Jolly voxel-based isometric shooter Voxatron is now available, in its alpha form, as part of an Indie Humble deal. Not a bundle, just the offering of this one game, which is debuting today, at a price of your choosing. After this, it will be available for $15. I’ve been playing for a couple of weeks and reckon it’s worth every cent of that pricetag, but if you want it cheaper, now’s your chance. The graphics are lovely, as you can see in the new trailer below, but it’s the completely destructible world that most often made me want to applaud with delight, either dramatically when pillars collapsed or in the smaller detail of walls chipping away during fights. Imaginative and fun, this is a fine deal.
Saints Row the third now officially has EVERYTHING in it. Everything you expect from a video game, everything you couldn’t reasonably hope for and Burt Goddamn Reynolds.
It’s here and the rumour mill is already grinding away at full speed. Suggestions that Tommy Vercetti is the main character and San Andreas is the setting. Rumours also abound that this is only the story of one of four playable characters and 3 more trailers are to be released. Fingers crossed for more trailers, eh?
Team Fortress 2?s sinewy neck of content has been slashed open once more, pumping forth a bloody torrent of hats and features. It’s the third annual Halloween update, and it brings full-body costumes for every class (including a fantastic “teleporter gone wrong” Brundlefly for the Engineer), an update for classic King of the Hill map Viaduct turning it into Eyeaduct, which features dimension-jumping slipgates and a spooktacular boss fight with the Demoman’s demon-posessed eyeball, and finally another superb Halloween-themed comic book depicting the origins of said demon eyeball. It’s all still Free to Play of course, with the new costume items being found randomly throughout the map or available to buy immediately in the MannCo store. A short demonstration of the boss battle is after the jump.
The most common complaint about The Binding of Isaac is that it doesn’t contain enough horrid things in it, being a rather delicate cocktail of blood, tears and poo. Thankfully, the Halloween update, which will automatically apply itself to Steam copies of the game by noon PST today, adds “20% more evil”. It says so in the trailer, which is gibbering madly in the sulfurous depths below, along with some details on what that extra evil is composed of, including new playable character Eve.
Feast your eyes on the grown-up laughing young daredevil as he throws down on the thugs of Arkham City. The clip highlights his specialized weaponry and shows off his acrobatic fighting style, too. You’ll be able to start playing as Dick Grayson in new Wayne Manor and Main Hall challenge maps next week.
Rockstar sequel rumored to put players in control of a handful of characters, return to the sunny part of the West Coast.
Individual Grand Theft Auto releases have traditionally put players in the role of a singular protagonist. A recent report suggests the next entry in the series may provide a few different playable perspectives on the game’s story, while returning to familiar territory with its setting.
Yesterday’s announcement of Rockstar’s latest provided nothing more than a logo, but citing a “source familiar with the game,” Kotaku reports the game will purportedly use Los Angeles as its city of inspiration and will feature more than one protagonist. It would not be the first time Rockstar turned to LA for ideas, as the West Coast metropolis loomed large as a clear muse for the fictional California microcosm of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
While GTAV could be the first title in the series to tell its primary story through multiple characters, the idea isn’t entirely unprecedented. Grand Theft Auto IV focused on the story of Niko Bellic, but subsequent expansions depicted Liberty City from the viewpoints of two more characters. The Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories PSP games also returned to cities from the main console versions of the series, but with new characters driving the story.
This is not the first suggestion that GTAV could return to an LA-inspired setting. In March, reports linked a casting call for voice roles in an interactive project codenamed “Rush” to Rockstar’s next game. Those listings described a motley crew of California characters, including the return of GTA: San Andreas character James Pedeaston.
Whatever the setting, it’s likely to be revealed soon. The first GTAV trailer is set to be released November 2.
What is a day without spikes? Brazilian indie game Mr Bree: Returning Home is mostly about a pig repeatedly falling onto spikes and spikes repeatedly falling onto a pig. As with other spike-themed platformers, it’s rather tricky and, as the trailer shows, it has a resemblance to the fiendish Super Meat Boy, except with a pig instead of a sentient meat-chunk. Let’s be honest, there is precious little difference between the two. The game is currently in beta and shall be out on PC and Mac this winter, hopefully preceded by a demo. I’ve played a little already, enough to confirm my understanding that abattoirs are unpleasant and pointy metal things are my least favourite acquaintance.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that WoW’s pandas look quite good in motion, but, well, they do. You can see them frolicking in their Asia-themed themepark world below in the Mists of Pandaria trailer. Cute hot air balloons, too.
These Panda types will apparently be a neutral race, with players deciding between alliance and horde once they get past the starting stuff. The pandaren starting area is, also, on the back of a giant turtle. Hmm.
I love Cortex Command. It’s one of my favourite indies ever. The current build of this brain-defending, bunker-building, robot-deploying, side-scrolling tactical digging and shooting game means that it has a tonne of interesting scenarios you can set up and play, but currently the campaign (which I’d jumped into to take a look at) is a bit completely broken. Cortex Command has been out in “work in progress” beta form for about 47 years, but there’s been a bit of progress of late, and so I’m hoping we’ll see that campaign built upon soon. Nevertheless, for those of you who’ve not played this yet – and you really should have done by now – there’s a free (and sadly harshly limited) demo on the site.
A warning: this one of those games that takes some getting used to before you see the real magic of it, and I suspect the demo isn’t long enough to get all that across. The quirky mannequin clunkiness of the character is the whole point: it’s an absurd slapstick physics robot battle toolbox, and it has a bit of a modding scene now to make things even more ridiculous. I’ve posted what is now quite an old gameplay trailer below, but I think it gets the point across.
I am definitely not going to recommend getting the full game unless you’ve played the demo, as it’s definitely an acquired taste. It can be fiddly, and really takes some time to get into the pace of it. But when you’ve got a great scenario ticking over properly, and robots get smacked all over the place, and you are managing on crisis after the next, it’s hilarious.
I plan to play a bit more and perhaps write some more thoughts later in the week. Join me?
