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Each month a new artist; each image a new angle. This month: Giovanni Cervantes.
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  • The Problem With Episodes: Where is LostWinds Chapter 2?



    Looking at the game design zeitgeist through the lens of GDC, you can start to get a clearer image of what videogames are going to be like in the next decade. More small games, more downloadable games, more mobile/iPhone games, more user generated content. This is the way of the future. It isn’t a future unique to GDC 2009, though. These have been the trends dominating futurist
    industry discussion for five years running. We know it’s the future, dag nab it! Enough. Let us talk of the past.

    One design trend that everyone and their Commodore 64-programming uncle was talking about just three years ago was episodic content. Episodes! This is how big games will be delivered from here on out! Wave of the future, by gum. Gabe Newell and Valve were the poster children of the episodic games movement. They’re also the poster children of how well that movement has worked out.

    Read More...


  • Wallace and Gromit Demo Now Available

    I got a little tired of Telltale Games' Sam and Max games, to the point where I never even bothered to try the last episode of the second season; the novelty of playing new point-and-click adventure games wasn't enough to get me past the lukewarm, dated humor that the series desperately needed to improve upon. So I was more than a little happy to hear the news that the developer was working on a series of games featuring the cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his put-upon dog Gromit.

    As a fan of the duo since their very beginning, I've always felt like there was something very video-gamey about all of the brilliant setpieces Wallace and Gromit would find themselves in throughout the course of their various adventures. And now that Telltale games has just released the demo for the first episode of their newest video game adventure, we can see if my theory is true.

    Yes, I know there have been a few Wallace and Gromit games in the past. They just weren't very good.

    Read More...


  • Unimportant News: The Imposter Wallace



    We all know (and should be excited that) Telltale Games is bringing out a series of episodic Wallace and Gromit adventures later this year. But what you might not know is that the Wallace in this new series of games is an...

    *thunderclap*

    IMPOSTER!!!

    That's right; longtime voice of Wallace, Peter Sallis, will not be returning to voice the lovable bald and British inventor in Telltale's new games, according to this tip from The International House of Mojo:

    However, the bad news is the PCZone have confirmed that Peter Sallis will not be playing Wallace. However, his voice will instead be played by Aardman's official back-up actor for Sallis, "you know, the bloke who did his voice on that rubbish novelty alarm clock you got for Christmas".

    I realize that it's a little much to ask an 88 year-old man to reprise his most-famous role for a series of video games, but there's something about sound-alikes that I find intensely creepy, like the original actor was replaced with a pod person of something. And even if I get even slightly used to the understudy, I can't help but experience a sort of audio aftertaste, like when you accidentally gulp down a diet Coke and quickly realize that something terribly wrong is going on in your mouth area. But maybe this is just a personal problem.

    Related Links:

    Quickies: Homestar Ruiner
    Whatcha Playing: The Thirst For Adventure, Pointing At Things, and Not Knowing What to Say
    Will Games Ever Be Funny?

    Read More...


  • Will Games Ever Be Funny?

    Two short years ago, when I learned that there were going to be not one, but six new Sam and Max games, I was ecstatic. In the brief period of time I could have actually been considered a PC gamer, I subsisted primarily on the Lucasarts brand of PC adventure games, and Sam and Max Hit the Road was one of my favorites. But today, the final episode of Sam and Max Season 2 sits on my desktop, where it has been unclicked for months and will probably remain so until I force myself to play through it on some day where I'm not burdened with responsibility. That's right: "force." What the hell happened to me?

    I've been in love with Sam and Max even before I played their original game; Steve Purcell's art style, along with a great mix of film noir send-up and absurdist humor made the duo immediately appealing to me.  So, in the 90s, I bought their game, somehow managed to get my hands on the original printing of the trade paperback (no one was murdered, I swear), and watched the mostly-okay cartoon on Fox Kids for the whole year the network decided to air it.  Thus, my Sam and Max fanhood should not be called into question.  But these days, I can't find myself caring too much about these beloved figures from my adolescence.

    Have I merely grown up, or is something foul afoot?

    Read More...


  • Whatcha Playing: The Thirst For Adventure, Pointing At Things, and Not Knowing What to Say

    Amidst the cavalcade of blockbusters, handheld eccentricities, and Rock Band I’ve been indulging in over the summer, a grand season now a mere two weeks from being officially dead, I’ve been getting a crash course in one of gaming’s most respected and forbidding forms: the adventure game. Though I started playing games during the genre’s heyday, I’ve always been somewhat less than literate when it comes to the many point-and-click and text-commanded classics crafted by Sierra and Lucasarts. My only real experiences came from visiting my aunt Donna. At the ripe age of seven years-old, she introduced me to the wonders of Kings Quest and, er, Leisure Suit Larry. Yeah. It’s not that I didn’t have fun with these eye-openers – they certainly expanded my vocabulary – I was just more interested in walking from left to right, jumping, and shooting when it came to videogames. I always knew that I was missing out on something, listening to friends chortle over playing Space Quest and even later, as a teenager, looking at lush screens of Grim Fandango. I’ve only gotten around to them recently thanks to three conditions working in concert. One is that there are new, easy to access (read: on Wii) point-and-clickers being released with regularity by folks like Telltale Games. Two and three regard vintage software: Hooksexup is equipped with numerous PCs capable of running things machines in my home twenty years ago could not, but also (and most importantly) I have a guide.

    It’s easy to approach Telltale’s Strong Bad games because they move at a brisk pace and they work on a very simplified version of classic point-and-click language: see something, point at it to interact with it. Got an item? Point at it, click, then point the item at what you want to use it on. Repeat playings of King’s Quest V left me acclimated to both the process and the occasionally obtuse logic at work in these sorts of games, so it’s been a painless process and a reminder of the genre’s charms. Playing through the first two episodes of Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People (more on Episode 2 when I’m allowed to talk about it) has, however, made it abundantly clear that adventure games are not inherently relaxing in comparison to more action oriented fare.

    Read More...


  • Quickies: Homestar Ruiner

    While we were all ridiculously pumped for Bionic Commando: Rearmed last week, there was another highly-anticipated downloadable game to tide us over for the first half of the week: Telltale Games' point-and-click WiiWare adventure Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People Episode One: Homestar Ruiner. Odds are good that if you're on the internet you're already somewhat familiar with the world of Homstar Runner and its brash luchador masked star Strong Bad, and, if you're anything like me, you were with them from fhqwhgads and quit right around Cheat Commandos. A quick glance through the Toons section of the site shows that, like The Simpsons and Family Guy, I'm probably better off for having missed the past few years of redundancy. How does this bode for the first official H*R video game?

    Read More...



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about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.


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