Open Source Textures

OpenGameArt's texture section just received an update. There now is a category tree and files from texture packs are also available as single nodes (pages/description/downloads).

You can see some discussion about the new features on the official announcement's comments.

Continue Reading

TWISTED METAL: THE LOST ENDINGS PART I

As discussed above: HERE is the link to the man who plays Calypso: the fantastic, the super cool, the super gifted, and all around nice as hell guy: G. Russell Reynolds! Click the link check out Russell's range!

Continue Reading

Silent Hill Revelation 3D gets a release date announced, which is set this fall in late October

Now this is a real treat for a change. We know now exactly when the Silent Hill game based movie "Revelations" will be out in theaters. THR indicates that Open Road will be distributing the new Silent Hill game based movie and will release it in theaters this coming October 26th, just in time for Halloween. For those of you wondering still, Silent Hill Revelations is directed by Michael J. Basset and the cast of the movie will feature
the following actors

Adelaide Clemens, Sean Bean, Carrie-Anne Moss, Deborah Kara Unger, Radha Mitchell and Kit Harington.

You can find out a bit more if you like by visiting the official page located at Cinemablend.

Image from Cinemablend

Continue Reading

Metal Gear Snake Eater for 3DS will be headed your way soon.

You remember this masterpiece don't you? The famous Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater was released exclusively for the PS2 system back in 2004. This particular Metal Gear game was more interesting than usual because it takes place before the first Metal Gear and the story reveals how Solid Snake's father became known as "Big Boss". There is a pretty lengthy review you can check out for the 3D port of Metal Gear Solid 3 and what to expect from it, along with some screen shots by heading to the source page at El33tOnline. Enjoy.

Continue Reading

NanoTechnology and the Metal Gear series have conspired together

This is a very interesting article I'd like to share with you. It discusses nanotechnology and how it has been portrayed in the Metal Gear Solid series over the years. Well what exactly is nanotechnology and what does a Metal Gear game have to do with it? You remember Metal Gear Solid Guns of the Patriots right?, remember that the soldiers were monitored by having nano machines injected into their bodies. In one Metal Gear game The Sons of the Patriots system was used to monitor blood pressure, chemical balance and respiration rate of the soldiers to determine if they are combat ready or not. It's an article worth reading and makes for a good learning experience. You can check it out at the official page located at Kotaku.

Continue Reading

Yet more on Pro Evolution Soccer 2013 and what you might expect from it this time around

Konami knows what they are up against when it comes to their Pro Evolution Soccer 2013 this fall. They have one rival, which they had to deal with last year with PES 2012, and that is FIFA 2013. The new controversy out there will be not only what new features Konami will implement in the latest Pro Evolution Soccer game but also addressing the control issues that seem to plague a few past PES games. There is a bit more to read up on if your interested by heading to the long article at Independent.Co.Uk.

Continue Reading

Both Silent Hill Downpour and HD collection get a patch to fix some game play issues within

Silent Hill Downpour is getting a rare patch. The Silent Hill HD collection also is getting one. Two patches for multiple Silent Hill games, that doesn't happen too often. These patches are going to address the frame rate and audio syncing issues for Silent Hill Downpour and the Silent Hill game collection in HD gets a fix with a few game save issues it seems to suffer from. Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 owners will get their patches in a few weeks. Konami won't specify an exact date. I know there have been some issues regarding graphic problems and game play issues, and they should be addressed soon. As soon as I get word, I'll post about it here as usual.

Continue Reading

Metal Gear Rising Revengeance gets a new trailer out for the fans to enjoy

This is probably the hottest game in development Konami has. Everyone wants more and more footage of the next big Metal Gear. Well here it is, Konami has released a new teaser trailer for Metal Gear Rising "Revengeance", which is set to be released, well, when Konami says so. I've watched the trailer and it's a live action trailer called Make It Right. You can check it out right now for yourself by heading to the Konami YouTube channel where it's located. Tell me what you think about it. 

Continue Reading

PS+ members get 2 Castlevania titles in May this year, both of which are genuine classic hits

For you PS+ members and Castlevania fans get ready. Remember Castlevania Smphony of the Night? How about Castlevania Chronicles?, well both are going to be available for you to enjoy with your PS+ subscription service. If you so choose, you can get trial versions of those games for those of you who might not have played these particular Castlevania hits. How soon might you ask? Sooner than you think, how about May of this year. See?, your mother was wrong, all that money you spent on games wasn't that big a waste after all ;)

Continue Reading

Tweekin' Tha Twisted

UPDATE ON TWEAKS: Hey all, so communications got snafu'd and the tweaks go live tomorrow morning. I would count on seeing them hit sometime around 11 or 12 California time. A few changes were made to the original list below because of some good- and fast to implement- feedback from the net as well as because some of the variables we thought were hooked up were- in fact- not yet hooked up. See the additions and changes to the original tweak plan below in this color.

Hey all- I've had a number of folks requesting a change log for the TWISTED METAL patches. As many of you know, a lot of the patch work so far has been changes and adjustments designed to make online more stable. However, as we get into more tuning and balancing work, I did want to start providing that. I'll use the blog- and the welcome message in the game itself- as a way to do that. 

In fact, I'll do a little more than that for the blog. Here's the cut and paste email between myself, Sony PD, Sony QA, and Eat Sleep Play regarding today's TUS numbers.

NOTE: TUS stands for TITLE USER STORAGE. TUS are the thousand+ variables we can adjust and send immediately out to players without having to go through the process of sending a brand new patch.  The last patch - 1.5- gave us access to a lot of the TUS numbers we needed to make meaningful changes to the game's balance. So while the next patch won't hit till mid-to-late May, ideally we'll be doing TUS updates once a week based on player response.


And while the official Eat Sleep Play Twisted Metal maintenance contract is up end of May, I'll still be engaged and working with Sony to noodle with these as the Twisted Metal community* see fit.


So here is what HOPEFULLY will hit players today:


1-TALON AND SWEET BOT- HOMING OF THE BULLETS FOR MEGA GUNS AND NORMAL MACHINE GUNS
The homing on these have been nerfed. We will probably be noodling with these numbers 2-4 times before Friday end of day based on user feedback. Between this change and lowering the energy regen of Talon (see #7 below), the goal is to bring the flying vehicles in to balance with the other vehicles. We may be pushing too far in the other direction today but the goal is to get it to a place most (all?!? Is it possible?!? :) love by EOD Friday.

2- JUNKYARD DOG-MORE XP FOR HEALING TEAMMATES 

CURRENT: Handful of current numbers but the just is they are too low in our opinion and thus don't motivate players to use the 'healing class' aspect of Junkyard Dog in team games. We feel these numbers will change that while making sure JYD doesn't become over powered in terms of XP.

Weap - Bonuses - Team Death Match 

CHANGES: 

Player Given: 5xp 
Upon Healing: first 20%HP and 5XP for every successive 20%HP  (multiple vehicles can be healed at the same time for bigger XP bonus) 

Weap - Bonuses - Team HUNTED
Player Given 5XP for healing 20%HP of teammate.
Player Given: 20XP for healing first and every following 20% of TEAM'S HUNTED.

Weap - Bonuses - Nuke 
Player Given 5XP for healing 20%HP of teammate.
Player Given 20XP for healing first and every following 20%HP of TeamMate Carrying Faction Leader.

Weap - Bonuses - Team Last Man Standing 
Player Given 10XP for healing 20%HP of teammate.

3- CRIMSON/KAMIKAZE: SPECIAL WEAPON REGEN RATE FOR BOTH VEHICLES:

CURRENT: 40

CHANGE CRIMSON FURY SPECIAL REGEN RATE TO: 32 

CHANGE KAMIKAZE REGEN RATE TO: 38

REASON: These vehicles have well liked, powerful specials but with such weak armor these cars are not picked as often as we feel they should be. This change keeps fast and weak (the core pro/con) while allowing them more opps to attack with what makes them unique. 

4- CRIMSON FURY FREEZE BREAK OUT NUMBER 

CURRENT: 700 

CHANGE TO: 400

REASON: We set this originally thinking Crimson's flame was so overpowered that we needed to give him an Achilles Heel. We were wrong :). 

5- JUGGERNAUT: Increase damage when missiles fly in the open trailer.

CURRENT: 2X damage

CHANGE TO: 3X 

REASON: People rarely use this tactic and going up this high seems like a way that we could motivate them to do so.

BILLS SAYS: Nobody here would be opposed to 3X damage. The issue here is that it's very hard to hit that 2X or 3X damage. The hit box when the doors are open is very small. Most of the time the user firing at Juggernaut has to jump and shoot a missile in order to get the bonus.

UPDATE: Turns out the TUS number to change damage when a missile flies in the back of JUGGERNAUT has yet to go in. So JUST FOR NOW, to at least change the balance, here is what will happen:


Tomorrow we will drop JUGGERNAUT'S HEALTH from 700HP down to 55HP. This is most likely JUST FOR NOW until we get patch 1.6 that has the 3X rear trailer damage working. But who knows at this point :). If these tweaks help in other areas- for example more people playing NUKE and using JUNKDOG HEALING and thus getting LOTS of XP that will let more folks open JUGGERNAUT and we'll start to see even teams more often (right now it seems you usually end up with 1 JUGGERNAUT on 1 team but no one on the other team 2 has unlocked it yet). So we'll see...

6- NUKE: STATUE HIT XP

CURRENT: 75XP

CHANGE TO 100XP

CHANGE TO: Still not feeling satisfying/pay off-y enough

7- WINNING A GAME OF NUKE XP

CURRENT: 100XP

CHANGE TO: 600XP

REASON: Nuke games not played enough and many folks online say that the 30 min time limit that yields tiny XP for most players is the reason. Here's the exchange between Bill and I that brought us to agree on this number:

JAFFE: Players are saying they can get 1000+ via DM or TDM wins. I think if we keep NUKE 3 innings in ranked, this should go up to 600 for winning a game of NUKE. Am I nuts?

BILL'S RESPONSE: Definitely not nuts. We think 600 would be great and motivate people more to play Nuke. If players are getting 1000+ for DM and TDM, then winning a game of Nuke in addition to hitting statues and getting 100xp for that, you could come close to getting the same XP as a DM game if you hit the statue a few times. Plus it's a 30 minute game. People can play 3 DM games in that time, so it would make sense to bring the Nuke win XP way up.

8-REMOTE BOMB DAMAGE CLOSE - WEAPON DAMAGE (NOTE: ONLY FOR ENVIRONMENT DIRECT HIT/CLOSEST RANGE- not for stuck to a car)

CURRENT: 75

CHANGE TO: 90

REASON: The time it takes to get this set up/pay off weapon (and the effort) is not worth it when you can get the same damage from a lot less effort of a power missile or 2 shotgun point blanks. Kicking it to 90 should allow players to feel rewarded for this more complicated, time consuming tactic.

NOTE: I suggested 100 when Justin and I spoke last month on this, he felt that was too high. We compromised at 90 as I recall. Bill says the QA guys feel 75 is sufficient reward for the stage 2 direct hit damage but since it's easy to change, I'd prefer we try the 90 and if it's overpowered, easy to roll back.


NOTE: This change did not go in as planned. It will be in for patch 1.6. It will NOT make it in tomorrow's TUS/TWEAK pass. 

9- TALON- ENERGY REGEN SPEED

CURRENT: 33

CHANGE: 42

REASON: Need to NERF this guy. We thought by making him an easy to RAM KILL sitting duck when you froze him (since he dropped so fast) that that would do it, but we also made his energy increase fast (in order to help balance his weak armor). What we didn't anticipate was Talon- with such a frequent access to his shield and his distance from the battle at times- could see freezes (shot with the intent to bring him down to the ground) coming a 'mile away' and have the distance and thus time to avoid and/or frequently have the energy to shield the freeze.

BILL SAYS: This I think would be a good change. It was a welcomed change when we made it because his survivability was kind of low. Maybe bringing it down that much to 33 made his survivability too good? I feel 40 would be a safe change, but 7 seconds might not be too noticeable to the players who have a problem with it.  (JAFFE: So I changed it to 42 to be safe :) 

10- GRIMM RPG- DAMAGE 

STAGE 2 FAR CURRENT:45

STAGE 2 FAR CHANGE:60

STAGE 2 CLOSE CURRENT: 80

STAGE 2 CLOSE CHANGE: 120

BILL'S COMMENT: QACrew really like's this. It's makes his RPG much more worth the effort. And I personally as well as other people on the crew use his RPG frequently now in the way I think you intended it to be used. We'll camp out up high and launch RPG's at people or into crowds and have a lot of fun/do really well with it. 


11- ROADKILL HEALTH INCREASE:
CURRENT: 160
CHANGE TO 190


12- ROADKILL SPECIAL REGEN TIME INCREASE:
CURRENT: 40
CHANGE TO 30 
We could not tweak RoadKill's Stage 3 Special via TUS Tweaks yet (next patch is the plan) but we did want to buff RK a bit to see how players responded. This may be too much of a buff or it may be just right. We will let it cook over the weekend with players and then make a call start of next week. 


We also wanted to up NAPALM BULLSEYE DAMAGE from 35 to 50 but we need patch 1.6 for that.


Always have to be careful not to buff stuff w/out bringing something else down. Otherwise before you know it, all the vehicles start to feel the same and you lose the vehicle personalities. That said, it's clear a lot of this work needs to be done. How close we are on these numbers is TBD...I'm sure you'll let us know! :) And we appreciate that! 

So that's the plan. QA is looking over the numbers right now and seeing if there are any other numbers/balance issues they'd like to see us address today. If you have anything not on the list that is PURELY numeric that we MIGHT be able to easily change, tell us in the comments. I'll take a look at it all and anything we get before 1pm today (Cali time) if we agree and if it exists in the TUS, we'll push live this afternoon. Thanks!f there's a snafu :)

David

* RE: TWISTED METAL COMMUNITY- I know we don't have super crammed lobbies and that sucks. And I know that much of that is the fault of all the shitty connection issues we had from the day our demo hit. But I meant what I said in press interviews about this game: While a MEGA HALO/COD/BF3 sized community is always the goal, even if we only have a teeny, tiny group that likes to play regularly, I will be there to do what I can to support the game and to work with Sony and Eat Sleep Play to balance the game via the TUS numbers. And I'll always be interfacing with folks who like to play the game. I LOVE this version of Twisted Metal and still play at least 4-5 nite's a week (had some really fun games last nite!) And I plan on regularly playing until they pull the plug (hopefully a loooong time from now). Hell, I would LOVE to see Sony release JUST the MP version of the game on PSN for 9.99 one day! I need to ask them about that! :) Just wanted to share my thoughts as I see people on TM forums bitching about community size. Again, would it be great to have a bigger club? Hell yeah. But I can always find games and usually full games so- for now- I'm not complaining. 

Continue Reading

More news on Pro Evolution Soccer 2013 showcasing some new details that have emerged

That last post wasn't quite enough information for a lot of folks. So I've located another site that gives more details on Pro Evolution Soccer 2013 coming this fall. It's located at VideoGamer and describes more about the new features Konami will implement for their next Pro Evolution Soccer game. Head there now and check it out. It seems more and more details about this years PES hit just keeps on slamming us. I guess this is great news for die hard soccer fans out there, right?

Continue Reading

Konami lands 20 million subscribers as of March 2012 for hits like Dragon Collection and Sengoku Collection

Now that's a lot of people. Konami has stated that they now have 20 million subscribers for their social games out there. That's a staggering number, and a testament of how social games have touched the lives of so many. Three of those titles include the Dragon collection, Sengoku collection, and the recently released Star Wars collection Konami announced not too long ago. Many of you are probably wondering what these Konami games are as you/ve probably never heard of them. So let me point you in the right direction. You can find out more information and look as some nice screen shots for yourself by heading to the page located at Siliconera.  It's worth checking out.

Continue Reading

Metal Gear Solid HD collection gets a hands on review with an exclusive all out compilation

More of a hands on review this time for the Metal Gear Solid HD collection. As stated before, Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater and Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty is among them but sadly Konami chose not to include the PSP hit Metal Gear game Peace Walker, which is a sad day for Metal Gear Solid game fans alike.

Konami did tweak the 2 Metal Gear game hits a bit and improved their look as well. You can check out the hands on review for yourself if you like by heading to the source page located at DigitalTrends. It's quite a nice one. By the way, which MG game in the collection is your personal favorite?

Continue Reading

Konami says Pro Evolution Soccer 2013 on the way and will be better this year than ever before

Wow already, one of this blogs flagship titles is now announced. Konami has said they are currently working on Pro Evolution Soccer 2013. Set to arrive on the PC this coming fall, the new Pro Evolution Soccer game will have more features and be an improvement than the last few PES games have been in the past. The inspiration will again be super star Cristiano Ronaldo of course. Konami has promised that some issues with the AI will also be fixed, which is refreshing to hear. For more information and a really nice trailer featuring Cristiano Ronaldo himself you can watch, head over to the source page at PcGameSpy right now and check it out. There is a link in the video too for the official teaser trailer to the next Pro Evolution Soccer game as well.

Continue Reading

Castlevania The Adventure will be headed to 3DS pretty soon

Actually it's a second release of the original Castlevania game "Castlevania The Adventure" which was released on the Nintendo Gameboy way back in 1989. That particular Castlevania game took place 100 years before the first Castlevania did. You remember Christopher Belmont right? I was only 15 years old in 1989. Anyway Castlevania The Adventure is headed to the 3DS eShop hopefully soon worldwide since it will be out in Japan as of Mid May. This is according to a news piece located at BaconafterDark.

Continue Reading

Internet connection down for a few days

I'm back in action again. Internet connection was down for a few days but it's up again and I'll get back on track and make some posts on what was missed since then. Stay tuned. 

Continue Reading

Arx Libertatis 1.0 "Bloody Gobblers!" released!

Walking in the underground city hub in Arx Libertatis

Looking up magic recipes and managing inventory while a vision enhancement is active in Arx Libertatis

[more screens]

Arx Libertatis 1.0 has been released. We already wrote about the engine a month and a half ago but this is the first official, stable release of the GPL-licensed engine for the proprietary first-person cave RPG Arx Fatalis.

But being able to play the proprietary game is not the end of the development. There are plans for future milestones, for example a Qt-based modern game editor and support for modern shaders. I look forward to it!

Continue Reading

Tesseract, Cube2 next-gen'd

A FOSS gaming engine stalwart made a major leap forward today. Sauerbraten/cube 2, everyone's favorite octree, in-game editing game engine has finally implemented modern dynamic lighting, making its innovative mapping system a lot more intuitive and easy to use, as well as allowing for all kinds of new game play. Tesseract loses the backwards compatibility of Cube 2 in order to take full advantage of modern gfx cards.

Personally, I'm looking forward to games that utilize to implement destructible terrain, and the inevitable Minecraft clones that come with it. So go out coders, and create!

                            

You can find the sourcecode on Github here

EDIT: Well, that was quick! Hirato from Sandbox / Redeclipse pointed out this day/night cycle made with the new code: 

Continue Reading

A Las Barricadas CC-by-SA boardgame & Kickstarter

Yes...you read right, a board-game on FreeGamer :p
Playable completely without the aid of a computer or similar device. But hey... it's a game and libre licensed, so it is not really that OT.

So this ominously named "Black Flag Games" collective has recently jumped on the Kickstarter hype and seems to have quite successfully financed their game by it (but you can still donate to the cause). Currently they are at $5,932 of their $3,500 goal with 22 days to go.

I noticed it because they already started releasing graphics on OGA under the CC-by-SA license as promised:

Personally I am looking forward to this, as I actually proposed something quite similar in my long running "game design brain-fart" thread. Luckily for them I released these ideas into the public domain... otherwise I would be sooo suing their a**es off :p

P.S.: viva la revolución... errr I for one welcome our new Kickstarter overlords!

Continue Reading

Trigger Rally Online Edition Open Sourced on GitHub

Trigger Rally Online Edition race start on a sand track with green trees and an animated checkpoint ahead.

Trigger Rally Online Edition [github] is a WebGL racing game based on the concept of Trigger Rally. It has a more detailed car model than the classical game, however I am not sure about the game data license. It features replays too!

The project was created by the lead coder of the original/classical Trigger Rally version.

video: Trigger Rally Online Edition gameplay

By the way: if you are interested in helping me to sort out missing license-clear graphics and sounds for the classical Trigger Rally, I created a thread on OpenGameArt for that purpose.

Continue Reading

People keep asking about the Castlevania movie and want any details they can find

All I can say right now is, if your wondering what in the world is going on with the Castlevania movie out there, you know as much as I do right now, according to IMDB it's still classified as being
"In developement", so I'm sure that means our beloved Castlevania game series is going to see a movie in its future, although when the hell that'll be, according to their information possibly 2014. I wish they would speed things up a bit. A lot of people out there want to know more. I'll post it here of course as soon as I know any other information.

Dracula Begins?....

Continue Reading

Castlevania art, here is a site you might want to take a look at in your spare time

You like concept art for any Castlevania don't you?, especially titles like Symphony of the Night. We all remember that particular Castlevania game and can't forget it. Well here is a site I found sitting out there you might not know of  and they do concept art for Castlevania very well. You can see for yourself by checking their page out at GiantBomb. It's worth a good look. I cherry picked a couple of cool art pics below if you want to check them out. Enjoy.

Continue Reading

Metal Gear Solid HD collection hands on review and what's really headed your way

This one has a hands on review for the new Metal Gear Solid HD collection for Vita. It looks like the images are little bigger too in this one. And the review seems a little more in depth than the other one I posted. Just thought I'd pass it along to you as well. You can find this review of the new Metal Gear game collection by visiting the source page at ShackNews. Enjoy.

Continue Reading

Castlevania Throne of Darkness done in Minecraft gets a thumbs up pick

The guys at GameRant have given a top pick to the original Castlevania being redone in Minecraft, along with a few other picks as well. To clarify, the original Castlevania game was released on the NES 8-bit system way back in 1988. I personally played it back then more times than I can count and still get around to playing it every now and then. There is a video that lasts a few minutes featuring the remade Castlevania game in all its glory and it can be reached by checking out the video below, which showcases some really cool footage. Cheers.

Continue Reading

Silent Hill Downpour 2nd review is now out and reveals some more info

I figured I would post a 2nd review for Silent Hill Downpour. This one addresses an issue I didn't know before hand. The new Silent Hill game does have an issue with a few bugs when it comes to the fighting action, although the scare factor as always is still pretty high. The review on this can be found by heading over to the source page at TheLeafChronicle. Enjoy.

Continue Reading

Konami shows off new screen shots for Metal Gear Solid collection that was redone in HD

New Konami hits on the horizon, well new as in redone in HD format. Konami has released new screen shots for the Metal Gear Solid collection for HD, which is to be launched in the UK this summer. As stated before the new Metal Gear game collection will feature the classic Solid Snake, Raiden, and you can share PSN trophies with the Metal Gear game collection for the Playstation 3 system as well. I will post more on this new Konami game jewel as it becomes available.

Continue Reading

The Big corrections round-up post (and TA contest)

So... you might have followed the lengthy discussion in the comment section of this blog entry of mine from last week... if you didn't don't worry you didn't miss anything important :p

However I was corrected in quite a few things (besides all the disagreements), so I though it would be good to post a sort of "counter statement" to clear up some recent mess-ups by me:

First of all, the developers from Q2W informed us that in fact most (but not all) of their art assets are CC-by-SA or GPL, which is great. They have also released a Linux installer now, so feel free to check it out if you are gaming on this platform (like me). Oh and I have also updated the video to a newer one, in case you didn't notice yet.

Also, and I am to be honest quite surprised by this, OverDose does in fact have an open source-code repository since some time now, where you can download the source to the engine and some of the cool in-house tools they have developed. No clearly visible notice on the website about this however :-/ Even on the wiki they have no link to it I think.

Ah, and I was also informed that UFO:AI has now released an Linux version of the mentioned 2.4 RC.

Otherwise? Stunt-Rally does indeed have a player-collision option, which I somehow missed... but at least I am not the only one who feels that the physics are a bit off :p

Last but not least, and that is the only real news in this post:
The rather early in development steam-punk themed MMORPG Tempest in the Aether are hosting an art contest in collaboration with OGA too (to celebrate their first release). A bit of a pity that it will probably be somewhat overlooked due to the big OGA contest mentioned in Bart's previous post, but maybe you want to contribute to this game as well.

P.S.: Criticize me all you want, and I am open to corrections as you can see, but don't expect me become a "proper" journalist! After all this is the "splatter zone" :p

Continue Reading

Konami title "Puddle" gets a new patch released for puzzle game fans

You probably don't know this, but Puddle started out as an independent project by six students in France. The new Konami game Puddle has had a patch released for it to help speed up loading times so many were complaining about. It's not often you see Konami games like this one, a physics based puzzle game. But not too bad considering it's a digital download for $9.99 USD. A few tweaks are addressed as well throughout this new Konami title.

Continue Reading

Speaking of the latest Silent Hill Downpour, what about the new collection redone in HD?

Missed this one a few days ago for those of you wondering if you should pick up the Silent Hill HD collection. Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3 are among them and there is a review if you want to check out located at PcMag that's a bit informative. Each Silent Hill game has been revamped with 720p and looks really nice according to the screen shots there. Or better yet, check out the video below for a nice review done about it.

Continue Reading

Silent Hill producer Tomm Hulett talks about the future of horror games

Discovered this today, a nice article about Tomm Hulett who brought the world Silent Hill Downpour a month ago. The future of horror games and what to expect from them. The horror genre has seen so many different aspects over the years as they've evolved and have only seem to get better in the process. Hulett had this to say:

"Hulett told MCV “While many other games have gone the route of more action oriented game design, attempting to appeal to more mainstream audiences, we’ve taken a very careful approach to the pacing of Downpour to make sure it maintains that original ‘slow-burn’ and keeping the player off guard with less predictability.”

You can read the rest of the article if you like by heading to the source page at Bloody-Disgusting. There is also an interview with Tomm Hulett as well located at McvPacific. By the way what did you think of the new Silent Hill game Downpour? Did it meet your expectations? Let me know what you think about the future of horror games and what you would like to see in them from now on.

Continue Reading

More details on Metal Gear Rising Revengeance have emerged and what features it will have during game play

This is the one we all need more of. Every scrap of information you can get on Metal Gear Rising Revengeance in production. It's hard to get a lot out of Hideo Kojima these days, but thanks to a post at zoknowsgaming who got their info from the latest issued of Play Magazine, there are a few details to point out. First, the new Metal Gear game will feature cyborgs instead of human soldiers. Why do you ask?, to keep from being censored or banned in Japan. Second of all, the main Metal Gear Rising game character "Raiden" will be able to perform parry attacks while his back is turned.

Last but not least, and this is a bit controversial, the entire script has been redone in just two months. It took Hideo Kojima 10 months to do the first one. I hope that doesn't hurt the game play. There will also be a playable demo of the new Metal Gear game located at this years E3 show. There should be a release date or at least a time frame for the latest Metal Gear game by then.

Continue Reading

Announcing the Liberated Pixel Cup!

I'm excited to announce that OpenGameArt.org is will be teaming up this summer with the Free Software Foundation and the Creative Commons for a big summer games contest, the Liberated Pixel Cup!

The TL;DR version is that the Liberated Pixel Cup will take place in two phases.  The first phase will be the art phase, in which artists will be asked to submit pixel art that matches an existing body of professional quality art that we're building specifically for the contest.  The second phase will be the programming phase, the object of which will be to create a game using the pre-made assets along with the assets created by contestants during the art phase.  A longer overview (as well as the official rules page) can be found on the website.

I've been running OpenGameArt.org for just over three years now, and I'm incredibly excited because this marks the first official recognition we've received from the FSF and the CC.  It's particularly awesome because it'sa massive boost for OGA's goal -- that is, bringing artists and coders together to make awesome games!

So, spread the word, donate to the cause (donations will be used to add to the already impressive base art set, and fund contest prize money), and above all, join us and take part in the contest!

Bart K.
OpenGameArt.org

P. S.  I'd like to offer a special thank you to Chris Webber (aka paroneayea) from the Creative Commons, who conceived this idea and made it happen.  You rock. :)

Continue Reading

Reviews for Silent Hill Downpour have popped up and reveal some new details.

For those of you still wondering about Silent Hill Downpour, here is another nice review done for you to see located at Psu. The new Silent Hill game features new control elements unlike past Silent Hill game titles that had some controversy over how harsh the character controls turned out, a mistake that is supposed to be fixed in Downpour. The creepy atmosphere game play is back again, as well as new monsters, puzzles and so fourth. For more information and multiple screen shots to view, you can check out the whole Silent Hill game review by visiting the source page at Psu.

Continue Reading

Castlevania done in Minecraft is given a heads up by fans everywhere

Ever wanted to see a 3D Castlevania done in MineCraft? This nice concept was put together block by block from the original Castlevania game itself. I must say it's done very well too, over the course of 37 days and over 100 hours of working on it, you can see from the video what a 3D Castlevania game would look and feel like. This Castlevania world and a Simon Belmont skin is also available for download by visiting the source page for this news located at Kotaku. You can check out a video of it below which shows some nice footage in case you want to get in on the action.

Continue Reading