Publisher Digital Jokers has announced their first game for Apple’s hot new electronic leash, an adaptation of their point-and-click adventure entitled Call of Cthulhu: Darkness Within. You’ll excuse my skepticism, but I’ll be interested to hear if this will even prove functional on an iPhone or Touch. One can only hope that the game isn’t of the “pixel-hunt” variety, as searching for that one, particular place to click is frustrating enough on a full sized monitor using a mouse, never mind on a three inch screen using one’s finger. I predict sanity crushing frustration, marked by the rainbow trails of greasy fingerprints and the gnashing of teeth.
The Spore Creature Creator, from autistic demigod Will Wright, has spread at a breakneck pace throughout the internet since its release. YouTube is heavy and tumescent with short videos of various abortions of nature and blasphemies from people, ignorant in the ways of creation, anatomy, and a life without the horrible pain resulting from a spine bent at various, unnatural angles.
Even Ectomo is not immune to the siren call of such god-like powers. Qais has become so deeply drawn into his own, private Book of Genesis that we fear we may have lost him forever. Even now, as I write these words, I can hear the strains of Strauss’s “Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30″ wafting through the offices. He plays it so loudly that, even with his door shut, every movement can be heard quite clearly. His correspondences have even begun to suffer, consisting almost solely of links to videos of his newest life-forms; and they are always, at the very least, unsettling. I’m still not comfortable with anything having that many pairs of testicles.
Needless to say, then, that it was inevitable that the great Cthulhu would shamble forth from the diseased brain of Spore obsessed cultists. The number of different interpretations excreted onto YouTube is impressive, though they range from quite good to, frankly, awful. One can only wonder if, when the full game is released, we will see entire planets of Cthuloid creatures, growing and thriving until maturing enough to go off into the universe of Spore and lay it to waste.
Rapture: a subaqueous Objectivist dystopia in which unbridled anarcho-capitalism, unhampered by morality, leads to the dehumanization, the genetic mutilation of its populace and the ultimate squelching of free will. Thematically and aesthetically, Irrational Studios’ Bioshock was a masterpiece, only slightly sullied by a rote video-game ending and some ultimately shallow gameplay.
It’s surprising that a game that pandered to its audience’s intelligence and sophistication would become such a break-out hit. Less surprising? That the video game industry as a whole would ignore what Bioshock did so differently and immediately turn it into a property like every other successful game: within a month of Bioshock’s success, Take Two’s executives were telling investors to expect bi-annual sequels.
Now the first of those sequels has been announced. There’s no details, except that it will be released at the end of 2009, in keeping with Take Two’s promise for a sequel every two years. For those who don’t know games, that’s a fairly aggressive development schedule even for a regular sequel, let alone a game as intellectually challenging and visually lurid as Bioshock was.
But my main fear is that Take Two’s going to do the obvious here: bring Bioshock 2 back to Rapture. It was a great setting, but a game like Bioshock should inspire sequels based primarily on common themes: Ayn Rand style objectivism, isolation, the paradox of will, the protection of the innocent, and genetic engineering as the metaphor for ethical deformity. That’s what I want to see from Bioshock 2, wrapped up in a setting as breath-takin and convention-defying as Rapture… perhaps a sister city, a Randian bio-dome splattered with blood from the inside, built in the silver dust of the moon, gazing silently down upon the alternate-history Cold War Earth from which it fled. Now that’s a sequel.
Incidentally, this entire post was just an excuse to link Ben Mauro’s fantastic fan concept art for Bioshock 2, linked below.
At some point after 1988 someone, somewhere was playing Super Mario Bros. 2 and thought “One day I’m gonna fuck Birdo.” Well it seems that that day came to pass.
From the Place That Shall Not Be Named.
Let’s ignore for a moment the fact that Fez was nominated for two awards at the Independent Games Festival this year. For the sake of argument let us even ignore the fact that it won an award for Excellence in Visual Design and that aside from looking completely gorgeous it is adorable as all hell.
This is a game about a diminutive albinoid with an over-sized head, an affinity for Mediterranean cranial stylings, and a jones for inappropriate nudity. By that description alone your interest should be piqued, though there is another draw, one far too insidious to be unintentional. Don’t see it yet? Give the little bastard a pipe and you, my friend, are playing what is likely to be one of the greatest gaming achievements of our era: a John Brownlee simulator.
Hannah, a librarian, has no respect for religion. None. This smug book dominatrix laughed at Reuben and his insipid belief in Noah and the Great Flood, but who’s laughing now? Reuben, that’s who. Reuben and God, because Reuben decides to challenge Hannah to a race, and after doing so, he seems to defecate behind a bookshelf. Then they, along with mute friends Priscilla and Cain, are transformed into a scarf wearing horse, a rhinoceros who wears a beanie and honks like a goose, if said goose was having its testicles squeezed in a vice, a pig in a top hat, and, lastly, a cougar who, of course, dons a pirate hat and an eye-patch. Then the race begins.
They race through water and they race on land. They dodge exploding barrels and exploding balloons. They weave through animal-crushing pillars and hide searing flames. OH, and they fly! They shoot themselves out of cannons and ride missiles! Then, at the end, they have a big disco dance party with Noah while a disco Ark of the Covenant shoots multi-colored lights out onto the dance floor. Why you ask?
“Faster Than the Speed of Night” is a craptacular example of bombastic, ’80s Pop. The video, however, is in a league all it’s own. Featuring a towering haired Tyler attempting to make out with her muscled, thong-clad boyfriend in an arcade, we are magically transported into the inner worlds of various arcade cabinets, with names like Space Punks and Guitar Warrior, where motorcycle jousting, amateur gymnastics, Kabuki theater, and the swinging of Flying Vs are a way of life. Truly a horrendous hodgepodge of terrifying imagery, one of such detestable magnitude that blogging maven, and gadget guru, Joel Johnson recently, and rightly, consigned a dastardly spammer to its Speedo™ laden vision of hell.
Take 5’s PSP strategy game Jeanne D’Arc takes the legend of La Pucelle and twists the history in such a way that the English command armadas of pig demons, skeletons, and snake men against the noble French peasantry, who are led by Jeanne herself, wielding a magical bracelet that allows her to transform into a cyborg super-knight when she makes a Power Rangers style wrist snap.
I’m loving it. Jeanne D’Arc’s unapologetic dismissal of history is ninety percent of its charm. But for those expecting a more dry, ponderous and historically-accurate strategy game, the first five minutes are a real mind-bender, as a cadaverous Duke of Bedford tells his young nephew, King Henry VI, the real reason behind the 100 Years War: a demon from another dimension invading Earth with an army of monsters that could only be stopped by a quintuplet of laser-shooting power knights.
By the end of the video? King Henry looks like he’s about to start projectile spewing pea soup, the Duke of Bedford is sporting shadow tentacles from his jester hat, and a loyal retainer has been slurped up into another dimension. And it gets even better! This game is just totally awesome.
Here we have a peculiar modernist/retro take on an old Japanese folk song, “Kokiriko Bushi.” The video features disembodied hands, dancing puppet-skeletons, and more giant eyeballs than an ophthalmologist’s convention at The Residents’ house. If the blippity-bleepity 8-bit arcade-game sounds don’t summon up an urge in you to play Pac-Man while shakin’ your butt to the buzzy Moog bass, there’s something wrong with you. Dance, you Space Invaders, dance!
If you choose to play Call of Duty 3 be warned, dogs will rape you, which may or may not be preferable to playing Call of Duty 3, a game that instilled in me a powerful desire to use the Wii remote in a geeky homage to Oedipus Rex. What really makes this clip is the fact that the person filming the horrific act shows no intention of helping the child. It seems an unspoken rule in this particular household that if you’re going bend over in front of the dog, you better be prepared for rape.
It might appear at first glance that I have become some sort of cheap shill, a prostitute willing to debase my self at the mere suggestion of product, regardless of its quality. This is,
however, not the case. I am, as of yet, in no position to buy in sell out but I assure you that I await that moment with baited breath.
No, instead what we have here is a perfectly valid excuse for me to talk about videogames which, despite Eliza being of the opinion that my views on the subject are on par with, say, an otter suffering from Down’s Syndrome, is one that I love nonetheless.
Let me say, however, that it is difficult to retain one’s enthusiasm for for one’s hobby in the face of such cutting criticism. If you are “in the know” (or, similarly, “down with O.P.P.”), you are aware that the horrifically deformedblasphemous lovely Miss Gauger is an actual, flesh and blood games journalist, which is to say that when she “raps” and “tells it like it is” people will listen and, in some cases, moisten with incoherent and unearthly rage. She is, then, a professional and, as such, her views on my worth as a human being carry both weight and value, making them capable of delivering a swift and vicious one-two punch to my, admittedly, already emaciated and tattered self-esteem. Continue Reading…
In sheer defiance of the World Wide Web Consortium's will, Ectomo was designed using a non-web-standard font. Luckily, it is included in the excellent font pack released by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which can be freely downloaded in Mac and PC formats here. Ectomo should still look fine without it, though.
