’s abilities are “tackle” and “swing hammer so hard it hurts people far away.”

Oh, sure, he may have the volume and accent of a cartoon yodeler, but make no mistake—behind his lion-faced barrier shield, underneath his hydraulic super-armor, Reinhardt suffers from a weight greater than any other character in Overwatch. His fellow countryman Friedrich Nietzche once said: “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” Reinhardt once said, “I AM THE ULTIMATE CRUSHING MACHINE!” As a tank, Reinhardt’s main job for his team is to survive. What meaning has he engineered for himself behind that barrier? What has he heard in the silence of his slaughtered supports and flankers? He is taking the point. He begs you not to try and stop him.

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Offensive Heroes

Genji – Genji is with you

McCree – Who you kidding? McCree is Overwatch‘s true shooter

Pharah – Don’t play fair, play Pharah, exclusively

Reaper – In defense of Reaper, the patron saint of mall-goth teens

Soldier 76 – Soldier 76 is here to make everyone else look good

Tracer – A series of limericks about Tracer, because why not

Defensive Heroes

Bastion – Bastion is the machine pointed at the world

Hanzo – Hanzo “looks like a good man,” my Japanese mom raves

Junkrat – I have fallen in love with Junkrat

Mei – Here comes Mei, the badass nerd hell-bent on revenge

Torbjörn – An ode to hard-working, salt-of-the-earth Torbjörn

Widowmaker – Widowmaker made a widow of me

Tank Heroes

D.Va – An ode to D.Va, the sassiest dream girl this side of Overwatch

Roadhog – An ode to Roadhog is an ode to ugliness

Winston – Winston, the Science Gorilla, is in charge

Zarya – Zarya makes Mother Russia her bitch

Support Heroes

Ana – Ana is the protective mother we all want

Lucio – Inside the idiot party-bubble of Lucio

Mercy – Mercy is the most terrifying character in Overwatch

Symmetra – Go ahead, sleep on Symmetra

Zenyatta – Praise be to Zenyatta, then chill the heck out

The post An ode to Reinhardt, tortured scion of a broken land appeared first on Kill Screen.

Don’t play fair, play Pharah, exclusively

We love Overwatch. So we assembled 22 of our best writers and set them to work—a writer to jump into the skin (or robotic shell) of each character. The result is 22 odes. You can use the “Overwatch odes” tag to leaf through them all, or use the handy list at the bottom of this post.

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At the end of a round of your fave shooter, you are blessed with a wall of stats to pore through and analyze. If you’re a Very Serious Player, maybe you bought a Very Serious Mouse to improve your “accuracy percentage.” But what if one of those popular statistics—bragged about and trained for—were “bullets landed.” This would be very silly. A stat like that would suggest your goal is to recklessly fire as many bullets as you can to maximize the opportunities for one to smack into somebody … What a coincidence, then, that Pharah has this stat, as well as splash-damaging rockets, and—like everyone else—infinite ammo.

you too can land some rad Pharah kills

Leading your targets and very nearly one-shotting Tracer is satisfying, but in no way do you need to be a tactical pro to excel with Pharah. It does not matter if you’re a newbie, drunk, sleep-deprived, or playing with your feet, you too can land some rad Pharah kills if you just follow these steps:

Jump up high enough to make their whole team look like ants
Fire rockets into places where people are (approx.)
Repeat until your Ultimate is charged
Repeat with (borderline broken) Ultimate

Overwatch levels have a bunch of verticality built right into them, and Pharah is the only character who continually scrapes the top of the level, and who slides off roofs that are suspiciously much more slippery than they look. In fact, while she’s busy dropping rockets on dejected Reapers and D.Vas, only one other hero can get nearly as high: Pharah’s sweet wonderful girlfriend Mercy.

When Mercy’s watching out for you, you really can one-shot Tracer, or survive against those dangerous heroes who shoot normal straight bullets, which in Overwatch is, like, one guy. With the power of love and rockets and not a care in the world for aim, Pharah—with Mercy’s help—really just ruins a team like they’re so many grumpy dwarves or earth-bound gorillas.

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Offensive Heroes

Genji – Genji is with you

McCree – Who you kidding? McCree is Overwatch‘s true shooter

Reaper – In defense of Reaper, the patron saint of mall-goth teens

Soldier 76 – Soldier 76 is here to make everyone else look good

Tracer – A series of limericks about Tracer, because why not

Defensive Heroes

Bastion – Bastion is the machine pointed at the world

Hanzo – Hanzo “looks like a good man,” my Japanese mom raves

Junkrat – I have fallen in love with Junkrat

Mei – Here comes Mei, the badass nerd hell-bent on revenge

Torbjörn – An ode to hard-working, salt-of-the-earth Torbjörn

Widowmaker – Widowmaker made a widow of me

Tank Heroes

D.Va – An ode to D.Va, the sassiest dream girl this side of Overwatch

Reinhardt – An ode to Reinhardt, tortured scion of a broken land

Roadhog – An ode to Roadhog is an ode to ugliness

Winston – Winston, the Science Gorilla, is in charge

Zarya – Zarya makes Mother Russia her bitch

Support Heroes

Ana – Ana is the protective mother we all want

Lucio – Inside the idiot party-bubble of Lucio

Mercy – Mercy is the most terrifying character in Overwatch

Symmetra – Go ahead, sleep on Symmetra

Zenyatta – Praise be to Zenyatta, then chill the heck out

The post Don’t play fair, play Pharah, exclusively appeared first on Kill Screen.

Bastion is the machine pointed at the world

We love Overwatch. So we assembled 22 of our best writers and set them to work—a writer to jump into the skin (or robotic shell) of each character. The result is 22 odes. You can use the “Overwatch odes” tag to leaf through them all, or use the handy list at the bottom of this post.

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I’m not very good at shooters. My aim is poor and my reaction time is molasses. I’m also terribly impatient. So when I turn on Overwatch, more than one layer of my grey matter shuts down entirely. My attention span is reduced to that of a fish, twitching left, nudging right, running, jumping, and shooting as if the map were a bundle of muscle fibers and I was an unwanted electrical signal spasming through it.

This is why Bastion always kills me. Not just once, or twice, but repeatedly. The first time I run around a corner into an open arena, I can usually guess he’s going to kill me. The second time I insist I’ll be quicker, trying to draw and aim first against a sentient machine gun who already knows I’m coming. And I’ll keep coming, breaking against the lethal AI wave after wave, as sniper, rocketeer, and eventually tank. I’ll march right up to Bastion and shred him at point-blank or I won’t do it at all.

In this way, Bastion provides a crucible for determination not unlike the water gun race at a carnival. All you can do is aim water into a hole for 30 seconds and hope for the best. None of the other games at amusement parks or county fairs ever got under my skin in the same way. For some reason, the futility of throwing darts at deflated balloons, or trying to toss ping-pong balls into milk bottles, seemed obvious enough.

It’s deeply cathartic to slaughter other Overwatch players

But the water gun felt completely within my control. If I was good enough, if I focused hard enough, the oversized gorilla holding a banana would be mine. I would see the bullseye in my mind before I went to sleep. The next day I would aim better. Pull the trigger harder. And, surely, my horse would tick across the finish line first.

Decades later, I’m waiting to respawn back on the Temple of Anubis. This next time through the first choke point will go different. I’ll aim better. Left-click harder. And Bastion will die. It’s in these moments, when I’m playing Overwatch in the most wrong way possible, that I feel like anything’s possible, like I’m searching for an invisible crack in the game’s code, an instant in which the game’s rules stop applying to me, and the sheer weight of my desire to kill that fucking robot will lead me to a breakthrough.

But if insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results each time, Bastion is also my lobotomy. Playing as the SST Laboratories Siege Automaton E54 is like being the man behind the counter at a carnival, running the table on wide-eyed children and their parents, who are too tired to put up resistance. It’s deeply cathartic to slaughter other Overwatch players as they try to dash down exposed hallways or sneak out of cover after you’ve wasted so many respawns trying to do the same.

Especially because with Bastion the mantra of “aim better, click harder” actually does produce results. The walking, talking minigun is supposed to force players to think more creatively, to adapt by learning maps better and switching characters more often. No matter how good you think you are, some situations are simply unwinnable, so go back to the drawing board try again with a different set of tools. The fact that Play of the Game wrap-ups are still littered with Bastion montages shows human nature might be more complicated than that.

The gatling gun, on whose design Bastion is modeled, was invented by, and named after, Richard Jordan Gatling. Part of a truly terrifying development in the state of warcraft, the weapon could cut down human beings with speed and ease.

It was Gatling’s hope, however, that the gun would actually save human life. “It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine—a gun—which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred,” he wrote, “that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease [would] be greatly diminished.” The enigmatic logic governing the human mind proved too unwieldy for his designs as well.

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Offensive Heroes

Genji – Genji is with you

McCree – Who you kidding? McCree is Overwatch‘s true shooter

Pharah – Don’t play fair, play Pharah, exclusively

Reaper – In defense of Reaper, the patron saint of mall-goth teens

Soldier 76 – Soldier 76 is here to make everyone else look good

Tracer – A series of limericks about Tracer, because why not

Defensive Heroes

Hanzo – Hanzo “looks like a good man,” my Japanese mom raves

Junkrat – I have fallen in love with Junkrat

Mei – Here comes Mei, the badass nerd hell-bent on revenge

Torbjörn – An ode to hard-working, salt-of-the-earth Torbjörn

Widowmaker – Widowmaker made a widow of me

Tank Heroes

D.Va – An ode to D.Va, the sassiest dream girl this side of Overwatch

Reinhardt – An ode to Reinhardt, tortured scion of a broken land

Roadhog – An ode to Roadhog is an ode to ugliness

Winston – Winston, the Science Gorilla, is in charge

Zarya – Zarya makes Mother Russia her bitch

Support Heroes

Ana – Ana is the protective mother we all want

Lucio – Inside the idiot party-bubble of Lucio

Mercy – Mercy is the most terrifying character in Overwatch

Symmetra – Go ahead, sleep on Symmetra

Zenyatta – Praise be to Zenyatta, then chill the heck out

The post Bastion is the machine pointed at the world appeared first on Kill Screen.

An ode to hard-working, salt-of-the-earth Torbjörn

We love Overwatch. So we assembled 22 of our best writers and set them to work—a writer to jump into the skin (or robotic shell) of each character. The result is 22 odes. You can use the “Overwatch odes” tag to leaf through them all, or use the handy list at the bottom of this post.

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Torbjörn is a dwarf. He builds things. What Blizzard did to come up with Torbjörn was look at Team Fortress 2 and say, “Which World of Warcraft archetype would the Engineer be?” Obviously the answer is dwarf, because dwarves are squat and grumpy, and they build things.

You play Torbjörn because you want to play tower defense

I can’t tell you what it’s like to play Torbjörn, because I have never played him. In my nine hours of Overwatch I have never played anyone but Pharah. What I can tell you is what it’s like to play against Torbjörn.  

Torbjörn builds a turret. He has some other skills, which I looked up and promptly forgot, but really his defining ability is the turret. The turret sits in one place and shoots at enemy players. Because the turret is immobile, Pharah’s rocket launcher is supposed to be good against it. But because I am a noob, this has not been my experience. When I try to shoot the turret, the turret shoots me back. I often miss. The turret does not.

Every class-based first-person shooter has at least one character designed for people who do not enjoy the core mechanics of first-person shooting. Hence: Torbjörn. Yes, he has a gun; yes, the gun does decent damage. But you don’t play Torbjörn because you want to click on people. You play Torbjörn because you want a turret to click on people for you. You play Torbjörn because you want to play tower defense.

And there’s nothing wrong with that! Overwatch is overtly committed to diversity. Characters from every region of the globe! Robots, cowboys, and a soft-spoken ape! Different body types and personalities and skillsets and playstyles! For a high-flying jetpack trooper like Pharah to feel unique, you need stolid, earthy heroes like Torbjörn to differentiate her from. In the landscape painting that is Overwatch, Torbjörn is not the brilliant sun, nor the softly waving fields of pink flowers; he’s the dirt in the foreground, the loamy soil at the foot of the trees, the simple and pastoral foundation without which the other elements, for all their beauty, would seem garish, lurid, and fundamentally incomplete.

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Offensive Heroes

Genji – Genji is with you

McCree – Who you kidding? McCree is Overwatch‘s true shooter

Pharah – Don’t play fair, play Pharah, exclusively

Reaper – In defense of Reaper, the patron saint of mall-goth teens

Soldier 76 – Soldier 76 is here to make everyone else look good

Tracer – A series of limericks about Tracer, because why not

Defensive Heroes

Bastion – Bastion is the machine pointed at the world

Hanzo – Hanzo “looks like a good man,” my Japanese mom raves

Junkrat – I have fallen in love with Junkrat

Mei – Here comes Mei, the badass nerd hell-bent on revenge

Widowmaker – Widowmaker made a widow of me

Tank Heroes

D.Va – An ode to D.Va, the sassiest dream girl this side of Overwatch

Reinhardt – An ode to Reinhardt, tortured scion of a broken land

Roadhog – An ode to Roadhog is an ode to ugliness

Winston – Winston, the Science Gorilla, is in charge

Zarya – Zarya makes Mother Russia her bitch

Support Heroes

Ana – Ana is the protective mother we all want

Lucio – Inside the idiot party-bubble of Lucio

Mercy – Mercy is the most terrifying character in Overwatch

Symmetra – Go ahead, sleep on Symmetra

Zenyatta – Praise be to Zenyatta, then chill the heck out

The post An ode to hard-working, salt-of-the-earth Torbjörn appeared first on Kill Screen.

Widowmaker made a widow of me

We love Overwatch. So we assembled 22 of our best writers and set them to work—a writer to jump into the skin (or robotic shell) of each character. The result is 22 odes. You can use the “Overwatch odes” tag to leaf through them all, or use the handy list at the bottom of this post.

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Dear Widowmaker,

I’m writing to you because it’s been awhile since we’ve looked into each other’s eyes and saw anything more than that first moment we met. We reveled in predestination (surely knowing that you would see me and I you) and in soft mornings we danced in the battlefield on the corpses of those whose widows you did make.

With new eyes we explored this world together, from the rooftops of factories in Russia to the winding alleys of London we stood, hand in hand, and watched from the shadows all the puppet players of the world move red-traced paths we thought we had avoided.

Grapple hooking over the heads of those that would defy us

All this, in the halcyon days before the Kaplan storm hit and with it brought in the seas of competitive waters. Since then, their waves have crashed and I admit that these waters have weathered and tired me, dulling me to the magnetism we first felt. Side by side with you, I find it hard to reclaim that rush that brought us together. Your rifle, once sing-song like with its triplet clicks is now like a clock, its voice fading into the background noise of repetition.

Too often do I feel like time spent with you is time indulged … I watch my allies fall by my side as we snake through alleys and peer out of windows—is this it? Is that what we wanted, what we planned? Grapple hooking over the heads of those that would defy us, peering together through your scoped rifle and waiting for the right moment to usher in yet another widow to this world. I look back at this beautiful beginning and wonder how the world really saw us—not as the rebellious flame we imagined but maybe only cold embers whose flame will never rise, destined to only smolder for eternity.

So boldly we used to live when the world was young, but now? Now I fear I risk the fate of those who we stomped on. I find myself more often now looking down on where we used to stand. I come back to where we would meet only to find you too have moved on, in other hands you now seek me and I hear you watching me like we used to watch others. But to those who hold you now, my fear is with them, as they may soon too realize the conclusions I have drawn. Widowmaker, is this your nature?

Your web is seductive, initiating the timid and scared with a bargain of which would make even Faust’s cheeks blush. I now see what I once was. Widowmaker, quick, make a widow of me now, or shall we strike each other down in battle so that your web may never trap another.

Yours,

Kyle

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Offensive Heroes

Genji – Genji is with you

McCree – Who you kidding? McCree is Overwatch‘s true shooter

Pharah – Don’t play fair, play Pharah, exclusively

Reaper – In defense of Reaper, the patron saint of mall-goth teens

Soldier 76 – Soldier 76 is here to make everyone else look good

Tracer – A series of limericks about Tracer, because why not

Defensive Heroes

Bastion – Bastion is the machine pointed at the world

Hanzo – Hanzo “looks like a good man,” my Japanese mom raves

Junkrat – I have fallen in love with Junkrat

Mei – Here comes Mei, the badass nerd hell-bent on revenge

Torbjörn – An ode to hard-working, salt-of-the-earth Torbjörn

Tank Heroes

D.Va – An ode to D.Va, the sassiest dream girl this side of Overwatch

Reinhardt – An ode to Reinhardt, tortured scion of a broken land

Roadhog – An ode to Roadhog is an ode to ugliness

Winston – Winston, the Science Gorilla, is in charge

Zarya – Zarya makes Mother Russia her bitch

Support Heroes

Ana – Ana is the protective mother we all want

Lucio – Inside the idiot party-bubble of Lucio

Mercy – Mercy is the most terrifying character in Overwatch

Symmetra – Go ahead, sleep on Symmetra

Zenyatta – Praise be to Zenyatta, then chill the heck out

The post Widowmaker made a widow of me appeared first on Kill Screen.

Go ahead, sleep on Symmetra

We love Overwatch. So we assembled 22 of our best writers and set them to work—a writer to jump into the skin (or robotic shell) of each character. The result is 22 odes. You can use the “Overwatch odes” tag to leaf through them all, or use the handy list at the bottom of this post.

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Look, I get it: you hate Symmetra. She doesn’t heal. She doesn’t snipe. She never gets her own Play of the Game, but trust me, she’s always there, silently, in the background of everybody else’s. Genji mowing down an entire team that’s trying to capture a point. Winston leaping into the backlines before sending three opponents careening to their bottomless deaths. Dang, a Tracer might think. I thought everybody was dead, and yet here they are again, with shields, stabbing me in the kidneys and hitting me off cliffs.

Symmetra will autograph your baby

Have you ever noticed how short the respawn timer is in Overwatch? It’s mercilessly so, but built in to each map is an additional respawn penalty in the form of travel time. We’ve all died numerous times only to walk through a Hollywood set just to get back to the real game. It’s a moving obituary: a place for regret. A place for reflection. A place for shame.

Nobody likes contemplating their life choices every single time they shamble back to the fray after getting Hanzo’d in the face. It’s slow and lonely. Teleportation is neither of those things. Teleportation is quick, and probably like going to a photon orgy where you may or may not be cloned and then annihilated. Symmetra will teleport you. Symmetra will give you a shield. Symmetra will autograph your baby.

Symmetra might not fit neatly in with the other healing supports, but that’s because she’s running on her own system of order and trying to beat back the chaos of Overwatch’s colorful world. And when that chaos ends in a team wipe, she’ll be there, helping your teammates’ sorry asses get back to the front lines to defend as fast as possible. She’ll be there, in the background, putting you all neatly back onto the shelf that is the capture point, her shield a fresh dustcover keeping the disorder at bay.

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Offensive Heroes

Genji – Genji is with you

McCree – Who you kidding? McCree is Overwatch‘s true shooter

Pharah – Don’t play fair, play Pharah, exclusively

Reaper – In defense of Reaper, the patron saint of mall-goth teens

Soldier 76 – Soldier 76 is here to make everyone else look good

Tracer – A series of limericks about Tracer, because why not

Defensive Heroes

Bastion – Bastion is the machine pointed at the world

Hanzo – Hanzo “looks like a good man,” my Japanese mom raves

Junkrat – I have fallen in love with Junkrat

Mei – Here comes Mei, the badass nerd hell-bent on revenge

Torbjörn – An ode to hard-working, salt-of-the-earth Torbjörn

Widowmaker – Widowmaker made a widow of me

Tank Heroes

D.Va – An ode to D.Va, the sassiest dream girl this side of Overwatch

Reinhardt – An ode to Reinhardt, tortured scion of a broken land

Roadhog – An ode to Roadhog is an ode to ugliness

Winston – Winston, the Science Gorilla, is in charge

Zarya – Zarya makes Mother Russia her bitch

Support Heroes

Ana – Ana is the protective mother we all want

Lucio – Inside the idiot party-bubble of Lucio

Mercy – Mercy is the most terrifying character in Overwatch

Zenyatta – Praise be to Zenyatta, then chill the heck out

The post Go ahead, sleep on Symmetra appeared first on Kill Screen.

Celeste is the insanely difficult and insanely cute platformer we deserve

As part of one of the many petty, savage feuds in Greek mythology, King Sisyphus was forced by Zeus to roll a boulder up a hill and watch it roll right back down

as punishment for his murderous, greedy ways. But also, mostly, as punishment for thinking he was cleverer than Zeus.

Designers Matt Thorson (TowerFall) and Noel Berry (Skytorn) are currently working on Celeste, a game that’s sort of abstractly Sisyphean: there’s no boulder except the boulder of difficulty you have to shoulder as you guide redheaded Celeste through its 90+ levels. Initially created as a quick, hard-as-nails platformer for a Games Done Quick marathon, it’s now being designed as a much bigger experience.

You can play the old version here (fair warning: it’s tough) and find out more about Celeste, due sometime in 2017.

Lenovo

Sponsored by Lenovo. Speed and precision in your hands. Lenovo Ideapad Y700.

The post Celeste is the insanely difficult and insanely cute platformer we deserve appeared first on Kill Screen.

Pokemon Go has no idea how to tell you what Pokemon are nearby

“We’re currently testing a variation of the ‘Nearby Pokemon’ feature with a subset of users,” read the August 9th patch notes for Pokemon GO. “During this period you may see some variation in the nearby Pokemon UI.”

This is an understatement. The quality of Pokemon GO is almost irrelevant in the face of its sheer cultural weight, but make no mistake: this game is busted. First it would tell you with a scale of three arcane “footprint” icons your general proximity to a given Pokemon: whether one footprint or three meant they were close is anyone’s guess. Also: what direction should you go to find that Meowth that’s two footprints away? I have no clue.

Then the designers at Niantic completely removed the footprints, instead leaving a list of Pokemon with absolutely no way to tell which ones were closest to you. Coupled with the game’s inconsistent GPS tracking, which can see your trainer slide all over the place while you’re sat calmly enjoying a cup of coffee, this phase of the Pokemon GO Tracking Saga is a particularly dark one.

Now, the apparently tentative (see those patch notes) solution is to match the Pokemon to a nearby location: if you haven’t gotten close enough to find them, they’re superimposed over some grass to let you know they’re still hidden. Why it would be helpful to show where they are if you’re close enough to catch them is, again, anyone’s guess.

That said: I’m still trying to catch them all. This is the perverse paradox of Pokemon GO. We are powerless to resist the primal allure of catching them all, even as the designers toy with us by stripping out essential functions. Soon it will be a single screen with a featureless Pikachu. Tap him and he makes his noise. Your inventory fills up beyond capacity, beyond comprehension with faceless, mewling Pikachus. You look forward to the next update.

Lenovo

Sponsored by Lenovo. Speed and precision in your hands. Lenovo Ideapad Y700.

The post Pokemon Go has no idea how to tell you what Pokemon are nearby appeared first on Kill Screen.

Get punny with It Ain’t Over Till the Fat Lady Sings

Animator Veronica Jelinek and designer Tim Garbos’s It Ain’t Over Till the Fat Lady Sings is an adorable two-minute interactive animation that gently pokes fun at the absurdity of five English idioms. “It’s raining cats and dogs” becomes a deluge of pink-and-blue animals pouring from the sky while you open and close an umbrella. You can pull a literal leg until it stretches across the screen and snaps back like a roll of measuring tape.

It Ain’t Over Till the Fat Lady Sings is a clever, funny little game that points to some unexplored areas in the overlap between animation and games; it allows you to trigger its lovingly drawn, brightly hued animations, while keeping you within a tight enough structure to function as comedy. By focusing so tightly on one idea—we say some weird stuff in English!—it illuminates the endless potential of games as a medium. Play it here.

Lenovo

Sponsored by Lenovo. Speed and precision in your hands. Lenovo Ideapad Y700.

The post Get punny with It Ain’t Over Till the Fat Lady Sings appeared first on Kill Screen.

Morrissey and PETA made a game, and yep, it’s terrible

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Morrissey has yet again teamed up with PETA, this time to create a game illustrating the atrocities of factory farming. Created by independent studio This Is Pop, This Beautiful Creature Must Die is a highly-stylized 8-bit clicker that, at first glance, is all too reminiscent of Flappy Bird (2014).

The original woke heartthrob, Morrissey has been unabashedly pushing his animal rights agenda since 1985’s Meat is Murder. The singer and PETA are a natural pair, both sharing a penchant for the criminally vulgar, and the desire to liberate animals by any means necessary. Unfortunately, that determination doesn’t translate into the game’s content, or lack thereof.

PETA’s new game is neither visually impressive nor thought-provoking

The goal of This Beautiful Creature Must Die is simple: save falling cows, pigs, turkeys, and chickens (each with their own panel) from the spinning blades below.  The occasional bomb (which obviously should not be clicked) is the only thing that breaks up the game’s repetition.

Though PETA’s work is not solely centered on factory farming, the organization highlights it as one of their most exigent issues. PETA has struggled with being too revolting in the past (case in point: their sinister handbag stunt from a few months ago), but their new game is neither visually impressive nor thought-provoking—something they generally succeed in doing, if nothing else.

Barbarism begins at home, and you’d think that an accessible, non-threatening clicker would be the perfect way to get people thinking about animal cruelty. Morrissey boldly claims that, “This game is the biggest social crusade of all, as we safeguard the weak and helpless from violent human aggression. You don’t get that from Pokémon Go.” But the game grows tiresome in record time, and without a goal, it’s difficult to imagine how it would change anyone’s opinion, let alone start a conversation about the very real atrocities of factory farming.

You can play the game for yourself here.

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