Sunday, July 31, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Born this Way - Lady Gaga (Comic-Con 2011 Cosplay Lipdub)
lame but the costume at 3:08 is worth checking out.
Monday, July 25, 2011
the walking dead gane
Telltale Games, the creators of the episodic video game series based on Robert Kirkman's comic book The Walking Dead, have but one screen shot to spare of their upcoming PC and console title. But one screen shot will do perfectly fine.
The folks at Telltale are bringing an ink and watercolor aesthetic to the The Walking Dead game that they say strives to match the visual style of comic artist Charlie Adlard. The 3D adventure game will feature a distinctively loose concept art approach, with textures designed with ink lines and watercolor streaks in mind.
The above screen from The Walking Dead gives us a peek at the game's main character, Lee, an Atlanta man who is en route to a Georgia prison when the zombie apocalypse begins to spread. Things obviously don't go as planned during his prison transport and eventually he teams up with a young girl who has lost her family to the undead.
Telltale says The Walking Dead episodic game series will be unlike most zombie video game fare, a game that is a more personal story built on narrative, but not moral, choices. They talked about an adventure game stuffed with moment-to-moment micro-choices, a game more experiential than your typical horror game.
Players will be forced to make hard decisions over the course of the game, whether to save the life of one person over that of another's, for example, but that The Walking Dead may be the "easiest" zombie game you've ever played. (Tellhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giftale still stressed that the game would require some thought and skill, but that the game's slow-moving zombies wouldn't require expert virtual marksmanship and undead survival skills to complete.)
Telltale Games expects to have more to show of The Walking Dead by this year's New York Comic Con.
via kotaku
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
thorin!
As a young Dwarf prince, Thorin witnessed the destruction and terror wrought when a great fire-breathing Dragon attacked the Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor. After slaughtering many of Thorin’s kin, the great serpent, Smaug, entered The Lonely Mountain and took possession of its vast store of gold and jewels. No-one came to the aid of the surviving Dwarves, and thus, a once proud and noble race was forced into exile. Through long years of hardship, Thorin grew to be a strong and fearless fighter and revered leader. In his heart a fierce desire grew; a desire to reclaim his homeland and destroy the beast that had brought such misery upon his people. So when fate offers him an unusual ally, he seizes the chance for revenge.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Balin and Dwalin
Dwarf Lords in their own right, Balin and Dwalin are close relatives of Thorin. Beyond this, these brothers are two of his most loyal and trusted friends. An old warrior, Balin has lived through hard times and fought many battles, yet he harbors doubts about the wisdom of the Quest to retake the Lonely Mountain. Dwalin has no such forebodings – his belief in Thorin’s leadership is unshakeable. A powerful and bruising fighter, with a natural tendency to distrust anyone who is not a Dwarf, particularly anyone who might be an Elf, Dwalin is not someone to cross lightly.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
While most of the Company of Thorin Oakensheild is related to the royal and noble line of Durin, Bofur, his brother Bombur and their cousin Bifur most definitely are … not. Born and bred in the West, descendants of coal miners and iron workers, they have joined the Quest for the Lonely Mountain partly to seek their fortune and partly because they were told the beer was free.
Dark Souls Is Only Kind To Be Cruel
For a guy who can't seem to survive two minutes in the foreboding, swords-and-dungeons world of Dark Souls, I must seem unnecessarily worried about how difficult the game will be.
Demon's Souls, Dark Souls' predecessor, was as much known for its brutal level design and lack of save points as it was its unique approach to cooperative and competitive play. It was a game that created genuine fear in players not through plot devices and monster design, but by the threat of stripping a player of everything they accomplished between levels if they died.
But in Dark Souls players can find safety as they wind their way through dungeons, working their way from one behemoth to the next, simply by camping out at a bonfire.
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"Don't you worry you've made the game too easy," I ask Namco senior brand manager Brian Hong as my character dies for perhaps the fifth time?
Hong isn't worried at all, nor is developer From Software, he tells me, because the bonfires were simply a way for the developers to make the game harder.
"The best way to explain bonfires is that the developers wanted to make the game harder," Hong said. "Which they did, but they were also very concerned with game balance. With the increased difficulty of play it is much harder, but harder to the point of not being fun."
So essentially the bonfires, which can replenish health and refill life-giving flasks, are a way for the developers to make a hard game even more difficult without creating something that only the most devoted of fans would want to play.
It's worth noting too that unlike Demon's Souls, Dark Souls is not a linear game that leads players along a narrow channel of adventure through a series of dungeons. Instead Dark Souls is conceived as an open world that allows gamers to explore, and die, at their own leisure. So in a way, the bonfires serve the same purpose that the breaks between levels served in the previous game.
And the bonfire isn't always a player's friend.
"If you're one of those players who get to the checkpoint and then fight ahead for 45 minutes to clear a level and then decide to go back to a bonfire to replenish your health and flasks everything will respawn," Namco brand manager Brandon Zien said.
And when those creatures repopulate the dungeon you just made safe, they will come back tougher, angrier.
The bonfires are also pretty spread out. Zien tells me they are "strategically placed throughout an area."
"Just when a game is kicking your ass you can find a bonfire," he said. "It balances the frustration, because they've toned up the difficulty in other areas: The bosses, the hit points, the spawning of mobs.
"That makes this the hardest game. Harder than Demon's Souls."
From Software's decision to not just include save points, but to give them some teeth reminds me of some of the clever design decisions the team made when creating Demon's Souls.
When you died in that game you were sent back to the beginning of a level, but if you paid attention as you fought your way through a level you may have opened back doors and short cuts. These new paths inevitably made getting back to where you died a much quicker journey. It was a clever way of getting around save points, something I'll miss if it doesn't find its way into this game.
Hong declined to tell me if this sort of shifting level design was going to appear in Dark Souls, but said that From Software wants to "maintain all of the good parts that people remember" from the previous game.
"That feature you're talking about was a pretty important first for them," he said.
There's a lot that Namco and From Software are keeping to themselves about Dark Souls. That's not just because they want to dribble out new details of the game going into its fall launch, it's also because they're trying desperately to recapture everything about Demon's Souls launch and its surprising success.
A big part of the game's success, both Hong and Zien say, was that it was such a surprise to everyone who played it. The game sort of appeared out of nowhere with very little interest leading into its launch. It went on to sell nearly a million copies, they said.
Because of that relative obscurity, the game was able to deliver not only a bit of tough, throw-back gaming, but also a lot of design surprises.
That's why the developer and publisher are still hesitant to talk about Dark Souls' story, some of the new mechanics, like the character's ebbing humanity and how it can be fed into a bonfire to strengthen it.
We don't even know all of the game's characters yet. So far the developer has said there will be a soldier, knight, witch and pyromancer. They also discuss a black knight and the Solaire of Astora.
While much of the Demon's Souls experience was single player it had some interesting ways to interact with other players online beyond online cooperative play. You could, for instance, leave messages scrawled on dungeon walls and floors for others playing the game. These messages, shared automatically across the Playstation Network, would warn away from or sometimes trick players into ambushes and falling deaths.
This ability returns in Dark Souls, which will now be coming to the PS3 and Xbox 360. Players will also still be able to "invade" another player's world, taking on the form of a Dark Knight to stalk and try to kill another player online.
In Dark Souls there will be other ways to harass online players. The pyromancer, for instance, will be able to summon a gravelord to another players game. The gravelord's appearance in the other game brings with it a slew of new haranguing monsters. The only way to stop the flood of new enemies is to destroy the gravelord. While the pyromancer can summon this creature, he or she can't decide in who's game they appear or directly control them.
When a player decides to invade another world as a playable character, there are also new and interesting ways to scare and attack the other player.
"We're trying to put in as many surprises as possible," Hong said.
So players will sometimes be able to hide in coffins and ambush other players when they walk by. They will also be able to temporarily become inanimate statues, blending in with the statues that already dot the game's landscape, and then break http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giffree of this form to attack another player.
Namco wasn't able to show me any of the online aspects of Dark Souls in action, but the promise of endlessly helping and harassing other players in creative new ways sounds as inviting as the game's challenging level design.
I think I dread Dark Souls release nearly as much as I anticipate it.
via kotaku
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
fili and kili
Two of the youngest Dwarves, Fili and Kili have been born into the royal line of Durin and raised under the stern guardianship of their uncle, Thorin Oakensheild. Neither has ever travelled far, nor ever seen the fabled Dwarf City of Erebor. For both, the journey to the Lonely Mountain represents adventure and excitement. Skilled fighters, both brothers set off on their adventure armed with the invincible courage of youth, neither being able to imagine the fate which lies before them.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Friday, July 8, 2011
oin and gloin
Distant cousins of Thorin Oakenshield, these two doughty Northern Dwarves join the Company out of a sense of loyalty to their kin, and also because they have a substantial sum of money invested in the venture. Along with Bombur, Gloin is the only other married Dwarf in the Company (there being a shortage of female dwarves in general). His wife is an acclaimed beauty with a particularly fine beard. Gloin is the proud father of a young son, Gimli, who will go on to become part of the famous Fellowship of the Ring.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Dori, Nori and Ori (holy shit!!!!!!!!)
These three brothers, all sons of the same mother, could not be more different from each other. Dori, the oldest, spends much of his time watching out for Ori, the youngest; making sure he’s not caught a chill or got himself killed by Wargs or Goblins. Nobody quite knows what Nori gets up to most of the time, except that it’s guaranteed to be dodgy and quite probably, illegal. Dori, Nori and Ori are intensely loyal to each other – and whilst they are perfectly happy fighting amongst themselves, woe-betide any anyone who means harm to one of these brothers.
Friday, July 1, 2011
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