PC Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

Faced with a title like AdvertCity, I have to concede defeat, pop the cap back on my best punning pen and call it a day. It’s strong work and there’s an intriguing slice of game hiding between the delicious word-layers. Originally released as part of the Cyberpunk Jam, AdvertCity is a strategy game that plays out like a more realistic version of Syndicate. Instead of taking over a city by means of miniguns and Persuadertrons, the corporations of AdvertCity utilise billboards and advertising blimps. I suppose it could be argued that advertisements are a low-tech form of the Persuadertron but BLIMPS. Observe.

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White Paper Games' Ether One may be one of the best video game adaptations of The Wizard of Oz, despite having absolutely nothing to do with it. In the classic 1939 film, a young girl leaps between the dreary physical world and a dreamlike dimension of color, wonder and magic. Ether One too has its player leaping between worlds, one being the painful reality of dementia and the other being a hand-painted, cel-shaded vision of a pristine harbor town called Pinwheel.

You play as a Restorer, someone contracted to dive into peoples' minds and repair them from within. The patient you're helping is suffering dementia, and their memories are fragmented. Your job is to travel through the patient's recollection of Pinwheel, scavenging these memories as represented by red ribbons. Collect them all and, in theory, the mind will be restored. Dementia, for all its agony and seeming invulnerability, will be cured.

In theory.

Ignore the screenshot. Yes, Hero Generations looks like yet another roguelite, or even a puzzle game along the lines of Triple Town, but the best description of the design concept is right at the top of the Kickstarter page – “The 5-Minute Civilization”. Worlds are procedurally generated and heroes move across them, tile by tile. Each turn consumes a year of the player character’s life so important decisions must be made – will you explore, gather fame by battling monsters and retrieving items, expand a settlement, or find a mate so that you can produce offspring and forge a millennia-long legacy? 4X strategy zoomed in to the individual and personal level. It’s my favourite Kickstarter pitch since Meriwether.

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Almost two weeks in, and the end is almost within our grasp...

We already know the Oculus Rift is the perfect tool for immersing players within cockpits, but I was unsure until I played SuperBike TT whether they might similarly benefit motorbikes. The narrow straddle-rockets can cause problems with positional awareness even without a head-mounted display, but the indie project currently on both Greenlight and Kickstarter suggests threading the racing line in VR could be thrilling.

Just as soon as there’s a Rift headset available which doesn’t blur your vision like a drunkard, anyway. Video below.

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Band members Joe Hahn and Mike Shinoda want fans to literally "play with" their music.

The company's leadership team spoke to us about what the deal means for the Rift, gaming, and why fans should be excited.

A fun multiplayer game that sets up hilarious face-offs with your friends.

Because Facebook bought Oculus, Mojang won't be using the VR device for its hit game.

It’s not quite April 1st yet, so I guess this is happening. Oculus VR, the daringly sexy eyeware fashion company/hobbyist virtual reality outlet has officially been purchased by, um, Facebook, of all things. It sort of makes sense, I suppose, given that VR stands to radically alter the way people communicate from long distances, and that seems to be Facebook’s focus here. Problem is, the social media goliath sent out a press release that’s full of bits like, “mobile is the platform of today, and now we’re also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow” and hey wasn’t Oculus Rift a PC gaming device at one point? Also John Carmack works for Facebook now, and that’s just weeeeeeeeird.

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Galactic Civilizations 3 is taking the slow, collaborative road to blastoff with the game's alpha scheduled to begin March 27 on Steam. Here's a first look at the strategy sim's gameplay and... well, it sure looks like GalCiv.

VR makers to remain independent as Facebook helps expand content partnerships and broader applications for the Rift.

Behold, the latest and most powerful graphics card from Nvidia, capable of running video in 5K resolutions.

Roll a die.

On a 5-6, you have scored a success, and may read the rest of this board game news column.

If you fail, close the browser.

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Apexicon is back. Last year’s Kickstarter didn’t work out, not by a long shot, but the team are back with a reduced target, and a few more months of work and experience under their belts. The game looks like it could be the spiritual sequel to take the place of the actual sequel that Puzzle Quest is weirdly lacking. There are strong differences between the various classes, and special abilities and board control are more important than owning a large dictionary (or internet connection). Essentially, it’s turn-based wordplay combat with RPG elements and that is something I would like more of.

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One dev is fed up with the sorcerer always being held back for the sake of balance.

Valve's puzzle platform game is finally making its way to mobile, thanks to an upcoming release on Nvidia's handheld game device.

Videoball looks like something you might have played on an Atari 2600 you bought at a garage sale. Played on a single screen, two teams of two triangles fire bullets at a ball, attempting to knock it into their opponents' goal. At its most basic, that's it. It's dead simple, but its complexities start to emerge within a few minutes. Charged shots, defensive walls and deflections all add a layer of high-level nuance to Videoball that serious players are bound to appreciate. On the plus side, it's also a lot of fun.

What's really surprising about Videoball, however, is its inspiration: Real-time strategy. Videoball designer Tim Rogers told us at GDC that the concept was born from the idea of reducing a game like StarCraft to a single button. Throw in scoring, thumping music and an announcer and you have something approaching NBA Jam levels of competitive camaraderie - and that was no accident.

Videoball is expected to arrive this year on PC, Mac and other platforms, courtesy of Majesco's indie label, Midnight City.

Dungeon Defenders was more than a peanut butter on chocolate blend. The Reese's analogy implies a meeting of just two flavors, whereas Trendy Entertainment's blend of tower defense and action role-playing benefited from a third, magical ingredient: cooperation. A gooey gaming smore is what it is, and Dungeon Defenders 2 is all that with rich cartoon art, crunchy complimentary class abilities, and melty marshmallow. Maybe not the marshmallow.

Joystiq Streams dives into the pre-alpha version of the co-op-tower-defense ARPG sequel today, and Trendy Entertainment's Philip Asher will be our guide and partner in exploring its wiles. Alexander Sliwinski will join Philip in the game while Anthony John Agnello hangs in the chat feeding your questions to the developer.

It all happens at 4PM EST on the Joystiq Twitch channel. Joystiq Streams broadcasts every Tuesday and Thursday at 4PM EST just in case you don't get enough of us today. [Images: Trendy Entertainment]

Dawn Of The Dead contained some brilliant social commentary. The zombies were in a shopping mall, you see, which made the audience think about the herd-like cannibalistic nature of modern consumerism. Genius! If the film had been set in a school it would have contained brilliant social commentary about the mindless clones created by the education system. If it had been set in any branch of a popular chain of coffee shops it would have contained brilliant social commentary about the herd-like nature of coffee consumerism. If it had been set in a thrift shop it would have been about the rise and fall of the hipster.

Corporate Lifestyle Simulator is an isometric action game set in an office. Your co-workers are now zombies.

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Double Fine can’t stop announcing games. They refuse. Tim Schafer and co have so many dollops of digital glee in the oven, in fact, that you might have entirely forgotten about Hack ‘N’ Slash. It is not, as you might expect, a game about hacking and slashing or even gently bopping on the head in a way that implies mild disapproval. Rather, the entire world – the entire game – is hackable. It might look like The Legend of Zelda (that’s intentional), but it plays like… well, pretty much nothing I’ve ever seen. You wield a giant USB stick that lets you dig around in the code of enemies and objects in the game world. And it’s *real* code. You can and probably will crash the entire game, though save state trickery keeps that from ruining the whole experience. Honestly, it’s a bit tough to wrap your mind around at times. Go below for an explanation and demo from lead designer Brandon Dillon.

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MSI has announced pair of new thin and light gaming notebooks powered by Nvidia's 800M-series GPUs.

Double Fine may be known for creating games like Psychonauts, Brutal Legend and Broken Age, but it's expanding its efforts to add indie game publishing to its repertoire. Its first act as an indie publisher is to provide "promotional assistance and distribution" for MagicalTimeBean's Escape Goat 2, COO Justin Bailey told Game Informer.

"Our goal is to help indies build their own community and empower them with the knowledge and tools they need to succeed on their own," Bailey said, adding that multiple indie developers have approached Double Fine to ask for publishing assistance. "They all had a unique request and that's where we started to see there was a real need for the knowledge we've gained over the last 14 years on how to prototype, fund, develop and publish our own games."

Double Fine's publishing ambitions boil down to the efforts of two individuals: Bailey and senior publishing manager Greg Rice, who will offer advice for crowdfunding hopefuls as well as development feedback, platform porting advice and promotional assistance. "We're open to working with each developer and figuring out how we can help make them successful," Bailey added.

Double Fine recently teamed up with MagicalTimeBean to create a quirky promotional video for Escape Goat 2. The game launched yesterday on PC, Mac and Linux via Steam, GOG and the Humble Store for $10. [Image: MagicalTimeBean]

I feel like I’ve spent much of the last few weeks in space, either in Elite: Dangerous’ alpha or in re-watching Star Trek: Voyager, and I am more than ready for some strategy set among the stars.

Galactic Civilization 3 seems poised to sate my appetite. GalCiv 2 was a game that effectively let you defeat its personality-rich AI by broadcasting better television than them, and as the new GalCiv 3 video below suggests, most or all of its best features are returning.

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I think my struggle to calculate an opening line for Cloud Chamber is rather indicative of quite what a peculiar, interesting and original thing it is. But that seemed to work. A multiplayer game in which “playing” is discussing, where there are no puzzles but you’re always puzzled, where mysteries are crowd-solved, but spoilers are impossible. I’ve got a lot of explaining to do.

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Get paid a grand to play The Elder Scrolls Online for a week, plus walk away with a top gaming PC.

John has already written about Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today. It’s a promising point and click adventures so, try as we might, it was impossible to prevent him from singing the praises it was due when the project arrived on Kickstarter. With 18 days left on the clock and $30,000 to raise, the Kickstarter is still a good distance from the finish line in both senses. Updates have been regular though and the latest combines my two greatest loves – artistic creation and a barman. Both tend to the spirits.

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The recent UK budget is set to close a tax loophole, meaning the days of cheap online purchases on Steam and Amazon could be numbered.

It’s official: goats are taking over gaming. Between Goat Simulator, Escape Goat 2, and not really anything else, there’s no escaping it. They’re everywhere, by which I mean in more than zero places. But in Escape Goat especially, the bearded beasts of burden appear to be far more than a conduit for cheap laughs. Magical Time Bean’s goatroidvania sequel looks downright lavish, with strong systems underpinning attractive visuals and, you know, goats. There’s a launch trailer in the trap (and goat) ridden labyrinths below.

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