And now for something completely different:
“I’m recording this message so that if I don’t make it, at least somebody- anybody who finds it will have an idea of what the hell they’ll face getting through this nightmare. Our original party was four: Bill, Francis, Zoey, and me, Louis. We were trying to make it to the top of Mercy Hospital, but I’m the only one left, and I don’t know if I can do this alone. Bill was the first to go. We had just cleared a horde of zombies and he stopped to patch himself up while the rest of us went ahead a bit to scout...a muffled scream was the only warning we had. By the time I blew the smoker’s head off its tongue had already crushed his windpipe. Zoey was next...she was a cute little thing. A boomer threw up nasty green liquid all over her and a hunter shredded her before Francis and I could clear the mass of Infected from around her. We made it into the subway tunnels alright, but Francis ran off into the dark when he heard a woman sobbing...thought it might be another survivor. I heard the Witch scream, but I didn’t turn around. Wait, I can see a heavy metal door at the top of this room...it’s a safehouse! I might actually.*thud thud thud thud*..wait...what’s that rumbli- Oh God noit’saTanknonoNONONO *ROOOOOOOOAR* *gunfire* *crunch crunch crunch*” - Audio recovered from a mangled tape recorder by unidentifiable remains.
Hit the jump for more prose and less agony.
Valve is releasing their latest big update for Team Fortress 2 this week on Thursday, consisting of a pack of 35 new achievements and equipment for the Pyro. Available for viewing today, however, is their newest “Meet the” video, featuring everybody’s favorite headshot artist, the Sniper. I’ll post the achievements on Thursday when they’re actually available, and for anybody who hasn’t tried on Team Fortress 2 yet, Valve is offering another “free play” weekend beginning Friday, June 20th, at 11AM so new players can experience the enhanced Pyro in all of his/her muffled glory.
Today, Sony announced its version 4.00 firmware for the PlayStation Portable gaming system. The new firmware will add Google search capabilities to the XrossMediaBar, meaning that gamers will no longer need to even switch from one screen to another in order to find FAQs or endless amounts of gaming trivia and factoids . The search function is billed as delivering the “same Google search results as when searching on http://www.google.com” and will also feature a history function that stores up to twenty previous searches. In slightly less spectacular news, the 4.00 firmware will also allow users to control the viewing speed of movies stored on their memory sticks.
Heads-up courtesy of Gamasutra.
You may have heard that “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” Well, the creators of the PC game Limbo of the Lost went even one step further than imitation, outright stealing layouts, backgrounds, items, and anything else they could lay their electronic mitts on from what is rapidly turning out to be a LOT of media from the last decade. The hijacked material was first brought to the internet’s spotlight courtesy of a review from Gameplasma, showing environments that may have been ripped directly from Bethesda Software’s The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Enterprising internet investigators have taken to scrutinizing the game’s promotional trailers and have uncovered evidence suggesting that the cut-and-paste wizards who threw this game together may have also stolen assets from Diablo II, Unreal Tournament 2003, Unreal Tournament 2004, Silent Hill 4, Painkiller II, and other game titles. For those not quite familiar with these titles, to parallel this in the movie industry, this would be akin to somebody stealing backgrounds/layouts/scenes/etc. from Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, and X-Men and then cobbling them together to create his own movie.
Rondo of Swords is turn-based strategy game for the Nintendo DS that was developed by Success and published by Atlus, who has also released other turn-based strategy RPGs on the Nintendo DS such as Luminous Arc. Rondo of Swords, however, takes a slightly different tack than most grid-based strategy games by changing one of the fundamental elements of battle - rather than walking up to an enemy and smacking the daylights out of him, your characters are now required to use the “route maneuver system” to pass through both allies and enemies in the name of gaining bonuses and dealing damage (to the respective parties, of course).
Before I discuss the particulars of this game, however, I have a confession to make. I can’t finish this game. Despite the fact that my game timer only records my having played approximately sixteen hours, I am quite sure that I have spent in excess of thirty hours playing this game. How is this possible, and is this a good thing? Read on to find out.
Today, Japan saw its worst crime to the day in the last seven years. Tomohiro Kato, a 25-year old auto worker, drove a rented truck into a busy intersection in Tokyo, taking down as many people as he could with the truck before he proceeded to jump out and stab every random pedestrian in reach before police overwhelmed him at gunpoint. My sincerest condolences go out to the families and friends of those who lost their lives in this killing spree, but it irks me to see that gaming can be tagged as the (il)logical primary reason for homicidal behavior on both sides of the Pacific.
Edit: BBC News has a much more level-headed article citing possible trends in Japanese society that could have contributed to Kato’s choice of actions.
I love music and games like Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero, where you have to tap a button that matches the button displayed on the screen, those games help you stay alert and in my opinion improve your reflexes.
Now there’s Battle of the Bands for the Wii, a game similar to DDR and Guitar Hero, with one small difference, instead of pressing a corresponding button; you have to flick your controller when the button on the screen reaches a certain point.
Let me start by saying that I am not a big trivia fan; I don’t watch shows like Jeopardy and probably would never buy a trivia game. However, I did get my hands on Buzz!: The Hollywood Quiz game which is just that—a trivia game for the PS2/3 that comes with 4 buzzers.
The questions in the game are based on movies, TV shows, Hollywood stars and anything Hollywood related—an area I am horrible at. But then again, I am pretty much horrible at all trivia.
Well, since I had it, I decided to play it. To be honest, my initial impression was that it was hard and really boring, but I guess any game is boring when you’re playing with yourself (shut up, perverts). So, I invited my Mom, my sister, and her husband over for Mother’s day so that the four of us could play. Much swearing was involved.
For Western gamers, when somebody says “MMORPG,” some of the titles that are most likely to spring to mind include Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, NCSoft’s City of Heroes or Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy XI. What about on the other side of the world, though? A vast number of Eastern MMORPGs have been pulling in a steady paycheck from a variety of customers, particularly throughout China and Korea. These games can sport a radically different underlying philosophy from their Western counterparts, and thanks to an article on Danwei, we are allowed a glimpse of what an MMORPG can become when it sanctions and even engages in the very practices that Western MMORPGs are trying very hard to stamp out. It’s a bit of a long read and the English isn’t tip-top, but it’s very interesting and easy to skim, so I recommend you take a few minutes to peruse it. (Note: RMB refers to the national Chinese currency, not to be confused with RMT, which stands for Real-Money Trading in MMORPGs)
Tags: gaming pc steam valve left 4 dead