Bully is one of my favorite Rockstar games of all time. Although it blew up release, it's fairly unheard of today, amidst praise for Red Dead Redemption and the latest GTA game. But that may change, as Rockstar's parent company, Take-Two Interactive, has filed a new trademark for Bully related media on July 25th.
We've heard talk of a Bully sequel before, and hopefully that talk will become reality on the next generation of consoles. If you're interested in checking out the original sometime, it's constantly on sale on Steam for under $10.
Take-Two [GameSpot]
Bungie hopes to take Borderlands’ brand of openworld shooting one step further through connected play.
The Destiny developer invited us into its studio for the cover story of our new issue, on sale Thursday August 1. The game will allow players to level up using Talent Points, and Bungie acknowledges that it has taken inspiration from fellow openworld shooters Far Cry and Borderlands.
“We are absolutely doing things that would be familiar if you’ve played any kind of open-world game,” creative lead Joe Staten told us. “I mean… Far Cry, even. We would be idiots if we didn’t look at an awesome game like Borderlands and ask, ‘What are they doing well and how can we try to hit that same ball?’ I have never played a game where I have such a great attachment to my gun as I do in Borderlands.
“When we look at a game like that, we look at the things they’re doing well and also at opportunities they might have missed that we can capitalise on. You can party up with a group of people and then go around with that group, but never in Borderlands are you going to collide with a group of other people doing it too. We don’t do that just once or twice in the game, we do that all the time, everywhere. You see other people on the horizon, hear gunfire over a hill and see space magic flying behind some trees, and you know… there are other people out here, that [changes everything]. Borderlands right now is: ‘I’m going to walk into that space and we’re going to clear them out and keep going’. And frankly that’s not just Borderlands, that’s any co-op shooter.”
Speaking as part of our new issue’s cover feature, Bungie also told us what it learned from developing the Halo games and how those experiences fed into the making of Destiny.
E257 is on sale Thursday August 1 – you can find out more about the issue here.
The post Bungie on what Destiny does better than Borderlands appeared first on Edge Online.
An intimate tale on an international canvas, The Raven puts you in the shoes of underdog policeman Anton Jakob Zellner as he gets tangled up in a web of thieves, gangsters and misguided, distrustful bystanders. If those ingredients sound familiar, it’s because Nordic developer King Art is overtly – and passionately – riffing on Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot tales of murder and mystery (right down to Zellner’s waxed moustache and an indirect cameo by the author herself onboard – where else? – the Orient Express).
Christie’s influence permeates every element of the game, from the family-friendly tone to the period setting, but King Art injects its own personality into the production with a meticulous approach to mise en scene and cinematic framing that makes scouring each environment for clues a pleasure.
While the logic-based puzzles are never too perplexing, they can require a little too much back-and-forth travel between adjacent rooms, occasionally wearing out the good impression made by each gorgeously rendered setting. A hint system helps alleviate the eye-strain, however, with the tap of a button using up a portion of your currency to highlight areas of on-screen interest (currency is awarded a little too generously for each successfully solved puzzle).
This first episode of three is a solid foundation for King Art to build on and proof that the team is up to the challenge of bringing Christie’s oeuvre of intrigue, interpersonal conflict, and superior facial hair – in everything but name – to life.
The Raven: Legacy Of A Master Thief is out now on Steam.
The post The Raven: Legacy Of A Master Thief review appeared first on Edge Online.
If you love videogame art, it would be criminal not to know who Mikaël "Orioto" Aguirre is. He is a French digital artist known for his spectacular renderings of notable videogame scenes painted using the brush of the gods. You've no doubt seen some of his work before even if you don't recognize him by name. In fact, I use this sparkling number as the wallpaper for my mp3 player!
His most recent masterpiece is an assembly of several key events in Final Fantasy VI. Created in 120 hours over the course of two months, it contains references to the prologue, the Ultros battle, Locke's rescue of Celes, the famous Opera scene, and more. And this is just the first part of a three-piece set! Madness!
If you want to purchase a print of this awesome sauce, you can order it from here, but you only have until September 2. Orioto previously sold prints of similar frescoes for Quackshot and Sonic the Hedgehog . Not anymore, regrettably! At least there are still other works you can buy.
FFVI Fresco (part 1) by Orioto [deviantART]
Once a Wii U exclusive, Rayman Legends will now be released on 360, PS3, Vita and PC too – a move which might make business sense, but it still caused consternation among owners of Ninendo’s home console earlier this year.
It even led to reports of protests at the developer, with studio staff posing alongside banners which read: “Release Rayman. Support Ubi Montpellier.”
Emile Morel, Rayman Legends’ lead game designer remembers it differently. “As for the protest about the delay, it actually never happened, it’s a funny story and in the end a big misunderstanding,” he told us. “A few days after the announcement of the delay, one morning two Rayman fans came by the studio with a funny banner to protest about the delay in a nice and humoristic way. We’re not used to have fans coming by the studio, so some members of the team took pictures with them to be nice and friendly. We spent some time talking with them and once they left I remember someone in the team asking: ‘Did we tell them not to put these pictures online?’ The answer was ‘no’ and two hours later these pictures were everywhere and people started to think that the whole team was protesting about the delay. In the end, no harm was done, and this gives us a funny story to tell!”
Level designer Chris McEntee told us of his disappointment at the move, as the team had worked so hard to meet the initial deadline. “Finding out that it would be delayed just made us feel for the fans,” he told us. “We knew it wouldn’t be taken well, and it hurt to see people’s reactions.”
McEntee also says that the ‘protest’ was just a few photos take out of context, and explains the story from his perspective.
“I’m working at my desk in the studio, and someone comes in saying there are two people outside with a sign saying Release Rayman,” he says. “I thought, I have to see this, so I and a lot of other people went outside to check it out. We were so happy to know that people cared enough about our game to come to our studio and tell us that they were disappointed.
“We wanted to take a picture with them, a personal picture, just because it was a cool moment for us. Once they posted the picture, it became a ‘protest’ according to the internet. There never was any protest; we worked on the game and made the best out of a slightly disappointing situation. And, truth be told, we have a better game for it.”
Rayman Legends will be released on Wii U, 360, PS3, Vita and PC on August 30.
The post The real story of Ubisoft Montpellier’s Rayman Legends ‘protest’ appeared first on Edge Online.
Nintendo has finally confirmed that the Black 3DS XL is coming out on August 11, in the United States at least. It's been priced at $199.99, but some stores may have it for $179.99 through a promotion.
Mario & Luigi: Dream Team also comes out on August 11. What a coincidence!
We're here folks! Breathe that big ol' sigh of relief because by midday you'll see BioShock Infinite 's first piece of downloadable content, Clash in the Clouds, available for download on the PC through Steam.
Clash in the Clouds is an intense combat-oriented DLC where players can climb the leaderboards by beating up various enemies from BioShock Infinite. For some it's been a long time coming, but I had patience and I certainly wasn't disappointed with the time I spent playing Clash.
Hey Suda 51, you're great. I love your games. Killer Is Dead looks like it will be a lot of fun. But enough is enough! There's promotion, and then there's just spoiling every single little aspect of your game.
We've seen so many screens, so many trailers -- we get it! At this point you're just hurting yourself here. It's like a movie trailer that reveals all the best parts, or the best jokes. Let us be a little surprised when it finally comes out in August.
Also, eggs.
Left 4 Dead 2 ? It's a fun game. It's made even better thanks to all the amazing mods the community has created. Enjoy this compilation of Teletubbies, raptors, Koopa Troopas, Storm Troopers, cats, Justin Bieber, My Little Pony, Aliens, and so much more craziness.
[Thanks, Lucas!]
Bungie has revealed the lessons learned from its work on Halo, and how those experiences have fed into the creation of Destiny.
Speaking in the new issue of Edge magazine, on sale Thursday August 1, creative lead Joe Staten outlines where he feels the FPS genre’s future lies, and how Destiny aims to get there.
“I think we did two things well with the Halo games,” he told us. “One, we told a story that you can play by yourself or with a small group of friends. And two, we made a great hardcore, competitive game. Between those two choices we tried to do other things – Firefight, for example – but the options are very slim, and I think that’s true for most shooters. Between those two poles there’s a vast gulf of opportunities but a lack of choices. We want to very carefully bring those two communities together and open up those choices.”
Elsewhere in our cover feature, Staten adds that while the first Halo games were considered as individual experiences, Destiny is being developed with a longterm plan in mind.
“The big lesson [from Halo] is: if you don’t have a plan for the future, you’re scrambling to catch up with your own success,” he told us. “This time we’re planning for success, and that’s enabled us to imagine a future where many things are possible. It allows the plot a long arc, which is great. In Halo we certainly didn’t have that. We planned for an eight-hour experience then, two years later, figured out another eight-hour experience. This time we’re thinking about how you grow and evolve this world over many years, many hours. It’s a whole different mindset.”
You can read more about Destiny in the new issue of Edge magazine, on sale Thursday August 1.
The post What Bungie learned from making Halo appeared first on Edge Online.
There's quite a bit of Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII news afoot courtesy of All Games Beta.
We now know Lightning Returns will feature four distinct areas, the newest revealed of which is a "vast, open-world area in vain of Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" in which you can ride Chocobos and generally gallivant around. I'm also quite interested in the first city where Lightning apparently is investigating a murder. Games tend to do investigation poorly, because failing would mean ruining progress and pacing, so it will be interesting to see if that bit is any fun.
There will also be over 100 shop types. Talk about meeting your critics. It's like when Square was super excited to awkwardly show off the jump button in Final Fantasy XIII-2. "You wanted shops?" Square asks. "How about over a hundred different kinds," game director Motomu Toriyama screams from the rooftops while batting at fan requests flown in on paper airplanes.
Speaking to the legitimately interesting "dress up" portion of the game, certain outfits allow you to alter the colors, while save data from previous games will grant access to Lightning's earlier outfits. On top of that, you can dress Lightning up in Yuna's summoner outfit from Final Fantasy X, which gives her a demure bow post-battle.
I actually thought it was going to be Auron's garb given that her default clothes look similar. A bit less excited with this. Then again, I'm presently mildly less excited about the project as a whole after reading that sophomoric interview about increasing Lightning's bust and adding jiggle physics. Just let me be tentatively excited, Square! Since it seems everyone is fair game, any other outfits you'd like to see? I vote something from Final Fantasy XII.
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII pics and info from Tokyo event [All Games Beta]
Tearaway will now be released on November 22, a month later than planned, developer Media Molecule has confirmed.
The studio has explained on its blog that it needed “a little more time than we anticipated to finish the game; to tie all of the mechanics, story and amazing visuals together into the adventure that we want you to play.”
The UK studio had originally intended to release the game on October 22, and added: “We’re really, really sorry for the minor delay, we promise you hand on heart that the wait will be worthwhile!”
Our most recent time with the game suggested that it will be – you can read our Tearaway preview through the link.
The post Media Molecule’s Vita exclusive Tearaway delayed appeared first on Edge Online.
Lisbeth is dead, and we continue our boring journey through space with ... some other person!
Witness the terror of aliens that stand around waiting to die. Be amazed by Hicks' magic pants! Feel shock at the comprehension of Weyland-Yutani's Danger Ammo!
Musician sleepytimejesse has graced the Dtoid front page before. Last year, he directed I Miss You - EarthBound 2012 , in which various artists used the sound library from EarthBound to produce an entirely new score. He later directed Make Music, Throw Music , the same concept but using Yoshi's Island audio instead
Spacious Anxious is his latest solo venture. It's an original 10-track space trek that samples sounds from multiple games spanning the SNES through GameCube, including Super Metroid, EarthBound, Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64, Kirby 64, Glover , and others. And yeah, it sounds totally like variations on Super Metroid boss battle themes. Fine by me!
You can score the album from Bandcamp for only $4. Cough it up if you wanna!
Spacious Anxious [Bandcamp]
Phil Fish is dead. He’s not dead, obviously. He’s just stopped posting on Twitter, cancelled Fez 2, and apparently abandoned games altogether after the hate got too much. In the aftermath of the cancellation, it’s not hard to see why – just a brief look at the comments on Polytron’s website is enough to make you not only swear off games, but the internet, words, and nerds aged 18 – 35 with very strong opinions about things.
But now he’s gone – and assuming he stays gone – it’s worth remembering just what we all loved about Phil Fish, with “we” in this instance referring to the part of the internet that isn’t currently on blogs accusing him of being a gay criminal or a woman.
Ask yourself whether you’d like a high-profile developer who doesn’t filter their opinions and isn’t shy of coming out with something that’s a bit controversial. The answer, cleverly suggested by the format and tone of the question, is yes. Most people on the internet would probably agree with that. But there’s a hidden clause to that agreement, which is “provided said controversial opinions agree entirely with everything I hold dear, on pain of going berserk and throwing around a few death threats.”
Phil Fish absolutely fulfilled his side of this bargain, with a big chunk of the web fulfilling the other side. It’s tempting to say that Fish tells it like it is, if ‘tells like it is’ wasn’t a euphemism for ‘is a mad bigot with no off-switch’. Phil Fish isn’t a mad bigot; only the most perspective-challenged self-identified fans of Japanese games would accuse him of being a bigot, which is admittedly still at least 50 per cent of self-identified fans of Japanese games.
And the thing is, Fish didn’t even tell it like it was. There’s no pretence that his pronouncements are the objective state of the world; when he said that Japanese games sucked, it was reported as a unilateral attack on Japanese developers, their Japanese mums, and Japan in general, with Fish rearing out of the ocean and kicking over some CGI skyscrapers with ‘ALL OF NINTENDO’S BACK CATALOGUE’ written on them. There was no context and no intimation that hey, maybe there was some discussion and explanation attached to the original statement. You could blame this on Chinese whispers, except that implies a gradual process of a message’s content degrading through retelling, rather than it going straight from zero to a lurid account of Phil Fish draped in a Canadian flag, being disrespectful towards a photograph of Toshiro Mifune while confidently stating to an agog press corps that Western game development’s most cynical freemium child-enslaving bankruptcy enabler was a more satisfying and rewarding experience than Super Mario 64 and Street Fighter II combined.
This refusal to pipe down and stop being mean to angry 18-35 males isn’t surprising when you think of Fish’s history. Fez’s development took in half a decade and a whole series of personal, professional, and financial setbacks. It’s astounding that he and Polytron finished it at all, let alone to the point where it’s a beautiful, brilliant reinvention of gaming’s equivalent of the wheel – the platform game. Fez is an incredible achievement, with the layered, nested levels of design taking you right from the basics of jumping from platform to platform, through the mind-punching flipping of perspective, all the way up to decoding alien languages and working out what the hell those owls are all about. It’s a game that doesn’t hold your hand, but at the same time never deliberately lets you fall – it trusts you with its puzzles so implicitly that it rarely even tells you that there is a puzzle.
The gigawatt-laser intensity required to push that through meant Fish was never likely to use his Twitter account to quietly push out press release-toned news updates and blandly positive statements that he’s looking forward to various things. He didn’t use Twitter for that. He used it to say that “gamers are the worst fucking people”. And why not? Everyone who plays games and reads about them, or has read any online comment section at all ever knows this is broadly true. Most people would joke about it; some people would even take a kind of weird pride in it. But when Phil Fish says it after the internet threatens to pirate his work because they don’t like him, then it’s action stations oh God everything’s on fire.
We’re so used to seeing developers’ public personas through a mesh of corporate hierarchy and external comms policy that seeing someone filtered through the mesh of being a sarcastic real-life person is frightening and confusing. And following this weekend’s announcement, it looks as though those meshes were there for a reason; the corporate mesh deflects and absorbs abuse, deforming and ricocheting off to one side like a bullet on kevlar, whereas Phil Fish’s normal person mesh just lets everything through unhindered, to grim cumulative effect.
The game industry needs more people like Phil Fish, and it’ll be all the poorer for his absence if he’s really gone. The internet isn’t short of people saying things are rubbish, in the same way that there’s probably enough creepy artwork of characters from Mass Effect already, and Sonic-themed erotic fiction is so oversubscribed as to be on a one-in-one-out system. But there are precious few people in Phil Fish’s position who are willing or capable of stirring up such debate, and almost none who are as entertaining. You might hate him, but he made Fez – and as such, he’s probably better than you.
The post Phil Fish and the hate mob: an internet tragedy appeared first on Edge Online.