HERE COME ‘DA SCOUT: VALVE UNVEILING NEW ABILITIES FOR TEAM FORTRESS 2
It’s always a special time when Valve starts the process of updating one of its Team Fortress 2 characters, because their new abilities are always so gloriously ludicrous.
Case in point, phase 1 of The New Scout — coming to the game next week — and his first new move, ‘The Sandman.’ Valve explain:
You Scouts are gonna love this highly collectible bat that smacks baseballs at the other team, stunning the living crap outta anybody dumb, slow, drunk, mute or Australian enough to get in the way. The farther the ball flies before ricocheting offa some chucklehead’s skull, the longer he’s gonna be stunned. And guys who think they’re tough because they’re invulnerable? It works on them too. Now the bad news: You can’t double jump when you’re carrying this little beauty. On the other hand, double jumping never put anybody in a coma.
New updates to the Scout’s repertoire will be coming daily up until the official launch of the patch.
The Scout Update [Valve]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
YOU WILL KNOW IT BY THE PILES OF DEAD: BUILDING BEHEMOTH’S NECROMANCER
The latest in artist Dan Paladin’s video showcases looking behind the screen at how Castle Crashers‘ big boss battles were born, this time, “the Necromancer… [his] level, his resurrection attack, and flying animation.”
Necromancer Development [Behemoth devblog]
Previously:
Behemoth now building a better Frost King – Offworld
Behemoth show how to build a better Undead Cyclops – Offworld
The Behemoth talk Castle Crashers balance, ladies – Offworld
Castle Crashers gets Kinged – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
VALVE: LEFT 4 DEAD DLC TO BE AVAILABLE FOR FREE
Heading off any backlash that Left 4 Dead‘s upcoming DLC might have under-delivered with a promise to “simply” unlock the two remaining campaigns that aren’t currently playable in Versus mode (alongside it’s still not quite transparent Survival mode), Valve has just sent word that — like the continuing evolution of its Team Fortress 2 — the new modes will be free for both PC and Xbox 360.
First announced last week, the DLC will contain the extra multiplayer modes and that Survival mode which, to date, we only know will see your team struggling to survive as long as you can against a continual undead onslaught “across 12 maps.”
The spring release of the DLC will also see a new ‘Critic’s Choice’ retail package containing the original game and its new modes, and a PC SDK to let the mod community create new maps and custom game campaigns.
Left 4 Dead home [Valve]
Previously:
Valve announce first Left 4 Dead DLC – Offworld
'Detailed' is a stretch: more on the Left 4 Dead DLC – Offworld
Another dimension: Left 4 Dead in true 3D – Offworld
Why Left 4 Dead has the best tutorial ever… and why you never …
Ragdoll Metaphysics: Left 4 Dead, The Thinking Man's Braindead …
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
‘DETAILED’ IS A STRETCH: MORE ON THE LEFT 4 DEAD DLC
I’d forgotten I was looking forward to watching GameTrailers TV for the first details of the recently announced DLC for Valve’s Left 4 Dead, and it’s good thing I didn’t wait up. Shacknews points to the episode online where, after an extended look at GTAIV‘s own upcoming DLC, the L4D announcement boils down to, essentially, a sentence fragment: “Dead Air and Death Toll maps for multiplayer, survive as long as you can ‘across 12 maps’ in the Survival mode.”
Whether that means record-keeping and global ranking in Survival, and whether that means new maps or across a selection of the current locations is still Left 2 Be Announced.
Left 4 Dead DLC details [GameTrailers TV, via Shacknews, Left 4 Dead home]
Previously:
Why Left 4 Dead has the best tutorial ever… and why you never …
Left 4 Love: Alexandria Neonakis' latest valentines – Offworld
Ragdoll Metaphysics: Left 4 Dead, The Thinking Man's Braindead …
Left 4 Dead: Savage beyond belief – Offworld
Surly Hate Machine: Dance to everything Left 4 Dead's Francis can …
Left 4 Dead: the twits don't stand a chance – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
CAPCOM UNLEASHING MORE UNDEAD HORDES WITH DEAD RISING 2
That viral video that made the rounds late last week that seemed to point to a new entry in Capcom’s Dead Rising series turned out to be right on the money: Capcom has just sent word that Vancouver studio Blue Castle (they of 2K’s arcade baseball series The Bigs) are currently at work on a new PS3, Xbox 360, and PC version of the zombie survival game.
Details are still scarce, but Capcom says the game is set years after the original game, with the zombie virus spreading to (
), the DR equivalent of the glittering world of Vegas (though it’ll also, happily, be taking us back to
).
The original Dead Rising was perhaps the most faithful recreation of Romero’s conception of the shambling hordes, if a brutally unforgiving one, with its much maligned sparse save-point and underlying forced restart structure that undercut its sandbox appeal for many. It’s something the upcoming Wii remake is making an effort to fix, and something that, hopefully, we’ll see in this sequel.
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
WEEKEND WATCHING: NETFLIX ON 360 EDITION
For this week’s Weekend Watching, I wanna know: what the hell are all of you people watching all the time on Netflix? Semi-related to the post below, though privacy issues stymie, I’d be thrilled if the Xbox 360’s NXE dashboard gave me at least a bit of a hint as to what lies beneath those alluringly sealed-off red boxes on my friends list, or even a data feed that gave me recommendations based on my friends’ preferences.
It was the NXE itself that sold me on finally subscribing to the service (more honestly, in tricking me into never canceling my trial account), but since then I’ve been at a constant loss to find anything truly amazing that I hadn’t already seen, and have instead relented to picking through every b-list movie I’d been meaning to watch for ages, and finally getting through that “Thirty-Rocks” show I keep hearing so much about.
So, in the spirit of CrownDozen’s recent blog post digging up some of Netflix’s hidden gems, Microsoft’s announcement that there’s now over a million of you on the service, and the launch of the brilliant new instantwatcher.com service that’s about a quadrillion times easier to browse than Netflix’s own site, I put it to all of you to find us all something good to watch on our Xbox 360 this weekend.
My quickie recommendation list looks a lot like CrownDozen’s (and probably the playlist of any given film-school geek): anything by David Lynch or the Coen Bros, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Persepolis, typography porn docu Helvetica, comic/outsider art nerd docus Crumb and In the Realms of the Unreal (don’t miss the latter!), effortlessly charming spelling bee doc Spellbound, the unanimously loved Man on Wire, and Errol Morris’s oddball Fast Cheap & Out of Control.
What else are we missing?
Netflix + XboxLive [CrownDozen, InstantWatcher]
Previously:
Weekend watching: Look Around You makes its U.S. debut – Offworld
Weekend watching: Rex Crowle's Grip Wrench – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Weekend Watching, Xbox 360
VALVE ANNOUNCE FIRST LEFT 4 DEAD DLC
Valve have just sent word that Left 4 Dead, one of Offworld’s still most-played games, will be getting its first dose of DLC this spring with the “L4D Survival Pack.” Details are still scarce, but Valve says the pack will introduce a new ‘Survival’ multiplayer game mode, as well as two new campaigns for Versus mode.
On top of that, Valve says an SDK update will be making its way to the PC around the same time, that will allow for the creation of new custom Left 4 Dead campaigns, and a ‘critic’s choice’ edition of the game will ship this spring as well, bundling the game with that Survival Pack.
Left 4 Dead home [Valve]
Previously:
Why Left 4 Dead has the best tutorial ever… and why you never …
Left 4 Love: Alexandria Neonakis' latest valentines – Offworld
Ragdoll Metaphysics: Left 4 Dead, The Thinking Man's Braindead …
Left 4 Dead: Savage beyond belief – Offworld
Surly Hate Machine: Dance to everything Left 4 Dead's Francis can …
Left 4 Dead: the twits don't stand a chance – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
THE WAY OF THE DENKI: GARY PENN’S GAME DESIGN RULES
After some years working without much in the way of games media attention, it’s good to see Denki striking back as the release of its debut Xbox Live Arcade game Quarrel nears. Case in point, a two part studio visit feature by the UK’s Guardian newspaper, the latest of which reveals some of studio head Gary Penn’s golden rules for games making.
Penn, as I noted before, was creative director for DMA Design as it formed the first Grand Theft Auto and, more recently, helped design the Xbox 360 sandbox sleeper Crackdown, and these rules I found especially interesting:
Feel
“This is about trying to create products that feel good – they are substantial, they aren’t sloppy, the controls feel responsive, and you feel in control. But it also makes you feel good, so there’s some emotional resonance going on there. It’s not some deep meaningful need to create a game that exploits the emotions of love or hate, it’s just… hey, you know… feel something, feel good. Smile.”Alive
“We try to make products that feel alive. And that kind of operates on two tiers – informative and attentive. You’re never in the dark for too long, the game never feels like it’s crashed, which can still happen when you get this… dead air they call it on television, it’s horrible when you get that in games. It’s making sure the game is keeping you informed at the right times, with the right kind of absorbable information. The main thing we think of is, we as developers are performers, we’re building toys, the tools of play, for players who are also performers. Performing on your own is tedious, but performing in front of an audience is much more interesting. That’s where the attentive element comes in – if the product has life, it’s evocative and attentive, it says ‘hey that was pretty cool, I like the way you did that’.Twist
“There has to be some sort of meaningful twist in there. And that doesn’t mean it has to be wholly original, it just has to have something that distinguishes it from everything else. It can be a twist in the concept, a twist in the execution, and it has to kind of manifest throughout the product.
The full feature (and its first part) give more perspective on the studio’s process.
Gary Penn on the rules of game design [Guardian, via Infovore]
Previously:
Denki re-emerge with XBLA boardgame mashup Quarrel – Offworld
Denki does recruitment right – Offworld
Phil Spencer and Major Nelson talk Crackdown 2 – Offworld
See more posts about: Denki, Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
BEHEMOTH NOW BUILDING A BETTER FROST KING
Oh! Is this going to be a series? Because I could get behind that. Following his original behind-the-Undead-Cyclops video, Behemoth’s Dan Paladin does another (16 minute!) look at the creation of Castle Crasher’s Frost King, which not only gives you a look at the design and animation process, but the Paladin-ification of the character, going from its original placeholder sketch to its full black-spot-wall-eyed glory.
The eagle-eyed will also spot Behemoth programmer Tom Fulp’s hirsute AIM screen-name and relentlessly badger him for details on their still-secret new game.
Frost King [The Behemoth]
Previously:
Behemoth show how to build a better Undead Cyclops – Offworld
The Behemoth talk Castle Crashers balance, ladies – Offworld
Castle Crashers gets Kinged – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
WARTHOG FROM HELL: OXM TEST-DRIVES HALO’S TRANSPORT
In a fun left-field feature done by former workmate and friend of Offworld Alistair Wallis, Official Xbox Mag takes a trip to Peter Jackson-related special effects house WETA for a Top Gear-type tour test-driving the Warthog, Halo‘s signature four-wheeler vehicle: a remnant of the since-canceled live action film Jackson was set to produce:
While the rounded acrylic windshield might look incredible in-game — and on film, too — the fact that the left-hand crease lines up exactly with the driver’s line of sight could be considered a bit of an issue. Suddenly, I’m a little worried again, and this is before he even starts explaining the three different steering modes: front-wheel steering, four-wheel independent steering, and a frankly rather frightening prospect he refers to as “crab mode.”
“It lets you drive sideways,” he explains cheerily.
We Drove The Warthog! [OXM ONLINE]
See more posts about: Meta, Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
