For those of you unfamiliar with this property, it is being billed as a co-operative shooter with some pseudo-MMO and Role-Playing trappings. It feels a bit like a hybridization of Team Fortress 2 and Tribes. Each player takes on a class role, each bearing set weapons with multiple firing modes as well as an array of class abilities. This, alongside its arcade-like pace and feel, helps to differentiate it a little bit from the plethora of other class-based shooters on the market right now. Even so, the developers at Red5 have been very quiet about the co-operative PvE portion of the game, save for a video they released earlier last year. As this trailer illustrates, the competitive play is very much a game of team death match, and any amount of added depth and complexity will not change that simple fact. I’m still looking forward to this game regardless. As I mentioned before, even if it is basically just another class-based team shooter it’s very fun.

(Image found here since Red5′s site doesn’t have any savable images)

Child of Eden releases for Xbox 360 Kinect on June 14, 2011 while the PS3 date is still TBD.

I saw Guild Wars 2 at PAX East this year and it continues to look incredible, both visually and mechanically. Unfortunately I was not able to make it to ArenaNet’s panel on designing next gen fantasy MMOs because the auditorium filled up way before I got there. Thankfully, ANet has posted video of the panel for those of you who are in the same position. Good stuff, as always. Check it out here.

ArenaNet is one of those companies that never ceases to amaze me.  They behave like an indie studio, in that they have almost complete creative control over their IP, hold innovation as central to design,  and honestly don’t seem to mind freely sharing information about their games. However, they also have a fairly huge force of developers and no scheduling constraints to speak of. I embarrassed myself a bit when talking with one of Guild Wars 2′s developers by referring to them as a “smaller studio.” He basically responded by saying “dude, we have almost 200 people working on this game alone,” which completely took me aback. I would love to see more developers go this route, but as we know it is more financially dangerous than ever to take risks and innovate when developing games of this scale. Hopefully if Guild Wars 2 does well, it will send the message that innovation is marketable.

I read once that when designing a game, it is important to not include mechanics just for the sake of having them.  For example, don’t include a crafting system in your roleplaying game if you don’t have the time or resources to make it seriously compelling.  To take this idea once step further, when it comes to smaller projects I think it is almost necessary to design a single mechanic and build the rest of the game around it.  Magicka is an action game with heavy RPG overtones that really takes this philosophy to heart.  You (and up to 3 other friends you can partner with) all play wizards and the game mostly consists of your party hurling spells at hordes of goblins, orcs, and other ugly monstrosities.  So far, this sounds like it could be a stripped down Diablo analog (as if we don’t have enough of those in the world).  However, due to the nature of the game, the spellcasting system is really the star of the show.

The game lets you play with 8 different forces; fire, water, earth, lightning, shield, life, ice, and arcane.  Each has different properties and behaviors associated with it.  For example, lightning can jump between targets, ice slows, and arcane makes targets pop into meaty chunks when they die.  I say “targets” as opposed to “enemies” because it is worth noting that any spell can be cast against any being in the game.  I have accidentally wasted many an ally because they ran in front of the business end of my staff. All players can summon up to 5 elements at a time which will combine into a spell reflecting the properties of all its member components. For instance, earth can allow you to launch a boulder missile that does impact damage and fire burns. Combining the two creates a fireball. There are some rules about spell creation, as all elements have an opposite, which will negate each other if summoned together. Fire and ice are an obvious example of this. Other elements interact with each other constructively, however. Fire and water make steam which can combine with lightning to make a spell that moistens and shocks, a feat usually impossible in a single spell as water and lightning are opposed.

This depth is what makes the system so remarkable, but the game is also mind-blowingly frantic, especially in multiplayer. When I have been in multiplayer games, everything is blowing up all the time as I hammer on the buttons for spell combos that I know and trust with blind muscle memory. I should also mention the game’s quirky, referential sense of humor–the characters therein don’t so much make jokes as they talk about stuff you know about (e.g. Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons, Monty Python, Lovecraftian fiction, etc.) but through insane fake-Swedish voice-overs.  This game is definitely worth a look, especially at the 10$ price they’re asking for it.  But it’s probably better to show than it is to talk about. Follow the links for a few snippets of gameplay I shot with a friend.

Magicka Dungeon Fight

Magicka Bridge Massacre

Magicka Lightning Suicide

SURPRISE! Yes, today Gearbox Software announced that the much maligned Duke Nukem: Forever is going to be delayed yet again.  As if we didn’t see that coming.  I am still morbidly curious to see what this game actually looks like when I have it in my hands, because at this point it only exists as an artifact of game design that doesn’t really exist anymore.  Well, I guess we’ll see for real when the game (maybe) ships in June.
Watch the “official” announcement below (marginally NSFW)
An important message about Duke Nukem Forever

The Playstation Blog posted this video from the ladies and gents at Media Molecule. The 8-minute mini doc tells the story of how two people came to work in the video game industry and how their dedication to their imagination made it all possible. If you’ve ever dreamt of making games this video does a good job of touching on that hope left rattling around in the back of your head.

Taking place on an exotic island, the game will have a heavy focus on melee combat and will pit up to four players in some zombie horror action. But really, why waste our breath? The trailer says so much more. Amazing teaser aside, there’s no telling how the actual game will turn out but consider us excited. Dead Island is currently set for a 2011 release.