Jonathan Mak's one man show Everyday Shooter is now available to PC gamers via Steam. Like the PlayStation 3 version, it's a mere $9.99 USD—actually $8.99 in its debut week on Valve's digital distribution platform—a bargain for such a fabulous little, Independent Game Festival award winning experience like this. Also exciting? A revamped Steam web site that makes it easier to peruse the ever increasing catalog. Hooray!

Everyday Shooter [Steam Games]

Wow, I'm not sure where to begin with this one. I'm not often overly critical of games, especially ones that haven't released yet, but I have to say here and now that I was very disappointed in the Fifty Cent game. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't what I was presented with.

The plot of the game involves 50 Cent and his G-Unit crew who are performing a concert in a "war torn country." Things start getting bad and Fifty and his pals must use an arsenal of weapons to help stop the terrorists involved. Something about watching this game being played really left me with a feeling that everything was kind of tacked on. Like they started out to make a terrorist themed arcade shooter and when it don't work out, added in 50 and friends to help sell some units.

"Our intention to deliver the game simultaneously worldwide is both a challenge and big responsibility to the many fans of the game around the globe. We are looking forward to achieve this ambitious goal in August." - said Sergiy Grygorovych, GSC World Publishing CEO.

House of the Dead 2 & 3 Gameplay

GSC Game World's follow-up prequel to last year's S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl makes and meets a lot of promises. Better graphics, a more fleshed out story, more interesting graphics and a greatly improved AI make S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky a definite improvement over the original game, but seriously - where's the Clear Sky? Check out the latest screens. Cloudy, overcast, dark - dammit, I want my money back as soon as the game comes out and I pay for it!

Obsession In Game Design

What obsessions plague our top independent game designers today? What theories keep them up at night? What possibilities blow their minds, challenge their presumptions and make them sound like a bunch of philosophical hippies after two bottles of ice wine and carton of black bean hummus?

Kellee Santiago (fl0w), Jon Mak (Everyday Shooter) and Pekko Koskinen (LudoCraft) told us of their obsessions during our first session of GDC's Independent Games Summit. And these simple ideas that make their minds spin forced us rethink games a bit as well.

Everyday Shooter FINALLY Hits PAL PS Store This Week

NPR Has Good Taste In Games

I've made fun of NPR more than my fair share, but Heather Chaplin recently did an interesting piece regarding the "games that got away." About 7 minutes of radio gives credit to three incredible games we've seen this year: Portal, Everyday Shooter, and Desktop Tower Defense.

It's worth listening to just to hear Jonathan Mak call Everyday Shooter a "celebration of geometric sexuality." And, of course, I don't know that any Kotaku readers have overlooked any of these three games—but in case you have, yeah, it's time to check them out. I just wish that the radio piece said a little less about GLaDOS, since her evolution of character is one of the most fascinating and surprising (yet gloriously inevitable) elements of Portal. Still, hopefully well-written stories like this on NPR help these games sink into the mainstream consciousness as much as they have our own.

Video Games that Got Away [npr]

Black Friday on PSN Starts Now, Save 50%

Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles Weapons Trailer

Geometry Wars: Galaxies DS 'Maseis'

This looks like it could be fun on the DS, though a bit claustrophobic. I think, maybe, I'd rather see Everday Shooter on the DS.

I'm a huge fan of Everyday Shooter, but if you read Kotaku you probably already know that. I first played it last year while judging for the Independent Games Festival and was blown away. I've since played through the entire game on my PS3 debug and remain blown away, mostly because the Sony folks were smart enough not to touch the game in any real way when it made the jump from PC to PS3.

I happened to run into Jonathan Mak, the creator of the game, on a Tokyo train bound for TGS last month. We got into a long discussion about his game, his surprise success and how he finds inspiration. He's a pretty interesting guy and the first developer I've met who's really struck me as an "artist."

Today he posted a slew of pictures and comments on the official Playstation blog to illustrate his life as a "one-man developing crew." I think they only highlights my first impressions of him.

Personality Profile: Everyday Shooter Creator, Jonathan Mak [PS Blog]

Candy Mountain Massacre

From the website that brought you 5 Minutes to Kill Yourself and Viva Caligula comes Candy Mountain Massacre, the latest highly inappropriate game to grace the Adult Swim Games section. It's a 3D 3rd-person shooter which puts you in the shoes of a sexy female exterminator charged with cleansing the creatures of Candy Mountain, who have been turned into vicious killers due to some sort of plague. Dress up in cosplay or don some black-ops gear as you slaughter your way through leprechauns, bunnies, and cooing babies with three different weapons. It's one of the better web-based shooters I've played, running quite smoothly despite the odd glitch here and there. Probably not safe for work, unless your job doesn't mind dying representations of Irish folklore shouting, "Look what you did, ya slut!"

Candy Mountain Massacre [Adult Swim]

Everyday Shooter — that PSN release that you'll hopefully all be downloading a couple of weeks from now — had a presence at the show, with its creator, Canadian Jonathan Mak, on hand to give people a go at the game. Since the title isn't getting a Japanese release just yet, Mak was previewing the game from a laptop, and offering the use of earphones so that you could take in the game as it was meant to be played, meaning in a space where you can actually hear the music (not easy when you're located right next to Capcom's bombastic booth).

As has been written elsewhere, the game is an absolute blast, but surprising to me was the variety of gameplay that each level introduces. From Geometry Wars-like waves of enemies you move on to hard-to-kill and quickly-spreading insectoids to a level that Mak says was inspired by the Ghibli film Porco Rosso (you need to shoot down red airplanes that continually circle you).

It sounds like Mak is in a good place right now, with the release of the game coming up, and plans are already on the way for a new, undisclosed project. While I was at the booth, a writer for Japanese game bible Famitsu walked by, and he was so entranced that he pretty much promised on the spot that he would feature the game in an upcoming column.

Jean Snow

Justify Your Everyday Shooter

A game named "Everyday Shooter" is begging not to justify itself. It's the digital equivalent of "Another Restaurant" or "Yet More Toyota Sedans." I mean, you can't plan irony like this.

More PS3 Titles Coming From Everday Shooter Creator

I am, to put it lightly, a huge fan of Jonathan Mark's Everyday Shooter. It's the sort of simple approach to gaming that both seems to get casual gaming and still provide the sort of experience that a hardcore gamer can enjoy.

So I was thrilled when I heard that the game was headed to the Playstation Network. After playing through the game on my debug Playstation 3 I was even more thrilled, the translation was sublime.

Now I hear that Sony is in talks with Mak to sign him on for a multi-game deal. I think it could be a major coup for the PSN, specifically the indie/casual side of things, if they can make things work out. Mark brings to the gaming scene a sense of fun that seems at times to be getting pushed to the side, so it's nice to see it pop its head up on a major platform.