Time Wasters International

I had not heard of this event until today, the first annual Global Game Jam, put together by the Independent Game Developers Association. At this very moment, 2000 indie developers from around the world are slaving away, trying to create their own games in just 48 hours. and I'm very excited to see what the standouts will look like. You can check out live streams from different locations on the site linked above. Below is the amusing keynote address, given by 2D Boy's Kyle Gabler, one of the two guys that made last year's indie hit World of Goo:



-K.

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Thursday Morning Video: 30 Rock - Flu Shot

I'm too lazy to link to anything else, so here's a funny 30 Rock episode:



-K.

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Play This Now EX: The Legend of Princess

I haven't done a proper one of these in a while, demos shouldn't really count, so I'm glad I stumbled on this.
Have you ever wondered what it would have been like had Nintendo stuck with the side-scrolling style of Zelda II and ratcheted up the action? No you haven't, but that's where indie game designer Joakim Sandberg (A tad NWS) comes in, making things you really want that you never even thought of. I'd never heard of him until recently, but 2D side-scrolling action games seem to be his bread and butter, and between commercial projects he's crafted this loving, small homage to the Zelda series and put a little arcade spin on it. It's very fast-paced, looks fantastic and is a lot of fun to play. And it don't cost nuthin'.

Link, princess.zip (9.6MB)

-K.

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Fantastic!

There's an amusing story arc going on over at Player vs. Player that I think will resonate strongly with most of you.

-K.

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Play This Now: F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin Demo

Monolith is a developer whose output I've really enjoyed over the years, their body of work including Blood, Aliens vs. Predator 2, No One Lives Forever, and one of my all-time favorites, Condemned: Criminal Origins. Though I was not as enthusiastic about the console-only sequel that followed, nobody's perfect. I also enjoyed the original F.E.A.R. quite a lot, mixing effective horror elements with over-the-top John Woo-style firefights, so much so that I was able to forgive the lack of enemy variety and locations. While retaining the solid gameplay, those concerns, if the demo is any indication, are exactly what Monolith is trying to address in the sequel. While the game feels a bit more console-oriented than the first, with the huge HUD, giant contextual pop-ups and a curious omission of leaning, it looks be shaping up to be a great and thoroughly creepy shooter. I'm not sure of the exact requirements, it wasn't terribly taxing on my machine with everything cranked, so most of you should be able to run it fine. What you will need, though, is hard drive space and patience, because it comes in just under 2 gigs.
As an aside, I also love the way that Monolith has been putting together their demos since the original F.E.A.R.. It is not just the beginning of the game, but an amalgam of parts from different levels from the full game spliced into one.
You can grab it off of Steam, or grab it off of my service of choice, FileShack.

Link, FileShack.

-K.

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Thursday Morning Video: Disney - Donald in Mathmagic Land

A discussion I had a few weeks ago prompted the search for this artifact from my childhood, a production which I owned on the ancient video cassette format. These were some heady concepts for a five-year-old:







-K.

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A Crazy Man at the Helm

Some news days in the gaming world can be painfully slow, so thank god that Sony bigwig Kaz Hirai, best remembered for failing to get you excited about Ridge Racer, has lost his goddamn mind, providing a double-shot of crazy in a recent Official PlayStation Magazine interview. These two articles can be summed up by Kaz claiming that, despite lagging behind Microsoft and both being left completely in the dust by Nintendo, Sony is the industry leader, mostly because Hirai feels Nintendo doesn't count. Also the PlayStation 3 is intentionally hard to develop for, because if it was easier everybody would be making games for it. Somehow, in his fractured perception of reality, this is a benefit.

I'm calling it right now, on Tuesday, January 20th 2009 at 5:31 PM that tomorrow's Penny-Arcade strip will be about this exact topic.

EDIT: Or maybe not, now that I have reviewed the situation and recalled that Penny-Arcade is in the middle of a rare story arc, but this seems insane enough to interrupt the proceedings.

-K.

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Free At Last

In an effort to get more people to subscribe to their service, the folks at GameTap are going to rein in a bunch of their free titles. Effective January 22nd, 30 titles will return to Gold status, making them playable only to paying subscribers. A full of the titles reverting to their capitalist overlord standards can be viewed here, this list does include Mr. Robot, Deus Ex and anything else I may have recommended to you personally.

Bummer.

I can understand charging a premium to be able to play more recent, full-fledged games like Second Sight and Thief 3, but I guess I don't understand restricting a game like 1942. No one will be beating down the doors of GameTap to play 1942.

-K.

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Thursday Morning Video: Something Awful - Derek Smart's Desktop Commander

I can't think of anything else to post before I head off for my awesome, totally-not-stressed-out heart examination appointment so I'm throwing up this oldie.



-K.

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Executions and Stays Of

Ziff-Davis, the former-giant-now-troubled media company, sold off popular game news site 1UP to UGO, which I was shocked to learn still existed. UGO has since wasted no time getting to work on decimating 1UP's staff and laying waste to long-running print magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly, which will have its final issue printed this month. It's sad to see a publication like that go, which was my primary source of useless video game knowledge in the early-to-mid 90's, but I had not picked up an issue since being connected to the internet.

Also, in not-as-grim-but-still-grim-news, Midway has earned itself a stay of execution, and now has an extra month to pony up Two-hundred and forty million dollars.

-K.

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