Friday, May 18, 2012 3:44 PM EDT
Sundance-winning indie game doc not just for nerds
There’s a pretty good chance that you wouldn’t like many of the game makers featured in Indie Game: The Movie if you met them in real life. And that’s fine, because they probably wouldn’t like you.
They’re outcasts. Fringe people. Young men who wear weird beards as badges of honour and use such colourful language that at times it feels like you’re listening to a rainbow (with particularly heavy streaks of blue). They believe with all their hearts that the world just doesn’t get them.
But that’s where they may be wrong.
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Friday, May 18, 2012 3:28 PM EDT
New ‘Max Payne’ a bullet-time bender in balmy Brazil
It’s clear from the outset of Max Payne 3 that our cleverly christened protagonist is not in a happy place.
It’s been 10 years since he avenged the death of his wife and daughter, and he can still think of nothing else. Drowning in lethal mix of booze and despair, Max – now a bit craggier, a little greyer and slightly broader around the waist – leaves his old life behind to start anew as a bodyguard in São Paulo, Brazil, where he takes a job protecting a family of local celebrities. But the new setting does little good. Chasing pills with whisky, he seems on a mission of self destruction set to rival Nicolas Cage’s character in Leaving Las Vegas.
Monday, May 14, 2012 3:16 PM EDT
'Starhawk' is action-packed, but sadly charm-free
Starhawk, the PlayStation 3-exclusive successor to 2007’s multiplayer-focused Warhawk, has several tasty ingredients that should have guaranteed a fragging good time.
It’s a fast-paced sci-fi adventure set in the far reaches of space, where frontiersmen toil to earn a living by harvesting valuable “rift energy” while fighting off the humanoid mutants who try to protect it. This is the backdrop against which a conflict between two brothers plays out. One is (mostly) human, the other is a mutant, and they seem destined to face off in some sort of bloody, Wild West showdown.
What’s more, it boldly and cleverly combines three distinct kinds of play: standard third-person shooting action, arcade-style mech combat on land and in the air, and a sort of tower defence strategy that sees players calling down walls and turrets from a ship in orbit to bolster key positions.
Friday, May 18, 2012 3:12 PM EDT
12 games that were made for the new iPad
Thanks to its fancy 2048-by-1536 resolution retina display and powerful quad-core graphics processor, Apple’s third-generation iPad has created a perceptibly tiered iOS tablet platform, especially when it comes to games. Interactive entertainment just looks better on Apple’s latest whiz-bang slate than it does in an iPad 1 or 2.
That is, so long as it was designed with the latest hardware in mind.
Most older games look and play fine running on the new iPad, but only those optimized to make the most of its crisper display and more powerful guts – so far just a tiny handful of the tens of thousands of games available through the app store – really show off its potential.
Here are a dozen games – both new releases and existing titles given fresh updates – that have been optimized to make the most Apple’s most recent tablet.
Monday, May 7, 2012 2:46 PM EDT
Draw Something gets players to sketch their own ads
It was the best thing my wife had ever drawn. The subject was an elderly man with horn-rimmed glasses, a distinctive goatee, and a bolero tie, his visage emblazoned in white and black on a red bucket. It was KFC’s Colonel Sanders, of course, and it was as fine a piece of art as I'd ever seen rendered by another player in OMGPOP's smash hit guess-a-sketch game Draw Something.
What I didn’t know was that it was also an ad. Or at least a prelude to one.
Friday, May 4, 2012 3:01 PM EDT
'The Elder Scrolls' gets the massively multiplayer treatment
Bethesda Softworks’ sister studio ZeniMax Online Studios announced Thursday The Elder Scrolls Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game that’s been in development for several years.
Its existence was made official through the unveiling of GameInformer’s June cover, which features an image likely to become an iconic symbol for the game: A ring of dragons biting each other’s tails.
Friday morning came the game’s first teaser trailer, in which a narrator talks about ancient enemies, an empty throne, and salvation in the form of many heroes (us, presumably) as the ring of metal dragons forms on the screen.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012 3:49 PM EDT
Wired GeekDad calls for 'new priesthood' of player-critics
Andy Robertson, a colleague and long-distance friend of mine on the other side of the Atlantic, recently delivered a TEDx talk in which he argues that people need to begin working harder to connect the games they play with the human experience. You can check it out in the side bar. It’s only 11 minutes long and well worth a watch.
He takes the position that video games can enrich our lives by providing fresh perspectives on human issues that can help us better understand ourselves and the world. Books and films perform a similar function, but the interactive nature of games means that players are forced to engage with a work’s ideas and messages in an unusually compelling way.
Think about Heavy Rain, in which a man experiences extreme distress following the disappearance of his child, or Limbo, which sees a boy lost in a strange place and desperate to reunite with his sister. Players don’t just watch events in these games, they become involved in them. They feel the panic of the father and the fear of the boy in a very immediate way. Hence, Andy argues, games are particularly well-suited to help people find new meaning in their own lives.
The trouble, of course, is that people don’t look at games this way. Most folks are still largely skeptical and dismissive of games’ potential to serve as meaningful cultural assets.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012 9:10 AM EDT
Nintendo dips a toe in digital distribution for new games
Nintendo’s digital distribution strategy is improving. The Japanese game giant recently revealed that most upcoming first-party titles for both the 3DS and the soon-to-launch Wii U (successor to the outgoing Wii) will be available for purchase both at retail and in digital format.
What does this mean? Starting soon you’ll be able to choose whether you want to head to the store and purchase a box containing a physical copy of, say, New Super Mario Bros. 2 (which is set to release for 3DS this summer), or just tap a few buttons and have it sent straight to your console via the Nintendo eShop. Consumers who like the idea of downloading games but prefer not to make purchases online will be able to buy download codes from shops like EB Games and Best Buy.
This is welcome news that demonstrates Nintendo understands the current and future importance of digital distribution within the industry.
Still, it may not be enough.
Friday, April 27, 2012 12:23 PM EDT
Google 'Zerg rush' right now
Before reading any further, open a new browser window, type “Zerg rush” into its Google search bar, and hit enter. Trust me.
Done? Okay. If you’re familiar with StarCraft, a ridiculously popular series of real-time strategy games that have spawned professional leagues and televised tournaments, you’re probably giddy with delight. If not, you may be a little confused. Let me explain.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012 2:20 PM EDT
'Machinarium' maker swaps robots for plants in 'Botanicula'
Amanita Design’s Botanicula is an extravagance of imagination.
Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, it's a follow-up to the Czech studio’s artsy point-and-click adventure Machinarium, which found critical and commercial success across the globe thanks to its beautiful graphics, challenging puzzles, and a compelling story told through images rather than words.
Botanicula follows a similar formula, but where Machinarium explored a monochromatic world of robots and machinery, this new game is set in a lush organic world full of life and colour.
Controller Freak Contributors
Chad Sapieha
Chad Sapieha has been covering the video game industry in print and broadcast since 1997. He began writing about games for The Globe and Mail in 2004.
