Alex Austin updates the Cryptic Sea blog to show off the latest look at No Quarter — the six-game “compilation” in development with Gish and Super Meat Boy‘s Edmund McMillen — specifically, the first long-form look at Odyssey, the Lunar Lander-esque sixth of the game which terrifies me a little, but I’ve got that nightmare thing about the dead, empty expanse of the universe.
As a bonus, if you click through, Austin paints an accurate picture of the indie-gaming all-star party Cryptic Sea held to help test the game as it approaches release: pictured are Braid‘s Jonathan Blow, World of Goo‘s Kyle Gabler, Bit.Trip‘s Alex Neuse and Chris Osborn, Reflect‘s Mike Treanor and Spelunky‘s Derek Yu.
McMillen says the game will be released for PC “soon(ish)”, on Steam.
As usual, SomethingAwful’s latest Photoshop busywork — which asked readers to MSPaint-a-Pika — is equal parts forgettable, disturbing, surprising, and sublime.
It’s the game that’s got other publishers pushing all of their late-year release dates out of its way into 2010, and it’s more guns and ammo than I normally might cotton to, but as I’ve said before, the persistence and leveling achievements that constituted Call of Duty 4‘s multiplayer made it easily one of the best faux-MMOs of 2007/2008, and developer Infinity Ward has just published a look at its online successor.
The biggest change you’ll see here: the ability for players to take control of the AC130 gunship in the midst of your skirmish and pick people off from a distance, precisely in the same way as you could in one of the most quietly disturbing and sobering sequences of CoD4‘s single-player mode.
As you will have seen, will see above, and will probably see many times across all media in the coming months: the game is due for release on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC on November 10th.
Though we had — as usual — pretty strong hints that this would be the next official Blurst game via the studio’s changelog twitter feed (and the next that would return Flashbang to their ‘action/machinery + animal’ roots after Blush, Paper Moon and Crane Wars), they’ve just made the news official via an in-depth look at the art direction behind the game.
Specifically, they’ve just showed off the first concept image from new contract artist Justin Messner that illustrates the more cartoonish direction the game is headed, and art director Ben Ruiz lists a number of the aesthetic influences the game’s had, primarily GameCube Zelda entry WindWaker, Capcom’s Wii puzzle game Zack and Wiki, and long-time favorite debut WiiWare game Lost Winds, all examples of limited palettes and blue-sky super-saturated colors.
Flashbang promise more inside-views of the game as it pulls itself together over the coming weeks, but the one-two punch of the video’s mechanics and properly cheery art direction has already got me hooked.
Just unveiled for Sidhe’s just-released PlayStation Network Breakout/shooter crossover game Shatter (which I have been far too overwhelmed, game-wise, to properly get my head around, but was previously featured back in May): a new page to both stream and purchase the surprisingly excellent score from Jeramiah ‘Module‘ Ross.
Sidhe says the soundtrack was meant to conjure “80’s new wave, stadium rock and intergalactic space rock opera,” and I can’t argue with a single aspect of that. $9.99 will get you the full downloadable version, and, while you’re there, you can also stream/buy Ross’s contributions to GripShift, Sidhe’s fantastic debut PSP/PSN/XBLA puzzle-racer.
A double-shot of LittleBig-updates, as Media Molecule announce this week’s Sackboy crossover: the morally ambiguous Cole MacGrath, star of Sony/Sucker Punch’s inFAMOUS, available in both sides of the good/evil wooden nickel.
And then: a hold-over from the weekend’s Comic-Con, as the studio follows its 2000AD tie-in with a partnership with Marvel due later this year, and, I mean, how can you even start to deny that duct-taped on Captain America ‘A’. Sony and Marvel say the photos simply represent “concept art of possible costumes… incorporating Iron Man, Wolverine and Captain America, however other characters will be considered.”
This one, unfortunately, is for looking but not touching only, with no accompanying PDF pattern: Matt Hawkins, one of the papercrafting niche’s most accomplished designers (and creator of the official Urban Paper book) does Pac-Man in his signature Kricfalusi-an over-exaggerated style, and we’ll just ignore the glaring “yeah, but, how did he swallow a non-blue ghost” discrepancy.
Indie devs Nicalis are quickly gaining a reputation as the go-to house to make indie gaming’s freeware hits console-consumable — first with Pixel’s Cave Story, due soon on WiiWare, then in partnership with Knytt creator Nicklas Nygren to create his original Night Game, and now: a newly announced partnership with Japan’s Nigoro for a WiiWare version of La Mulana.
La Mulana‘s a name you frequently hear right next to Cave Story (and, later Spelunky) for its retro-inspired free-roaming exploration, and it’s also one you often hear lauded cursed in the same breath for its brutal difficulty.
That’s presumably something Nicalis will be looking to counter-balance, as they also bring the original game — which was heavily inspired by games for, and full of references to, Japan’s 8-bit home computer MSX — up to a more widely palatable 16-bit feel.
