May 20, 2011
Kill Screen’s review of Infinity Blade
Kill Screen's review of Infinity Blade does a neat javascript thing.
Latest Gamefilter Posts
May 19, 2011
11 Million Deaths Made Beautiful
Gorgeous 3D heatmap visualizations of 11 million player deaths in the massive Just Cause 2 world, as collected by the developers and visualized by Jim Blackhurst, Square Enix employee. [via]
May 18, 2011
IndieCade 2011
Submissions for IndieCade -- the International Festival of Independent Games from October 6-9, 2011 in Culver City California -- are now open. IndieCade welcomes games of all genres, types, formats, and encourages works-in-progress. Some video from the 2010 event.
May 17, 2011
3DS Terms of Service: Not Exactly Consumer-Friendly
The Terms of Service for the Nintendo 3DS grant Nintendo full rights to use any user-created content on the 3DS -- including photos taken with it. Additionally, the device will automatically contact Nintendo at any opportunity it has. If Nintendo detects that your 3DS has been modded, or if unauthorized peripherals have been used, then they will brick the system.
[via BoingBoing]
Spacechimp Gently Urges You to Play These
A few new Flash games for your timewasting pleasure:
Spike: A Love Story | Gemcraft Labrinth | Soviet Rocket Giraffe Go Go Go
Share and enjoy.
May 16, 2011
Minecraft Miyazaki
Ghibli's World The fantastic and imaginative worlds of master animator Hayao Miyazaki's movies, done in Minecraft. [more inside]
Old, but depressingly relevant
Playing through Fallout 3 again has gotten me thinking about the sorry state of game AI, thus an old article from Cracked.
Valve, Interviewed
A lengthy and fascinating interview at Develop Online with Gabe Newell , head guy at Valve, on the way they make games, hire people, and do business and what the future looks like. Fifth in a series: Valve on art, on Steam, on Portal 2, and on Source and studio culture. See also: the Valve manifesto. It's Valveriffic!
May 15, 2011
Don’t Panic
As we mark the 10th anniversary of Douglas Adams' untimely death, RPS has a nice retrospective on the maddening, wonderful Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy text adventure. You can play the original online here or an updated, graphics-added version here.
May 14, 2011
On Minecraft and Materialism
Grant French is building the Minecraft equivalent of a sand mandala. He figures it'll take about 72,000 blocks of wool. It's 310 x 310 blocks from edge to edge, and it's going to take a LOT of sheep-punching. When he finishes, he plans to burn it down. [more inside]
CodeWeavers’ CrossOver Birthday Bundle
CrossOver Standard+Games available for USD 15 starting 15 May. If you're interested in running Windows games on OSX or Linux, CrossOver Standard and Games are going to be available together for USD 15 ($35 off regular) from tomorrow as part of a "birthday" promotion. [more inside]
Mariocraft?
The launch trailer for Blocks That Matter, "a puzzle/platform game in which the player, as a tiny driller robot, travels underground in order to save its creators kidnapped by someone who wants to steal their work."
Play Dates with the Devs
Ars Technica explains the process behind video game press events, where the press can play advance copies of games with the developers.
Previously, they also talked about how extravagant the preview event was for CoD: Black Ops.
May 13, 2011
Spy Party Beta Opens, Notch Helps Spread the Word
Spy Party is going to open a beta soon, and sign-ups have been trickling in. Chris Hecker has posted some data about the sign-ups on the website.
Note: That big bump in the middle of the graph? That's what happens when Notch tweets about your beta sign-up.
May 11, 2011
Thousand Year Game Competition
"To support games designed for longevity – that can be learned, played and shared for hundreds of years – we offer this challenge to any game designers, artists and imaginative people who also share this desire." Thousand dollar prize winner is to be chosen January 1st, 2012, and entrance is open until July 31 2011. Some recent entries here. Inspired by the Long Now Foundation and the X Prize.
A Blunt Critique of Game Criticism
Dan Cook said : "Unlike a decade ago, there is now an absolute deluge of essays being written about games. Most of it is a waste of my time as someone who wants to see games improve." Worm can status: opened. [via, with commentary]
May 10, 2011
GOG.com updates their privacy policy… for the better!
It's a rare thing when a company's privacy policy change isn't some further encroachment on your privacy. GOG.com has updated theirs and will no longer be using Geo-IP to determine its customers' regions, relying instead on self-reporting. [more inside]
Games can be art, says US government
New US National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) rules put out this week allow US government funding of video games for the first time. It's now official. Video games can be art.
Extreme Portalcraft
Extreme Portalcraft is a Minecraft mod that lets you craft portals in mines, or mine crafts to make portals, or port your mine craftily or something. It looks pretty cool, and you can already download a couple of levels for it. [via]
May 9, 2011
Behind the scenes with the Portal 2 ARG
In a recent article on Gamesutra, Rob Jagnow (of Lazy 8 Studios) takes a look back at the behind-the-scenes planning for the Portal 2 ARG. [more inside]
May 8, 2011
Unevenly Distributed
"I would like to try to impart my love for one of the oldest, and most impenetrable, and aesthetically unattractive, and sociopathic and schizophrenic genres of computer game to a reader who will doubtlessly hate it for all of those exact reasons. I’m talking about rogue-likes..."
May 7, 2011
Freeman’s Mind #32
Freeman's Mind Episode 32 has been released. On the off chance that you haven't been following this legitimately hilarious journey through Half Life 1 inside the head of the no-longer-silent Gordon Freeman, you really should start now. It's worth it.
Spacechimp Commands You! Play These!
Some groovy new flash games that SpaceChimp commands you to play: Soul Brother, Light Hunter and Chalkboard Alien.
May 5, 2011
At the intersection of Femme and Fatale
The forthcoming L.A. Noire features a painstaking reconstruction of 1947 Los Angeles, from the streets to the skies.
1947project plays LA Noire
1947project, a blog devoted to 1947 Los Angeles, has plays LA Noire and dissects its accuracy. The result is an in-depth, if nitpicky, look through the city's history.
May 4, 2011
Fighting dragons in my mind just for kicks
Roll a D6. Excellent Role-playing parody of Like a G6 by Far East Movement.
I assert: the engineer is lousy. She doesn’t build or fix a thing – she just kicks arse and chews gum.
Ice-Pick Lodge, developers behind the deeply weird Pathologic and The Void have a new game out called Cargo! - the Quest for Gravity (steam)
Giantbomb quicklook
RPS Wot I Think
20 Free Must-Play PC Games
PCGamer: 20 Free PC Games You Must Play
You don't really have to, but I guess if you don't want to disappoint PCGamer, you'd better.
May 3, 2011
Exploitationware and the Rhetoric of Gamification
Exploitationware and the Rhetoric of Gamification: in which it is proposed that the practice of 'gamification' is the domain of crass marketers and spineless consultants.
May 2, 2011
Fly Me to the Moon
Bayonetta Director Hideki Kamiya is recording a commentary playthrough of the game. Only two videos are up now, but he will be playing through the entire game.
Where Realtime Worlds Went Wrong
Where Realtime Worlds Went Wrong. It's an old article, but still an interesting read about what went wrong at Realtime Worlds, developer of APB: All Points Bulletin.
April 30, 2011
The Gostak: An Interofgan Halpock
Finally, here you are. At the delcot of tondam, where doshes deave. But the doshery lutt is crenned with glauds.
Glauds! How rorm it would be to pell back to the bewl and distunk them, distunk the whole delcot, let the drokes uncren them.
But you are the gostak. The gostak distims the doshes. And no glaud will vorl them from you.
Delcot
This is the delcot of tondam, where gitches frike and duscats glake. Across from a tophthed curple, a gomway deaves to kiloff and kirf, gombing a samilen to its hoff. Crenned in the loff lutt are five glauds.
>_ [more inside]
Spacechimp Commands You To Download and Play
Spacechimp would like you to enjoy the following three games: Ranger is a top-down 2D shooter that took developer Robbert Prins three years to write and was recently made available as a freeware download on his web site. You play as a space pilot hired to travel to several alien planets and rescue the hostages who are being held for ransom negotiations, all the while dispatching any kidnappers and mercenaries who dare stand in your way. [Windows, 15.5MB] [more inside]
Capsized
Capsized is an indie game from Alien Trap Games. There's a demo on Steam. The environment detail is staggering. Youtube trailer.
Didi I mention? It features a jet pack and a grappling hook, both of which you get to play with in the demo.
April 27, 2011
Become a student of the history of fire and maneuver warfare
"These are real scenes of war, circumstances under which our grandfathers actually fought and there is nothing like this in any museum in the world." Charlie Hall of Gamers With Jobs talks about upcoming turn-based/ real-time strategy hybrid Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy.
