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The Week in Links #24
One Night Left, final lineup announced. I’m on from midnight-ish I think. Will probably post up the mix after the event. ‘Hosting Your Windows 7 Torrenting Party‘ Like a good Onion headline, you almost don’t need the rest of the content… I AM THE CLIENT! Insights into the mind of a marketing commissioner. Dubstep remix ...
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Axel & Pixel: More of the Samorost?
Fanged tadpoles, giant turtles with tank treads for back legs, obese juggling beetles and magpies wearing pink toupees: Axel & Pixel’s rolling countryside is a colouring-in book representation of Dante’s milder cheese dreams. Settled in an esoteric circle somewhere between divine comedy and inferno, the scrapbook aesthetic combines photographic backgrounds with Terry Gilliam-esque creature animations ...
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Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This?
Who knows what crease in Nippon Ichi’s psyche draws the developer continually back to the anti-hero. Perhaps its scriptwriters were picked on by prefects at school, or maybe the CEO was never any good at team sports. Whatever the reason, from Disgaea to Makai Kingdom, the studio has rarely cast players as anything but a ...
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The Week in Links #23
E Honda is so fat, even his hair is big-boned (Via Gril) Cigs on the Queen’s bed. Chris Donlan pointed out that this provides an excellent premise for the next Jonathan Blow game: wandering dark corridors, eating cheese, finding out your Queen is always in another bedroom… Scribblenauts made hideous flesh: Google turns making adding ...
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Borderlands: Mad to the Max?
Halfway into Borderlands’ development, Gearbox Software changed everything. A game that started out a dour shower of browns, greys and post-apocalyptic shadows was fed through the Crackdown filter and came out a blaze of SEGA blues, Mario shine yellows and Jet Set cel-shading. The visual rewrite has done more than merely distinguish the game from ...
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When Comics Met Videogames
Now 60 years old, Dave Gibbons has been writing and drawing comics for over half his lifetime. From his formative years working on British institutions such as 2000AD and Dan Dare, Gibbons became best known for his collaboration with Alan Moore on the seminal 1980’s graphic novel Watchmen, the work that single-handedly legitimized a medium ...
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The Week in Links #22
Fascinating Reddit Q&A with a victim of Scientology. Made me think that exploring the parallels between Scientology and MMO-style leveling would probably make for a useful explanation of its appeal. Thought the Daigio parry vid was the pinnacle of 3rd Strike showboating? It has competition. 6:00-7:15 in particular. Michael Moschen performs The Triangle. Dude must ...
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Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Republic Heroes
Republic Heroes is the very worst sort of licensed videogame: functionally inadequate, creatively redundant and artistically bankrupt. Marketed to parents as a safe Christmas option and aimed at children in the hope of drawing them into a 30-year-old IP in order to secure the next decade’s worth of dead-eyed spin-offs, there are few thrills to ...
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Grand Theft Audio: Beaterator
Beaterator, as a piece of serious music software masquerading as a videogame, is not without precedent. In 1999, Codemasters’ Music introduced a generation of PlayStation gamers to the world of digital music sequencing and, apocryphally at least, was in part responsible for launching the careers of Dizzee Rascal and The Streets. Beaterator, like Music before ...
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Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising – Xbox 360 review
Infinity Ward is a liar. An excellent liar with a clutch of fantastic, irresistible lies, but a liar nevertheless. Through its Modern Warfare titles it claims to present players with a glimpse of professional conflict’s future, a virtual replication of the horrors and thrills that will soon buffet our soldiers in service to their particular ...
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The Week in Links #21
‘There are 12 reporters in Columbia whose work is critical to that town, trapped inside a burning business model‘. 8-bit Total Eclipse of the Heart. Regretsy.com tracks the most questionable offerings on Etsy, like this Pokemon menstrual pad. How videogame producers roll. Videogame character Facebook status updates. *titter* Katy Perry’s Hot n´ Cold on Mario ...
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Best Thing I Saw Today #52: Project Projection
The wisdom and practicality of Sony’s plans to make their latest PlayStation 3 matinee blockbuster, Uncharted 2, playable at movie theatres across America remains to be seen. Either way, I think there’s great potential in the idea of creating bespoke interactive experiences that can play out across building facades using the kind of projector technology ...