Posted 5/21/13 2:00 pm EST by kevinkelly in call of duty, Call of Duty: Ghosts, PC, Previews, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360
By Kevin Kelly
By now you've probably heard about the Xbox One, Microsoft's new game console that was announced today. That reveal also included a deep dive into Call of Duty: Ghosts, the upcoming shooter in the ongoing series from Activision, due out this November. We were able to get a sneak peek at the title last week, and were treated to an underwater sequence from the game that involved following an enemy submarine and destroying it.
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Posted 5/3/13 11:14 am EST by kevinkelly in Interviews
By Kevin Kelly
Movies about geeks have never been particularly flattering. Even in films like Revenge of the Nerds where the nerds win the day, there is plenty of dramatic license taken to make them badass so they can win the girl. But stories that cut to the heart of geekdom and reveal what true nerdery is all about? Those are extremely rare. It's even rarer when you find yourself pulling for the geek at the heart of those stories, despite everything else.
Luckily this year at SXSW we stumbled across Zero Charisma, a film about a gamemaster struggling to keep his RPG campaign alive after losing one of the main players. But problems arise when he has to battle with the replacement for popularity, and his world begins to unravel. The entire movie hinges on the fantastic performance of Sam Eidson as Scott Weidemeyer, and while he might seem a bit over the top, the honest truth is that we all know someone exactly like him. And we can see facets of ourselves in his personality.
Filmmaker Katie Graham served as director of photography on the cult hit documentary Best Worst Movie about the making of Troll 2, which she also co-edited with fellow filmmaker Andrew Matthews. Together, they co-directed Zero Charisma, based on Matthews' script. We caught up with them long after the frenzy of SXSW to talk about the making of the movie, and how they stayed true to nerdom. Read on for the full interview, and try to catch Zero Charisma if you can. With any luck, a distribution deal will get it close to you. There's a scene where Scott blasts some World of Warcraft players that you really need to see.
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Posted 4/10/13 7:00 pm EST by kevinkelly in Uncategorized
By Kevin Kelly
Capcom had thoughtfully set up a multi-station obstacle course for us at GDC, otherwise known as the Capcom Press Suite, which is parlance for "cramming as many video games as possible into one hotel room." Which is much better than unlimited room service and free pay TV. Scattered around the room in every nook and cranny were Capcom's up and coming titles at hands-on stations ready to be touched and inspected. So without further ado, we're going to run you through the same course, and give you our impressions.
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Posted 4/10/13 10:33 am EST by kevinkelly in GDC, PC, PS4
By Kevin Kelly
A decade has passed since the third and final game in the Thief series, "Thief: Deadly Shadows," was released, and a new generation of gamers who have been raised on consoles and handhelds have no idea what it was like to slink about in the shadows as a master thief named Garrett. Which of course means that it's time for a reboot, or a sequel where the protagonist has been away for a very long time. Thus enters the upcoming "Thief" from Eidos Montreal and Square Enix, which is a little bit of both.
The original "Thief: The Dark Project" actually began life as different different projects with developer Looking Glass Studios, including "Better Red Than Undead," which would have been a 1950s cold-war game with zombies in the Soviet Union and "Dark Camelot," which would have been a backwards retelling of the Camelot tale, with Arthur as the villain and Mordred as the hero. But those two ideas, along with a project called "School of Wizards" eventually morphed into "Thief: The Dark Project," with some development help from Ken Levine.
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Posted 4/8/13 4:58 pm EST by kevinkelly in GDC, PS3, Wii U, Xbox 360
By Kevin Kelly
While LEGO has long conquered the realm of real-world toys, they didn't really make a big dent in the video game arena until "LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game" back in 2005. This ushered in an era of minifig-based games featuring licensed properties featuring characters from Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings, DC Comics, Pirates of the Caribbean, and more, all at the hands of developer Traveller's Tales. Not a bad job of bringing a physical toy to life in a virtual medium that revolves around storytelling.
This trend also shows no signs of slowing down, with TT having already developed seventeen LEGO video game titles, and at GDC we were treated to a brief demo with the newly-announced "LEGO Marvel Super Heroes." While "LEGO Batman: The Videogame" was DC's initial entry into the LEGO video game arena, the sequel, "LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes" was the one that brought in the lion's share of other DC characters, and was TT's first game to feature speaking minifigs instead of pantomime. Marvel isn't making that same mistake, with this title just laying the whole Marvel universe out there for you.
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Posted 4/8/13 10:00 am EST by kevinkelly in ea, Features, GDC, News, PS3, Xbox 360
By Kevin Kelly
As a video game journalist, it isn't often that you get to sit down with the head of a studio and co-op through a video game with just the two of you. Often, the events we attend feature a big group of writers, all jockeying for sound bites and hands-on time with games, so imagine our surprise when we stepped into a small meeting room and were presented with two gaming setups, and were introduced to Ted Price, the president and CEO of Insomniac Games. He was there to show off "Fuse," the newest game from his company.
Just in case you didn't know, Insomniac has been a powerhouse development studio for Sony, creating games that turned into franchises like "Spyro the Dragon," "Ratchet & Clank," and "Resistance: Fall of Man." But "Fuse," which was originally introduced as "Overstrike" back in 2010, marks the first time the studio has developed a title for multiple consoles, and it will be out for both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 this May. It's a third-person shooter, grounded more in the "realistic" universe of the Resistance games. That is, it's not cartoonish, although it is frequently over-the-top. Which is what you will love about it.
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Posted 4/5/13 8:45 pm EST by kevinkelly in PC, PS3, Xbox 360
By Kevin Kelly
Play as Kirk. Play as Spock. Those are the selling points behind the upcoming "Star Trek: The Video Game" from Digital Extremes and Paramount. During the filming of the 2009 movie, the development team got together and decided to pursue an immersive Star Trek video game experience, and they are certainly doing that here by heaping tons of fan service into this title. You can mind meld. You can Vulcan neck pinch. You can find Tribbles. You can flirt with girls as Captain Kirk. You can watch Redshirts die. You can shoot phasers, tricord, beam. Just about everything you would expect to run around and do if you ever found yourself aboard the actual Enterprise.
The game was first shown to press behind closed doors at E3 back in 2010, although at that point the game only used temporary audio, and not the actual voices of the cast. Luckily, Paramount was able to secure them, and the entire cast of the film from Kirk down to Chekov will be adding their voices to the game. Along with actual assets from Bad Robot and Industrial Light and Magic, the developers have worked to recreate the world that J.J. Abrams brought to life from a video game point of view. Have they succeeded? We were able to play the game for the first time at GDC, so beam down for our impressions.
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Posted 4/5/13 9:45 am EST by kevinkelly in GDC, Previews, PS3, Wii U, Xbox 360
By Kevin Kelly
DC Comics and NetherRealm have crossed paths before although their first meeting was when creative director Ed Boon was working at Midway Studios, and that meeting resulted derailed what would have been the next installment of "Mortal Kombat," and instead became the 2008 fighting game "Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe." While it might not feel like it set the world on fire, the game actually sold almost two million copies, and was on track to have a significant amount of DLC and would have been supported up until the release of "Mortal Kombat" from the then-renamed NetherRealm Studios, due to Midway's financial issues.
If you haven't played the game, the plot revolves around the Mortal Kombat and DC Comic universes colliding, and basically providing an excuse for these characters to fight each other. The fighting in the game was deep, as you would expect with the injection of Boon and his team's DNA, but it seemed to die a quick death after release, probably due again to the Midway issues. But the two teams are joining forces again, and the resulting game, "Injustice: Gods Among Us," is a much richer dive into the lore of DC Comics. Plus, there are no pesky Mortal Kombat characters butting in.
Posted 4/4/13 9:00 am EST by kevinkelly in GDC, Lunchtime Twitter Poll
By Kevin Kelly
Warner Bros and Turbine announced on the first day of GDC that a new multiplayer online battle arena game (MOBA) based on DC Comics properties was on the way, and invited us to spend some time with the game. While it is still in development, what we saw so far was very impressive, especially for diehard DC fans.
Granted, I'm not the world's foremost MOBA player, having only dabbled in "League of Legends" and "Guardians of Middle-Earth." While I found the gameplay in both of those titles intriguing, nothing sucks me in like a DC Comics property. Especially if it includes Captain Marvel, which this game does. Of course, he goes by the moniker Shazam these days, but he still commands the lightning and the thunder, and he's a powerhouse enforcer in "Infinite Crisis".
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Posted 4/1/13 3:55 pm EST by kevinkelly in GDC
By Kevin Kelly
When I was in college at the University of Texas at Austin, "Myst" consumed most of my waking hours for a few weeks, driving me crazy with its puzzles and mysteries. I skipped classes, stayed up late, took copious notes, ignored my friends and barely ate while I struggled to complete this wonderfully maddening game. So, when it was announced that Robyn Miller, representing one half of the brothers Rand and Robyn who created the game, was going to speak at GDC, I knew I would be there. Much has been said about "Myst" in the 20 years since it was introduced in 1993 (!), but the chance to hear about it directly from one of the Millers was too good to pass up.
Two decades have passed since the game came out, and Robyn took us back to the start, rolling back the clock back to 1988, four years after the introduction of the original Macintosh. Robyn was living in Washington State at the time, and Rand was in Dallas, and he called Robyn with an idea for an "interactive storybook," and with it came an introduction to HyperCard. He started drawing a manhole cover, eventually with a vine growing out of it, and this became "The Manhole," and the first game from Cyan, the company that the brothers founded. What followed was a series of point and click adventures that were aimed at young audiences.