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Gabriel Knight and starvation wages at Pinkerton Road
Twenty-one years ago the world was introduced to the mysterious universe of Gabriel Knight from prolific games industry creative Jane Jensen. This month marks the celebration of that anniversary, with the release of the Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers remake – enhanced with new visuals, audio and, in some cases, tweaked to preserve the original game's intended emotional resonance. One sequence, in particular, stands out to Jensen, she tells me: the police station. In the original 1993 release, the scene plays out light and even campy: "When Gabriel goes to the police station and breaks into Mosely's office [...] in the game there was a puzzle sequence that had to do with cops and doughnuts and distracting them. It was all very silly," Jane Jensen admits. The sequence, she says, has been changed in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers – 20th Anniversary Edition (one year late, but close enough), to better parallel Jensen's original novelization. "I wrote a book about Gabriel Knight, I mean I wrote it as a novel after I had written the game, and so there were a few things that I had put in the novel that were new that we ended up rolling back into the remake," Jensen adds. In the novel, the police station sequence was written to be "much scarier," and given the opportunity to better convey the story's suspenseful hooks with the remake, the sequence was changed to better mirror the novel. It was the first of a few tweaks made in Gabriel Knight's return.
Editor's Note: We Are Always Fighting
We are always fighting. The first video game I ever played, Space Invaders, rendered fighting in a sickly green hue, with squid-like aliens descending down the bulbous surface of a beige monitor. As much as I admired their patient and orderly see-saw attack pattern on our planet, it made it easy to blow them away from below. You see, it's not about the violence, but timing and pattern recognition. My other starting game was some kind of Mad Libs program, which accepted a list of nouns and verbs and then spat out a boring or comical story, depending on how creative your input was. The key to playing this game well, I determined, was baking a well-timed "pie" into the plot. The archer reaches into his quiver and removes ... a pie! Help, the sheriff's been shot in the pie! The crowd sucked the air out of the room as the boxer fell to a critical blow from his opponent ... the PIE. You see, a video game lets players control (and probably ruin) the story.
For a good time, call Devolver
Founded in 2009 in Austin, Texas, Devolver Digital has gained a reputation for introducing the mainstream audience to games with undeniable personality that might have otherwise been overlooked. "When you read Twitter and you follow a bunch of game developers, it's easy to forget that most people outside of this bubble don't really know of many of the games that you hear about all the time. The concept of 'indie' games is still mostly unknown," Mark Foster of Titan Souls developer Acid Nerve told Joystiq. "Devolver kind of breaks out of the bubble and draws more attention to it – makes more people aware that these smaller budget games exist and that some of them are awesome."
One-button Bayonetta: Disabled gamers fight for inclusion
Last year, former games journalist Adam Sessler confessed that for the first time his age kept him from being able to play a game that he needed to complete for his job. It's a sobering reminder that we all have limits. Those often come in different forms, but nobody can do everything. Fundamentally, games are about challenge and require some form of conflict to be compelling. That challenge can come in a huge variety of forms, from puzzles to fighting game combos, but the player is always the core component to completing these assignments. Many challenges, however, can prove impossible for some players. In the past few years, video games have grown, trying to adapt themselves to suit larger and broader audiences. Despite this growth, a segment of would-be gamers continue to be effectively locked out by constraints like color blindness or physical ability. Some dedicated groups have been looking to change that, however; and the work they are doing might just open the floodgates for everyone else.
Resident Evil: Revelations 2 speaks in code, Veronica
After firing up the brief demo of Resident Evil: Revelations 2 Capcom brought to New York Comic Con, I turned around and asked producer Michiteru Okabe point blank: "How the hell does Claire Redfield seem to always find herself in this exact situation?" He just laughed. Nearly a decade and a half after waking up in the cell of an island Umbrella fortress in Resident Evil: Code Veronica, here's Claire again, waking up terribly confused about where the hell she is. Spoiler: She's on an island and bad things are happening. Monster-y bad things. True to form, Claire looks a few years older but she's still rocking a red leather jacket and is quick with a pistol. In fairness she has a weird wrist band on rather than a collar that might explode, so it's not exactly the same. It's close enough, though, that fans still perturbed by the series' mutation into co-op action schlock in the mainline Resident Evil series will find even more to love here than in the survival horror-tinged Resident Evil: Revelations.
Happy 18th birthday, N64!
Nintendo 64! Gaming machine that birthed the modern Nintendo, maker of consoles with libraries both peculiar and specific! Like the Wii U, Wii, and Gamecube that followed, the Nintendo 64 played host to a handful of revolutionary games, some real garbage, and some stuff that was frankly just bizarre. This week, the Nintendo 64 turns 18 years old, an auspicious year. That's when people start to branch out, to experiment beyond the social mores of youth and high school. Learning new things, meeting unusual people, and creating your adult self from the ground up. You know, when you take a comp lit class, get an industrial piercing, and start wearing garish, insane clothing. To salute the N64's passage into this period, we celebrate games that reflect that weird, weird, weird stage of life. Occasionally brilliant, sometimes embarrassing, these are 18 games for the 18-year-old N64. >>Nintendo 64's Weirdest Bunch<< [Images: Nintendo]
Alien: Isolation review: Escape claws
Alien: Isolation is a trauma machine masquerading as a video game. Only in the realm of horror could this be seen as a compliment, and only with horror games in particular is this worthy of nervous applause. Say this about any other kind of game and you'd mistake praise for insults: it's unpleasant, stressful and rarely merciful. Yay! The game's success hinges on its meticulous interpretation of 1979's Alien, which it effectively recreates in both look and premise. Instead of the intimate confines of a lousy spaceship, however, Alien: Isolation strands you on Sevastopol, a neglected station deep in its decommission throes. You arrive there as Amanda Ripley, pursuing information about your mother and her last known ship, the Nostromo. Aside from being a biological connection to the original Alien film, Amanda is also heir to the universe's most horrible stalker. Sevastopol's sad disrepair and in-fighting can be traced back to the Xenomorph, a destabilizing creature that intimidates to this day with its skeletal figure, eyeless gaze and unmistakable hiss. The alien is a black cloud hanging over the entire game, with its arrival signaling the end of your hunky-dory skipping-down-the-corridor ways. Actually, just never do that. Ever.
Scenes of Calm and Chaos: Artists on fighting game backgrounds without the fights
The hand-drawn fighting game background is a fading art, kept alive by the crew at SNK Playmore, keeping the lights on in the King of the Fighters series and the tireless hardcore savants at Arc System Works. Brawlers like Super Smash Bros. 3DS, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle, and Ultra Street Fighter IV maintain fighting games' presence in the mainstream gaming world, but only outliers like Persona 4 Arena Ultimax keep the old ways alive. Lush two-dimensional backgrounds like these inform fights in subtle ways. They're not interactive, never allowing for ring-outs or environmental effects, and their animations are slight, repetitive so as to not draw attention away from the action happening in the foreground. When Rose wraps Ken Masters in her scarf and shocks him, there's no surrendering your gaze to calm Grecian architecture around them. Free of those fights, though, is there anything left? What do these backgrounds have to say on their own as singular works of art? Joystiq asked three professional artists to examine this sprawling gallery of animated fighting game background culled from famous SNK and Capcom fighters like Street Fighter II and King of the Fighters '94. Here's what they had to say.
The Truth Inside Destiny's Loot Cave
The loot cave is dead, but its spirit will haunt other venues and hover over Destiny for a long time. Bungie will keep persecuting it, having barred item trading and proclaiming, "You should be able to tell a badass story for every sweet jewel in your arsenal." The Man Who Shot Into The Cave A Whole Bunch doesn't quite have that "legendary" ring to it. It's easy to side with the loot cave, though, given Destiny's parsimonious grip on worthwhile weapons and armor in the endgame. The cave, an exploitation space constantly filled with enemies if you stand outside in just the right spot, is an oasis of rewards in a desert of so-so shotguns, and the ideal way to exact revenge against the game's overlords. Really, if you're looking for the most corrupt figure in games right now, it's Destiny's super shady Cryptarch – an embezzling creep who takes futuristic blueprints extracted from exotic alien corpses, disappears into his shop and brings back the equivalent of a rusty shovel. And so you can either hit more things with your shovel, hoping a superior engram will fall out, or go shoot into the latest loot cave for a more assured fortune. It's poetic vengeance wrapped in weathered rock.
Stories we tell in quiet houses and alien invasions
Video game experiences aren't wholly relegated to what designers have deliberately laid out for you; through gameplay, a unique narrative emerges. We all have our own stories: a car chase in Grand Theft Auto V, a battle within a hidden cave in Skyrim, an ore-rich chasm in Minecraft. These discoveries highlight the promise that, if we just keep looking and keep testing a game's boundaries, we might find something that's uniquely ours. Thanks to franchises like BioShock, Fallout and Grand Theft Auto, the idea of player-driven narrative is being explored in different ways. From collectibles to character customization and sprawling open-worlds, video games today are littered with tools people can use to manufacture stories that belong only to them. But that doesn't mean the role of the developer has been in any way diminished. On the contrary, designers now have more work to do than ever, subtly and precisely tailoring their games so that players can get a full experience without feeling like they're being led by the nose.
Opening the valve: Steam Curators rule the front page
Ask a hundred independent developers what impacts their sales most and you'll likely get a hundred different answers, but among the more popular ones will be the topic of discoverability, the ways in which prospective buyers are able to find lesser-known video games. Platforms like the App Store and Steam see a lot of foot-traffic in their featured sections, and even brief visibility for independent developers can make for a massive difference in their bottom line. As more games have made their way to Steam via regular release, Greenlight and Early Access, it's become vastly more difficult for a new game to be discovered. Enter Steam Curators, Valve's means of placing the weight of game recommendations on those outside its walls. The service launched this week and allows any person or brand (such as your friends here at Joystiq) to compile lists of games their followers should play, shifting the scope of the store's front page to include recommended games and a section for popular curators. Given Steam's incredible popularity and its status as a "must-have" piece of PC gaming software, Steam Curators is a major step for the service, and developers hope that it might heavily influence independent game sales.
Making games when you're dead broke: The story of Ragtag Studios
After a dozen or more years apiece kicking around the AAA side of the games industry, the three men behind Ragtag Studio embraced independence. They've spent the last two-plus years working on Ray's the Dead, a cartoonish zombie adventure that is about to conclude an already-funded Kickstarter campaign (which ends Sunday), but going indie brings new challenges and necessary sacrifices. For all three, that's meant a long span without salaries. But for co-founders Chris Cobb and Matt Carter, it's also meant moving halfway across the country from Chicago to Dallas and combining their families within a single rented home, which now houses four adults, the Carters' infant daughter, the Cobbs' corgi, and the Ragtag office. It's a premise fit for a reality show-but in fact, it's simply their reality for the next year or so, at least. Call it a Hail Mary of a life change, done in an effort to finish the game following a taxing year-plus that saw a first Kickstarter attempt flatline, family members arrive and depart, and development slow to a crawl. But can this grand gamble really bring Ray's the Dead to life?
Heavenly Sword: How Not to Kill Your Heroine (in the movie)
Heavenly Sword begins with its heroine in agony, convulsing on the battleground, her tangled red hair swirled in the dirt. Nariko still clings to the cursed sword that had gotten her so far. As searing scripture snakes up her arms, branding her the doomed property of this mystical blade, she wonders: Why now? Why, on the verge of victory, does the sword claim my life? That glimpse of Nariko, unable to dodge the sword's fatal toll, forever lingers over the action game that follows. Instead of a plotted ascent to power, with sharp, assured victory in hand, we play through a dreaded descent. With every new chapter, Nariko comes closer and closer to the end of her strength.
How PlayStation Plus went from maybe to must-have
When PlayStation Plus was announced in 2010, it was difficult to understand why PlayStation 3 owners would feel motivated to pay for a premium tier to the service they had been enjoying for free. Four years later, the Instant Game Collection has provided plenty of incentive to pony up the annual PlayStation Plus fee, thanks largely to how the team behind the Collection decides what games are made available. "There is a lot that goes into finding the right mix of titles for each month's Instant Game Collection, but the goal is to deliver a solid lineup that has something for all different types of gamers," John Koller, vice president of platforms marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment of America told Joystiq. Koller says a major goal in determining the PlayStation Plus lineup is to retain current subscribers and grow new subscriptions through making the service a "no brainer" for owners of PlayStation platforms. "We look at a variety of different things to deliver a lineup that will provide amazing shared experiences, including the most popular genres for our members and fan requests."
Happy 15th birthday, Sega Dreamcast
Fifteen years ago today, Sega launched its final video game console. Arriving in stores on September 9, 1999, the Dreamcast stole our hearts with a plethora of amazing games. There are plenty of essential classics from the Dreamcast era – Power Stone, SoulCalibur and Phantasy Star Online, to name a few – but what are some of the lesser-known favorites? To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the machine that refused to stop thinking, the Joystiq staff presents a short list of obscure treasures. The system may be gone, but our love is eternal. What are some of your favorite, lesser-known Dreamcast titles? Tell us your picks and why and we'll add it to our gallery as a community choice! >>Obscure Dreamcast Gems<<
The Behemoth finally has enough clout to get away with Game 4
The Behemoth, better known as the house that made Castle Crashers, is continuing a pattern in which it approaches new genres with each project. Its newest venture, Game 4, is a turn-based strategy game for PC and Xbox One that retains the developer's quirky humor and trademark charms while stripping away some of the expected tropes found in the genre. In it, players collect a team of interchangeable, oddball heroes wielding the strangest weapons and helmets, then select their movement paths on the battlefield and observe as attacks play out. It's an intriguing direction for a studio that made its biggest mark with a beat-em-up.
Hatoful Boyfriend review: The beak shall inherit the earth
Most pigeons reach sexual maturity in their first year of life. This is something I know now, and it's one of the many revelations I had while playing Hatoful Boyfriend, the pigeon dating simulator. I also discovered what a rock dove is, I settled on the type of plumage I'm most attracted to (in a *mostly* hypothetical sense), and I found out how long it takes me to become numb to the idea of dating a bird. Spoiler: It's about 20 minutes. And then there's the story behind the beaks – touches of structural oddity and hints at a wider, broken society – that keep Hatoful Boyfriend interesting. Well. More interesting.
Globe-trotting with Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions
It wouldn't be fair to Lucid Games to say that Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions is "just more Geometry Wars," and then leave one's impressions at that. Announced just a few weeks ago, the game literally takes the series where it has never been, primarily thanks to new three-dimensional visuals (with a pun-tastic title to match). In all honesty though, calling it "more Geometry Wars" serves as a reassurance to the twin-stick series' devotees that its fast-paced action hasn't gone anywhere. My time with Geometry Wars 3 at PAX Prime in Seattle demonstrated that the game fits perfectly with its 2D brethren. Piloting the iconic, angular cruiser through galactic grids felt as tight as ever, while slipping past threats and rapidly firing laser-like bullets at geometric baddies is as chaotic as ever. It took a few attempts to get acquainted with the game's latest twist, though the enemy and bullet behavior is just that, a "twisted" version of the previous games. The flat grid-like playing field fans are used to is now a sphere, tube, pill, peanut or one of numerous other shapes, depending on which of the single-player mode's 50 levels you jump into. Every element in play is stuck to the surface like Nintendo's iconic plumber in Super Mario Galaxy, but ultimately Geometry Wars 3 draws some appropriate comparisons to Super Stardust HD. Missiles rocketed past my ship and around the bend of some levels, but aiming for the more distant neon creatures never felt like a real shot in the dark, if I'm allowed to make my own puns here.
Super Meat Boy Forever trims fat, cooks up 'huge' challenge
Super Meat Boy Forever is as much a game as it is a meat grinder. It's "impossible," but only in the sense that it's similar to The Impossible Game, Grip Games' 2011 auto-running platformer that placed an emphasis on blazing hard difficulty. Super Meat Boy Forever dumps a similar formula into Team Meat's universe, and it's optimized for touch-based controls. "The goal is, this is going to be a Meat Boy that you play everywhere," Team Meat's Tommy Refenes told Joystiq at PAX Prime. We took a moment to play both the tablet and PC versions of the game at the event, which both relied on two physical (or touch-based) buttons. While Meat Boy never stopped sprinting through the boldly-outlined demo level, he happily jumped, slid and fell to the Earth at a rapid pace on command. Leaping across broad gaps and jumping from wall to wall, our Meat Boy dodged spinning saw blades just like he did in the original, making the experience feel immediately at home with pared-down controls, particularly on a mobile device.
Remasters of the universe: Obscure titles we want to revisit
It was no great shock when Sony released a PlayStation 4 version of its super-popular third-person title The Last of Us. Deep Silver bathing its new Metro franchise in the spotlight for next-gen consoles was no great surprise either. A new generation seems to come with it a series of new versions of some of our favorite games. But what about the less obvious choices? Capcom bringing the original Resident Evil back makes sense, but what about Nintendo's cult-hit Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem? The Joystiq staff has reached back into the last decade-plus for its obscure favorites to present a list of some games we would like to see make a return in remastered form. Of course this is only a small slice of our favorite obscure games we'd want to revisit. Tell us your selections and why and they may be added to our gallery. >>Obscure Games We Want to Revisit<<
