Luke Plunkett

This Halo Concept Art is so Old it’s Drawn on Paper

Lovers of Halo (or of art in the most traditional sense) should dig these images from artist Eddie Smith, who over the years has worked on several games in the epic sci-fi saga. The more recent the games are, the more modern the art, but my favourites are Smith’s pieces for the first two Halos,…

Crysis 3 Will Make me Upgrade my PC, if This Beautiful Trailer is Anything to go on

This clip, which is masquerading as a Crysis 3 trailer but is really a showreel for the game’s engine, is beautiful. It claims to be running in real-time, and to have been captured from Crysis 3 the game, not Crysis 3 the tech demo. Unless it’s a clip full of lies, this would have to…

Grand Theft Auto’s Liberty City Has Been Buried in Sand, And it Looks Incredible

While most Grand Theft Auto IV mods do little more than add a stupid character to the game or mess with the visuals, this mod – called Desert Storm – does something way more drastic. It covers the city in sand. Like, it buries the entire city in the stuff. In a very Spec Ops/Dubai…

Mod tools are coming to The Witcher 2, developers CD Projekt announced today. More details to come at GamesCom.

Sleeping Dogs Actually Cares About Its PC Version

Given the fact many publishers enjoy punishing PC players with sub-par ports, it’s nice to see Square Enix going the extra mile with the upcoming Sleeping Dogs. On day one, it’ll have a high-resolution texture pack available for download, a busier game world than the console versions and DirectX11 support. It’ll even play nice with…

Everything You Wanted (or Needed) to Know About Halo 4’s Guns

The history. The purpose. The sound effects. The enormous write-up over on Halo Waypoint (linked below) has everything a series fan – or firearm fetishist – could ever want with regards to humanity’s weapons of choice. And if you don’t feel like reading? Here’s every UNSC gun in the game, shooting things in the face.…

It’s Call me Maybe, Made Entirely With Lines From Star Trek

It’s been done with Star Wars so, as is required by the laws of fandom, it must be done with Star Trek as well. This is, yet again, a remix of Call me Maybe, with short snippets of on-screen dialogue (from Next Generation only, mind you!) standing in for Carly Rae Jepsen’s vocals. I don’t…

Ouya’s Ridiculously Successful Kickstarter Ends With Millions in the Bank

The Ouya console, an ambitious attempt to turn what’s essentially an Android tablet into a tiny home console, has just seen is Kickstarter campaign draw to a close. The final tally? Oh, just a meagre $8,583,769. That’s from 63,303 backers, with by far the most popular funding option (with over 46,000 taking up the offer)…

Nintendo Once Made a Vacuum Cleaner

As you know, Nintendo hasn’t always made video games. Before the dawn of the home entertainment era, the company made everything from love testers to fake LEGO to shooting galleries. Did you know, though, that amidst all that fun stuff, Nintendo also made a vacuum cleaner? This is it. The Nintendo Chiritorie. Released in 1979…

Sadly, Only One Old Video Game is Called Lone Wolf & Cub

Lone Wolf & Cub, first published in Japan in the 1970s, remains one of the most popular and respected manga series of all time. The epic tale of Ogami Ittō, an assassin who travels across Japan with his young son Daigoro, has been turned into a number of movies and TV shows, but strangely, given…

What BioShock Would Look Like Running on Crysis’ Engine

The original BioShock was created using Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 2.5. Let’s imagine, though, just for a second, that it had instead been built using Crytek’s fancy new CryEngine 3. The same tech that powers Crysis 2, it would certainly have allowed for larger, more expansive depictions of Rapture than the 2007 original allowed. These…

Metal Gear Ain’t Metal Gear Without Yoji Shinkawa’s Iconic Art

Last year, Fine Art looked at Ashley Wood’s contribution to the Metal Gear universe with his scratchy, chaotic images. While those have become popular of late, for many long-time fans the man they think of first when they think of Metal Gear’s look is Yoji Shinkawa. Beginning his career on cult hit Policenauts, Shinkawa quickly…

Compare Skyrim’s Sucky Graphics With Its Awesome Graphics

Stuck playing on a crummy system and want to see how the Übermensch play Skyrim? Or, conversely, do you own a killer rig and want to see how the peasants make do? There’s a site for that. Nvidia have made this handy interactive slider, which lets you quickly and, in some cases, dramatically see the…

The Matrix’s Coolest Scene Incredibly Remade in Valve’s Source Filmmaker

Valve’s new Source Filmmaker is being used to create an unbelievable amount of original content, sure, but there’s also scope for people to pay homage. Like LiveCurious95 has here, with this ode to the Matrix’s “rescue” scene, swapping out Agents with Medics and Keanus for Nicks. The Matrix Remaked (SFM) [YouTube, via @kpereira]

The Next Plants vs Zombies Game is a…Multiplayer Shooter?

This afternoon’s great PopCap mystery may now be a little less mysterious: a Canadian industry source with ties to Electronic Arts has told Kotaku that a small team at EA’s Burnaby campus is working on a new entry in the Plants vs Zombies franchise. The thing is, it’s not another tower defence game. Apparently it’s…

According to this job listing, Microsoft expects to release a “new version” of the Xbox within the next 18 months.

According to recent research, there may actually be a less slingshot-intensive way to calm down Angry Birds

Freshly-Announced Grid Sequel Follows Old-Fashioned Naming Conventions

Codemasters has seen fit to develop a second Grid game. The first, released in 2008, was pretty damn great, as you’d expect given the fact many of the team from the respected TOCA series had worked on it. The sequel, Grid 2, will be out in 2013.

A Short Film Made Entirely Out of Papercraft

Papercraft isn’t just useful for making tiny recreations of famous video game characters. You can also make terrific animated shorts with it. This clip, by Israeli student Neta Cohen, was the first piece of animation she’d ever done. If you can believe that. If she turns around and says it’s also the first papercraft she’s…

Get Your Ass to Mars in This Space Flight Video Game

Because landing on Mars is the hottest thing this year, Lunar Flight – the terrifyingly realistic space landing simulator – is being updated to include a map of the Martian surface, meaning you can recreate the sensation of touching down on an alien world over and over and over again to your heart’s content. While…