-
Zynga Flips the Bird at Facebook, Launching own Games “Platform”
Farmville andCityville developers Zynga made their name on Facebook. But Facebook makes the rules on Facebook, and Facebook takes a cut of a company’s profits on Facebook, so Zynga is now looking to sell more of its stuff to you directly. The social gaming giant yesterday unveiled Zynga Direct, an online distribution service that sounds…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 12, 2011 -
Mommy, Where do Team Fortress 2 Hats Come From?
Team Fortress 2 used to be about guns. Now it’s all about hats. Fancy, ridiculous, elaborate hats. Ever wonder how those hats are made? Let Bay Raitt, formerly of WETA (he’s responsible for Gollum’s face in Lord of the Rings) but currently of Valve Software, explain. In this step-by-step guide he shows people how a…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 12, 2011 -
Watch 57 Seconds of Battlefield 3 Blowin’ Shit up
EA’s upcoming shooter Battlefield 3 lets you destroy certain parts of the environment. Not all of it, but enough to let them compile this 57-second trailer of buildings collapsing. You’ve seen some of this footage before, but most of it looks to have been captured directly in-game, including some multiplayer madness involving man vs helicopter…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 12, 2011 -
A Sexy Silver Spartan Will be At the New York Comic Con
Square Enix’s classy Play Arts line of action figures will get a little longer at the New York Comic Con later this week with the release of a new piece (and re-release of two old favourites). The new figure is a very shiny, very silver Spartan Mk. V who comes packing a sniper rifle. There…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 12, 2011 -
No, There is no Rape In Portal 2 (But There Were Buddy Cops)
Yesterday during a writer’s roundtable at the Game Developers Conference Online, Valve’s Erik Wolpaw, Marc Laidlaw, and Ted Kosmatka opened up on some of the processes – and problems – they had writing Portal 2 First up, problems! Wolpaw says that, originally, the idea was to have the player and GLaDOS team up in a…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 12, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallLife in a Video Game is Tough, but in Avalon, it’s Also Awesome
The Last Starfighter is my favourite video game movie of all time. But it had to fight, almost to the death, to claim the top spot. Because at number two is Avalon, a 2001 flick that’s part-Japanese, part-Polish, all awesome. It’s a strange movie. But I love it for the same reason I love Last…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 12, 2011 -
Somebody’s Trying to Break Into Your PSN Account…Again
Sony has just announced that it has detected someone trying to match “a massive set of sign-in IDs and passwords against our network database”. The company suspects that somebody has got hold of a massive list of usernames and passwords from “another source and not from our Networks”, and have been caught checking to see…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 11, 2011 -
Culture
The Art Of Gears Of War
There’s an established, if corny description of the art of Gears of War: “destroyed beauty”. I don’t like typing it, I especially don’t like hearing it. Beauty doesn’t need to be defined like that because even the most smashed up thing in the universe can be beautiful if someone simply thinks it is Take the…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 11, 2011 -
It’s Battlefield 1942…2011, With Strategic Stuff to Boot
For over a decade now, it’s been the holy grail of online gaming: combine a shooter and a strategy game in the one package and make it work. Many have tried, notably World War II Online, but none ever really got there. Heroes & Generals is trying to get there. In development at Reto-Moto, a…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 11, 2011 -
This Star Wars Case Mod has Doubled its Efforts
A Dutch site recently held a competition asking people to take a stock PC case —in this case a Corsair 600T—and spice them up a little. The results are spicy Given the fact the modders couldn’t craft their own cases (tasked only with designing a case), what they came up with is still impressive. There’s…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 11, 2011 -
Gran Turismo 5’s DLC is $12 for a Smorgasbord of Stuff
Along with its big update, which is free, Gran Turismo 5 is also getting some paid DLC, which includes new cars, new courses, new clothes and…new paint colours. There will be four packs made available on October 18. One has 15 new cars, including the Red Bull X2011, touring cars and three karts. It’s $8.…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 11, 2011 -
Sonic Commemorated in the Most Boring Way Possible
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the creation of Sonic the Hedgehog. And nothing says “old, possibly dead but worth a token remembrance anyway” like commemorative postage stamps. Making things even less exciting is the fact they’re from Belgium, so most of us can’t even use them. At €4.99, you’re paying €1 per stamp…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 11, 2011 -
Why Gaming’s Most Famous Transgender Character Remains a Controversial Topic
Quick history lesson for those who don’t know: there’s a character in Final Fight who in Japan was a sexy lady. A sexy lady you had to punch in the face. Her name was Poison. Fearing this may not go down well overseas, in the West she was turned into a he. It was the…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 11, 2011 -
Let’s Play “Guess the new Zerg Unit!”
Having teased one of the new Terran units due in the next instalment of StarCraft II, Heart of the Swarm, developers Blizzard are now showing the outline of a new Zerg unit. And here it is. Scan your eyes over it from left to right and it looks like, yup, a Zerg. Scan from right…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 11, 2011 -
Now Skyrim’s Manual has Leaked
A Reddit user has posted what looks like the final retail manual for the upcoming Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Now, while a manual is normally grounds for zzzzzzzzz, in Skyrim’s case, it’s got information on stuff like skills, lock-picking and – sigh – encumbrance. And if you don’t give a shit about any of that?…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 11, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallClive Owen’s Embarrassing Video Game Past
British actor Clive Owen is a badass. A man’s man. He’s got a deep voice, a heavy face, and is usually in movies where he kills things, or is at least around things being killed. Did you know, however, that between leaving the UK and making it big in Hollywood he appeared in one of…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 11, 2011 -
The Queens of Cosplay from the King of Fighters, Final Fantasy and More
You know, it’s tough work settling on which cosplay images from the past week I’m actually going to feature in this main, first picture. Especially when there’s almost a dozen that easily deserve the spotlight. I mean, aside from those three, we’ve got some old-school Resident Evil cosplay. With rocket launchers. Catherine cosplay. With hair…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 10, 2011 -
First (Brief) Look at Team Fortress 2 Toys
NECA, specialists in action figures and props based on video games, will be bringing out lines of figures based on Valve properties in 2012. While we haven’t yet seen the finished versions of these toys, we do today have some work-in-progress shots of Team Fortress 2’s Demoman. What’s more interesting than the pictures themselves is…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 10, 2011 -
The World Has Become a Video Game, and It Is Very, Very Sad
This is a commercial currently airing on Australian TV. I won’t spoil the bizarre ending by telling you what it’s for, but that’s not the point. The point is how great the voxel effects look. Voxels, which had a trendy little run in the video game business in the 1990s with titles like Outcast and…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 10, 2011 -
Mass Effect 3 Has Multiplayer, Says PC Gaming Magazine
Australian magazine PC Powerplay is showing off the cover for its next issue on the publication’s official site, and it says as clear as you can get that the game features multiplayer. In big writing, cross the middle of the front page, it says: MULTIPLAYER COMES TO MASS EFFECT 3: FIGHT ALONGSIDE YOUR FRIENDS AS…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 10, 2011
Luke Plunkett
Luke Plunkett's posts