Potatoes are delicious. We all love potatoes. Some more than others. I have six potatoes. I plan on using them in a delicious meal. Maybe with some cavefish. Cavefish is delicious, but only if cooked. You’ll mess it up bad, well let’s leave it at that. I’ve eaten whenever, whatever I’ve hooked. I’d kill for the thrill of a meal with some fat.
Sometimes you just gotta slow down.
Video games don’t always have to be fast paced. You don’t always have to have bullets constantly flying or several hundred explosions going off in the space of about ten seconds, and even multiplayer shooters featuring squads of soldiers armed to the teeth with enough ordinance to erase a medium sized country from the face of modern civilisation don’t always need to be twitch-controlled fragfests. And though I do love sprinting across the Fields of Battle or being Called to Duty with groups of my friends online, I am here today to tell you about a game that takes the exact opposite approach to player-versus-player modern combat.
In the future, professional sports will no longer be comprised of a team of athletes chasing a sphere or ovoid around a grass field, but rather take the form of teams of cloned combatants killing each other in colourful metal deathmatch arenas for our entertainment.
As some of you may know, though many of you will not, Monday Night Combat has seen something of a re-launch this week as it makes it’s debut on Steam. This time however, I am already seeing a much brighter future for the game than it ever had on Xbox Live Arcade.
So in an attempt to make a less-than-triumphant return to getting my opinion back out to the masses with burning vigor, I have decided to pursue a more clichéd approach to my articles. Namely, my thoughts of games from days of yore.
To kick off this series of reflections on the titles that helped to make this fine industry what it is today, how about I start off with the best classic game you have almost certainly never played? (That is, if you are a reader from the United States or Canada!)
Today the positively hilarious guys over at Zombie Cow Studios released their latest game, which features a crack squad of contraceptive-capped marines delving deep into people’s most disturbing orifices, blowing up all kinds of nasty naughty diseases.
It also happens to be free, so you can go grab it right now and not have to pay a penny!
This week as promised Valve has released Alien Swarm for free, and it is pretty much the best thing to hit Steam since Left 4 Dead 2.
There. I said it.
Despite the fact that it is incredibly short out of the box, (just a single campaign that took around two and half hours on Hard) it is an incredibly fun four player co-op zombie survival alien blasting experience played from a top down perspective. It also happens to be incredibly pretty to look at (it’s built on the latest version of Source, even newer than Left 4 Dead 2′s version) and comes with the easiest map creator in the world. Expect to see literally hundreds of custom maps, campaigns and mods in the coming weeks following its release. I personally can’t wait to see Left 4 Dead campaigns work their way into this title – zombies and all. That would be so much fun I don’t even know where to begin. Not bad for a free title, eh?
So we have a completely free, professional quality downloadable title (that is shockingly similar to the $15 downloadable Alien Breed: Impact), which also comes with the entire source code and the latest version of Valve’s Source Development Kit.
Everybody with a PC should must download this on Steam (it is completely free), and experience Valve once again raising the bar in the gaming industry. I honestly can’t recommend this game enough. Did we also mention that it is free?
Alien Swarm on Steam
Two weeks ago I find myself deep in thought pondering over a question that was posted on our forums – “What is your personal greatest achievement in gaming?” After serious consideration and headaches, I could only come up with a single answer. I have absolutely no idea.
The successive migranes, however, did make me realise a dark little secret of my past as a gamer, specifically a gamer who prides himself on his knowledge of classic gaming and the wealth of experience under his belt.
I had never beaten a Megaman game.
Despite the fact that we mentioned it in a podcast a while back, I still don’t think enough people have been introduced to the wonderful world of Spelunky. I have become completely addicted to the game as of late, and I think more of you out there in internetland should do the same.
Spelunky is a fantastic little indie game developed by Derek Yu, a fairly well known independent developer who’s other titles include Eternal Daughter and Aquaria. Obviously heavily influenced by classic games like Spelunker, the game revolves around exploring an expansive underground cave complex whilst collecting mass quantities of buries treasure, fighting snakes and giant spiders, and rescuing Hysterical Dames. The main selling point of Spelunky for me however, is the completely random nature of the game. Every time you start, the entire game is randomly generated so no two playthroughs will ever be the same. There are some small factors that remain constant, such as the amount of starting items you have and the ‘theme’ of the current level you are on (1-4 are simple brown caves, 5-9 are an underground jungle, etc). You also only have a single life in the game which can make the game a little difficult, although a large amount of the fun in the experience is seeing just how the game will play out the next time.
The game is completely free to download, although Derek does have an Xbox Live Arcade version planned for release in the near future. So what are you waiting for, head over to Spelunky World and download it now!
Today Valve announced the first piece of downloadable content for Left 4 Dead 2, and it really feels like they know exactly what their user base wants.
The new campaign, ‘The Passing’, will be set after the events of Dead Center from Left 4 Dead 2, and will feature our old favourite characters Bill, Francis, Louis and Zoey metting up with the four new survivors from L4D2.
Valve also mentioned that there will be a new melee weapon added to the game, along with a new firearm, and a new ‘campaign challenge’ game mode. Could this be the 8 player campaign mode us fans have been pining for? We’ll keep you up to date on news as it appears. Words cannot express how excited I am to use the original characters in Left 4 Dead 2.
So, Mixmoff has forced me into updating the general public about his vain attempt to get his PS3 working again. As you can see, he has managed to completely destroy disassemble the console fairly well so far, let’s just hope he can figure out how to put it back together and somewhat resemble what it is supposed to be. And maybe, just maybe, if you listen real hard, you might be able to hear anything he’s saying.
The amount of thermal compound used on the CPU and GPU in that refurb machine is beyond sickening. Considering I build and service PCs by day, seeing this just makes me want to take whoever thought that was a good idea out back and show them just what really happened to Old Yeller.
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