Do you like gels? I hope so, because the final Portal 2 E3 demo videos showcase two of them, of the repulsion and propulsion varieties.
Trust me, I’m Machiavelli: We kick off season two of our podcast with talk of our new site. Tim, Tom, Graham and Craig discuss why Guild Wars 2 will be genuinely different, the crushing disappointment of APB, the cleverest thing about Portal 2, how drama works in The Old Republic, why Bethesda should use the Rage engine for the next Elder Scrolls, the ridiculous inconsistencies of Singularity, and how the PC fared against the consoles at E3. The true identity of the podcat is also revealed. One Twitter question demanded a photo of where we record our podcast, so there’s a grainy phone pic below the fold.
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Don’t be discouraged in the face of great adversity! Make thermal beams and pneumatic vents your allies, not your enemies.
You need more; you asked for more; we give you more!
It’s been more than 10 years since the golden era of space flight sims, when classics like X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter and Free Space 2 ruled our hard drives–far too long for our tastes. That’s I was very excited to sit down and play Jumpgate Evolution at E3 this year. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I jumped into the cockpit, but I soon discovered a wonderfully accessible and extremely rewarding spaceship romp.
PC Gamers don’t get to watch a glitzy press conference at E3. We don’t get a PR firm to pump millions into glossy stage shows, or detailed press releases. We don’t even get a mascot. But we do get incredible games, and a steady stream of hardware innovations that let the PC leapfrog the opposition. Here’s why the PC was the real victor at E3.
When I named Lego Universe my best of show on our post-E3 podcast, a few of my compatriots were really surprised, so I wanted to run down a few of the details that got me so excited about this kid-friendly, adult-liberating game. If E3 showed me one thing about the industry, its that developers are realizing en masse that games are more dramatic and exciting when they get real relationships involved–your opponents need to be real people and your allies, your real best friends. I saw examples of just about every genre making the leap into persistent online worlds: shooters, puzzle games, classic RPGs, space flight sims–you name it, it was there.
The newly announced, Obsidian developed Dungeon Siege 3 was on-show in private rooms off the show floor at E3, and I was there to take a look. This new dungeon crawler is an interesting project: the first two games were purely about action and loot. Dungeon Siege 3 does things differently – Obsidian want to add a story and moral complexity to this over-the-shoulder Diablo-inspired orc-em-up. WTF?
Final Fantasy has an extremely rich history of cultures and races, and although the upcoming MMO, XIV, exists in an entirely separate universe, the races are strikingly similar to those from earlier FF games and other fantasy worlds. Here’s a quick breakdown of the 5 playable races and what the character creation page’s biographies tell us about each. Note: the bios are all subject to change and are nowhere near complete biographies for the races; Square Enix will obviously be fleshing out more complex relationships for them later on.
Here’s a fun fact: if you tried searching for PC games at E3, you’d do a better job looking at Sony’s portfolio than Microsoft’s. For the sum total of Microsoft’s commitment to PC gaming at E3 was utterly embarrassing. Four Xbox 360s running Fable 3. It’s now absolutely clear that Microsoft have zero interest in developing or supporting PC gaming’s incredible future. Their PC E3 showing was an embarrassment to the platform.
