Sometimes it’s the little things. The sound of a barrel behing jumped. Disappearing into a crowd of monks. Your new animal neighbor warning you not to go into her house and steal her energy drinks. These are the tiny details in games that immerse and delight us.

I recently started playing Alan Wake and the sense that I was out of my league was apparent from the first moment of the game. Alan isn’t a superhero. He’s a writer. The scariest they get is running around old hotels screaming about redrum something-or-other. But now it was up to me to jump into this writer’s shoes and take on some really terrifying shit.

So there I was, in a dark and ominous forest, spooky ghost like figures carrying axes and chainsaws after me. I don’t know about you guys, but this scenario in real life would make me run for the hills, or right off of one. So it’s no surprise that my first reaction in the game world was also to run. But here is the beauty; Alan Wake ducks before he runs.

That one little detail told me volumes about the character of Alan Wake and about the character I was meant to be playing. This is a mad scramble. A fight for my very survival. Taking a stand is not something real people do. Not in situations like these. Real people run. Real people get the hell out of here as fast as possible. Real people pray that luck, adrenaline and their gods will get them out of horrifying experiences. Even if they may have brought those experiences upon themselves.

When I was a kid, my brother and I collected a bunch of DC Comics cards even though we didn’t know 95% of the characters portrayed and honestly, we didn’t really care about them. Now, 25 years later I’m surprised that not only I still know them but I even enjoy them.

The Brave and the Bold isn’t exactly ground breaking or innovative. In fact, it’s pretty much a standard beat’em up, but it’s precisely where this game shines and it’s one of the main reason why it is so fun to play. Holding the Wii Remote and Nunchuk controls the character easily while you’re delivering simple punches, uppercuts, kicks and jump kicks for combos as well as using a variety of batgadgets with simple button presses. It’s a breeze really and while the game is pretty much a cakewalk, you still have to approach different types of enemies with different tactics, from flying cat bombs that need to be taken from afar to machine gun yielding henchmen that will take you down quickly if you don’t react in time. It’s easy, accessible and fun.

It’s the presentation that elevates the game. WayForward’s talent for hand-drawn graphics shine again here with fluid animation, and beautiful retro-ish background settings. What’s more, true to the show the game’s based on, it is downright funny. The first of the four episodes sees you fighting in a museum with an exhibition dedicated to cats where a tour guide tells through an intercom that cats, long ago a great civilization, invented the catapult. You would think that after that you would be fighting Catwoman, but no; you’re up against the infamous Catman who transforms you into small felines and it’s up to you to jump at his face and claw his him (motion controls included). It’s campy, silly and it works perfectly. The range of minor characters is cool, from the Gentleman Ghost to Bat-Mite, who serves as a guide for the entire game, the later voiced by Pee-Wee’s Paul Reuben just like in the show.

It’s actually less Batman than those “second-rate” characters that make the game such a pleasure to play. Batman will, depending on the episode, tag along Green Lantern’s Guy Gardner, Blue Beetle, Hawkman or Robin and you can play either characters, along with a friend or with the AI. During gameplay they’ll chat along, often debating about who’s the villain behind all this mess. Collect enough coins, shake the Wii Remote and you’ll unleash the help of your friends from Aquaman and his buddies from the sea to golden age Flash that will wipe the screen out of enemies along awkward battle cries.

Throughout the game’s four episodes, you will fight gorillas, be in space flying and shooting aliens or punching through bad guys over rooftops. It’s more Super Friends than Arkham City.

This games was my introduction to the cartoon and Warner are certainly happy because since then I bought the DVDs. It’s a great, downright funny show, a great game and both of them are a homage to the forgotten roster of DC Comics, the campy heritage of Batman and classic 2D beat’em ups.

You can now find Batman: The Brave and The Bold for Wii for around $15 to $20 new and even less for a used copy. For roughly the same price, there is also a DS version, also developed by WayForward, which is equally good if a bit more of a technical beat’em up.

All the guts of the beloved PC version are here, with some of the fat trimmed, an interface overhaul for touch screen and some added tweaks welcome in a mobile version of a classic game. I love Sid Meier’s Pirates! a lot.

The premise for the game is simple. You are a pirate. You start with one ship, minimal crew, and a vague allegiance to one of four European countries You then set out on the high seas to do any number of pirate-ey things. You can sail around looting ships then trade your loot at ports, recruit more men and build a fleet, take out your country’s enemies (or their own ships and towns), hunt down rival pirates, try to marry a governers’ daughter, or look for your lost family (the main goal).

I played it a lot on PC soon after it came out, and a bunch more about three years later. It came out for iPad last summer, but I don’t have one of those, so I apprehensively waited for it to (hopefully) hit iPhone (separate app, not a universal update). I was apprehensive because a lot of iPhone ports are either slap-dash attempts to give players a game they want with minimal developer effort, or games that really aren’t suited to touch screen control getting ported anyway. Pirates! is neither. It plays fantastically on a touchscreen.

The PC version played with a combination of mouse and keyboard. In this version the mouse controls have been converted to virtual buttons for menus and tap/drag to control your ship, while the keyboard controls have been converted to gestures and tapping.

The game ends up feeling like an iOS game, rather than a PC port on iOS. The virtual buttons work well, as they control menus and settings, rather than trying to emulate complex button controls like many other iOS ports. Tapping and dragging for was a good move for ship control, as it feels very natural. The gesture controls for the minigames are fantastic! Swordfighting involves swiping towards the enemy in one of three different directions to attack or away from him to defend. It’s even better than the fighting in the PC version. The dancing mini game is great too, the DDR style button presses have been replaced with Ouendan/Elite Beat Agents style tapping that’s a perfect for for a touch screen game.

There are a few problems with the controls, however. For some reason some menu buttons are really hard to press, especially the one that brings up the mini-map. It’s not that they’re too small, rather that the part of the button that registers the press is too small. Since it happens in slower parts of the game it’s not a huge deal, just a bit annoying

The goal system for the game has been overhauled. Many objectives now show up as quests and there is a linear series of goals to follow as a sort of additional gameplay framework. It boils down to doing what you’d normally do in the game and having boxes ticked every so often for progress, but it does help give the game more of a progression, if you found the original to be lacking in that regard.

All the quests can be tracked. The mini-map shows your objective, and if it’s a moving object it will live-update on the map. There’s also a fast travel system. Provided you have enough food stores and have already sailed to your destination at least once before, you can skip the travel time and get right to it. These are both welcome additions for a mobile game, especially the latter, and show the developer really made an effort to make the experience great.

The mini-map has one problem on the iPhone, however. It’s big, and your quests are only tracked when it’s open, so it can cover a lot of the screen. Again, not a deal breaker, and probably not an issue if you opt for the iPad version instead. Plus, it’s hard to complain that an added feature to a 3$ port of a full blown PC game isn’t quite perfect on a 3.5″ screen.

This last change will be polarizing, but I’m a fan. The iOS version removes the on-land portions of the game; sneaking into towns, attacking towns Civilization style, and wandering around looking for treasure. Your only option for attacking a town is a direct bombardment, and exploration is simply a pop-up telling you the result of your hunt. I never really felt like these were essential parts of the game, so I’m happy to see them go, in favour of focusing on the seafaring parts of the game.

If like me, you’ve become a bit jaded with shoddy ports on iOS, virtual buttons, and were hesitant to pick up Sid Meier’s Pirates!, worrying that the controls would be crap, they’re not. It’s an iPhone classic!

If you had any doubts that Journey is an inspirational piece of work, this should give you pause.

Users Wiedzmin777 and Elros put this amazing Journey-esque city together in two weeks. The inspiration and freedom built into games like Journey and Minecraft really show how awesome it is to be a gamer right now!

Thanks to Robin Hunicke for the link via G+!

I was at my local library recently looking for something new to read, when I decided to randomly search the card catalog for Doctor Who. As I skimmed through the list of DVDs and novels, one particular entry caught my eye – a book of Doctor Who knitting patterns. I have absolutely no experience and very little interest in knitting, but I also know a number of Doctor Who fans who are extremely talented crafters. I figured the book might have some pretty cool patterns in it.

I had no idea what I was getting into.

My initial expectation was that the book was a recent cash-in on the rising popularity of Doctor Who in America. In truth, the book was actually ancient – dating back to Peter Davison’s time as the fifth Doctor in the early 1980′s. The patterns within range from horrific mistakes to.. Oh god, that mustache! Oh, and they’re all amazing.

Read on for a few of my favorites.

They say that a picture can be worth a thousand words. This picture? This picture is worth however many thousands of words are contained within the covers of this book. This picture instantly clues you in on exactly what to expect from these knitting patterns. A bad mustache, sepia-tones, a hideous sweater, and a construction paper sprig of celery – this picture truly has it all.

Just breathe it in for a second. Ignore the smell of stale weed.

This man is so stoned. Just look at his glazed-over eyes. I don’t care how much of a fan of the show that they are – there is no way that you could convince any sober person to emulate Peter Davison’s questionable garnish-on-lapel style choices.

Oh man, I love this photo so much.

Let’s play a game. I call it “Actual retro photo or Instagram post?”

I’ve actually skimmed through this pattern book, and this one is still a hard call.

This picture terrifies me. Not only have they replaced the Doctors with horror film dolls but – even worse – all of these dolls have the same same panicked expression on each of their identical faces.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go cry now.

I love the content look on this man’s face. He’s not just some guy with dorky mustache and an even dorkier sweater. He’s the Doctor. He’s standing on the surface of an alien world, and he’s here to save the day.

Such is the intoxicating power of cosplay (and lots and lots of drugs).

The old-school computer monitor is pretty excellent, and I particularly love the baffled “why am I here?” look on the model’s face. The best part, however, is definitely the paper plates glued to the wall.

You may look at these felt aliens and assume that they’re the result of a mediocre craft project, but I’d put even odds on them having come straight from the BBC special effects department.

I would applaud the authors for sneaking one of Michael Jackson’s outfits into this book, but I’m just way too distracted by the paper plates. Why did they glue those plates to the wall?

“We need a good science fiction environment, but we only have $1.75 in our budget. Let’s just glue those plates to the wall.”

Who thought that would be a good idea?

Oh, right. The BBC special effects department.

Two things:

First, is that Totoro?

Second, creepy doll Doctor clearly can’t believe what he’s seeing either. The look on his face is pure “what the fuck?”

Maybe the seventies were a gentler decade. By the time that I was in elementary school in the early 90′s, I know that if I went to school wearing this sweater, I’d have spent the entirety of the semester with my head in a toilet.

Still, I have to ask – was there ever a time period where people actually would wear turtlenecks with logos embroidered on them? Were emblazoned sweaters the eighties version of ironic t-shirts?

All I can think of when looking at this Tardis-themed door hanger is just how great a Doctor Who/Flatland crossover would be.

This book has a number of absolutely terrible patterns, but I won’t lie, a Tardis sleeping bag is awesome.

Especially if it’s bigger on the inside.

My childhood gaming history is actually a little different from many of the other writers on this site. While I certainly spent time with many of the SNES and Game Boy classics, my first true gaming loves were on the Macintosh that my parents (perhaps foolishly) let me keep in my bedroom. Adventure games were a revelation to my young mind – they didn’t involve twitch reflexes, and you couldn’t just memorize enemy patterns. Adventure games made you think – they made you reason through incredibly convoluted puzzles, and they made you keep track of all of these little details.

I started out like everybody else, with the Carmen Sandiego series and Oregon Trail. From there, I spent months trying to conquer Myst (without the help of the internet!). However, the games that really burrowed their way into my heart were the LucasArts point-and-clicks. To this date, the LucasArts adventures have some of the best writing and cleverest puzzles of any game. Who could forget Sam & Max’s hilarious roadtrip, or Loom‘s utterly engrossing musical fantasy world? How about Grim Fandango‘s noir-influenced journey into the world of the dead? Then there’s my personal favorite – Day of the Tentacle – where you have to travel to different periods in history to defeat a horrific purple limb.

I could go on about these games all day, but the real point of this post is to share a link with you! German site Adventure-Treff has put up a gallery of cover artwork for a bunch of LucasArts classics – and a few more modern adventure games like Machinarium or A Vampyre Story – at massive resolutions, pretty darn ideal for poster printing. So, if still harbor an obsession for these games and want to cover your walls with posters of things that most of your friends have never heard of, this is your lucky day!

I think that I need the posters for both Grim Fandango and Sam & Max is my life right now.

Download Hi-Res Adventure Game Posters Here

E.T. The Extra Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 is one of the most maligned games in history. Despite not being entirely horrible, the game wasn’t the system seller that Activision had imagined it would be. With more copies in existence than Atari systems, the game ended up being an utter commercial failure and PR nightmare. As the story goes, thousands of extra copies were buried in the desert, passing into the annals of video game myth.

In 1996 Duke Nukem 3D rode the rising tide of shareware titles in the mid-nineties to critical and commercial success and established 3D Realms as a behemoth in the game software market. Many expansions and console ports followed but a true sequel to Duke Nukem 3D never really materialized. After multiple false starts and fifteen years, Duke Nukem Forever landed with Randy Pitchford’s Gearbox Software. Coming off the heels of the massively successful Borderlands, many long time Duke fans felt that the game they had been waiting for was finally going to come to fruition. Anticipation was high going into the game’s launch, but something wasn’t quite right.

The ad campaign for the game glorified the gross out humor and exploitative sexuality of the original but did so in such a way as to completely bypass the tongue-in-cheek nature of the original in favor of a hyper-macho Duke Nukem who didn’t know that he was the joke all along. The testosterone on display at stripper-hosted media events and porn website tie-ins should have been the first hint that the focus had shifted from a rock solid shooter with a generous layer of cheese to a self aggrandizing mess.

Critical and fan reception of the game was abysmal. Metacritic scores hover around 50% which, by that scale, is better than Grey’s Anatomy: The Video Game, but not quite as good as Blade Kitten. Complaints centered around poor controls and awkward game mechanics. Where Duke Nukem 3D excelled as a pick-up-and-play shooter, Duke Nukem Forever tried to build character development into the game with some RPG-like elements. Effectively distancing itself from the core mechanics players craved. Given the poor reviews and open fan criticism, box-copy sales were about half of what was projected. Despite this, Take 2 (the game’s publisher) claimed that overall the game would remain profitable.

Which brings us to today. Best Buy is now offering Duke Nukem Forever for $3. The first thing I thought when I saw that price was that it was still too much to ask for what is effectively a slap in the face. The second thing I thought of was E.T. In today’s world of digital distribution, giving away the physical copies of the game to make room for other merchandise makes sense. In the long run, $5 Steam sales on the same title will actually make more money with less overhead when compared to the value of physical shelf space at brick and mortar retail outlets. While I don’t think that Randy Pitchford is going to be burying thousands of copies of Duke Nukem Forever in the desert any time soon, I wouldn’t expect to see Duke’s brutish biceps glaring at you from a store shelf any time soon either.

If seeing a huge title fall from grace is shocking, watching how digital distribution can salvage the profitability of a modern-day E.T. certainly takes some of the sting out of the situation.

I’m getting ready to head out. Today is the “Great Hunt.” The Great Hunt is a once a year event where we, the younger Norn, prove ourselves by bringing in the biggest game.

Only the top Norns participate in the Great Hunt. This year’s task is the killing of a huge frost wurm. As proof of my skill, I bring the tusk of a dire boar and am picked for the group to fight against the frost wurm.

I’m a Norn guardian, and this is where my story starts.

I’ve had a chance to sink around 15 hours into Guildwars 2 this weekend, an impressive feat with two kids at home. I’m pretty sleep deprived this Monday morning but I wanted to type this up.

I have a background with the Guildwars franchise. I’ve played Guildwars and its expansions pretty consistently for 3 of the past 6 years and I’m pretty familiar with the lore of this world.

I’ve been following Guildwars 2 for the past 3 years, trying to dig up every little piece of information I could, which wasn’t much. Then, about a year ago information about the game started to be released regularly on the Guildwars 2 website. I usually don’t jump on board the hype train, but I just couldn’t resist with this game. After sinking so many hours in the original, I wanted to learn everything there was to learn about this sequel. The Guildwars 2 manifesto video did a pretty good job at describing what the team envisioned as the “perfect” mmo. From that moment, I was sold! This was the game that would make my gamer life complete.

If you are a fan of MMORPGs, you need to give this game a try/buy. But beware, the gameplay formula doesn’t follow the traditional WoW model. Guildwars 2 doesn’t progress though grabbing tons of quests at a city hub, doing them all, then turning them in, only to repeat the process at the next quest hub. The focus is instead on exploration; a fact you’ll learn pretty quickly when you’re thrown into a world without NPCs with “?” over their heads.

Exploring

Questing has been replaced by two things:

• Hearts – These are the closest thing to regular quest you’ll get, but instead of engaging an NPC to start, it usually activates when you enter a region of a map, you’ll get a notification of stuff you can do in the region to help out the NPCs living here. For example, you arrive at a farm and the notification pops up in your UI telling you that the farmers need your help. You can help them in different ways by getting rid of the wurm infestation destroying their fields or by feeding the cows. You could even help them pick their crops. Doing any of these will help you with your heart progression and once the heart is filled, you gain access to special karma vendors in the area.
• Dynamic Events – These are the main part of the game, and what makes the world feel so alive. Because you’re out exploring this huge world with your friends, you’ll want something more to do than just explore the scenery (although this game is amazingly good looking). So while out exploring, you visit a nearby village. All of a sudden a small army of centaurs attacks. Do you help defend against the attack or will you run away? If you succeed at defending the town, maybe a small militia will form, or rebellion will start. Maybe the villagers are tired of being attacked by the centaurs and want their revenge, so they start marching toward the centaur camp. Will you help them? What if you ran away, and the town was destroyed? If there’s no town you won’t get access to vendors and NPCs who lived there because they’re all dead(for now). With no town to visit you head down the main road toward a larger city only to notice a small army marching in the opposite direction. The soldiers tell you that they’re going to take the village back from the centaurs. Maybe now you decide to help them out. Once you’ve cleaned the village of centaurs, NPCs come in and start rebuilding their broken village, while you go out with a small militia to go rescue some NPCs that were kidnapped during the initial takeover of the town. These Dynamic Events raise the level of detail in the environment and breathe life into what could otherwise be a very static persistant world.

The nice thing about the dynamic event I described above is that it is just one single event, out of 1500 planned for launch. Dynamic events also scale up when more people join in, and scale down when people leave. If you participate in an event you’ll get rewarded, even if you don’t stay till the end. Depending on your degree of participation bronze, silver, or gold participation medals are awarded which give you Karma, experience, and currency. Unlike regular currency, Karma is used at special karma vendors, which offer a nice way to get some pretty good gear.

Hearts usually define regions where Dynamic Events are more prone to start, so it’s a nice way to get people gathered in an area in case an event chain starts. Hearts and their associated quests are for your character only, so even though everyone sees them, filling one is your own way of helping the nearby NPCs out.

Downscaling

One thing I’ve really liked was the downscaling happening in different zone. We’ve all went through power trips in WoW, where you go back to the starting zone just to show off to the noobs login in that you could one-hit kill anything and everything in sight. In Guildwars 2 you won’t be able to do that, instead you’ll be downscaled to the level of the area. What this means is that if you go back to a lower level area, your base stats will be dropped to the appropriate level while you keep your gear stats and any new skills you’ve acquired. So while you will be stronger, if you don’t watch out, you might also get killed. This lets you participate in dynamic events you might have missed without de-balancing the game for everyone else. Another huge benefit of this is that if a friend, or yourself, come into the game later than your other friends who are already maxed out, they won’t need to create a new character to play with you, and no one is in danger of power leveling through content. This way the game remains enjoyable while still providing players with a decent challenge.

Combat

Combat is the one place where I found GW2 truly shined. Combat is way more fluid and interactive than any other MMO I’ve played. You can cast on the run, you can dodge and roll away from attacks (position matters), and you can combo off other peoples’ attacks. If an elementalist drops a firewall, then a ranger shoots his arrows through it the result is fire arrows! A warrior steps into the firewall and makes a whirlwind attack with his axes, sending fire balls all around him. Because of the interactivity of attacks, position and dodging are key; if you can’t master both, you’ll be down more often than not.

Death/Down

When handling defeat GW2 takes a page from popular FPS games (Borderlands for example). When you run out of HP, you go into a down state. You are dropped to only 4 skills, specific to this down state. If you can kill a monster before your new health bar runs out, you’ll rally and keep fighting with all your skills. If that bar empties out, you’ll be defeated. You then have the choice of waiting for someone to resurrect you or to restart at a nearby portal.

Heal/Res

Everyone can Heal and Resurrect. Every single class has an obligatory healing skill with six uses, so there’s no dedicated healer. There’s not even a healer class in the game. This is interesting because you won’t see any “LF HEALER 4/5 group heading out to kill boss” in the world chat. If you were a healer in other MMOs, you were assured to be invited to any and every group, in GW2 this is not the case. What’s also interesting is, there’s no dedicated Tank class either. Yes there is a Warrior and a Guardian, but they are not meat shields. So this changes the mechanic. Instead of a single class getting all the aggro, with another class keeping him alive, combat focuses on a team dynamic based on role switching during combat. The warrior with his shield can still take more hits, so he’ll go up front first. But if all his heals are used up, someone will need to go take his place while he recuperates. Other group members might need to focus on controlling other monsters in the area so that the party doesn’t die and roles can shift fluidly throughout a battle.

Instead of trying different classes this weekend, I focused on the guardian. This class is a mix of Magic and melee type attacks. I really enjoyed it, especially since I usually play casters in these types of games. I got him up to level 16.

Conclusion

That’s it for my Guildwars2 gushing.

My only gripe I have on this beta is how their server architecture worked.

Like Guildwars 1, the world is divided in instance/zones, but instead of being instanced to your party only, they’re open instanced. Everyone is playing in them like a regular open world MMO.

To counter server loads/lags they implemented a cap on each zone or map. When that cap is reached it sends you to the overflow server and adds you to the queue of the original server.

The overflow is the same as the original, but less populated, since it’s only people waiting to get in the map, but you can do events and everything else you’d normally do in the original map. Once a spot opens up on the prime server, a popup will ask you if you want to switch over, or stay there and re-enter the queue. If you do switch, you’ll start at the exact same spot you were in the overflow. That system itself is awesome, because you’re not just starting at a screen waiting for a spot to play.

There is one unfortunate side effect of this system, which I experienced a couple of times while playing this weekend. When in a party (me and 4 friends), we would zone to a new map and get split up! Some of us on an overflow server and others on the original, and there is’t any easy way to get back together until room opens up on the main server.

Aside from this one issue, my experience in the beta was everything I hoped it would be and I’m even more excited for the official launch than I was before.

Things I haven’t mentioned above, but are worth looking into.

World Vs. World Vs. World

PVP

My introduction to gaming was Super Mario Bros when I was five years old and if that game taught me anything, it was to always keep going. No matter the challenge, no matter the adversity, keep going. You may experience victories, but that’s no reason to stop and gloat. Obstacles may rise up in your way, but keep going and determination will see you through. The simple act of going right has taught me more life lessons than I can count and for that I am ever thankful.

This video by RockyPlanetesimal is a beautiful reminder of the power of going right.

Make sure you watch in fullscreen 1080p. You can find a list of all the featured games here.

Videogame fans never cease to amaze me. While tributes and remixes are common across all artistic mediums, doing such things in videogames takes not only artistic skill, but a high degree of technical skill as well. The latest to blow me away are these custom levels in Super Mario Galaxy 2 from Youtube user Martboo48. He or she has taken Super Mario Galaxy 2, one of the greatest games ever made, and added new levels from other Mario games and is even working on getting the land masses form Zelda: Wind Waker into the game. And here I thought Galaxy 2 couldn’t get any better. Check out the videos below.

There are even some tutorial videos if you want to give it a shot yourself although Im guessing you will need either a hacked Wii or Dolphin to play these fancy new levels.

(Header image courtesy of Dead End Thrills)