Thursday Morning Video: Fez Trailer

Here's a trailer for a game I was previously unaware of until recently, an upcoming indie title called Fez that has you navigating a 3D environment with 2D platforming.


FEZ TRAILER 2 from fish on Vimeo.

Development for the game is being partially funded through t-shirts sales of their pixelated character on their site.

-K.

See the rest of this post >>

Collapse

Mind-Bogglin'

So the 2009 Game Developer Conference is underway and right out of the gate there is a pretty big announcement that has already created a lot of buzz. OnLive is a new service in development that is promising streamed games that rely solely on your internet connection, putting games on demand and taking the onus of needing high-end hardware away from the consumer. We're not talking Bejeweled here, but actual Big Deal™ games like Crysis and the new Prince of Persia, streamed from a server to your PC or TV. It sounds like a pretty cool idea, and I would love to be proven wrong when this thing drops, but I can't see how it could possibly work efficiently. The service comes with their state-of-the-art magic box doohicky that claims to use "advanced algorithms" to reduce latency, but even if there's a little lag it wouldn't be standard connection lag like you'd experience playing an online game. Even if they got it down to a ping 30-50ms, since your part in the connection is essentially uploading your input on the controller, that would represent 30-50ms of input lag rather than just connection lag. The input lag on my HDTV isn't too high but very noticeable when playing something that demands precision, like Mega Man 9, and becomes a chore. This service would be perfectly acceptable for turn-based strategy games but I can't imagine anything else, certainly not online shooters, would play too well. Maybe it's just me having a hard time wrapping my head around it being a functional concept, but as I said, it would be great if I were proven wrong.

-K.

See the rest of this post >>

Collapse

Thursday Morning Video(s): Star Trek Remix

So I stumbled across these videos the other day, they're a couple of months old so I don't know if I'm late to the party, but all of them can be found here. Here are a few choice selections:











-K.

See the rest of this post >>

Collapse

Thursday Morning Video: I Have a Poltergeist in My Computer and it Likes Half-Life 2

So because I'm sure I have developed some form of Attention Deficit Disorder and I can't focus my time on just completing Dawn of War II or Grand Theft Auto IV, or trying to crank out a review for anything, I decided to take a look at the latest version of SMOD: Tactical for Half-Life 2. SMOD is a big, crazy mod originally made by some Japanese fellow that adds things like more enemies, bullet-time, and silly weapons like exploding bananas and throwing scissors. SMOD: Tactical takes some of the coding changes of the original and makes the game more of a Call of Duty-ish experience with real-world firearms, ironsight aiming and a more realistic damage model. Except something really weird happened while I was playing it the other night:



The game crashed shortly after I escaped through the door, but at least it hasn't happened again since.

-K.

See the rest of this post >>

Collapse

Friday Afternoon Video: GTA IV Badassery Volume 3

Since the Lost and Damned expansion for the 360 version of Grand Theft Auto IV released I started playing it again... On the PC, where the expansion is not yet present. It's still an awesome game, so here's a video of some people from Shacknews having fun with the multiplayer and video editor.



I would like to make an update with some kind of actual substance at some point, I just haven't been playing many indie games lately. I'll see if I can't rectify that this weekend.

-K.

See the rest of this post >>

Collapse