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.

Coal Collector!

The Great Gift Pile objectives are turning out to be a mix of quick and easy tasks and longer, more difficult challenges..

Atom Zombie Smasher: KringleJammer was fairly easy to get, as was the Rock of Ages: Snowball War.  Audiosurf: Candy Stripe required only the collection of red and white blocks in a line, but it took me a while to find something on my PC that played at the right pace to generate the blocks I wanted.  “Still Alive” was giving me blue blocks, so wouldn’t do for this!

Beat Hazard: Survive Christmas 10 required me to survive for 10 minutes.. and it took far longer than that!  After several attempts of under five minutes each, I realised I had unlocked some perks which might help: the Ultra DLC added Micro Missiles and a Reflect Shield which just about let me last long enough to complete the objective.

A harder achievement was the deliberate loss of a game in Fate of the World, where instead of trying to save the world, I led it towards global thermonuclear war and the Let it Glow achievement!  After a few attempts I ended up consulting the internet for tips on how to get the ‘right’ ending.. it turned out to be a rather tight list of instructions while hoping for the right random numbers to be generated each turn.  I think actually winning this game, as opposed to playing for an achievement, will be next to impossible as all territories seem to get annoyed with you very quickly! 😀

For another deliberate loss, I also tried to nuke Santa in DEFCON.. but found his movements too unpredictable, the AI too eager to react, and my supply of nukes too low for me to get him.  I quickly got bored of this, so I checked out the tips on the net again, and reduced the number of cities to 5 per territory, but then found the game crashing almost as soon as I launched a nuke!  Something to do with the latest update and Windows 7 🙁

Another not-quite-game objective was Winter Assault.. survive a 30 minute match on Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II – Retribution, on one of the winter maps.  Four of us joined the game, with one going AFK immediately.. only interested in the achievement itself.. but three of us met in the middle to trade blows until we’d met our time requirement!  I wished for more Great Unclean Ones, but settled for a squad of Chaos Dreadnoughts instead 😀

With the completion of all these objectives, I’m collecting lots of coal along with vouchers which probably won’t get used.. two are for Valve.. I already own all their games, as do all my gaming friends.  Although, if anyone does want them.. 🙂

I did win one game via the giveaway.. Silent Dreams’ Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes, a fantasy role-playing game with strategic combat and a sense of humour.  The games in this giveaway are provided as a token, which can be added to your own inventory or traded.. so if you already own the game you win, you can give it away or trade it for something else.

A friend bought me Space Pirates and Zombies by Minmax Games, which I tried briefly last night.  After stumbling through the first couple of missions, I decided I need to be somewhat alert to play! 🙂

The Steam sales are ongoing, and I also picked up ACE Team‘s rather Monty Python-esque Rock of Ages, mentioned earlier, and Croteam‘s Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter, and Serious Sam 3: BFE, with the first two games below £2 each, and Serious Sam 3 at a reasonable price, considering I wanted a copy for me and a copy for Tim.

Other women spend their money on shoes: I spend my money on games! 🙂

Halloween Goodness!

Halloween.. time to celebrate zombies and undead things.. and time to check out the awesome extras added to certain games! 🙂

A friend pointed me towards TF2, and the Halloween map, the Eyeaduct!
This is a modified version of Viaduct, with pumpkins, candy, and ghosts roaming the map.. get too close, and you end up “Scared Stiff”!

There were freebies too: I was given a Seal Mask and Dr Gogglestache.. there were some new achievements to grab.. and there was also a boss to fight!

Monoculus spawns randomly in the map once there are enough human players, and sets about firing eyeball rockets at the players, who have a minute and a half to kill him before he leaves for another realm.  He seems to have a lot of health, and he hits hard.. I only saw him killed a few times during the hours we played, versus the hundreds of times he killed me.

While alive, Monoculus moves around the map leaving behind a purple vortex which grants access to the Underworld.. a special map where you take constant damage until you escape via the second portal.  Players escaping the Underworld get invulnerability and a brief crit boost.. and Monoculus gets stunned in the process, thereby helping to bring him down.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet grabbed the Bombinomicon..
When Monoculus is defeated he drops an open Bombinomicon, granting access to Loot Island for those fast enough, and a copy of the Bombinomicon.

Last night, I had a decent run with the Demoman.. finding Stickybombs a lot of fun 😉
Tonight’s game included a bit of Heavy and Medic power, which was working out rather well between Monoculus’ appearances.. but again, I think I should play more TF2 🙂

Dungeon Defenders was the second game with Halloween additions, in the form of free DLC.. a Halloween-themed map for high level players, and some unlockable outfits.  The Tavern was also decorated for the occasion 🙂

The Halloween map is available to all, but as I found, it’s far too difficult for low level players.. there are three Eternia Crystals to guard, and the enemies are very strong.  I lasted a whole 48 seconds! 🙂

Portal 2 ARG and Defense Grid: The Awakening

Portal 2 was supposed to be released on the 19th April.. however, an earlier release date was suggested over the last week, as a pile of clues have been discovered by fans dedicated enough to go looking for them.

I am not one of those people; while I love the fact they’ve done it, I don’t have the time or knowledge required to root around with codes, convert random numbers to images and access encrypted files.  Seriously.. even if I had the time I wouldn’t even know where to start, nor whether I was even going in the right direction.  Instead, I’m content to keep an eye on the Valve ARG wiki..

The Potato Sack Pack appeared on Steam last week, and I just took it as an opportunity to grab a few more cheap games, but it was another part of this rather clever play by Valve!  The info gathered so far points to Portal 2 being unlocked when an unspecified amount of play-time has been reached on the various games in the pack.

There is also a potato-collecting mechanic involved, with collectible potatoes hidden in the games and elsewhere: one can be collected simply by joining the ‘nelipot’ Steam group.  The ARG Wiki people have discovered that more potatoes increase the rate that the GLaDOS@Home bars fill up.. so really, the aim of this game is now: collect potatoes and play indie games 🙂

I won’t be idling in any games overnight, though.. while it’s mentioned on the Wiki as a way of adding the the cause, I consider it to be too close to cheating when the ‘aim’ is to play.  I have similar reservations about using the login details posted for collection of potatoes as well..  I’m just going to play the games.

I was gifted Defense Grid: The Awakening on Friday: a tower defense game with a twist.. when the invading aliens reach your base that’s not it.. they steal a power core and attempt to leave the base with it.

Killing the alien results in the core being dropped.. it will try to make its way back to base but can be grabbed by another alien en-route.

The Meteor tower is my current favourite.. long-range, great damage when it hits.. though I like the laser too, especially when upgraded. 🙂

Left 4 Dead 2 – Cold Stream

Cold Stream is a new campaign created by modder Matthew Lourdelet, who previously created the 2 Evil Eyes campaign.

Having received some well-deserved support from Valve, this became available for players to beta test last night.

I got round to playing it this morning.  We first spawned in the stream itself..  I thought this was a very pretty location with the rushing water and trees..

We decided this first part of the map could maybe have done with a few more pointers on direction, as once you’ve headed into the trees it’s fairly easy to lose your sense of direction..

We also wandered in and out of a small building before realising we were supposed to jump out of the first floor window to carry on.. maybe if this window had been broken it would have given us a clue, but as it was it looked like a recipe for fall damage.  Minor points, though.. and they didn’t hold us up for long 🙂

In the second map, we emerged in a tunnel full of rushing water.  A minor complaint here was the lack of sound for the water.. noticeable in the tunnel where you’d expect to really hear it.  I think it was around here that we started talking about how cool it would be if the water were to push you along, as it certainly looked fast-flowing..

I think the foggy lighting here would be great cover when playing as the Infected.. 🙂

Towards the end of this level we were nearly wiped out by a sneak-attacking tank, who incapacitated most of the team with a massive rock which came crashing down onto the group.  We hadn’t even picked up the bots by the time he got to us, and after I threw the bile on him, he sent me flying past the still-incapped Ellis..

The bile brought enough zombies to kill him off, and we carried on through a building and back into a tunnel full of water.

This time, there was a push behind the water!  Straight ahead there appeared to be a drop to the death, but we headed right and down a set of stairs with more water flowing down them.  I was rather pleased with this bit 😉

On the third level we were surprised with an explosion, sending cars and trucks flying and leaving a large hole on the bridge we were crossing!

I liked how this changed the map right before us, but wonder how this feels in Versus mode.. whether the infected get trapped here, or whether it allows insta-kills over the edge.  I need more friends who still want to play this game 😉

We had noticed a witch crying, and before the explosion I had been looking for her, hoping to beat The Undoer to the kill 😉

She turned out to be standing on a surface below the bridge, with no way up.  I noticed that this bug has been mentioned on the Steam forum dedicated to Cold Stream, along with the bug we got at the beginning of the Finale level..

That’s me, spawned on the outside of the safe room.. oops.

Using the radio in the safe room starts a cutscene with what we assumed was a rescue helicopter that crashes down into the trees.. all which needs some kind of voice acting as it just feels a bit strange.  After this, we were free to run out to look for the helicopter, or an alternative rescue..

A little further along, I thought the game had crashed when everything seemed to stick.. then we realised it was just a slow-motion effect.  At the time this seemed rather impressive, but I’m now thinking it should maybe have been left out.  In games like Homefront and Call of Duty, slow-motion is used to allow you to respond quickly to a threat.. here, it just seems to be used to add to the explosion, and after the second play-through I think this would be more of an annoying delay than something to be impressed by.

For the rescue, again, hindsight comes in..

Presumably attracted by the fire and smoke from the wreckage of the first helicopter, a second helicopter was waiting to rescue us.  I think this should have been the other way round, with us having to wait and hold out against a horde.. this would have been more challenging.  Instead, we almost discovered the ladder by chance, and with the common infected piling on Ellis and Rochelle, we were free to run up the ladder to safety.

Having run through this campaign though, I realised quite how much I miss playing the game.. the adrenaline rush, the need for really close co-operation.. the awesome feeling when you and your friends survive despite the AI director being harsh.. 🙁

Sacrifice and Mutation

I had been looking forward to the ‘Sacrifice’ since ‘The Passing’ was released for L4d2, especially as it would feature my favourite survivors, the originals.  I was also fairly pleased it was being released for both L4d and L4d2, and getting it on PC meant it was free.  The launch came with a lot of problems, though..

While my download came quickly for the original game, it took two days for my Left 4 Dead 2 download to come down.. crawling along at amazing speeds of 4kb/s.  When it finally finished downloading, it then refused to work.

However, I was in a better position than others.  Heavy traffic like this always seems to lead to authentication problems and issues with other games on Steam, getting “game unavailable” messages.   While I could at least play l4d, Tim’s machine didn’t even start downloading any updates for two days, and he couldn’t play any of his other Steam games because of… “Game Unavailable”.  Not good.

My first play through of the DLC was therefore with just one friend instead of a full human team 😉

Having Bill sacrifice himself and save the team as per the story wasn’t as easy as expected, though we had two bots with us.  After our sacrifice kept being beaten by the rush of zombies, we found the best method involved jumping back down the ladder early.

In this version, the achievement only comes for the Sacrifice instead of the whole team, but it’s easy enough to play through again.

I was slightly disappointed at the way the sacrifice ends.. once you hit the generator it’s all over.
I would rather have liked a Last Stand style effect, just to see how long I could hold out, or even a cutscene with a tank appearing and throwing Bill to his proper resting place in the smaller room.

Due to playing rather a lot of WoW and Minecraft, I’ve sadly let the mutations slip by in recent weeks.  The TAAANNNKK! mutation came this week.. and if you picked the right map and avoided the bugs, it was a lot of fun.

Bugs?  Oh yes..

On the No Mercy map, we found ourselves trapped as tanks on the wrong side of a fence, with no way of getting to the survivors.  We ended up trying to kill each other in hopes of spawning elsewhere, which worked after a few deaths, but by this time the survivors were too far along.  Another game was weirdly imbalanced; on one level my team was held back from spawning for a good while longer than the other team.. and then as survivors we faced three witches where the other team got none.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game that skewed before!

Despite the bugs I would love this to be added as a permanent mode; being the tank feels brilliantly powerful, and it’s a great feeling if you manage to get away as the survivor too.  Just.. maybe fix the bugs, huh Valve?

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! 😀

New things at E3

I’ve been looking at some of the info on the games and tech, and there has been plenty to get my interest.

The Fallout series holds a special place in my heart, so after seeing that Fallout: New Vegas has been dated for October 22nd, I’ve mentally written off the end of October in terms of playing other games.  This is despite the announcement of an October 26th release date for Fable III, another game I’ve been looking forward to – it will have to wait until after Fallout 😉

Pre-E3, there were rumours about what Valve might be revealing, after they said they’d be revealing something big.  It looks like the big secret was the fact that Steam is to come to the PS3 – while that’s good news for console players, I was rather hoping for Episode 3.

Portal 2 is on the way, but this was hardly new for E3, though the trailer was quite nice.  I’m quite excited about the co-op mode, and find the idea of playing as a robot or turret rather amusing 🙂

In addition to the two Warhammer 40,000 games, Dark Millennium Online and Space Marine, which I mentioned in the last post, THQ have also announced Red Faction: Armageddon, follow-up to Red Faction: Guerilla.  There was also a very brief mention of Darksiders 2.  I have yet to complete Red Faction: Guerrilla or Darksiders – again, with the consoles..

Must try harder 😉

Call of Duty: Black Ops is another game in my wanted list, though not as high up as the previous games.  I enjoyed Modern Warfare 2, but beyond single player, I didn’t find myself playing it so much.
I tend to prefer playing with a few friends rather than strangers with their camping, mic-spamming, teabagging ways.  Though sometimes I still get the latter from friends.. ah well.

Kinect, formerly Natal, is being shown at E3 too.  Along with the child-oriented Kinectimals, there are a large number of fitness and sports type games planned to use the system.  While I love the tech, these titles are very close to titles I already have for the Wii and so what’s on offer here isn’t going to make me rush out to buy the system.
PlayStation Move had more games on offer, but again doesn’t really add much on from the Wii.

Chainsaws

The seventh week of Mutations brought us loads of noisy chainsaws!

This was a much more hectic game, with a lot of friendly fire and thus best played on normal difficulty to avoid people getting annoyed at this 😉

Our group played a few rounds of this mode, though after a while the noise began to wear and it had to be turned right down.
The fact the chainsaws don’t run out of gas made this a much easier game to play, and I couldn’t resist the temptation of running through Dead Centre’s Hotel, sawing everything in reach.  My run was ended by a hunter, who I just hadn’t heard over the noise.

I’d vote this my third favourite of the mutations, following Realism Versus and Bleed Out.  Maybe not a game to play for long periods of time, but it was great fun 🙂