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martynzachary
A blog for those who spend more time thinking about gaming than gaming
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Top Five Left 4 Dead 1/2 Custom Campaigns
In August 2010, Chet Faliszek announced Valve would begin to rotate biweekly custom-made campaigns on the official servers of Left 4 Dead 2:
Every two weeks we are going to feature a new community campaign on our servers. We will feature one campaign at a time to make it is easier to find games. We’ll be …
ReadVideo Game Criticism and the Question of S#%t
I had (erroneously) assumed that I would never, ever be writing about s#$t in video games, but after recently posting my conceptual/generic analysis of The Binding of Isaac, questions of merit, value/quality and meaning, as well as the overall relevance of video game criticism, emerged – chiefly at Rock, Paper Shotgun, as usual, the Mecca of …
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Latest Post: The Bird’s the Word
17/03/2012 – 13:06
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-  Wie das CIA ein ehrgeiziges Display in nach al-|... by hausiotoummap in Interview with Epic Games’ Jay Wilbur
- Yeah, as soon as it’s done! –Alexei by VoxExMachina in Video Game Criticism and the Question of S#%t
- Your original piece was so strong. The fact that... by Martyn Zachary in Video Game Criticism and the Question of S#%t
- Your original piece was so strong. The fact that we... by VoxExMachina in Video Game Criticism and the Question of S#%t
- Not being into BioWare, Nabeel’s articles on the topic are always a new... by Martyn Zachary in Prepare The Canons
- [NB] Wow, with only 6 hours to spare they did it! A rollercoaster of a Kickstarter: http://t.co/gOhqdaEp Congratulations to @Camouflaj! 6 days ago
- [NB] I hope @Camouflaj's Republique Kickstarter makes it: http://t.co/ihTGSvbT Only twelve hours go, it's going to be close! #KeepHopeAlive 6 days ago
- [NB] iOS hit Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is now available on Steam: http://t.co/ln4ETXNA Comes with the terrific soundtrack for free. 2012-04-17
- [NB] Regarding GFWL being the chosen DRM for Dark Souls PC, I think TotalBiscuit summed up the issues quite nicely: http://t.co/kFA5jK6k 2012-04-17
- [NB] We did it! http://t.co/jKPNjPhk Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition coming to the PC on August 24th. 2012-04-17
- More updates...
There Is Something In The Sky
29/05/2011 – 12:53
E3 2011 is in just over a week, which is just enough time for me to catch us up on some games that I am very much looking forward to. We’re just about halfway through the year and there have been some great titles already, but some of my most anticipated releases are yet to come. We’ll start with one that has recently had a fresh round of press coverage ahead of its E3 showing.
The last time we looked at Irrational Games’ BioShock Infinite, Martyn walked us through the newly unveiled teaser trailer and some of the early details about the game. Not much to go on in this all-too-brief CG video, a finely crafted reveal of the world of Columbia, but the details paint a grim picture. Posters touting the city’s motto describe an ultra-nationalist, xenophobic society, clearly the core philosophical theme to be explored by the game in true BioShock fashion.
Infinite takes place in 1912 on the massive floating city of Columbia. You take on the role of Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, on a mission to seek and assist in the escape of a young woman by the name of Elizabeth. It seems that she is no run-of-the-mill damsel in distress, however: your NPC companion has a mind and will of her own, and a host of supernatural abilities to boot. She will aid you in combat with her various powers, and you can choose to exploit these abilities at a cost not yet fully defined.
Fractiv, Offsetting
01/03/2011 – 17:10
Anybody still fondly recall Project Offset, the FPS/RPG Intel bought for internal development? Unfortunately, this grand and ambitious project got canned by Intel quite some time back. The good news, though? Surprisingly, old members of the Offset Studio have already set up new shop in Santa Clara, California under the moniker Fractiv and have even released their first game, Lane Splitter, for the iPhone and iPad (with Android to follow shortly). As cheesy as its premise is, the game actually looks pretty funny!
The bad news, then? Intel does own everything the team produced before and during their stint for the behemoth. Project Offset, their magnum opus, will never see the light of day sans a slew of really cool videos and demo reels. Sniff. Talking to Bigdownload, though, studio leader Sam McGrath didn’t seem all that heartbroken, even if the long development process ultimately resulted in the cancellation of the project.
In the interview, McGrath recounts the early days of the project, telling that before they went to work at Intel, the team
…developed a graphically impressive, fully playable prototype, as well as developing core engine tech at the same time. Due to circumstances out of our control, the publisher we were working with decided to shift their company strategy in a direction that did not involve PC games, and our project was cancelled. Luckily, we had a very good contract with them that allowed us to retain the rights to our IP.
Wow, talk about a close shave there.
No Deal for Dead Island
25/02/2011 – 16:40
That Dead Island trailer – supposedly created by the Glasgow-based animation studio Axis Animation – has already been viewed far over 3 million times on Youtube, with an equal amount of tweets to go. Its popularity has, in turn, turned up quite a fair bit of misinformation that now surrounds the project. As things stand, a clarification to our earlier report is in order: Unlike previously reported, no movie deal for the game has yet to be made.
In speaking to LA Times’ 24 Frames, Koch Media representative Malte Wagener stated that
There are a lot of different stories out there but the bottom line is that neither Union nor Sean Daniel has ever talked to Koch Media. Richard [Leibowitz, of Union] and [game developer] Techland agree there was never any rights.
I personally find it more than a little troubling that so many respectable film websites would report the deal as fact, which in turn leads me to question Koch Media and Deep Silver’s role in the propagation of the news. While I don’t think this sort of misinformation bodes well for the negotiations of a potential adaptation of the game, it’s frankly quite futile to discuss any of this as both the film and the game are still but a ghost in the hype machine. At the time of writing, Dead Island is coming out late 2011.
Gemini Rue (P)review
24/02/2011 – 17:19
Gemini Rue, an IGF 2010 Student Showcase winner under its previous title, Boryokudan Rue, is Joshua Nuernberger’s first full-length commercial title that successfully follows up on the promising path already travelled by the developer’s first adventure game title, La Croix Pan. Dave Gilbert’s Wadjet Eye Games is to publish the game today, 24th of February, and a demo was made exclusively available at GameFront yesterday.
The game, a film noir/sci-fi adventure, is of two separate halves: Players control Azriel Odin, with the help of his partner Kane Harris, sneaking into the colony of Barracus in search of an informant known as Matthieus Howard. Interwoven between Azriel’s sections also figures the mysterious prisoner-patient Delta-Six, an amnesiac confined to and conditioned in a sterile facility with totalitarian, Pavlovian means.
An equal split between the two halves exists not only narratively, but also visually: On the surface of Barracus (a “New Pittsburgh,” as it is described), where habitable conditions are sustained by weather towers, where the constant presence of rainfall plagues the colony, its hammering rattle contrasting strongly with the sterile silence and cleanliness of the facility Delta-Six remains confined in. Where Delta-Six is a silent, worn-down man deprived of his humanity and personality, Azriel is a keen-eyed man of action and freedom, constantly entangled in danger, shootouts and the narrowest of escapes.
No Man Is a Dead Island
20/02/2011 – 13:00
…but maybe a zombie is! A singular and unique, expertly designed trailer was all it took to light a fire under the video gaming community, bringing a slow and deliberate simmer to an absolute, absolute boil. This trailer, with its decidedly nihilistic take on the zombie mode, exhibited in reverse and to a haunting piano-based soundtrack, has been called the best trailer of the year (in February!) on several sites already, for instance, by LA Times’ 24 Frames, The Escapist, Unreality, and Ain’t It Cool News:
This heavy praise heaped on the sudden smash hit of a trailer, of course, was directed towards Techland’s Dead Island, now officially housed under the wings of the German publisher Deep Silver. The game has indeed been simmering under the surface for years, with first indications of the game’s free-form, melee-based survivalist direction coming in late 2007. And then silence.