4 new shots posted.

GDC 2011: Tim Schafer’s studio bringing third-person shooter, tower-defense hybrid featuring mechs to Microsoft’s downloadable platform.

Handing out accolades to last year’s top titles was the name of the game at last night’s Game Developers Choice Awards, and Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption rode off with another saddlebag of statues.

However, the night also had a future-looking element, as host Tim Schafer capitalized on the opportunity to announce Double Fine’s latest downloadable title, Trenched.

As seen in the game’s first trailer (below), Trenched presents the plight of the Mobile Trench Brigade, which has been charged with protecting earth from an evil invading alien force known as Monovision.

A hybridization of the third-person shooter and tower-defense genres, Trenched sees players erecting both stationary defensive constructions and lurching about in a highly customizable mech warfare suit. According to Double Fine, players will be afforded thousands of differnt options to customize their mechs.

Trenched will also feature an online co-op mode, where players can join up with other players throughout the world to battle the invading force. Double Fine has yet to offer word on whether the game will have a competitive component.

As with the Double Fine’s recently announced Sesame Street:Cookie’s Counting Carnival, Trenched has thus far only been announced for the Xbox 360. Double Fine’s other recent downloadable efforts, Costume Quest and Stacking, both enjoyed multiplatform releases through Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network.

We slip and slide all over the place in this eccentric platformer.

The Fancy Pants Adventure is a game about pants. More specifically, fancy pants. Well, at least that’s the goal. You don’t start out the game with fancy pants. In fact, the pants you begin the game with are downright plain. All solid colors and whatnot.

But the more time you spend with this eccentric 2D platformer, the more pants you unlock. We’re talking plaid pants, striped pants…you name it. All the pants you can imagine!

Yes, The Fancy Pants Adventure is an extremely silly game. If you dig below the surface, however, what you’ve got is a fairly straightforward core: It’s a 2D side-scrolling platformer in which you attempt to run and jump in a generally left-to-right direction across a variety of treacherous levels. But layered on top of all of that is a thick smattering of ridiculousness.

Fancy Pants, based on a free Flash game by then-college student Brad Borne, is presented in a hand-drawn stick-figure art style that feels more than a little bit like you’re peering at someone’s notebook doodles. The controls are also quite different from most platformers because building momentum speed plays a huge role in how you move about the levels–you’re basically sliding all over the place as though running on ice.

Read the rest of this entry »

Scott Probst from Visceral Games drops in for a look at the Severed downloadable content for Dead Space 2.

We shed some light on The Darkness II and catch up on the life and times of Jackie Estacado.

Jackie Estacado has it rough. As the protagonist of 2007′s The Darkness–a first-person shooter based on the comic series of the same name–Jackie led a content life with his girlfriend, Jenny. However, on his 21st birthday, a malevolent force awoke within him and drew our unfortunate hero down a path of violence, hardship, and sacrifice. It was the darkness–a primal force of creation and chaos passed down through the Estacado family for generations.

It has been roughly four years since we parted ways with The Darkness, and since then, it has changed hands from developer Starbreeze to Digital Extremes. We recently met up with publisher 2K Games to watch a demonstration of The Darkness II in motion and see what changes the new developer has in store.

Our first look at the game started off, appropriately enough, in the dark. We could hear the steady beat of a hammer not far in the distance. As our character opened his eyes, we could see that a hand–Jackie’s hand–was having a large, metal spike nailed through it. He was being crucified in the dim confines of what appeared to be a filthy torture chamber.

Our captor was apparently a mysterious crippled man who appeared to be gloating at our distress while surrounded by jackbooted thugs. As he spoke, Jackie’s gaze dropped from his punctured hand down to his midsection. A steady stream of wispy, black essence was flowing freely from his gut and into an ornate canister. We were obviously bearing witness to some dark ritual, but how did we get here?

Right on cue, a flashback transported us back to the prior events. Jackie Estacado, now the don of the Franchetti crime family, had just arrived at an opulent Italian restaurant and was being led to his specially prepared table. As he walked through the establishment, we got our first good look at The Darkness II’s new art style.

Read the rest of this entry »

We play as a gun-toting marionette in Twisted Pixel’s upcoming shooter for Kinect.

Leave it to Twisted Pixel to come up with something quirky, silly and totally hilarious. At the Microsoft February Showcase in San Francisco, we got our first look at The Gunstringer, where we played as an undead cowboy who is the star of a stage show. There’s even a real life audience in game to cheer you on between acts.

This lone cowboy is out for revenge, and he’s going to get it with your help as the puppeteer. It’s an on-rail shooter using Kinect and once you jump into this fabricated theatrical performance (reminiscent of old spaghetti westerns), you’ll find that it actually takes some coordination and finesse to exact revenge on the posse who betrayed you.

It’s not that the controls aren’t responsive enough; it was actually quite solid and we were told that there would definitely be more fine tuning. Waving your right hand and left hand around at the same time can be tricky–unless you’ve mastered the art of patting your head and rubbing your belly.

In Gunstringer you use your left hand to move your puppet, flicking it up to jump and the right hand controls the target reticule. With a swift jerk up with your right forearm, you’ll be able to fire at any enemies that you’ve highlighted. Pointing your finger at the television and yelling “pew pew!” as though you’ve got an actual gun is optional, but the game is fun enough where you actually kind of want to. We’ve all ran around as kids pointing and firing at people with our fingers, so this actually felt quite natural and for the most part it was very responsive.

It will take some practice before you can weave around cacti like a pro with one hand while highlighting all the targets with your right hand and firing. At least it seems like we’re flexing certain parts of our brain that we normally don’t use. What also keeps you motivated though is that stuff blows up with dramatic flair when you unload your gun, so it feels like a shooting gallery except that you’re always on the move. It’s also interesting to listen to the narrator narrate what you’re doing on screen since you are in a play and there’s an audience to entertain.

The environments are full of random items thrown together and the characters that you meet and ultimately kill are so ridiculous that you can’t help but laugh as you go along. The Wavy Tube man was the first boss we came across, and he was basically a giant green wavy tube with tube arms donning a cowboy hat, blowing in the wind. You’ve seen these tubes before. They’re usually blowing around at a car dealership or some kind of festival to get your attention.

Read the rest of this entry »

Busting has been known to make people feel good.

At a recent Microsoft press event, we got a chance to check out the XBLA (as well as PSN and PC) Ghostbusters top-down, twin-stick shooter called Sanctum of Slime. This particular game doesn’t really take place anywhere in the proper Ghostbusters storyline (yes, there’s a proper Ghostbusters storyline) as the characters and locations have been made specifically for this game. Unfortunately, that means no Spengler, Stantz, Venkman, or Zeddemore, but Sanctum of slime does support cooperative play for up to four characters that are not the Ghostbusters from the movie.

Mechanics in Sanctum of slime are pretty straightforward. The left analog stick controls movement while the right analog stick determines aiming and shooting–just as you’d find in most other twin-stick shooters.

The twist is that, in addition to the positron glider, you have two other weapons types at your disposal–each of which produces a different kind of projectile that you can access by pressing a shoulder button. You’ll know when to use a certain weapon type depending on the color of the ghost you’re attacking, so if the ghost happens to be red, then you use the regular glider.

If the ghost is yellow, then you use a different weapon that produces a yellow net-like projectile that covers a pretty big swath of space.

All of the weapons will inflict damage on a ghost no matter the color, but you can kill them (or is it re-kill?) them quicker when using the properly color coded weapon.

There are 12 levels and two separate boss levels in Sanctum of slime. Some of the locations you’ll see include a hotel, sewers, and a graveyard and most of the locations we’ve seen so far have enemies that are unique to that area. Level progression involves clearing out a room and then moving onto the next.

If any team member loses all of their health, you have an opportunity to revive them by standing over the body and pressing the designated button repeatedly. Doing this also means that you leave yourself open to attack, so generally you have to wait for an opening before you risk reviving a fallen comrade.

Read the rest of this entry »

Robot Entertainment’s first effort falls in fantasy action-strategy genre, due on PC, possibly 360, PS3, this summer.

Ensemble Studios’ closure by Microsoft in 2009 sent shock waves throughout the industry, but it didn’t take long for many of the Age of Empires developers to land on their feet. One studio to form out of that studio’s remnants was Robot Entertainment, which formed under Tony Goodman and other former members of Ensemble’s leadership team.

Today, Robot’s first orders have been inputted, as the studio announced it will release Orcs Must Die as a digital download on consoles and PC this summer. According to a Robot representative, exact platforms have yet to be nailed down, but the studio is aiming to release the title on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

As its title may imply, Orcs Must Die sees players defending their castle from a never-ending flood of orcs and other infernal beasts. As seen in the game’s first trailer (below), the high-intensity action title sees players strategically retreating through their keeps while laying and springing traps that range from spiked logs to magical wrecking-ball pendulums.

Robot expects to offer additional details on the title at PAX East, which will take place from March 11-13 in Boston.

D3Publisher confirms Insect Armageddon delay; multiplayer action game now set to swarm Xbox 360, PS3 this summer.

Gamers eager to enlist in the Earth Defense Force will need to wait a little bit longer. According to the game’s official Facebook page, Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon will miss its previously announced spring release window and is now set for launch July 5.

In development at Vicious Cycle Games (Dead Head Fred, Matt Hazard), Insect Armageddon will once again cast players as a member of the Earth Defense Force. When the planet is attacked by alien invasion forces closely resembling giant ants, spiders, and other terrestrial bugs, the vastly outnumbered EDF makes up for a lack of manpower with an abundance of firepower.

To help stave off the invasion, Insect Armageddon will give players access to over 300 weapons and helpful tools like jetpacks and movable turrets. It will also allow up to three players to go through the campaign mode together online, or two players in split-screen cooperative mode. The game also features a separate six-player mode where players battle wave after wave of the alien menace together.

The Earth Defense Force series began life as Chikyuu Boueigun, part of D3Publisher’s Japanese line of Simple 2000 budget PlayStation 2 games. While the Xbox 360 offering Earth Defense Force 2017 was the first installment in the series to see release in North America, the previous installments made their way to Europe under the Global Defence Force and Monster Attack names.

For more on Insect Armageddon, check out GameSpot’s previous coverage.

Get the full article at GameSpot