VGA 10 Trailers and Info Round-Up!

This year’s Video Game Awards, shown last night, was also the 10th anniversary of the VGAs.  This year’s show was hosted by Samuel L. Jackson, and I have to just ask the question.. Why pick a host known for non-stop swearing, if you then have to censor half of what he says?  Anyways, I didn’t enjoy last year’s show at all.. so this time I’ve skipped through the show’s episodes on GameTrailers, looking for the interesting bits.. i.e., the trailers and news!

The first trailer was for Obsidian Entertainment‘s South Park: The Stick of Truth (from 4.54), and a rather interesting announcement trailer for The Phantom Pain, the debut game from Moby Dick Studios (from 10.45)!

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Dear Esther Releases Today

The indie remake of the cult mod Dear Esther releases today for PC and will be available on Steam.

Dear Esther started as a mod for Half Life 2, an interactive ghost story with randomly generated audio telling a tale, created by Dan Pinchbeck and with a soundtrack by Jessica Curry.

The visual overhaul comes from professional game artist, Robert Briscoe., and the remake of Dear Esther has been supported by the Indie Fund, an investment model which aims to support the growth of gaming and indie developers.

From an Elevator to The Blind Monk’s Society

Two mods came to my attention this week: Elevator: Source, a mod built on Garry’s Mod, and The Blind Monk’s Society, a mod for Half Life 2.

Elevator: Source is an elevator simulation by Pixeltail Games.  You get on the elevator, and then wait until it stops on a one of the 28 randomised floors..

First I got to look out into a freezing world.. I wanted to step out and have a look, but there was an invisible wall 🙁

After this, there was a dingy corrridor from which an NPC appeared.. she joined me and waited.. the next stop had the doors open in space, with a strange spinning kaleidoscope pattern.  There is an end-level where you can leave and walk around a games room, play pool and watch TV, but I just didn’t feel like sitting through more floors to get there.

I had the second mod to get to.. Blind Monk’s Society, where you play the part of a blind monk!

The game has no visuals, so to find your way around you have to listen very carefully.  I had read about this game over on Rock, Paper Shotgun and seen a recommendation to shut my eyes.  This actually helped a lot as it removed the distraction of my room and forced me to just listen..

You are greeted by two other monks, who really are channeling Monty Python with some very strange voices, silly singing and random phrases.  I got told off rather a lot as they explained my first task, for not keeping up as they started walking!

The first task is to collect a wind-chime, making your way alongside the river and up to where you can just hear them chiming.  My path up to the chime was extremely hesitant, after I stepped into the river and quickly backpedalled to get out, then didn’t want to end up lost.  The return journey was guided by the ringing of a bell, although I was nearly distracted by a crazy monk chattering about sitting in the grass and getting a wet bum!

I consider my hearing to be poor, so I was surprised to find that on the second mission, I was able to follow the audio cues rather easily, retrieving the second wind-chime and returning rather quickly.

I would have loved to see an overview of the path I’d made afterwards, but as the game was made as a project in navigation, there weren’t any visuals.  I would also rather like to see a horror game using some mechanics like this.. scary as it would be!

Dear Esther – First Trailer

Dear Esther is the reimagining of an interactive ghost-story by the same name, originally created using the Source engine and released as a mod for Half Life 2, by Dan Pinchbeck and The Chinese Room, a development research project at the University of Portsmouth, UK.

With an overhaul of the graphics and level design from Robert Briscoe, a professional game artist, the project became so much more than a simple mod, and then with the support of Valve the team were granted a license to turn Dear Esther into a completely independent release.  The Indie Fund have also helped by providing investment funding for the project.

The first trailer for the game shows off some of the beautiful environments on the island:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7VJ4lP-05A]

Dear Esther is planned for release on Steam on the 14th Feb 2012.

Gabe, Knives.. and a Half Life 3 Logo

This image of Gabe and his knives appeared on Reddit:

Valve have previously shut down rumours about a Half Life 3 release announcement via a secret message in the Portal 2 video at the VGAs, and said that the community is “trolling itself”, but they haven’t actually denied working on the game or the long-awaited Half Life 2: Episode 3.

Polaris and Radiator

I’ve had a few more Half Life 2 mods to play recently: The Stanley Parable, which had me in stitches, and Nightmare House 2, which had me running scared for a while.

Next on the list was the Radiator mod, which is a work-in-progress..
The series begins with Polaris, a strange short story of a couple’s strange first date in the woods, with star-gazing tasks..

This required clicking on specific stars as prompted, with a bit of a story including a little mention of Polaris being the god of dreams “who knew every mortal heart’s desire”.. rather a cheesy chat-up line 😉

The final note was of the relationship being fairly forgettable.. so when the second part of the story involves a couple in marriage therapy.. I wonder if it’s meant to be the same couple.

This part of the game was weird.. being stuck in a room full of crates and warning signs, and vague instructions to place the crate somewhere within the rows.  Picking up and destroying a random crate triggered some kind of repressed memory of the couple’s life together, but it all seemed rather depressing, regarding illness, death, break-ups.

I found the first few crates easy to place, but any wrong move resulted in explosions and warnings that I wasn’t taking the therapy seriously.  I started to find it rather frustrating, and having the therapist repeatedly asking the same few questions, with the player’s husband giving the same responses only added to my annoyance.. and I gave up on the mod.

I love trying out mods, and I love that there are so many, but I don’t want to be frustrated by them.

Homefront

Homefront is a first person shooter by Kaos Studios, set in an occupied and rather run-down America.  This follows a speculative future history of rising oil prices, the collapse of the financial system, war, and the rise to power of a unified Korea and a very sneaky EMP blast which renders the US helpless to the invasion that follows.

The game begins with you being beaten and dragged out of your home by Korean soldiers and forced onto a bus, which takes you through the streets where soldiers are beating and killing civilians.. setting the scene, really.  I know from all the reviews what I’m going to see, but it still hits.. especially the little boy who sees his parents shot down by soldiers who then just casually wandered away.  The little boy howled, horrible, terrified cries, and ran to his dead parents.. and I wanted to blast those soldiers to hell.

However, I’m unable to move until a truck slams into our bus, and I’m rescued by the freedom fighters.  I’m given a gun, but I don’t get to go on a murderous rampage.. instead I have to run away through some buildings, accompanied by my new ‘friends’.  My friends quickly begin to annoy me as they keep on yelling at me whenever I step away from the immediate objective, or don’t move fast enough.  The lack of a sprint button also annoys me at times, as the collectible scraps of newspaper are everywhere.. I can go and get them but if they’re not yelling at me to do something, my friends just carry on walking, and then I have to hope that they’re scripted to stop somewhere, because I just can not run to catch them up.

Mass graves.. After a mission in a concentration camp went wrong, we escaped and came across the mass graves.  We took out all the soldiers around the field, as well as the turrets, but then had to hide in amongst the bodies when a helicopter showed up.  I could have done without the xbox key prompt here.. as could some of the gaming press, who highlight the “Press X to jump in mass grave” as an example of what’s wrong with the game.  I’d rather have had a cutscene, though I guess it was done this way to give the illusion of choice.

Later on in the game we headed towards a survivalist camp.  I was set free to make my way to the top of a church to provide cover, having to pick off guards who blocked the way or were close to discovering my friends.  After the tightly controlled earlier parts of the game I wished I’d been able to take out more of the guards this way, but an RPG destroyed my tower and I had to fight my way back to my friends and the helicopter.  Uh-oh..

I shouldn’t have worried about the helicopter, because it wasn’t too hard to fly, and I got used to it very quickly..

Guarding the hijacked fuel tankers was one of my favourite parts of the game.. powerful rockets and plenty of targets to pick off.

Next up was the assault on the Golden Gate Bridge.. this time looking after a gun rather than flying.  I also loved this part.. picking off enemies while in the helicopter, and then making our way along the bridge with less hand-holding.

Something blew up, and I ended up underneath the bridge.. I think this whole section was inspired by Half Life 2, as not only were there broken girders and walkways, but also enemy troops and a helicopter to contend with!  No headcrabs, though 😉

There was even more destruction when I got back on the deck as I got to take out a helicopter and an armoured truck!

All this massive destruction let the game end on a high, despite early irritation with the too-short leash around my neck.

Are Games Too Short?

The subject of game length has come up again at work this week, with complaints about Homefront’s short single player campaign of four to five hours.  I got rather annoyed with the double-standards of some people whining about Homefront but being perfectly happy with the length of the single-player campaigns in the Call of Duty series.. they’re all about the same length!

Personally, I think five hours isn’t enough if that’s the entire game.. I really wasn’t happy when I completed Half Life 2: Episode 2 in just a few hours.
However, in most games there are extra modes, and for Homefront and the Call of Duty series, there is a lot of playability in the multiplayer part of the games.. though if you are only interested in single-player, that’s no consolation.

A short game with great action and really memorable sections should be considered far superior to a longer but less fun game.. but it seems that some people dismiss a short game as being poor value for money regardless.  I wonder where this leaves us for the future.. I hope it doesn’t lead to devs padding games with boring travel sections or pointless dialogue..

While talking about Call of Duty 4, we all agreed that the single-player was rather short, but overall the game was fantastic.. even months after playing, we remembered parts of the game we enjoyed.. such as the One Shot, One Kill mission, which stood out as a real highlight.

Another game I look at favourably is Half Life 2, which was a lot longer, but was also paced nicely so that you could stop and look around between the more action-based parts if you wanted to.. and when devs have gone to the effort of creating a good game environment, I’d feel I was wasting that to speed through as fast as possible.

As for pacing.. I recently had early access to a game with rather annoying, nagging NPCs which made me push on all the time and I found myself getting angry with it, especially since I knew the game was fairly short.  Sure, I could have ignored the NPCs, but their constant barked orders were irritating.. this just spoiled my enjoyment in looking around and made me want to get things over and done with just to shut them up.

That’s not the feeling I want in a game, if I’m honest.. so short and rushed rates badly in my books.

I saw an argument last year for games being too long.. since many gamers have unfinished games in their collection, they must be getting bored before finishing them: therefore games are too long.  Now, I have a horrible record for completion, but this is nothing to do with the length of the games in question.  The reasons I don’t complete my games are a lack of time after the grind of work, lots of cheap games (I’m looking at you, Steam sales!) leading to there being more in my collection, and the fact that when I do have time, my friends are around to play as well.. and I’m hardly going to tell them to sling it while I get on with a single-player campaign.  Recently I would also blame WoW, as it’s rather too easy to just pop on for half an hour, which turns into a few hours that could have been used to advance the story in another game.

Ravenholm

We don’t go to Ravenholm.  Well, except for when the Combine attack, and it’s the only way out, that is..

Ravenholm is the part of the game I remembered long after my first playthrough of HL2; creepily atmospheric with plenty of scares, but also featuring some neat puzzles and traps.

There’s also the sawblade, which is lethal in the right hands 🙂

The rotor-blades are fun too..

What freaks me out, though, are the black headcrabs, or Poison Headcrab.

I know the neurotoxin they hit you with is only temporary, but there’s something about the skittering, screeching, spider-like creatures that really sets me on edge.

So what’s worse than one black headcrab?

Lots of black headcrabs, being thrown at me..

At least I’ve got guns, right? 😉

Half Life 2

I was looking at the mods for Half Life 2, and realised I’ve not actually played Half Life 2 since Valve added a pile of achievements to the game.

Might as well run through and grab them, right?  I liked the excuse, anyway..

I wanted to explore a bit, but Mr Combine objected to me straying from the path.

These two could be a set-up for a comic sketch, but I don’t have the time or energy at the moment 😉

There are many things I love about this game.

This is one:

And this is another.  Dog is just awesome! 🙂

On my run through, I also tracked down the All-Knowing Vortigaunt.
He’s hiding in a small cave down the end of a drainage pipe at the end of the Water Hazard level.  I also got an achievement for finding him 🙂

I wouldn’t actually have known about him if not for this video from GameCrit: cheers! 😀