Every Single Article Written by N - All 1343
Weta Workshop Builds Valve A Real Portal Turret
Hello? Are you still there?
Many people have tried to replicate the mechanical goodness of Portal’s existentially-challenged turrets, but none have quite reached the fidelity of Weta’s new version. Shipped to Valve in a Aperture Science-themed box, the turret is pretty deluxe, as one would expect from the special effects house of Lord of the Rings and Avatar. Check out the unboxing video below!
Can Obsidian Build Project Eternity On Such A Small Budget?
It all looks so big and promising, but how can they pull it off?
In case you were somehow unaware, we love covering Kickstarter projects here. Obsidian, the developer behind modern titles like Fallout: New Vegas, Alpha Protocol, and Neverwinter Nights 2 – and in a previous life, Fallout, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment – want your dollars. The mostly ex-Black Isle guys have never had a breakout hit and have really lived on bringing decent sequels to other franchises, perhaps out of respect to the talent on-board. Well, now they want to prove their worth to the world on their own merits.
Sony Unveils PlayStation 3 Slim, Uh, Slim. Double Slim? Slim Deux?
It’s like the Slim, but slimmer.
Does your PlayStation 3 need a diet? I bought mine in 2008 before they shrunk it the first time and, well, it’s kind of a big console. Seriously, grab it or an original PlayStation 2 and you’ll realize just how gargantuan the things are. Of course, if you’ll remember the PlayStation 3 debuted to sluggish sales and at an incredible loss, so ripping out features (backwards compatibility, anyone) and shrinking the unit down to save money on individual units was probably foremost on Sony’s mind.
Newgrounds Begins Ad-Free Supporter Buy-In, Can They Best Penny Arcade?
Will Newgrounds’ experiment pick up where Penny Arcade’s fumbled?
You can’t really blame anyone else but Newgrounds, the black-and-gold hub for Flash movies and games, for getting in the spot they’re in. As founder Tom Fulp puts it in his plea to potential supporters, “expenses have grown while our traffic has stayed the same and ad revenue has gone down.” Having scared away virtually every ad network on the planet with the site’s dark themes and, at times, even darker content, Tom and the Newgrounds crew are now hoping that its fans will be willing to support the site directly through a new $25 “supporter” option that will remove ads from the site for a whole year. Sound familiar?
FTL Review: Think You Can Manage A Starship? Prove It.
This will be a common sight in your travels.
Kirk and Picard make it look so easy. Those guys lead crews of hundreds (or thousands) in their mutual goal of exploring strange new worlds and seeking out new civilizations. You, however, will have no such luck as you manage your small vessel with a crew of three or more, travelling from one end of the galaxy to the other with precious information on-board that the Federation (unrelated) wants. Of course, there’s a rebel force nibbling up the space behind your thrusters and your mission is in danger of failing at any moment. And it will fail. Over and over again.
Beyond The Black Rainbow Review: Aims High, Arcs Back Toward The Ground
A dramatic build-up with nowhere to go.
I really wanted to like this film. I really did. Based in 1983, but filmed in 2010, Beyond is an over-indulgent slab of that era’s sense of science-fiction and terror, drawing from the same pool that also informed Mass Effect’s aesthetic. I was introduced to this quirky little piece of Canadian cinema by Videodrome on our very own forums and I must’ve watched the trailer thirty or forty times, something that hasn’t happened since the first, dark trailer was released for Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly. But Beyond is less interested in being a story and more interested in being a tribute to obvious benefactors like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris and less obvious ones like Enter the Void or even the stylish cruelty of Salad Fingers.
Borderlands 2 Review: It’s Pretty Awesome! Maybe.
The final version is probably fantastic.
I’ve played Borderlands 2 and now I’m going to review it. There are some caveats: it wasn’t the final version, and since I’m not under any embargo, I can get away with posting my opinion on the game without retribution. We at FleshEatingZipper work super hard to get early review copies so that you can enjoy an early opinion without having to look at a newspaper or magazine or even other web sites. Well, we let you down with Borderlands 2 and we want to make up for it in the best way possible.
Are We Excited About The Wii U, Yet?
I’m usually head-over-feet excited for marketing stuff like this. But, eh, nah, not this time.
Sometime late last night, I had the opportunity to report on Nintendo’s Japan-facing conference regarding the Wii U’s price and availability in that region. An announcement like that is usually the last piece of major PR a company can send out prior to a console’s launch. Instead, I went to sleep. Hours after the American version of the conference had ended, I woke up, read the facts, and then dove back into bed. So now, even more hours later, I’m finally writing this and am struggling to come to a conclusion about Nintendo’s newest console: a long-in-coming reaction to falling Wii sales.
Theme Hospital, The Article About
The future of healthcare is CHAINSAWS!!!
Theme Hospital was one of the best games I never got to play during the PC’s great strategy renaissance in the mid-nineties. When that special issue of PC Gamer landed, I played the limited demo of this game over and over. Then I never bought it. And it disappeared. And then it really disappeared, because like many of those strategy games, even the late ones, they simply vanished off the face of the planet as soon as they got a Value Software label. Well, now fifteen years later, GOG has provided the world with yet another gem that had been previously been lost to Abandonia, the land where PC games go to die. Last year, they brought us Bullfrog’s Dungeon Keeper and now I finally got to experience Theme Hospital game as it was intended. But has this design held up? Can this game work all these years later? Let’s find out.
The Wii Brought Us Motion Controls, Will The Wii U Take Them Away?
Old look, new flavor.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, you know about how the Wii changed how people played gaming. When it was unveiled, there were strong pulls toward dual opinions: the Wii would flop because Nintendo’s consoles had done progressively worse with each new generation or Nintendo’s position as a market disruptor would allow them to introduce motion controls into console gaming permanently. The former couldn’t have been more wrong, but the latter is still up for debate. The Wii didn’t have the gusto to do motion controls particularly well (aside from tossing a few bowling balls down the lanes) without a few extra peripherals. But things are different this cycle.
