Luke Plunkett

A Gundam Bike? In This Economy?

Suzuki recently decided they wanted a Gundam bike, presumably for Gundam-related reasons, so the Japanese company just went out and had one made. It was done by American company Icon Motorsports in just 30 days, and while I am not a bike man, I am enough of an anime man to be very much in…

STATIONflow, out today on Steam, is a game all about designing subway stations. Not the lines, not the network, just the stations themselves, optimising their layout to keep people moving and not constantly freaking out. It’s very chill!

Old World Is Teaching Strategy Games Some New Tricks

Civ IV designer Soren Johnson took an axe to some long-standing ideas about strategy with Offworld Trading Company, and his Mohawk Games is still swinging with its next game, Old World, which you’ll see for the next few months endlessly (and unavoidably) described as “Civilization meets Crusader Kings.” It’s a crude comparison, but it’s also…

Luke, He Is Your Father

Rick Boer, once known around these parts as the King of Metal Gear cosplay, has since become a family man. Which hasn’t stopped his cosplay efforts; it just means he’s got someone else around to help out. These images show Rick and his son Luke (his actual, very good name). This first one below was…

Track: At All Times | Artist: Manga Saint Hilare | Album: Make It Out Alive

Bring Disney Infinity Back And Put Snoop In It

Alex Alvarado is an artist at Disney, where he’s worked on stuff like Frozen 2, Big Hero 6 and Moana You can see more of Alex’s stuff at his ArtStation page

Wolfenstein Is Now A Board Game

Now that the recent Wolfenstein games have fleshed out the series’ canon and roster of characters, it’s time for a board game to come in, promise some plastic miniatures and, as they always do, ask for money on Kickstarter it’s a co-op dungeon crawler, so anyone who has played anything from Space Hulk to Imperial…

My Kids Keep Fucking Up My Animal Crossing Island

You should play Animal Crossing with your kids, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. They were, in many ways, very wrong. Like most of you, I got the game at launch, and like many of you, I thought it would be a blast to share the same island with loved ones, who’d be able…

A Very Close Look Inside The Mandalorian’s Ship

Know what I love? Cross-sections, aka cut-aways. Know what else I love (though that love has been worn to a paper-thin nub in recent years)? Star Wars. Let’s combine ‘em. This intricate look at the guts of the Razor Crest is provided by Max Degtyarev, an illustrator we’ve featured before here for similar stuff. Only…

I tend to read a lot of art books given this line of work, and one I’m digging right now is the Complete Art Of Guild Wars, which like the best art book of all time takes loads of concept and production pieces from the series’ history and accompanies them with developer commentary. 

Half-Life: Alyx Is Now Kinda Playable Without A VR Headset

This isn’t an ideal way to play the game, but if you absolutely need to play Half-Life: Alyx and don’t have a VR headset, you now can. This mod by r57zone basically locks Alyx’s hands out in front and lets you control the action with a mouse and keyboard, keeping the visuals centred in a…

Star Fox, Team Fortress Voice Actor Rick May Has Died From Covid-19

Rick May, a veteran voice actor whose most notable credits in video games were playing Star Fox’s Peppy Hare and Team Fortress 2’s Soldier, has died at the age of 79 from covid-19. May, who also voiced Star Fox’s Andross and Genghis Khan in Age of Empires II, had been in a nursing home after…

Lunch Break

Alex Andreev is a freelance illustrator and concept artist from Russia. You can see more of Alex’s stuff at his ArtStation page

I’ve been playing someForegone in between digging up eggs and pulling eggs out of the sea, and it’s pretty good! A bit brutal in parts, but the endless respawning (and gear improvements that come with it) temper this a little. The animation is gorgeous. 

A Whole Book About Architecture In Anime

Anime Architecture is an upcoming book from Volume that is an exploration of, well, architecture in anime, looking at the buildings, cities, and designs from some of the biggest films in the medium. It’s got loads of production and behind-the-scenes material, much of it unseen before now, from movies like Akira, Patlabor (and Patlabor 2!),…

Hey History Games, The Nazis Were The Bad Guys

I’m playing Slitherine’s Panzer Corps 2 at the moment and loving almost every minute of it. It’s one of the best turn-based strategy games in years, but there’s also something a bit off about it, something that’s troubling about a lot of historical strategy games: It has a little too much fun playing the Germans.…

Yoshi’s Desert Planet

These Nintendo remakes are getting out of control. And while, yeah, this is very much Just Two Things, I also want to point out the restraint/folly in not going for the more obvious route and making Yoshi the bounty hunter and Mario the weird, powerful baby. These are all the work of concept artist and…

Resident Evil 3 Also Being Remade As A Board Game

Capcom isn’t just remaking Resident Evil 3 as a video game. There’s also a board game adaptation in the works. It’s being made by Steamforged Games, and a Kickstarter will go live later this month. You may think this is a weird time to be running a board game Kickstarter, and you’d be right! But…

A Reminder That Most Steam Games Tank

Valve put out a big announcement today broadcasting the fact that “there’s been a continuous increase in the number of games achieving success on Steam.” Of course Valve would celebrate their own platform, but in sharing the success stories, it’s easy to lose sight of the increasing number of games that are failing. Valve shared…

Conventions Can Still Be Held, They’re Just Happening Online

One of the biggest casualties of the global Covid-19 lockdowns are events like comic and anime conventions, because huge arenas filled with tens of thousands of people crammed in, hugging and shaking hands are a massive health risk. But that’s OK! We can still have cons on the internet. And not just joke ones, like…