#GamerNews: The Humble Indie Bundle V

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Sean. He has a really rad site called Violent Gamer, and he's here today to talk about some of the latest and greatest in the gaming industry. I only have one more thing left to say ... HIT IT SEAN !!</editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @violent_gamer

I used to be able to cover the majority of the indie bundles for PC or Mac, but nowadays there are just so many bundles like the IndieRoyale Bundle, which just released a new one, or the Indie Gala Bundle, but yesterday The Humble Bundle came out with a truly impressive offering. Their new bundle has already made over 1.3 million dollars and sold over 180,000 bundles. All of this is result of the stellar games included in this bundle that is made up of: Bastion, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Psychonauts, Limbo and Superbrothers : Sword & Sworcery EP. Bastion is the game that you only get if you pay more than the average of $7.42 (at the time of this post), but the rest are included no matter how much you pay. I do believe this is the first indie bundle, of any kind, that is full of excellent and popular games. As always The Humble Bundle lets you pay what you want and choose where your money is distributed. So if you wish to give all of your money to The Childs Play Charity then you may easily do so. If you wish head on over there right now, but if you want to hear a little about each game keep on reading. 

Amnesia: The Dark Descent by Frictional Games

I always thought that survival horror games were kind of gimmicky and not designed for those who aren't easily scared, but Amnesia: The Dark Descent has shown me that the genre still has a lot to offer. Amnesia is a survival horror that contains zero combat and focuses on puzzles, story and evading terrifying monsters. The puzzles are varied and just difficult enough. The story is actually interesting even though it starts off with the amnesia cliche, but as it goes on it turns out to be dark, mysterious and mystical. Frictional Games is currently working on a new game of the same genre, but Amnesia is still a fantastic game and one that you can recommend to all types of gamers. If only Amnesia were in the bundle it would still be worth it just for that. Check out this trailer and see how it great it looks in action. 

LIMBO by Playdead

Limbo, like Amnesia, is a dark game in both the literal sense and contextually. It is a side scrolling platformer, similar to Braid, with plenty of puzzles and a distressingly dark artistic style. You take control of a small boy, or man, as you travel through this dark world. There are simple puzzles that merely require you to move an object in order to get past a crevasse and then very complicated puzzles that require you to say...get past a giant spider that will murder you if you pass under it. This game, like one or two other games on this list, originally came out on Xbox Live first and was later ported to PC. Limbo is really short and doesn't have all that much replay value, but it is a really enjoyable and challenging adventure.

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP by Superbrothers Inc. 

Sword & Sworcery EP originally came out the iPhone/iPad and only recently came to PC & Mac. It is another adventure game that requires you to solve puzzles, but unlike Limbo it has no platforming and has a more open world structure. There is a forest to explore, caves, a separate mystical world and much more. The gameplay is very unique and everything about the game has musical inclinations, which explains the EP part of the title. It is an artistic game and the gameplay definitely doesn't resonate with everyone, but the people who like it tend to absolutely love it. I can't recommend it to everyone, but since it's part of the bundle I do hope that if you purchase the bundle you try it for a while at least. Check out this four minute chunk of gameplay. 

Psychonauts by Double Fine/Tim Schaffer

This is the one game that I haven't played, but back when the Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter was taking place I heard about it plenty. Psychonauts presents a quirky story full of interesting characters. Gameplay wise it is mostly an adventure platformer, like Banjo Kazooie or Mario. It never sold all that well, but it earned a bit of a cult following and was critically acclaimed when it came out in 2005 on PS2, Xbox and PC. It is singleplayer only, like all of these games, and recently just came out with updated versions for PC, Linux and Mac. Take a look at this trailer to get an idea of what kind of game this is. 

Bastion by Supergiant Games

This is another adventure game, but a different sort than all the rest. Bastion is plays more like an action adventure game and it has quite a bit of replayability.Nearly a year ago Bastion came out for XBLA and it was loved by many due to it's great art style, interesting story and enjoyable combat system. Later on in the year they ported the game to PC and brought in some new additions, like a portal gun. We reviewed the game back in July and there is a lot to say about it if you would like to hear more about it. Bastion has two ending, many weapons to unlock, many challenges to conquer and a fantastic narrator. Trailer!

This is truly a special Humble Bundle. It is full of excellent indie games, each of which is worth far more than the average price of this bundle. If you don't own any, or all, of these games then check it out. I have one last trailer for you all and it is the official Humble Bundle V trailer. It is fantastic, narrated by a famous narrator from one of these games and I demand you watch it. As always, thanks for reading and if you want to check out some more gaming news head on over to Violent Gamer.

Main Website: http://www.humblebundle.com/#contribute%Pay%whatever%you%want

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#NerdsUnite: Diablo 3 (Playing Off Nostalgia)

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Sean. He has a really rad site called Violent Gamer, and he's here today to talk about some of the latest and greatest in the gaming industry. I only have one more thing left to say ... HIT IT SEAN !!</editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @violent_gamer

After clocking in many hours and slaying half of hell, I feel like sharing some of my impressions and opinions on one of the most anticipated games of the last decade.  It's been 12 years since the release of Diablo 2 and ever since the first announcement, and all the teasers released each year at Blizzcon, fans have put Diablo 3 on a pedestal.  After having hour long discussions with friends and reading raving reviews online, everyone seems to enjoy the game, but why do I feel let down?

Blizzard has always been one of those companies that gamers look up to.  They have built their business around successful franchises and have published many of the best selling PC games ever. Diablo 3 is no different, selling 3.5 million copies in the first 24 hours and over 6 million in the first week. Diablo 3 continues the story with a world being invaded by the forces of  hell, and players choosing their heroes to defeat Diablo himself. With stunning cinematic cut scenes and hand painted environments it's obvious Blizzard put a lot of time and money into the game.

With that said, why did the game have a less than stellar release?  With the now infamous Error 37, players were not able to log in during the official launch, even during the first day there were hours of down time for server maintenance. That does not bother me as much compared to the lack of detail with character models, the short 10-15 hour campaign, no player vs player available at launch and the incomplete auction house with their revolutionary use of real currency.

Something I noticed right away after logging into Diablo 3 for the first time was the lack of customization and depth in the characters you choose from.  In most modern games today, customizing your character is a big part of the gaming experience.  Being able to customize your characters looks gives you a sense of identity.  Not only are you not able to customize your character, but the models themselves are unimpressive.  Sure you are looking at your character from overhead, but who doesn't want to zoom in every so often and check out how awesome your character looks after hours of slaying demons?

In Diablo 2, PvP was a big part of available content.  Being able to invade another players game and challenging them to a dual, compare stats on the leaderboards was partly why you kept coming back. I remember being at Blizzcon and hearing about the new arena battles that Diablo 3 will have at launch. Then, a couple months from the release day, we hear that no form of PvP will be available at launch.

Why does this all matter? As a consumer and a fan, I feel cheated.  I feel like I got a game that was 90% complete and was told "Enjoy what we give you and you'll get the rest when we are ready."  This has become a problem in the gaming industry.  I would much rather have a completed game with all the features and content available on release than wait weeks or months for the rest of the content.  I also find it hard to digest that other gaming websites have given this game such good reviews even with its flaws.  With games like Diablo, we can't let our 12 year old fanboy come out and cloud our judgment just because of the title on the box. Want to check out any of other posts? Come on over to Violent Gamer.

-Written by Adam Borchert

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#Nerdsunite: A Return to Black Mesa

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Sean. He has a really rad site called Violent Gamer, and he's here today to talk about some of the latest and greatest in the gaming industry. I only have one more thing left to say ... HIT IT SEAN !!</editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @violent_gamer

It's still alive! That's the big news. Black Mesa Source is a complete modification that is recreating Half Life 1 in the Half Life 2 source engine. The developers have been working on this mod since 2005, often with a dozen or so people working on the mod. Back in 2008 they released a trailer that looked fantastic and showed an expected release date of 2009. They didn't release Black Mesa Source in 2009 and since then most people assumed that mod had died, especially since news and updates for it ended sometime in 2009. Nathan Grayson Rock Paper Shotgun did an interview with the project lead of Black Mesa Source, Carlos Montero, earlier this week and he explained what has happened since then. Most importantly he explained that they are still working on the mod and they are hoping to have something out for it in the near future. Before I go over some of the really interesting parts of that interview let me show you the trailer that got everyone so hyped up for Black Mesa Source back in 2008.

Looks pretty spectacular right? Well they wanted to release the mod back in 2009, but they have had very many difficulties. There has been numerous problems with quality control, meaning parts of the mod were not up to snuff with the level of quality that other parts, so they have spent a long time trying to keep the quality of everything consistently high. They have also had problems with internal communication and dealing with their team of developers who are located all around the globe. In the interview Carlos explains that one of their biggest problems has had to do with balance. They've had to a lot of work trying to make Half Life 1 meet the modern standard and trying to keep make it not too challenging for modern gamers. If you want to see how the Black Mesa Source has been developing they have a nifty Time Line available that shows what has been publicly released for it. On that timeline it is interesting to see where they implemented their media blackout. Since 2009 they felt quite bad about hyping up the game and then not releasing it, so that's why they haven't been hyping it up anymore in anyway. Now that it's nearing release, again, we may start to see a lot more on it.

Black Mesa Source still doesn't have a solid release date and the only thing Carlos was willing to say, with some prodding by Nathan, was that they are working very hard on getting something out to fans soon-ish. The game is entirely custom at this point and had thousands of custom textures, sounds, dialogue and models. Hopefully someday we will see the fruit of their labor. It looks to be a splendid trip back to Black Mesa and Half Life 1. If you would like to read all of it head on over to Violent Gamer. Thanks for checking it out.

Black Mesa Main Website: http://www.blackmesasource.com/

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#NerdsUnite: When Scammers Turn to Kickstarter

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Sean. He has a really rad site called Violent Gamer, and he's here today to talk about some of the latest and greatest in the gaming industry. I only have one more thing left to say ... HIT IT SEAN !!</editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @violent_gamer

Let's face it, it was bound to happen eventually and it probably already has unwittingly taken place before, but a Kickstarter Project was created purposely to scam gullible gamers. If you happen to not know what Kickstarter let me explain that briefly. Kickstarter is a website, and service, that let's anyone put up a project and put out there for fans to fund. They are not often successful, but the video game portion of Kickstarter has exploded in the last four months and there has been some massive projects, like the Double Fine Adventure Game which earned over $2 million. A newly uploaded Kickstarter project called Mythic: The Story of the Gods and Men was quickly found out by the brilliant people of the internet. In late April someone from SomethingAwful, a somewhat large internet community, posted a ton of evidence to Rock Paper Shotgun's forums and then it was spread from there. The forum post was originally about the success of Kickstarter and how it's becoming something huge, but this is an interesting example of what could go wrong, yet at the same time it's a project that was quickly figured out and destroyed. Mythic had an $80,000 goal and already had $4,000 in pledges, but now the project has been cancelled and the "developer" has deleted their profile.

On the Kickstarter page for Mythic the first thing they show is this picture:

It turns out that picture is really from here: http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=211755

It is an article that shows a tutorial about how to draw that very picture that they slapped Mythic on top of. The next thing you read is about the project, which sounds very vague and odd. This sentence in particular should bother most people, "Game engine is custom but built based off of Unity3D and animations will be done via motion capture thanks to some friends at Disney/Pixar!" A small time developer that is looking for only $80,000 is planning to do motion capture? I think not. Another terrifying sentence is this one, "The gameplay characteristics will be similar to that of World of Warcraft and the graphics quality should be up there with Skyrim." So first off they are planning to do an open world game that gives you a lot of choices, very descriptive sounding I must say, and then they further elaborate by saying that it will be like World of Warcraft with the graphical quality of Skyrim? That is the craziest thing I've heard in a very long time. Were this a real project it would be doomed to failure based on those goals, but it's not a real project, it's a scam.

Interestingly enough the rest of their Kickstarter page is filled with more stolen images and art, plus some more absurd descriptions that are alarmingly ambitious. A good chunk of their page is filled with concept, all of which is stolen from this concept art website: http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=211755

The pledge reward tiers are also quite stolen as well. Most of them seem to be taken from a popular Kickstarter for the game The Banner Saga. The rewards are merely reworded to make it sound as if they thought of these pledges on their own. Here is an example of the two $50 pledges for the two projects:

The Banner Saga $50 Pledge: 
"Be a real part of The Banner Saga! At this tier we'll provide you a template and you provide us with YOUR OWN CREST DESIGN which we'll put into the actual game."

Mythic $50 Pledge: 
"Be a real part of MYTHIC! At this tier we'll provide you a template and you provide us with YOUR OWN GOD POWER SIGN DESIGN which we'll put into the actual game found on altar walls and pillars."

You can compare the large majority of the pledges between the two projects and see that the Mythic pledges are almost 100% copy and pasted from The Banner Saga's page. God forbid you want more proof than this of the project's false presentation, but if you do there is more to be found. Take a look at SomethingAwful's original post about it or the Rock Paper Shotgun post or the Reddit post, all of which have links and explanations.

I'm often writing about Kickstarters here and encouraging people to participate in interesting projects, but the fact that this Kickstarter made even $5,000 in pledges is worrisome. This is truly an amateur attempt to scam some gamers into backing this project, but what happens if some professionals do this? What happens if someone actually takes the time to make their own art, real and believable descriptions, custom pledges and in-game screenshots? I have faith that someone will succeed in rooting them out, once again, but it is still worries me a bit. Kickstarter truly is on the rise and we will see what happens to all of these projects, like Wasteland 2, The Banner Saga, Double Fine Adventure and many more. Hopefully they will fulfill their end of the bargain and we won't end up with a whole slew of failed projects and failed investments, but have hope my friends. We have not been betrayed yet and there is still plenty to be excited about. Thanks for reading and for if you want to actually see the Mythic Kickstarter Page take a look below.
Cancelled Mythic Project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/273246798/mythic-the-story-of-gods-and-men?ref=history

If you want to read the post in full head on over to Violent Gamer

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#Gaming: The Walking Dead: Episode 1 PC Review

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Sean. He has a really rad site called Violent Gamer, and he's here today to talk about some of the latest and greatest in the gaming industry. I only have one more thing left to say ... HIT IT SEAN !!</editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @violent_gamer

Zombies, choices and drama, that's what The Walking Dead is all about. It puts that all into a point and click adventure, the kind of game Telltale Games is known for. The graphics are stylized and inspired by the original The Walking Dead comics. The combat is handled through quick time events, which many people hate, but they are handled tastefully and professionally. The Walking Dead game is a five episode series, the first part of which just came out on Tuesday the 24th for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. A new episode will be released once every month following that initial release. The first episode costs $25 and lasts 2-3 hours, but when you purchase the first episode you are really purchasing all five episodes, so you are really purchasing 10-15 hours of gameplay. Episode 1 focuses greatly on choices, constantly notifying you when a character takes note of your actions and gives you plenty of options to piss people off, help them, save them or let them die. For now it is difficult to tell if your choices truly matter, but once the rest of the episodes come out we will see if your choices truly matter.

One of the first things likely to disappoint you in The Walking Dead: Episode 1 - A New Day is the graphics. Some of the character models are believe-able and are detailed, but there are plenty of zombies and a few people who look bland or hastily designed. This is especially evident when a zombie horde is shown. When a single zombie is shown it will often look quite good, but when they have a horde there are so many zombies on the screen that they didn't bother to detail them or the graphical engine cannot handle having a bunch of highly, or moderately, detailed zombies on the screen at once. Overall the graphics may detract from the experience every so often, but for the most part they do their job and make the world feel moderately believe-able, which is something very important for a game focused on character interaction and story.

The Walking Dead's story is one of its better points. You play as Lee Everett, a man who may or may not be killer, which you learn plenty about throughout the first episode, and you get to choose what kind of person to make him throughout the game. The game starts as the zombie outbreak is starting to spread all over, but you are specifically just outside of Atlanta, one of the main cities in start of The Walking Dead show/comics. To my surprise I like parts of the story in The Walking Dead game better than The Walking Dead television show. I especially enjoy the relationship they build up between Lee and the girl you meet very early on named Clementine. They make it easy to get interested in the back-grounds of all the characters you meet and they make it so constantly have choices, some of which are tiny, like backing someone up in an argument, while others are massive decisions that involve saving someone's life. I also appreciate that they make some conflicts between characters feel plausible, sure it's a zombie outbreak, but some people are assholes and some people just won't get along. There are gimmicky moments every so often, but they really did a great job with the voice acting, animations and script to make it easy to invest in the story. I cannot wait to see what happens next and what new characters will surface.

Last Comments

The Walking Dead: Episode 1 is not for everyone. It doesn't have mind blowing graphics, it doesn't have innovative mechanics, it doesn't have a super attractive combat system, but it does have a great deal of strength in story, tone, environment. It does make a point and click adventure feel interesting once again. Only one episode is out right now, another one due on May 24th, and that's all your going to get for $25, but in four months time all of the episodes will be out and it will be a fairly lengthy game with a ton of choices. No one knows if your choices truly matter just yet and the series will be broken or made by how your choices affect the story down the line, but based on the first episode it does look like your choices really do change things and create a different story line. If they can fix up the graphics a little, fix a few of the technical problems, like sound glitches and crashes, then the series could end up becoming one of the best point and click adventure games in a very long time. I don't recommend it wholeheartedly just yet. Wait at least until the second episode comes out, and our review, to see whether or not your choices in each episode do interact in significant ways.

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Read the full review and check out the game in action over at Violent Gamer.