One of the more interesting things I saw at GDC09 occurred while I was attending the Experimental Gameplay session. I had walked in sometime after the session started and right at the beginning of a time-traveling RTS game by the name of Achron being presented.

My mind was blown.

The concept of Achron sounded really awesome, Christopher Hazard and Michael Resnick seemed to have figured out how to resolve allowing time travel in their game design and some of the examples shown and discussed were just amazing. I really wish there was video or at least another account of how in one game session, the flow of time were manipulated in such a way so that one player ended up nuking his own units. That sold me that I had to try this out one day, if Achron was released in any playable form.

That time has come, I caught (via Joystiq) this week that pre-orders are now being taken for Achron and that pre-ordering also nets you a download of the latest alpha release.

I think I’m going to have to give in and pre-order to try this out.

Even if you don’t like the RTS genre or don’t plan on playing it, at least do yourself the favor and check out what Christopher and Michael are doing with Achron — I think it’s fascinating.

Tales of Vesperia
Grand Theft Auto IV
Condemned 2: Bloodshot
Just Cause
Alone in the Dark
Too Human
Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise
Operation Darkness
Lost Odyssey
Diablo
Diablo II
Bully
Ninja Gaiden II
Culdcept Saga
Devil May Cry 4
Assassin’s Creed
Army of Two
The Club
Beautiful Katamari
Resistance: Fall of Man
Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds
Blue Dragon
Enchanted Arms
Eternal Sonata
Oblivion
The Orange Box
Braid
Penny Arcade Adventures Episode 1: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness
Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
Siren: Blood Curse
The Last Guy
PixelJunk eden
Castle Crashers
Okami
Manhunt 2
No More Heroes
Super Mario Galaxy
Super Paper Mario
Shadow of the Colossus
Yakuza
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
The Red Star
Persona 3: FES
God of War
God of War II
Patapon
The World Ends with You
Bangai-O Spirits
Contact
Trauma Center: New Blood
Fallout
Fallout 2
Sins of a Solar Empire
The Witcher
Spore
God Hand
Killer 7

Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Castle Crashers
I’ve been waiting to play this since I put my hands on what amounts to be the first level way back at GDC 2007 when Castle Crashers was part of the Independent Games Festival (IGF). So far I only played through to the end of the first level again, but this was the first time doing it solo. What is it lately about my attraction to the retro 8-bit aesthetic? I even really, really like nu-retro like what Pac-Man: Championship Edition or Galaga Legions were designed to look like. So of course, that means I’m instantly in love with the retro name-selection screen used as the game credits sequence. That’s not to say I don’t like Dan Paladin’s art design in the game, because I do as well. God, I love Golden Axe so much and this is just like that so far, but better — upgradable items and a multi-path overworld map? Awesome. Although that means this game really won’t shine until you can play it co-op. The one game I was invited to disconnected–which seems to be a well-known issue–and I don’t have any local options right this minute to round out players 2 – 4. I stopped after beating the boss of the first level, which was an easier task than I imagined it would be. As I stopped for the night, I’m left with a nail-biting choice: the dock or the forest entrance…

Unidentified Secret Game A
This wasn’t a game from where I work, but I can’t talk about it. More fun than I expected however and I haven’t played this series of games before, much to the chagrin of some industry friends. I will revisit this one again, but it’s not a high priority at the moment.

Unidentified Secret Game B
Yup, can’t talk about this one either. I wanted to just “try it out for a minute.” Ha! Fate had more diabolical designs in mind and some unseen force compelled me to continue playing until i was a third of the way through.

I have but two words, my friends: frothing demand.

Grand Theft Auto IV

Today begins my restart of Grand Theft Auto IV. I got motivated again because I’ve been thinking a lot about movie trailers, game trailers and the similarity between GTA IV’s debut trailer and Koyaanisqatsi–read the comment responses in this post by Jenn Frank for some insightful discussion.

The first time through I couldn’t get Michelle to go on a date with me again for any reason. I found out that this was weird when talking to some friends, because they had no problems having her like pretty much anything you did with her on a date. I wasn’t happy I struck out, not to mention I think I missed a mission when I accidentally jumped out of a moving car on the phone. So now I’m right back at the very beginning, listening to Roman talk about American titties over and over again. At least I hadn’t made it very far that pretty soon I’ll be back to parts of the story I haven’t encountered yet.

Thursday, August 28, 2008
[Struggled with some massive self-inflicted PC issues tonight, which cut into my gaming time.]

Grand Theft Auto IV
Banged out a few missions today but still not back to where I was before I restarted. I’m back to where I can take my first mission from Vlad, but I haven’t done that yet. I realized I need to relearn which cars are the “good” cars to jack since it’s been so long since I last played it. Turned off the radio in all the cars tonight, for some reason I’m not longer thrilled with that and just want to hear the sounds of the city. I’m starting to get impatient to start making new progress.

Friday, August 29, 2008
Grand Theft Auto IV
Took time to make some more progress. Got my second date with Michelle and she liked it and me afterwards. Progress! How much are lapdances at the strip bar anyway? I walked in with $230 and I still had the bouncers come after me after I accepted all the offers to continue. This time I beat up the two bouncers and made a run for it, somehow retaining all of my money. Score +1 for having no morals whatsoever. I’m still about two missions behind from where I used to be, but I’m almost there. Then the fun starts again.

Q.E.D.

Sunday, August 17, 2008
Lord of the Rings Online
Over the course of the day I managed to put in a few hours in LOTRO. I hit level 21 with my Lore-master doing quests, which included my first Fellowship party with one other person as we decimated Elite spiders in Minas Eriol for a quest. I think I saw my first Fellowship maneuver opportunity, but I wasn’t sure because I’ve never seen one. If it was, I totally wasted whatever it was I could do for epic win. I also have managed to accumulate over 1 gold in this time. After that I started doing low-level quests in Buckland and The Shire to hit 22 because everything else I have flagged is either to high of a level or requires a Fellowship to complete. It is nice that I can walk past a ton of level 10 mobs, right up to the item I have to retrieve as part of my quest, get it and walk right back out without a fight. With only about 9k XP left, I’ll probably hit 22 this week so I can spend some of my silver getting new Lore-master skills. Am I a nerd yet?

Monday, August 18, 2008
Bionic Commando: Rearmed
Finally got a chance to try this out this week. I realized I had my NES copy of the game, but since my NES isn’t hooked up at the moment, I didn’t get any practice in before BC:R was released last week. I remember I used to be so smooth with swinging around with the bionic arm and getting through levels. I am definitely rusty. Most definitely. I defeated the first boss on my third try, that’s how sad it was. 16 minutes just to clear the level.

Lord of the Rings Online
More LOTRO. What I have become. Continued the easier quests to hit level 22 until I got greedy with a quest that required a Fellowship around level 18. Deep in the Old Forest, after a bunch of spiders, there was a big nasty Elite Haunted Barren-oak tree, with some bad tree root friends. I managed to get it down to about 24% before I died. The thing is, I was stupid. I only had one add that I could have kept indefinitely stunned or I could have kited the tree away a bit and maybe, just maybe I could have outlasted the Elite tree. Not going back to this until I am a higher level. Or with a Fellowship. Quit the session with 1.2k before level 21. All these low level quests are less than 200 XP each, so it’s slow going.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Lord of the Rings Online
Yes, more, more, more. Soon I’ll be treated for OCD. Or be found in an Internet cafe in Korea. Hit level 22 finishing one quest and defeating random things in the Old Forest. Picked up my one new Lore-master skill (Cracked Earth) which I’ve read is useful later on and completed the requirements to get the Apprentice level for Weaponsmith. I have a bunch of recipes for Scholar and Weaponsmith that require Journeyman level. So maybe soon, after some farming. I sold some stacks of crafting components at the auction house. I also gained two new class traits–Healer and Beast-lore. Too bad I only have one more free until level 27. Anyhow, I hit my goal so I can take a break on LOTRO for now. Just occurred to me tonight that I should have been taking screenshots to go with my updates.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Galaga Legions
Wow, this totally kicked my ass. This isn’t quite as tight or brilliant a remix as Pac-Man: Championship Edition was, but this is right up there regardless. The vintage, retro skin is where it’s at. Don’t even bother with the new or “standard” skin. Obviously I’m still struggling getting some of the game mechanics and patterns down so I can get better, but I do like the idea of side-pod guns that can you place in one of four cardinal directions whenever you want, even if they aren’t near you. This makes it feel like there is a rhythm towards clearing some of the stages because of how, where and when waves come at you. I know I’ll never get to the point where I can really maximize bonuses. Definitely going to keep playing this. I want to play more Pac-Man:Championship Edition now too.

Thursday, August 21, 2008
Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty
Shamefully I’ve never played a Ratchet & Clank game, nor have I played the most recent iteration, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. Therefore I felt a little dirty playing this episodic “sequel” of sorts–I’ll definitely have to myself the favor of grabbing the full title next week since what little I played so far was pretty fun.

Braid
I went back to Braid after a lengthy hiatus because I felt stuck and couldn’t figure out some of the puzzles. I’m still missing one puzzle piece in World 2 that I’m almost tempted to look up a solution for, but I won’t… yet. I solved the World 4-3 and then immediately got stuck and frustrated with trying to wrap my head around World 4-4 (“The Hunt”) so I gave up. Instead, I took a quick peek at World 5 and I was totally not ready for the shadow mechanics I encountered. Still managed to get a few puzzle pieces off of this one before I called it a night.

The highlight of the session was being completely stuck on World 4-3 thinking I had ruined my playthrough because I rewound too far when it turned out I had solved the puzzle by accident. One could say “eureka!” if one was old, which I am not, so I didn’t.

Q.E.D.

I mentioned this to Nayan, who unfortunately hasn’t had a chance to play Portal yet. Talking a bit more, lead to the following bit of exchange:

• me: max payne is another good one.
• Nayan: Is max an unreliable narrator? there’s a lot of doubt that you see in his dreams
• Nayan: like, in Max Payne 1, you kill yourself after you kill your own family…but i always thought that was a metaphor for essentially killing your family for being married to your job
• me: if only you take it far enough to question whether his dream sequences have affected his judgement in reality.

That was just the start of it. It was nice to read something last night that got me thinking a bit more about some of the games I’ve played with, ones that I especially hadn’t considered from a more critical point of view. Even better was that Nayan’s post generated discussion between me and a few other folks about storytelling in games.

Flickr user Matthew Johnston has put together a pretty sharp photoset showing key Liberty City landmarks and their real-world versions around New York City. I still haven’t spent much time at all in Grand Theft Auto IV yet but this is great stuff!

Matthew Johnston’s “Sightseeing in Liberty City” photoset

The stress test runs October 4 through October 7. Sign-up, get the download and registration key at FilePlanet.

See you on the high seas, matey!

While the area shown in the demo feels fairly closed and linear with seemingly only one direction to go next, the experience is absolutely immersive and there were a few jump in your seat moments. It was all just enough to get the heart pounding ready to push forward until it was all over after an incredibly suspenseful interlude. The end of the demo was followed by a short attract-style video that showed the different plasmid abilities and how to use them creatively in a game that just capped off how amazing BioShock had played throughout the demo.The demo and ending video perfectly served to increase my own anticipation for the release of the game next week. I wasn’t the only one as stories of the street date being broken by a retailer sent NeoGAF into a frenzy with folks calling stores and cooking up wonderful schemes to get other stores to break the street date so they could get their copy. Of course the story made the internet rounds, hitting up a number of blogs, before retailers got wise and they stopped sales. I didn’t manage to get a copy after calling all of one store. I can wait though.

Another cause for all the excitement was the art direction in BioShock. There have been many quality games released since the last holiday season and while I can’t say I’ve played them all, like The Darkness for example, there haven’t been many I feel that have the deliberate thought and creativity that Gears of War brought to the table. BioShock is indeed one of these rarified games, art deco objectivist roots and all. This is my impression mostly just from the demo. I think 2K Boston/Australia (née Irrational Games, if you haven’t been following current news) knows this quite well and despite the fact that they couldn’t put together an art book for the collectors edition of the game, they did a great service to their fans and put an electronic version of the art book up on their Bioshock site, The Cult of Rapture.

Can I also say that I’m totally in love with the design of that site? No idea why, but I am… it’s hot.

One particular individual, animpinabox, took the time to research and match up the dancing emotes for each individual World of Warcraft character and race to the originals it took inspiration from. They say they grabbed all the clips used for the comparison from YouTube, which is quite a feat in itself. The attention to detail by Blizzard is just… ridiculously astounding. And just plain ridiculous too.

Via Kotaku