SomTervo

Stranded Without A Phone (iPod/Phone, may be iPad version, which would no doubt be amazing.) It's an isometric hex-based survival game set on a randomly generated tropical island. It has a day/night cycle, random wildlife (fish and boars), and a great system for improvising things from your environment. It's a really amazing game, the deepest I've played on my iPod Touch. You play an elderly scientist who crash lands on an alien planet (I believe) and is the sole survivor of his station. You're on this small island, with nothing at all, and your only ultimate objective is to build a radio transceiver, with parts you have to wait to wash up on the shore and collect. If you don't maintain your Hydration, Hunger, Injury, and Health, you die. You have to maintain them to survive the days you'll be spending there- hyd and hung go down constantly, if they're at 0 your health starts to go down, injury only goes up if you're damaged, and your health goes down faster depending on how injured you are. There's a simple inventory, a function to search the ground for naturally occurring objects, a great list-based combining system so you can make anything from an axe to lemonade to a water skin to a battery (lemons, copper, zinc, and wire FTW). The combining system is based on items that are in your inventory or on the ground at your feet or at the hex in front of you. It only has two small flaws- it doesn't teach you how deep it is or how to play it properly (the interface is pretty complex and it doesn't point out the tutorial at all, plus you can only quit by pressing your iPhone's home button), and once you have collected loads of items from the environment, the game starts to have some item list refreshing issues (though this may only happen on my 2nd generation iPod Touch with the really rubbish 4.0 software update). This lead my guy to eating some rotten boar flesh as the list hadn't refreshed; it still said it was normal boar flesh. Great game though, I've made it to about day 15 or so. That must be 3 or 4 hours in. It's still pretty challenging and I haven't seen all there is to get from it. Great, great stuff.

91 on Metacritic. I am excite. Should be good.

Amazing articles. I can't wait. I laughed so. Fucking. Hard.

That's like 11pm GMT, right? Think I can do that. What day?

Win. I use so many of those on a day-to-day basis.

Yeah. I mostly like the look of it for a 'non-hardcore' fantasy game. I've had dreams of an open-world action game that was fantasy, not IRL like most of those are. This looks like it'll fit me nicely. I'm feeling that it's definitely Capcom's answer to Demon's Souls, after how much of a success that was. Even though this isn't going for a hardcore audience, the general feeling is similar. Simulation over scripting, and the like. I'm hoping there'll be large battles with lots of enemies, ala the old PS2/Xbox Lord of the Rings: Two Towers game, that was actually seriously fucking good "hack 'n' slash in huge battles" fare. @Pirand: Yeah I was surprised it wasn't going to be on PC. After I read the article I was thinking it'll probably be developed on PC as it's base, but hey, I was wrong. That's a good engine, and indeed should be able to support good porting.

I think he's just an Assassin-bro. Obviously incredibly smart, after what he did to get into/ become the Truth in AC:B. Don't think he's got overall-ley large significance though.

I saw a preview of this game in the most recent Edge magazine. I looked at it, looked at the screens, and thought "this looks like shit". However, after giving the article a good read, it's now one of my most anticipated games of 2012. It's Monster Hunter meets Oblivion. It's a 3rd person action adventure game set in a fantasy world. It's by the Capcom team who did Devil May Cry. They're used to RPG's or action games in linear settings- so they're making this game open world to push their skills. They know fantasy, and they know good combat systems. However, past customizing your character, and choosing a class (warrior, strider: 'rogue-type', and mage)- there is no RPGing. It's an action game set in an open-world, with dynamic battles featuring fantasy creatures from Goblins to Griffins to Dragons. There are towns and settlements which fully-voiced NPC's have 24-hour life cycles in. See a huge creature attacking a distant village? You can travel to it, and take it down. Or you could not, and just go adventuring in the country. Your call. Or you could go to a town and find some quests. To take down larger enemies, there is no set path, and no RPG-like hacking away at their ankles to reduce their health. In Dragon's Dogma, you (in the style of Shadow of the Colossus) climb limbs and stab them as they dynamically flee and try to shake you off- your 3 AI teammates can join in, jumping on or using ranged attacks from below. You have these 3 AI teammates chosen from a wide selection, to help you out. They have unique skillsets and styles. I reckon it's likely there'll be multiplayer co-op where friends can play the AI, but it's not confirmed. The mages are like something from Magicka in that they have no magic limit but they have different types and longer they hold a button the more powerful it is. They can imbue other party member's weapons with special effects. Eurogamer article on it. It sounds good, and seeing as it's by DMC's team, it's got a good focus on combat and a gritty, down-to-earth medieval approach to a fantasy action game.

I never really had any doubt that it wouldn't be good to a certain degree. Nice to hear that it's that good though. Think about it this way- Rockstar weren't going to put a bad title out. With them guiding the development and ideas from an early stage, but letting Bondi innovate what they want, it was set to be good. Rockstar's Quality Control must be unreal. While I feel it might be a bit of fail as a 'game', it should be great as an 'experience' or 'drama'. But hopefully the game part's good, too!

I'm not too interested in this game, but I like a couple of things. I like the physics engine. It's almost like Euphoria in that guys will prcedurally fall over and recover from shots. has a very improvised feeling, which is always good. I also like the idea of taking the TF2/Killzone multiplayer Engineer class and basically implanting those skills into a single-player game. It's a good diea, the dynamic planting of turrets and little mobile tools.

That's fair enough FLD, I think Miller is such a "fast-and-loose" pulp comics man that a lot of the time his storytelling is more going for impact and speed than substance. I felt like that about moments in the Dark Knight Returns, specifically the opening scene and a couple of the action scenes. But really what Miller did was create the Batman character as we know him today, in a mature sense. Nolan's Batman Begins is pretty much all Miller's Batman. The character already existed as 'The Darknight Detective', who did lots of detecting and beating folks up- but he's never had the gritty and realistic treatment Miller gave him. As a real-world type of character. I mean the obsessive extents to which he went to become the perfect anti-crime machine, the constantly thinking and planning mentality always one step ahead of everyone else, the slight madness and psychological problems (obsession with Dick Grayson and children etc.). The first time I read the Dark Knight Returns, it redefined Batman in my mind (specifically: The second time I read it I noticed how politically astute it was and how clever the story was. Stuff in that comic still resonates today- the attempted attack on Gotham's twin towers; the President being a holiday-resort showman (hello Donald Trump). I just thought it was amazing. And Year One didn't redefine much, but again brought Batman and Gordon down to realistic characters totally at odds with their social, political, and criminal environments. With plenty of pulpy action thrown in. I'm pretty sure Miller also invented Batman's "outwitting" style of fighting that is such a huge focus in later works, and things like Arkham Asylum. But yeah sometimes it's almost too pulpy, as is Miller's style. You guys hear about Miller's new story? It's called Holy Terror, Batman! (though now I believe it's just Holy Terror!), and it's about Batman fighting off an Al-Qai'Da attack in America. Man, Miller's one edgy bastard. Me, me! Will look when I get back home.

Video's down, Duke D= I'm not sure about Hanna. It looks like some unrealistic version of... Leon meets Let the Right One In. I'm not going to the cinema much atm, so I prolly won't see it, but if I get the opportunity I may take it up. Anyone seen Insidious? I think it just looks the same as Paranormal Activities, but worse. A friend went to see it last night. Speaking of horror- I got Jacob's Ladder on Blu-Ray. Can't wait to watch it through the week. Meant to be a seminal and original psychological horror. Maybe even the original psychological horror.

I saw both the Truth's, yeah. I felt that Assassin's weren't necessarily much better than humans, save Eagle-Vision, which arguably is just their highly developed intuition that's passed down. But yeah, it's not exactly realistic. I got the impression that they were physically pretty normal- they just had the whole 'secret organisation/cult' lifestyle that would keep them at the peak of physical and mental health. Very much like Batman. You got it down, Dean. I'm pretty sure all of that is correct. Serious spoilers on the whole Adam and Eve/ The Truth thing: In short: cool story ancient bro's. However, I got the impression that Templar's were also from the same pool of blood as the Assassin's, but just had very different views and drives for where humanity should go? I could easily be wrong- but that would explain why, if Altair got with a Templar, Ezio and Desmond are so pure. @Thursday: that's disappointing =(

Yeah, it's really good stuff. Here's Kotaku's article on it. Weird changes. Kinda spoilers following, where you go and what environments are like:

You better be guessing. You better not have looked through everyone's list and be spoiling it for all of us

Yeah it's always an issue. And yeah, surprisingly hard's are indeed hard to come by. They must be on relatively limited printings, I imagine they're expensive for the labels to print. Softcover's not as nice, but I've found in most cases the difference is negligible. I'm going for hards of AllStar Superman, because it needs it. And Ex Machina because I love it so much. But all my Batman's, and my Watchmen and V, and others are soft. It's still good shit. Although my copy of V for Vendetta- signed by David Lloyd, with an incredible mini-portrait sketch of V- has a dog-ear D=

Brutal to see such a great game so low down on the list. But there are better.

Why is that? I see it as 20-30 hours of HBO-quality crime drama, which is interactive and has branching paths through storylines. With a great simulation and a great script (though obviously this can only be attested in the retail release, and if it proves to be an actual failure critically I won't be getting it). To me it sounds easily worth the £40. And that's (almost) 80 of your American dollars!

Haha, I agree with both of you. Good calls. Yeah Ethan you must really like the Death of the Author read any of Barthes other stuff? I hate the guy, but he's got good pointz. On the audience participating as artist- that ties to my earlier analogy of the player of a videogame being both the audience and the actor in a game simultaneously. The audience is arguably the more important part, as they are the ones interpreting directed actions.

I struggle with the whole 'bad art' and 'good art' argument, personally. I want to believe that if anyone set out to make something artistic, whatever they come up with should be art. But in reality, it's so easy to look at some art and just think "... That's shit." But I guess this is where opinion comes in. How do you figure intent doesn't come into it Phallus? If someone creates something interesting or emotional, I reckon it's art if they intended it to be so, and if they didn't intend it to be so. But maybe not. I don't know. Arrgh.

Not impressed by that trailer- but tbh the only thing that could impress me now is the game itself. I'm just looking to get immersed. I've seen all I need to of the engine and the basic game details and mechanics. I am, however, impressed that they haven't spoiled any over the overarching plot yet. We still have no real idea where the game's going. Should be good.

And as long as it appeals to the senses, emotions, or intellect, as Toyger said.

Holy shit. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/05/11/ten-things-you%E2%80%99ll-think-playing-deus-ex-3/ I am ridiculous excite. EDIT: Wtf, the 'last page' option didn't actually take me to the last page, so I thought I was posting something fresh and new D= what an article though. This game just went to 'looks good' to 'I'm fucking buying this thing' Plus: Damn straight on RPS being amazing! I got an interview with Kieron Gillen back at Kapow Comic Con, on writing games journalism and writing comics- but I haven't had a chance to write it up yet