The demo for The Force Unleashed II is in the wild, and I have distilled its thundering contents into a collection of words arranged into a string of paragraphs for easy assimilation. If you are already familiar with forces and the task of unleashing them, you may wonder: have they unbroken it?
The answer is a resounding maybe.
It was a hot, muggy Saturday afternoon in Culver City. IndieCade attendees flocked to the Ivy Substation at 2:30pm, eager to hear from thatgamecompany’s (TGC) Jenova Chen and Robin Hunicke, about their upcoming game Journey.
The last of their three game deal with Sony, the title’s focus on multiplayer is something previously unexplored by them in fl0w and fl0wer. As social interaction transforms alongside technology and corporations are realizing that individuals strive to publicize their self-expression in order to connect to others in the virtual world, Journey aims to express simple feelings with other humans to achieve “authentic” memorable moments.
If you happen to have a PSP handy and are fluent in Japanese, or like me, always brave enough to clumsily trip through foreign languages, you should definitely check out the demo for Spike’s Dangan-Ronpa, which you can grab right here.
The investigation game revolves around an high school ruled over by a psychotic bear, where it seems that everyone is killing one another in order to graduate/escape.
I spent some time touring the halls of the school last night, and it didn’t take long to find a body with a blade sticking out of it, at which point there were clues to be gathered and characters to talk with. I’m led to believe time will be split between class and investigation. The delicious insanity of the plot and the designs of the students makes this a pretty easy title to latch on to even with the language barrier.
The game’s aesthetic slaps me upside the head much like Persona does with a sharp color palette, which then grabs at a variety of styles to create a visual carnival of psychological deviancy, a procession march led by the menacing Mono Bear, who delights in a hearty sinister laugh and opens the demo with a bit of video that on its own justifies checking this out.
Once again, you can check out the oddity for yourself right here.
As the second piece of DLC for Remedy’s psychological action thriller, “The Writer” continues Alan’s journey through the darkest of night via the exploration of Wake’s internal state of mind. Picking up where “The Signal” left off, Wake navigates a path through the fractured self exposed by the retail release.
By film or book or videogame, subject matter opens as many possibilities as it does the potential to fall into cliche, and I’ll suggest that once again Alan Wake manages to work within the trappings of the horror genre rather deftly considering how much of a tightrope that proposition creates – my investment in the character of both Wake and the world he is fighting to understand keeps psychological exploration from dipping into cheese.
That doesn’t mean that Wake’s latest outing cuts the fresh path the series seems capable of trailblazing however. But “The Writer” does cut a circular path through the events of the game to date to reach a rather inevitable conclusion, offering players a carnival ride through familiar memories, concerned with finding the significance in character relationships and happenings established by the game proper.
Take a look around you in this, the gaming environment we’ve crafted for ourselves. Does it remind you of a museum or a demolition derby? I’ve often come away from a gaming session feeling drained if I’m playing an RPG, or shell shocked if I’ve been playing something like, say, Battlefield 1943. But have I been educated? I’m not sure, unless you count running in terror from active grenades or falling off a cliff a learning experience.
For that, I’m not sure a major developer can deliver. They’re too interested in reaching the middle; what’s good for all is good for one. Over the past weekend however, I was lucky enough to attend IndieCade, my first time doing so, and in another first, I’m left feeling rather worldly.
Take The Cat and the Coup, a game developed by Peter Brinson and Kurosh ValaNejad out of USC’s Game Innovation Lab. In this trek through the memories and events leading up to the US backed coup of Iran’s first democratically elected prime minister, we play as Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh’s fictional cat in an effort to persuade him through open doors and through the headlines of an American perspective of the event itself.
This past week saw the release of “The Sacrifice,” Valve’s latest add-on for the Left 4 Dead games. This new campaign serves as a prequel to Valve’s previous DLC, “The Passing” which featured an appearance from the original survivors of Left 4 Dead—one man short. “The Sacrifice” gives players the opportunity to experience the events leading to “The Passing,” and the loss of one of their comrades—and not the kind of loss where you pick him up from a hero closet a few minutes later.
To avoid any confusion, “The Sacrifice” is available for both Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2—but the package is slightly different. The version for the original L4D includes only the new campaign, “The Sacrifice,” played with the standard enemies and equipment of that game. Alternatively, the L4D2 version includes the new campaign and an updated version of the “No Mercy” campaign from the original game, with both taking advantage of L4D2’s expanded arsenal and enemies. Regardless of which game you play, you’ll be playing these campaigns as the original survivors.
Considering that the release of Left 4 Dead 2 was not universally supported by fans of the original game, the decision to release this add-on for both products was a pretty sound strategy, likely good for business while also appeasing those who were not supportive of the release of L4D2.
While some of Team Sugar has been enjoying an early Canadian Thanksgiving, the Los Angeles branch was keeping busy around Culver City with IndieCade 2010, which had plenty of games I would have traded my share of turkey for some hands-on time with.
Never without her camera, our own Aileen Viray snapped up some great pictures over the weekend, some of which you can catch after the break.
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