Though their previous project, the original Unreal Tournament 2004 mod version of the game (that you can still try out and play, by the way; its unrelenting difficulty level and gritty gameplay is something to behold), illustrated in the screenshots below, had laid down a steel-solid foundation for future games to build on, their PR unfortunately started mirroring Black Widow Games’ They Hunger: Lost Souls on the other side of the fence.

This is why I am all the more happy to report that more than three years later and completely out of the blue, Valve have just released Alien Swarm, a Source-based top-down co-op corridor shooter, completely free of charge.

So whatever happened to Black Cat Games in the meantime? According to Valve,

Two years ago Valve hired the talented team behind the popular top down co-op mod Alien Swarm. Since then they have been busy working on the Left 4 Dead Series, and now Portal 2. However, we never forgot about Alien Swarm and the team has spent a lot of time bringing the game to Source in between their contributions to the other Valve projects.

Gaming journalists like PC Gamer’s Craig Pearson have jumped in to compliment Valve on setting yet another precedent by “leaping into a genre other than first-person”, and while the company must absolutely be commended for once again boldly pushing out their content delivery service by handing out Steam-bound games for free – much like they did with Portal for free just a while ago – let us not forget Alien Swarm is still by and large a Black Cat Studios project that now delivers on the promise of the previous version of the game.

Like you can see in the screenshots above, while the curvature of the character designs as well as the particle-based sheen of the new footage does not instantaneously read “hard” as much as it reads “soft” (note: Space marines are always “hard”!), there is little doubt in my mind that the game should be vastly more casual than its predecessor, as the original was in fact notoriously hard and unrelenting, creating a fantastically effective fiction of the players as just another bunch of utterly discardable space troopers.

While level-based unlocks, statistics and a slew of 64 achievements should help players maintain interest in the game, especially a coupled map generation tool as well as the complete SDK for Alien Swarm should ensure a longer half-life for the game. The launch trailer for the game can be found below:

More video, including gameplay footage, can be accessed at Steampowered, and the actual game can be downloaded from here, servers permitting. Say what you will about the sudden announcement, as far as we are concerned, there can never be enough small-scale co-op games, and Alien Swarm looks to be exactly what co-op is for! (And if you should happen to disagree on the shoot-up-aliens-dead-in-dingy-corridors bit, there’s always NASA’s Moonbase Alpha.)

Unfortunately, the one major announcement from Microsoft – the seemingly abrupt re-branding of “Project Natal,” a move that G4TV speculate was an extremely recent decision – had been spoiled only days before much in the same vein as Sony’s PSP Go last year. Nonentheless, the Microsoft hype train steamed forth as planned, with Senior Vice President Don Mattrick (on the left) opening up the show.

Despite first airing footage from the decidedly nondescript Call of Duty: BLOPS, the behemoth got off to a great start once Kojima Productions founder Hideo Kojima and producer Shigenobu Matsuyama (on the right) waltzed on stage to show off Metal Gear Solid: Rising in what ultimately turned out to be the most notable announcement of the whole conference.

The difference-maker surprisingly came in the form of a stunning gameplay reveal: “Rising,” while obviously also relying on the generic strength of the franchise, is being effectively sold to us on the wings of “zan-datsu,” or “cut & take,” as illustrated in the trailer below:

What Raiden’s newfound ability illustrates, above all, is how great a technical marvel Treyarch’s indomitable 1998 PC game Die by the Sword really was – to this day, its fluent mouse-based controls remain perfectly unreplicated, as if the holy grail of sword-fighting in video gaming. Perhaps MGS: Rising will be the first game to step up to the plate?

While the sword-on-watermelon brutality seemed at first to hark back to an April 2010 tweet from Kojima, in which he promised to “challenge a certain type of taboo” in his next game; however, as reported today by Andriasang, Kojima subsequently revealed that the game in question was in fact not Rising:

The thing that I in the past Tweeted ‘It might touch upon a taboo’ is a separate title, one that am doing game design and directing.’

Finally, the game is indeed a multiplatform title that will be available for 360, PS3 and PC. Hooray!

Regarding the follow-ups in Fable III (which came with a new 26th October release date), Codename Kingdoms, Gears of War 3 and Halo: Reach, I don’t have very much to say; beyond the third Fable, which is also surprisingly slated for release on the PC after the bypassed sequel, these are presently all 360-exclusive titles. In fact, the one major surprise here was how Crytek’s Codename Kingdoms should also be a 360-exclusive project.

While I have groaned about this before, I would still like to sternly chastise whomever was playing Halo: Reach during its demonstration. As it stands, whatever impact the gameplay was meant to have on the viewer was successfully sucked out thanks to way too much landscaping and too little thought: For certain, looking around at cool stuff while in the trenches is no way to survive an intergalactic war, the same of which can be said for not using any cover or tactics whatsoever. Why are we given these illusions of gameplay instead of how games really play like?

A wild Justin Bieber appears!

As mentioned before, Microsoft didn’t seem to mind their motion sensor reveal getting leaked much at all; Kinect (a combination of kinetic and connect?) was, as was the trend this year, the focal point of the show.

The absolute lowlight of the show must have been a segment dedicated to Live’s VideoKinect feature; not only was an employee’s personal space quite grossly invaded, the whole shebang was awfully, awfully scripted. Laura Massey, or “Lollip0p,” and her sister, “Velveteen,” demoed the setup in such a horrendously scripted exchange (image below) that I had a hard time staying put for the duration of the presentation. The sisters bade farewell to a miserable “bye” from three persons in the audience.

Of course, the aforementioned social features (video chat, Facebook), “easy and interactive gameplay, video chat, and more” are offered to users with the dreaded asterisk – a required Xbox LIVE Gold membership, of course. Here are the features of the peripheral, by the way:

• Color VGA Motion Camera 640 x 480 pixel resolution at 30FPS
• Depth Camera 640 x 480 pixel resolution at 30FPS
• Array of 4 microphones supporting single speaker voice recognition

Also announced was a Live content delivery deal with ESPN. While certainly a touchdown from the point of view of discovering an all-new way of infusing the system’s user base with fresh blood, the ESPN deal was another glaring example of the current publisher rat race for the most-expanded user base. I did have to stop to ponder what relevance this announcement could have possibly had to the video game journalists in the audience; after all, NCAA-level college sports and even higher-level leagues like the NBA are horribly insignificant to those residing outside the United States.

Following the ESPN reveal, Kudo Tsunoda (on the right), the haggardly hipster and Kinect creative director entered the stage, wearing his trademark indoor shades, to unveil the software line-up. The line-up of demoed titles began with Kinectimals, a cute “petting zoo ” app aimed for children. Like all children’s games, it seemed a mystery to me as to how its gameplay could be humanly sustained for longer periods of time.

KinectSports, then, was a brightly shining example of how late (four years!) Microsoft really is to motion controls. Furthermore, the Xbox 360 avatars that were introduced in late 2008 will probably draw further negative comparisons to Nintendo, potentially questioning the validity of the whole enterprise.

Just as I slipping into a com… deep thought while cursing the idea of simulating reality one to one in a video game, cue in Kinect Joy Ride and Adventures!

“EXCITEMENT! AWESOME PHOTOS! IT ALLOWS YOU TO SHARE IT WITH YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS!”

After the long-winded, cringe-inducing advertisement for Your Shape: Fitness Evolved from Ubisoft (which was also demoed in the Ubisoft conference a few hours later; a keen observation of the presentations here) had stopped playing, we were treated with something that nobody could have foreseen beforehand: Your Shape, demoed on stage.

In the areas where Your Shape failed, though, Harmonix’ Dance Central (as announced by co-founder/CEO Alex Rigopulos) excelled, especially in honest-to-god demoing the actual impressive technical capabilities of the new peripheral. The problem with dancing games, as popular as they are in Japan, is that some people like to dance, others don’t, and this will never change, resulting in limited market appeal at best.

I do love the fact that the game comes with a dead simple move tutorial though; it seemed as though if you ever wanted to learn how to do pop dance in the solitary confines of your own home, Dance Central might very well be it. Massive, massive latency was present, though, and we can only hope it was caused by the conference setup rather than the actual Kinect system.

While eliciting what was possibly the most enthusiastic response from the crowd at hand, Kinect Star Wars from LucasArts at once revealed to us the physical impossibilities inherent to Kinect: Instead of being an on-the-rails shooting game, I suppose the game is an on-the-rails waving game instead. Simply put, it is physically impossible for players to walk forwards and turn at the same time without the aid of extra buttons, a spear that Sony would later drive into Microsoft’s side in their conference.

I do believe this realization effectively means that all we are going to see for Kinect is a flood of static games and rail shooters trying to hide the fact as well as they can. Serious games have serious demands, after all, and these demands are solved with a proper controller. What is absolutely possible, like Sony (and Nintendo, four years before) demonstrated, is making compromises and meeting the limitations of the system half-way.

(Cue in random Ferrari fetishism from the latest Forza Motorsport:)

All-in-all, it seems that Kinect games are going to be a full-body cardiovascular onslaught, even moreso than the Wii launch games ever were. What I don’t get, at all, especially having seen Sony’s conference, is why Microsoft chose not to announce a price tag for Kinect. Not even a price point? Don’t get it.

Also unveiled during the show was the new black edition of the 360, which Mattrick Ophrah’d the entire audience with. The new design comes, notably, with built-in 802.11n support and a 250 GB drive; Arstechnica, who called the new version a “thoughtful, refined system”, have a fantastic hands-on of the console. I can’t help but note that the system does look a helluva lot like a toaster in the photographs, though.

Don Mattrick – whose Miles Fisher -style American Psycho expressions and mannerisms were an integral part to the show – waved off the audience stating that with Kinetic, “The new era of entertainment has begun!” I couldn’t agree more: Microsoft’s 2010 E3 conference perfectly illustrates the ongoing force push of gaming from behind closed doors into the living room. Like last year, there was not much on offer for the ordinary WASD guy.

In any case, let us just linger on for a moment on these fantastic quotes I pulled from the show – a veritable checklist of games marketing bullshit:

“Games you can feel.”
“Full body experience.”
“A magic inner journey.”
“The mind and body are controllers.”
“The player is a design pillar.”
“Playing in the real world.”
“Feel the magic of my environment.”

McHale’s off-kilter performance equally reminded me of a story from CVG’s Vernon Kay, called “How NOT to host a games event” (Kay’s list delightfully also includes what can be classified as the Pong Trap.)

The host’s constant barrage of sarcastic interjections and one-liners came relatively close to Jamie Kennedy’s classic E3 2007 Activision press conference, which he started off with “This is exciting. We’re at E3 and… I just wanna say… this place is the only place… that makes the guys at ComicCon… look like Ocean’s 13.”, instantly breaking Kay’s final rule of “Assume your audience are a bunch of closeted shut-ins.”

Another example of game-changing hosts is Jay Mohr, who single-handedly soured the 13th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. You can watch his potty-mouthed performance at Joystiq – this was a show after which 3D Realms’ George Broussard asked for his contract terminated “so he *never* does another AIAS awards show.”

The difference between McHale on the one hand and Kennedy and Mohr on the other, though, is that McHale actually focused on the relative ludicrousness of Ubisoft’s line-up instead of lingering on the apparent deficiencies of the crowd and the industry overall.

This minor detail made for vastly more amusing a show!

On this website, we will be following up, at the very least, on four of the major press conferences: Microsoft and Electronic Arts today, and the Nintendo and Sony on Tuesday.

We probably won’t be parroting the more generic announcements – don’t know about you, but my fingers are already worn out from scrolling thru the sudden flood of Kinect news – but anything we think is worth mentioning will certainly find its way on to the blog with some commentary to boot.

Finally, if you’re interested in watching the conferences yourself, the Gamespot live feed has been pretty reliable in the past.

As the earlier previews suggested, the game really does take a lot from the Gears of War series, and plays like a tight third person shooter. There is more to the basic formula with the addition of abilities unique to each Transformer as well as, of course, the option to transform into a vehicle at any time. Tieger explains that the vehicle form has two modes, a hover mode in which the vehicle controls exactly like the Transformer on foot, with strafing and jumping, and a regular mode in which you can travel forward much faster to “roll out” in style.

Some more details about the multiplayer are known now too. Players will have the choice of playing as the existing Autobots and Decepticons in the myriad multiplayer modes, as well as the ability to create whole new Transformers with a character editor, based on pre-built classes each with their unique capabilities.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I don’t have extremely high expectations of the game, but I’m still looking forward to it. It seems to hit the right notes in terms of fan service and the hands-on impressions out there indicate that it will probably provide some decent value through sheer content. The multitude of Transformers to choose from and the drop-in co-op will no doubt ensure a decent amount of replayability.

After the jump, the videos. War for Cybertron is hitting stores on June 22, 2010 for every platform imaginable.

The game employs a new Progress Bar system within each chapter too, revealing how far towards solving a specific problem you are and detailing how many ‘bonus actions’ you’ve managed to solve along the way. Although not necessary to advance the plot, bonus actions allow you to discover more detail about the back-story. (They also reward you with those inexplicably tempting Gamerscore morsels on Xbox 360.) –Kristan Reed, Gray Matter Preview @ Eurogamer

(See also: Mata Hari)

Don’t forget to vote for your favourite Guybrush-ne’er-to-be (“Special Edition” is currently in the lead)!

Once more, don’t forget to cast your vote! The compo is still ongoing and lasts until the 17th of May.

Hard Space

Our first entry today, Hard Space: Conquest of the Gayliks, continues on the path already taken by Shane “ProgZmax” Steven’s previous game, Limey Lizard: Waste Wizard!, only to bring the parodic aspects even more to the fore. Stevens is also responsible for the vastly, vastly different Mind’s Eye, one of my all-time favourite AGS games.

I do absolutely have to get this out of the way: Hard Space is a parody of the original Star Trek, built entirely on the solid foundation of cock-jokery. The game, set on the ISC (or is it I.S.S.?) Penetrator, “a ship crewed almost entirely by male homosexuals,” discusses the all-star entourage of Captain Jack Hardin, “the black sheep of the Interstellar Commonwealth.”

Admittedly, the foundations for a game like this do exist; not only do we have the legacy of Interplay’s Trek point and click adventures 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites, but also this (never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be linking it here):

Also aboard the starship are the Vulvan Cmdr. Spunk and Lieutenants “Scatty” Scatman and Tagai. I’m sure you get the gist. The captain, visibly shaken by the loss of the only female crew member on the ship to a tragic accident, bounces into a pair of levitating on-screen boobs that divert the ship’s course over to Fallux V in the Boner System.

First things first: Our good Cpt. Hardin has a permanent, raging hard-on (see screenshot on the right). Now that we have that out of mind (but not out of sight, especially now that I just subjected you to a screenshot, sigh), what we have here is an extremely full-fledged one-month project, a whole package. Intro? Check. Unique visual style? Check. Animations? Check. Inventory? Check. Gadgets? Check. A music volume slider?

Chekov! In fact, the game is so full (of itself) that it simply has no regard to the compo’s rule set: not only is the game made by three people (in addition to Stevens, Jim Reed contributed backgrounds and ShiverMeSideways music), but it also blatantly breaks the one-room rule! The nerve!

Some issues with the game’s interface are inherited from the aforementioned Limey Lizard: I would have absolutely preferred a revolving cursor – especially since only three actions plus look at exist – instead of having the buttons sandwiched in a cluttered, super-duper-miniature interface. Additionally, for sci-fi tech, Hardin’s WristCom (on the left) is positively retro-grade: For scrolling text, the communicator has buttons for left and right instead of the more semantic and logical up and down. Also, while its database access works by inputting searches on the keyboard, you still have to switch back to using the mouse to actually enter one. There’s always the chance, though, that Stevens is a fan of Tale of Tales, and these gaffes in the interface have been included to illustrate the incompetence of the Interstellar Commonwealth…

To the game, then: The first puzzle proper, fixing the “Transputter,” (on the right) is unsolvable to me. Now, I don’t know whether I’m confused by the letters X, Y and Z normally being used for denoting axes in a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system, or whether I’m too much of a humanist to understand how the circuit board is supposed to work here, but with zero feedback from the game and several hours of cracking open the puzzle for the sake of a democratic write-up, no can do!

As the compo’s voting period is all but over, and the two games below warrant equal space, time and attention – and since many other players have reported similar troubles – we will have to leave the very tangible flaws of this puzzle for Stevens himself to solve (for instance, why does the circuit barely cover one fourth of the available screen, when more explanatory details could be shown?).

The tragedy of this all is that I have yet to see whether Stevens’ marketing of the game (“Do you love ACTION and SEX and MYSTERY?”) as an adult-oriented experience has any bearing on the game’s subsequent content. Whether the game is smart, funny, crude or simply distasteful, I cannot know until I fix the damn ’sputter. April is the cruellest month, huh?

To end, let me just briefly discuss what I think is to blame here, that is, beyond the aforementioned puzzle: Much like Limey Lizard, Hard Space has to be considered a descendant of Space Quest. As we all know, the series is both particular and persnickety – like The Many Deaths of Roger Wilco puts it, “finding all the ways of killing off Roger is half the fun of playing” – and overall, quite the exercise in masochism (or sadism, if you happen think like the website above) and foolhardy persistence.

In these terms, in an era where the rest of the adventure gaming scene is increasingly moving away from the Sierra style and towards the more forgiving structures of the LucasArts tradition and even into the casual (see Eternally Us, for instance), Stevens’ stubbornness has to be lauded – at the very least – for retaining versatility in the, uh, the space-game adventure gaming space.

Fin.

P.S.
I’ll let you know of any progress in the comments section. Do let me know if you got the puzzle.

Snakes of Avalon

Igor Hardy, perhaps better known for maintaining the excellent adventure developer hub A Hardy Developer’s Journal, has also produced an April game together with Alex van der Wijst. Their entry, Snakes of Avalon, concerns the decidedly psychedelic and hallucinatory story of Jack the barfly, who accidentally happens upon a devious murder pact. As he begins to uncover the dastardly plot, despite his obvious self-caused no-go condition, Jack holds a meeting with his conscience and proceeds to try and make a difference – even if only within the confines of his neighbourhood watering hole.

Only, nobody else around wants to lend an ear to the poor soul; zero faith is placed on Jack’s abilities, his perceived agency so diminished that the only thing seen to move him at all is booze. In these terms, Jack often seems defined by other people’s responses to him. Bob the barkeep, for instance, predicts but an early grave for Jack, mocking him of his addiction to cheap liquor; Mike, the compulsory chiselled local tough guy, has fun at the expense of Jack’s physical shape.

A major thread to the game is then how Jack constantly tries to prove his doubters wrong despite being already somewhere far beyond mere alcoholism. Hardy characterises the game the following way:

…consider the fact that there always happen to be snakes in rat-hole. In this particular case, Jack happens upon a particularly nasty conspiracy organized by a bunch of them. He takes an oath to give his best to stop them. Too bad then that he is a complete drunk, who has trouble discerning reality from hallucinations. And of course it all happens on Avalon – the ancient, mythical island.

Avalon, the bar that functions as the setting of the game, feels like a spin-off of the legendary Lefty’s; both are decorated with the antique head of a moose, for instance, forming an intriguing lineage (see the screen captures on the left and below). Equal emphasis is placed on the presence of the bathroom, too.

But not much else here is derivative. What the game truly excels at is the decidedly unique spin it puts on the competition’s spatial restriction: By utilizing a mid-screen division of high and low, the game offers an example of what we often call the “seedy underbelly.”

Equally important, in the context of the compo, is Jack’s refusal to leave the bar, a manifestation of his psychological dependence and addiction. In this way, better than any other game in the compo, Hardy and van der Wijst’s entry explores the one-room concept to its very limit.

The titular hero, much like the aforementioned setting, is of the Lafferian archetype. In fact, the game’s graphics, while vastly more Paint-erly, are still reminiscent of the Leisure Suit Larry series, with especially the background art recalling the ever-so-slightly skewed structures of the latter-day Lowe-crafted Leisure Suits.

While the game’s looks hardly hold a candle to commercial ventures, they are nevertheless in no way detrimental to the overall experience. Indeed, a great deal of entrepreneurial diligence has been applied to the graphics: Nearly everything is animated, and the bar’s population is constantly changing and revolving, creating not only a fantastic sense of liveliness, but also of time passing.

Much of the storyline is also augmented with semi-animated cutscenes, which a great deal of work must have gone into; for a MAGS entry the game indeed sports massive amounts of action and movement. Some interesting artistic touches, like the crazy train (on the right) exist; a selection of music, which I assume to be from the public domain, is not quite as successful in creating ambience, instead serving to confuse the temporal placement of the game.

Curiously, the mouse buttons for look and use are inverted here compared to the usual paradigm, something that threw me off for a brief moment: Cognitive lock-in, I guess. As far as the puzzles go, once you get the gist of Jack’s internals, they become a smooth sailing, as the game constantly takes advantage, both in regards to its puzzles and its narrative, of its setting; only one or two inventory puzzles went decidedly beyond what could have seen to constitute Jack’s muddled-up inner life.

A thread of magic realism penetrates the internal logic of the game in a way that makes everything that happens to Jack still seem human-size and understandable. All in all, the game is a helter-skelter collage of events and occurrences that ultimately render its otherwise tragic protagonist a sympathetic – and quite a bit heroic – figure, even if only for a fleeting moment.

Two things of note: The game’s LucasArts metaphor is surely not lost on players! On that topic, do check out our story on goodwill and LucasArts. What the Arthurian Avalon has to do with all this I haven’t the faintest of clue, though.

Space Pool Alpha

Last but not least, Space Pool Alpha by Steve McCrea, Sheldon Moskowitz and Mark Lovegrove (against the rules, again?!) is a highly polished arcade experience that illustrates the inconceivable yet surprisingly potent combination of, yes, Asteroids and pool.

Let’s just… let’s stop and dwell on that for a moment: While the authors sell the game as an “intergalactic arcade sports simulation,” I don’t think that particular turn of phrase sufficiently illustrates all the different layers of the game.

What Space Pool Alpha is, really, is a video game whose mechanics are loosely based on the real-life ™ game family of cue sports, games played on a specifically designed table and with cue sticks and pool balls. This real-world game and its varying rule sets have been abstracted and subsequently brought into the computerized realm, as a symbol-based simulation, with another such abstraction – the science fiction of a space shuttle stuck in an asteroid belt, shooting its way out – layered on top of it.

This mixture of simulation-upon-simulation is then transformed together, by Mr. McCrea and co., into something entirely different. On top of everything, all this has been conceived and executed – successfully, if I may add – on an adventure game development system! Goodness, there are so many facets to this erratic entry that I simply cannot fathom how our brains cope with it all.

But I have played Space Pool Alpha and survived. In fact, it all could not be simpler as you are playing the game. The whole concept only becomes a brain-buster when you start thinking about it.

(Sorry.)

The graphics, then, pay successful homage to the original wireframe-based Asteroids style, retaining these ultra-familiar translucent shapes down to a tee. The sound effects similarly enhance the fiction, of a retro game, very successfully. The enemies, in arcade fashion, all have colourful portraits and background stories that tell players more about their opponents’ temperaments. The bots are largely competent and the gameplay is a polished experience, with no apparent issues sans some advantageous shooting methods. All in all, there are four modes of play: A quick tutorial and separate modes for practice, tournament and 2P each.

While I did find Lovegrove’s midi stylings to be somewhat more jarring here than usual, the problem has much to do with my idea of pool being better suited to a loungier, jazzier style.

That’s all from me, folks – and what a task it was! So many interesting entries this month. Again, the entries can be voted for up until the 17th of May, so you still have some time to familiarize yourself with the rest of the entries. Also, many of the games mentioned in part I, part II and here have also seen further revisions and updates since their original release. You can find more about these improvements by checking out the corresponding threads in the Completed Game Announcements section of the AGS forums.

Finally, also remember that we have quite a bit of existing Adventure Game Studio coverage on the website – feel free to take a look. Questions? Comments? Have a go below!

Eternally Us

One bad hand and it’s all over. -Fiona

Broken rules aside, context is everything with Ben “Ben304″ Chandler and Steven “Calin Leafshade” Poulton’s entry to the compo, Eternally Us. Context-free, the game is, like Steve Ince (So Blonde) calls it, a “beautiful” adventure. For a MAGS entry, then, the game is not only breathtakingly complete but also a fulfilling gaming experience.

The game is also yet another extension to Chandler’s formidable repertoire – a constant stream of short, self-contained adventures – that broadly discusses the same primary motifs, vehicles and themes, in many ways tying his output down into a more coherent whole. Conversely, Poulton is best-known for his well-esteemed (though also controversial) The McCarthy Chronicles.

Ostensibly an entry point into the relationship of two soulmates – Amber and Fiona – spending a beautiful afternoon out in the park, the game begins in subdued and relaxing tones. It also very, very quickly degenerates into a discussion of emotional distress.

In fact, whether it’s the loss of memory or knowledge, teleportation or even planar shift, Chandler has now juxtaposed the real world to a netherworld/spiritual world/otherworld in nearly all of his recent games, including Shifter’s Box, Heed, Hope and Featherweight. The same can be said of Eternally Us. While the game does technically utilize one and the same “room” as far as the concept is defined within the actual AGS engine, it nevertheless proceeds through a series of symbolic locations tied together by the thematic confines of the Kübler-Ross grief cycle. The author himself promised to explain these aspects in the form of a forthcoming post-mortem, so I won’t linger on this further.

The game seems equally informed by the standard dramatic structure of a five-stage play, from exposition to resolution. After all, adventure games have traditionally mimicked the spectators’ viewpoint in their presentation, and Eternally Us actually proceeds to acknowledge this fact.

Poulton’s dialogue utilizes a wildly poetic register, prosaic in a way that borders on the verbose. Let me quote the character of “Hurt”:

Why, when faced with the truth, do you close your heart and bear false witness to those who only wish to cleanse you of your pain? / You are bound by nothing more than your own clenched fists. By your fury at the realities that plague every one of us.

While the above clearly illustrates Poulton’s effortless lexicon and understanding of genre, these dramatic and overstated sections ultimately make out about 90% of the game and do hamper character-level relatability terribly; where overwritten dialogue in The McCarthy Chronicles is still directly used in the fleshing-out of characters, the stylings here are wasted on secondary and even tertiary characters that leave little mark on the protagonist or the player.

In comparison to Poulton’s previous work, Eternally Us also lacks the concise minimalism of Hope, as well as omits some of the more intricate details and touches of The McCarthy Chronicles, like the titular hero’s untouched revolver; his wish to be able to play the piano and so forth.

Poulton himself characterises his overall enterprise in the following way:

I only wish to create something which makes people feel truly alive and challenges their perceptions. I want to generate the power of Aesop with the elegance of Shakespeare. It’s fair to say that I want to make something special.. I want to make something which is truly Of Heaven.

The aims outlined above are, in no uncertain terms, lofty. For a writer to grow, of course, the utilization of schemas and narrative structures is surely recommendable. That being said, the structural choices here render the primary characters secondary while the narrative, though at the forefront, remains oblique and suffers from being squeezed into its formal constraints.

By now, you must have realized there exists quite the rift between the tone of my commentary so far and the actual merits of the production. There is obviously no doubt whatsoever that Eternally Us both looks and plays most excellently, with production values, polish and sheen of incredible calibre for a MAGS project.

The game also sports a wondrous cast of voice actors, with Miranda Gauvin’s performance especially of note, and Poulton’s musical score is similarly neat. Chandler’s background art is equally painterly and atmospheric as usual: Some of the latter-half scenery especially, with animated full-screen falling snow and leaves, begs to be seen in motion; speaking of motion, there is a-plenty of that, too. Only the artist’s obsession with lamps and lamp-posts is beginning to stand out like a bit of an eyesore.

Again, as outlined at the very beginning of the article, only a ludographic contextualization reveals these gripes, which do not arise much in relation to the compo at hand.

In terms of gameplay, Eternally Us is not so light on puzzles as its puzzles are light. I would draw attention to how the game forms no exception to Chandler’s recurring use of kinetic, movement-based puzzles that push the game more into the realm of the interactive novel. In my admittedly superficial and incomplete reportage of Heed I wrote that “[t]here is a definite emphasis on positioning, movement and object states”.

This is not a criticism. However, while the kinetic approach was still extremely novel in Shifter’s Box, and fresh enough in Heed, the issue of repetition is beginning to rear its head: As repeated action forms the solution to most of the puzzles here, more variation would be required for the game to create more of an illusion of a problem-solving game. As is, the term point and click could simply not be any more appropriate.

I would also like to further clarify how I find the game’s failures in the writing department to be ultimately far less about register and more about its actual use. While the game begins in the present day, and looks to be a discussion of banality, it abruptly delves into a more fantastic sphere. Sadly, these two modes, the banal and the symbolic, are ultimately irreconcilable in the game’s fiction: The main character, Amber, takes her predicaments always at face value, never questioning or negotiating her own role. Is there no lingering doubt, at all?

This, in turn, is rather dangerous to the game’s use of location- and character-based symbolism. Consider Shifter’s Box, where planar travel is beautifully motivated by the game’s in-game fiction, or even Poulton’s own The McCarthy Chronicles, which works to avert the obvious trappings of the genres of noir and hardboiled. Perhaps games like Downfall, in their discussions of the human psyche, succeed in part thanks to not relying so closely on structure and form?

Whenever Poulton lets his romantic stylings drop and subsequently allows the characters to shine through, whether cognizantly or accidentally, the game finds just enough time to deliver a fantastic payoff. In this way, the very best portions of the game in my mind are, by far, its beginning and its end.

Chandler, “Ben304,” one of (if not) the most prolific games writers currently working with AGS, can maintain an inhuman pace: Poulton and Chandler’s earlier collaboration, Hope, was completed over a 48-hour span. These men are clearly familiar with the presence of temporal constraint. What I would most like to see at this juncture, however, is for the authors to take a jab at producing a full-length; in short bursts, their games tend to dwell on the same topics each time around. Perhaps their forthcoming project in Winter’s Shadow – the second game to be released under the Infinite Grace moniker – shall be exactly that?

All things said, I hope the various references to all these wide-ranging earlier projects as well as the length of this write-up speak for (and, heaven forbid, not against!) Infinite Grace’s excellent contributions to the freeware adventure scene. Again, do not hesitate to cast your vote – there’s still enough time to check all the entries out. Please also remember to check back soon for the final portion of our reportage!

But why feature MAGS on this particular website, exactly? While we have obviously discussed a plethora of adventures both free and commercial before, doesn’t this begin to dig too deep into hobbyism?

First, whilst the basic idea of the compo may be deviously simple, it comes packaged with a twist every month: Each subsequent contest, as it stands, follows the creative guidelines defined by the previous winner! Such a constantly changing, personalized rule set makes for distinct competitions that always exhibit a different cross-section of genre, style and gameplay. Indeed, many participants seek to broaden their horizons also by battling the perceived limitations and constraints of the adventure-making engine itself.

April’s rule set was defined by Dualnames, who settled on the “One Room One Month” (OROM) format:

I know it may sound silly. But keep it simple, keep it plain. We’ve seen best of AGS games in the OROWs, and I’ve always wondered, if you had to have one room, what could you make more in a month. Keep it two people team MAX! Calin and Ben304 aren’t allowed to team up!

Second, for the very first time in five years, the compo saw no entries at all in March; in fact, this was the first-ever MAGS to not have an entry ever since the activity officially got its start in the June of 2001. April – the month that I have chosen to dissect here – was luckily vastly more successful, and as such raised my interest in addition to its prolific participants. What better moment to discuss the competition than to find it revitalized!

Third, the MAGS website places great emphasis on all voters playing through each and every entry before casting their vote. Therefore, after the jump, I have alphabetically taken a look at all of April’s titles, even if the inherent clashes of style, scope, direction and quality do complicate this task considerably.

Fourth, if Destructoid can report on Ludum Dare (which Nabeel has done on this website in the past), then we can definitely talk about MAGS. Off we go with part one – parts two and three of the article will be posted on the website over the following days.

Each segment has a hyperlink to a download for the entry in question; the general voting page for all entries can be found here. Voting continues until the 17th of May, so you still have some time to familiarize yourself with the entries.

AGS Footballer Tech Demo

Tzach Shabtay’s AGS Footballer Tech Demo seeks to replicate both the look and feel of the classic Sensible Soccer, and does so really quite admirably (though admittedly not quite so infuriatingly as Sensible Software’s TAC-2 destroying Amiga classic – whether this is a bonus or a minus is up to you!).

What we have here is a football game demo built to cope with – rather than take advantage of – the obvious constraints of the AGS engine. Therefore, the first thing of note here is not so much the actual quality of a functional AI and physics, but the fact that these exist in the first place! Chris Jones’ engine was obviously not designed with either in mind, and the developer’s effort in crafting these in is laudable.

Gameplay is built upon a two-button shoot/pass set-up. I’ve always vastly preferred the rather sensible one-button method of tapping for a pass and pressing to shoot, though, so having two buttons in AGS Footballer does go against the grain of the play style I was otherwise expectant of, especially since Shabtay merits the Sensible World of Soccer as his inspiration

“…for the controls, although I haven’t played it in years, so I did it from memory… In fact, in the first beta there was only one button like the original swos, but I couldn’t pull it off, so added the second button…”

The strict month-long time-limit of the competition therefore obviously played a major hand in the decision. Overall, passing functions better than shooting, which sometimes refuses to work how and when I would have preferred it to.

The physics are relatively neat; there’s quite a bit of vertical depth to the kicks – you can supposedly affect the kick height with the arrow keys – and even curveballs are accounted for. Every now and then, the AI (goaltenders especially) does goes perfectly ball-istic with its shots, though, and also get what I can only describe as spastic attacks.

Actually maintaining control of the ball remains somewhat elusive, further contributing to moments of chaos on the field. The problem is somewhat exacerbated by a rubbery automatic focus shift. It need be emphasised, however, that many of these issues are the by-product of the existence of the switch mechanic itself, and were similarly – if to a lesser degree – present in Sensible Soccer.

Using manual player switch redeems most of the aforementioned issues sans some accidental passes, which are caused by the same key being used both for switching and passing. According to a Making Of article on Sensible Soccer, the Sensible team sought to account for these player-selection related issues by keying the character not just based on where the ball was, but also “from the direction you’re pressing on the joystick which player you’re drawing on.”

By far the best aspect to Shabtay’s ballin’ entry to the compo is doubtless its high, high degree of polish. The game is not only extremely feature-full for a tech demo, with a good rudimentary set of graphics, controls and gameplay, but also equally polished in terms of in-game menus, available settings and documentation, which are all equally solid work and presented clearly.

Lastly, what better way to pay homage to the supportive AGS forums than to populate the teams with long-time discussants? In AGS Footballer, you’ll find yourself playing with or against Vince Twelve and Dave Gilbert, among many, many others. The teams are even set up as a contest between the Wintermute Engine and AGS!

Alphabeta – A Room of Words

Alphabeta – A Room of Words, Ivan Mogilko’s grammar-themed entry, is ostensibly a story about an evil wizard, Grammarfail, who kidnaps the crown prince of the Kingdom of Fairytales in order to, uh, pervert his literary abilities. The fair sorceress Alphabeta, our protagonist, is then booked to straighten out the whole shebang.

The game begins with a delightful and cute, play-like prologue (not unlike those of McGee’s Grimm) that cleverly taps into the otherwise questionable narrative potential of a… a spelling game? As such, the concept needs no further selling; only, as this introduction comes to an end, with Alphabeta teleporting into Grammarfail’s castle to combat the evil typographer, no “room of words” exists, and the castle is entirely pitch-black.

The author, prompted by the aforementioned zero-entrant April catastrophe, swore to take part in this month’s competition no matter what, and describes the game as a “vastly unfinished piece” and “a game without gameplay”; in other words, there’s no way to rock this thang. Too bad.

Next!

Dead Hand: Chapter 7 The Bridge

Limpingfish’s Dead Hand: Chapter 7 The Bridge is effectively a five-minute long first-person bait & switch that has been developed with the aid of the AGS Panorama3D module – admittedly to a pretty neat effect: Instead of having to work with a still screen, you can change your viewpoint, hover around the scenery for clues and even move in a slightly more spaced-out version of the classic step-by-step Dungeon Master style.

Yup, Dead Hand might only have five minutes worth of gameplay, but those five are, uh, well spent! There is a definite sense of an aesthetic and an art direction at work here, and combined with the use of an uncommon first-person viewpoint, the suspense of this murder mystery carries over rather well.

Unfortunately, the game did bug out on me on my first playthrough, with my cursor turning into a permanent red X. After restarting – with no way of skipping the introduction, boo hiss – I was finally able to get through that one last minute that I was yet to see.

The downside to the aforementioned module is that it does pixelate (voxelate? How does this thing work?) graphics considerably during camera pans, only to render the scenery properly as you pause. Curiously, this is utilized to great effect in this particular MAGS entry: The idea of having to stop to look when focusing on elements works excellently within the constraints of a detective story, but is probably bound to cause problems for other types of fiction.

Dead Hand is short and sweet, and there are decidedly no regrets for trying the entry out. In the meantime, it’s probably better to take a step back and let Limpingfish develop some more content for the game! (You could check out some of his earlier works in the same style, for instance.)

Dead Pixels

Folks, I can’t deny that Nathan Hamley’s Dead Pixels (title in reference to the pixel hunting within, I’m sure) made me reconsider my commitment to this write-up. While this uncertainty luckily came to pass thanks to the subsequent entries, at this stage I could not help but wonder about the legitimacy of the topic. The problem, simply put, is this: How to best deal with an entry that is generic yet formally incoherent, with puzzles arbitrary yet repetitive, and downright hostile towards the player?

How to best negotiate a game that sports a lead character that takes a full twelve seconds (12!) to walk from one edge of a screen to another; a game that has its background sculpted from a photograph, in which a low amount of hoverless and response-free hotspots are either blatantly obvious or altogether indiscernible?

In all fairness, it does bear mention that Hamley himself admits how he “can’t code for cookies” and that his “next project’s programming … won’t be done by me.” Ah well. What can one add? Instead of being an illustration of ability or quality, perhaps the entry served the purpose of getting the author more acquainted with the engine, or the constraints of the competition? If that was the case, then no more need be said.

Therefore, let me be brief, very brief: The frame story here is that the local net café is closed down, and what follows is that you have to rid the world of a solitary zombie. Despite all these garish flaws, outlined above and present in literally every aspect of the entry, it can be played from beginning to end and thus completed. Too bad getting through should be such an exercise in frustration.

Dead Pixels wraps up the first part of our coverage of MAGS April. The complete list of the entries in question can be accessed here on the MAGS website, and the subsequent parts of this article – to be published soon – will contain a longer discussion of Eternally Us as well as delve into the final trio of entries, Hard Space, Snakes of Avalon and Space Pool Alpha.

My question is, which of these discarded Guybrushes would have been your favourite?

For a completely different type of comparison, you can check out our earlier post that juxtaposes old and new cover artwork from the game.

How, exactly, you may ask? Glancing over older press releases (frantic, adrenaline fueled, immersive) for Painkiller, the lingo has been amped up several notches: Symphony, carnage, blockbuster, unadulterated, entertainment, arsenal, outrageously, unprecedented, frantic, yell-inducing, inciting, mayhem, insane, execute, exaggerated, excited, onslaught, cutting-edge.

(Only missing the good ol’ slobberknocker and barnburner, in other words.)

Good thing, then, that the just-released debut trailer below should back up some of that smack, too:

Below, a list of excerpts and examples of the aforementioned jargon in action:

1. The developers are slated to deliver a “Blood Symphony of Gunplay and Carnage” packed with “blockbuster moments”
2. The developers “believe” in “making killing ridiculous enemies as awesome as possible”
3. Inspired by pulp and Heavy Metal, the company is collaborating with comic book author Rick Remender, “best known for his original pulp sci-fi series Fear Agent and his work on Dead Space”
4. The game places specific emphasis on the methodology of the kill: “special kills that reward players with increased upgrade points”
5. The team “dubs the close combat in Bulletstorm ‘creative mayhem’”
6. The company has also done away with the cover systems of today: “Bulletstorm … has no cover mechanism, and we’re turbo sliding 20 or so metres further than science’s popular ‘momentum’ would realistically take us.”

While Wolfire & co. have been shoving it to the mainstream in a slightly different manner, People Can Fly seem to be aiming to counter the current established shooter paradigm in ways that are reminiscent of the Death of Glam Metal!

The question remains, then – which side of the fence is glam metal on, exactly, and what about the Death of Grunge? According to Joystiq, EA have slated Bulletstorm for Q1 2011.

P.S.
Ulysses?

You play as FBI agent William Carter, tasked with combating an invasion of alien forces on idyllic 1950’s America. The tranquil and perfect suburbia setting is only a cardboard-thin façade that is set to be torn apart in the brutal destruction to come.

It’s a world where people feel comfortable and everything is optimistic, they feel that there is a great future ahead.
- Jonathan Pelling

The screenshots are raw and unpolished, and the game is obviously still early in development. But already the distinctive style of the era is starting to come together in the art direction.

Your campaign to eliminate the alien menace will involve gathering intelligence and investigating sites of reported activity. The mission structure is non-linear, it will be up to you which locations to tackle next, at the possible cost of missing out on other missions. Upon selecting a mission you will be driven out to the site, and you have the choice of leaving it at any time and returning to headquarters. So each mission involves careful resource management and decision-making, with you having to weigh the choice to either leave with what you have accomplished and collected or to press on and risk your dwindling manpower and resources. You will accompanied by AI-controlled fellow agents who are expendable; as of right now it is unclear how much control you will have over them but I’d be surprised if some kind of tactical command system à la SWAT 4 was not implemented.

A number of different objectives can be pursued, such as wiping out the threat, gathering evidence and scavenging for precious resources. Confronting the aliens may land you in a tough battle especially early on when their technology is vastly superior to yours. Researching the alien tech will allow you to produce more effective weaponry and defenses. This can be achieved by gathering evidence at the sites with your camera, a mechanic borrowed from the BioShock series. In the demo shown to the press, the player had researched the black goo-like aliens and was able to produce two new items as a result: a kind of detector that points you in the direction of the nearest blob of goo, and a flame grenade that is more effective against the organism than the standard-issue shotguns and revolvers.

Another important goal is to collect Elerium, a valuable energy source that powers your underground HQ and weapons development. Searching for this substance can be your highest chosen priority, and yet prove to be the thing that turns a hopeful mission into disastrous failure.

With each new piece of information it’s becoming evident that the game is not a remake, and perhaps shares little more with the original series than the branding. If anything, the aliens and government agency aspects are more like something out of The X-Files. Hardcore fans craving for the traditional turn-based gameplay are going to have to look elsewhere for their fix, maybe in the indie effort Xenonauts. But it looks like 2K Marin are trying to retain the spirit of the series while crafting a new kind of FPS experience. The OXM preview focuses on describing a harrowing mission, beat for beat in a manner suited to an atmospheric, story-oriented FPS.

We’re forging a new mythology, but what we’re retaining is the core elements that made X-COM X-COM. The strategy, the base, the research, agents, being in charge, and dealing with this problem as you see fit. You are the one that’s driving the investigation – those elements remain but we want to create a new world with a new set of enemies that’s genuinely compelling for players to learn more about.
- Jonathan Pelling

I surmised earlier that XCOM could be very much like what Irrational Games’ Division 9 was planned to be. That is, tactical action in randomly-populated levels as in SWAT 4, with additional over-arching strategic gameplay involving base and resource management and tech research. The OXM and PC Gamer articles don’t elaborate much on this, but Australian magazine PC Powerplay does offer some information. Choosing exactly where to focus your efforts will determine the outcome of the campaign.

Optimising your operation is the heart of XCOM’s strategy.
- PC Powerplay

2K Marin are tight-lipped on the possibility of multiplayer as well, but as Martyn remarked to me, this game seems like a perfect opportunity for some co-op action.

So while diehard X-COM fans may have reason to be disappointed that a true successor to the series is not in the cards, 2K Marin appear to be onto something that, if everything falls into place, could be a great title in its own right.

Phase 1 of the Counter-Strike: Source beta has opened at cyber cafes that subscribe to the Valve Cyber Café Program. A full listing of those venues can be found here: http://www.steampowered.com/?area=cafe_directory
Later this month, the beta will be extended to owners of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and ATI\Half-Life 2 video card bundle owners.

Wait, wai-… wait a minute! Nearly got sucked into a bloody time warp there – that particular press bit’s actually way back from 2004. Believe it or not, after so many years of failed updates and broken netcode, Valve have honestly, really, truly scraped together a new batch of features to the game in conjunction with Hidden Path Studios. Broadly, here’s what the “limited beta” image above is about:

• 144 achievements added
• New lifetime player stats and summary screens
• New match player stats and summary screens
• New end of round display with MVP and interesting fact about a player
• Updated scoreboard with new icons, visual style, MVP stars, and avatar pictures
• New cinematic death camera
• New domination and revenge system
• Added avatar icons to voice chat, scoreboard, and end of round display
• Incorporated many source engine updates

Before these changes are rolled over to the general population, you can sign up for the beta here. Steam is coughing and sputtering as is common with all major releases, so you might have to wait for your turn a bit.

Update: Whoops, the limited beta filled up already. That was quick.

Somehow missed the bundle altogether?

• Contains five full games: Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru, Penumbra: Overture and World of Goo (plus Samorost 2 as a late bonus from Amanita Design)
• The profits all go to the developers as well as two charities: EFF and Child’s Play.
• You pay what you want to whom you want.
• The games are cross-platform and DRM-free each. Arstechnica recently chatted up Jeffrey Rosen on the topic.

Notably, for the duration of the campaign, Frictional Games are also offering the remaining two Penumbra games, Black Plague and Requiem, at a 75% discount. Furthermore, you can also preorder their forthcoming project, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, at 50% off (a great idea – the team will produce additional content if 2000 preorders are made before the 31st; the meter currently sits at an even 1900):

While you’re at it – and even if you’re not buying the bundle – please also remember to subscribe to Wolfire and Frictional Games’ development blogs; they contain what can only be described as a cornucopia of information, both intriguing and useful, for indie game fans and developers alike.