This game is probably my favourite Battledrome game so far. Visit [adult swim]’s game site here and play the running-and-jumping star smashing game: Robot Unicorn Attack. It relies on fast reactions so multiple play throughs are a must.
The player is given three wishes to try and last as long as possible (it makes more sense when you’ve played the game). After the third wish the total score is displayed, this is what we will be using to compare performance. Just post your score in the comments of this post and the most impressive runs will be discussed on the next NGCast (which may be a while, due to Wardrox being on a boat!)
PS. The music playing in the background of this game is truly epic.
Talking to Negative Gamer at GDC, Sixense, the makers of the TrueMotion controller, have said that whilst they would like to see their controllers become “completely ubiquitous” they are going to remain PC exclusive for the time being.
In the interview (which you can read in full here), Sixense said that even though their controllers are USB they’re sticking with the PC because they “don’t know what the people at Sony and Microsoft are going to allow on there”. They also added that Razer, famed for their PC mice, will be making the consumer versions of the controller and are much more comfortable working with PCs.
The TrueMotion controllers aim to offer 1:1 motion control for the PC and have already got their development kits working with Source based games (like Left 4 Dead), as well as League of Legends.
OnLive, the streaming gaming service has scheduled for its US launch for June 17th. The service, which lets users stream games from a server, requiring little work from the local PC/Mac, will launch on at the start of summer in the US (apart from Alaska and Hawaii) for the monthly cost of $14.95.
This cost gives you access to the service but not any of its games which are, according to its website, “to be purchased or rented separately”. No word on game pricing has come out. This lack of detail has led to questions about what happens to purchased titles if you leave the service, as well as concerns over what you’re paying $15 a month for.
Who knows if this will work or not, but at $15 a month it’d better be a damn good system to warrant the cost. If you have to shell out $60 a game on top of that, it might not look like such a great deal. The system launches around E3 so expect a truckload of hype around then. For now, just expect a stupid business model to destroy this potentially awesome idea.
[Editor's note: Dan's been getting his hands on all the cool toys at GDC this week. Earlier today he chatted to Josh Bays, Product Evangelist for Sixense and Scott Szyjewicz who is the Manager of their support group to talk about their PC TrueMotion controller]
Negative Gamer: Ok, so give me a rundown on this.
Josh Bays: So this is the Sixense TrueMotion dev kit. This is a wireless, magnetic tracking system motion controller. It is a magnetic base, plugged into the computer via USB, power and data. Generates a magnetic field six feet out, a twelve foot sphere, or “play area”. Anywhere within that area is where you’re going to get high fidelity, precise, motion controls.
So you can see on screen my movements of my hands on the controller are going to be reflected very precisely in the game. So my hand is now holding the crow-bar, instead of the Sixense controller. If I tilt it a little bit, or move it a little bit it’ll be reflected, it’s 1mm of position position precision and one degree of orientation.
Sorry for the buggy editing, that’s the joys of using Pinnacle products. Sadly there’s nothing I can do. I think I’ve found the limit of this software. Future video’s will probably not be as exciting.
Anyway, let me know what you think about the whole DRM situation.
With the success of Braid a few years back I was fully expecting a deluge of like-minded games to come out. Something as critically successful as that is bound to have copies seep out of the woodwork. But I never saw anything that attempted to capture the same method of storytelling or original take on the platforming genre. Then I played Herman. Thanks to Dirge Game Studios for sending us a review code.
Herman isn’t exactly a copy of Braid, but more of an homage. As a disgruntled office worker on his last day at the office, you must get out of the building alive. The problem is the entire building has been alerted to your shenanigans and your fellow employees will do everything in their power to stop you. This means travelling through 25 levels fighting off coworkers, all the while dreaming of the life you once had with your cat Chester and girlfriend Darla. It gets even weirder than that.
The parliament of the German state Baden-Württemberg has released a set of recommendations on how to prevent killing sprees in the future. Most of the 100 points are reasonable, like the plan to employ more teachers and psychologists. Others are a bit much, like the recommendation to install a signal similar to the fire alarm that tells the students to clear the school or stay in the classroom.
And of course this wouldn’t be Germany if there weren’t any jabs at videogames in there. The left wing opposition called for a ban of private ownership of high calibre firearms and video games that have been classified as dangerous. (I wonder why they didn’t say Killergames?) So once again, guns and videogames get put on the same level.
We’re kicking off our GDC 2010 coverage with what likely is the most unusual lecture this year – a session entitled “Abusing Your Players Just For Fun” by John “Cactus” Soderstrom. This was one of my most anticipated panels this year as I really wanted to sit down and watch some hilarious examples of how to troll players in the future. As it turns out, it looks like the entire session should have been called “How to Abuse Negative Gamer Editors Just For Fun By Trolling Them Into Thinking This Panel Will Be Relevant Somehow To Games”.
Instead of talking about games like Demon Souls, where the extreme difficulty is intended to frustrate you, the panel started off with a 20 minute discussion of Cactus’ favorite movie producers and how they make trippy movies where you don’t understand the point.
As if Venezuela’s economic woes, high murder rate, and possible terrorist ties weren’t big enough problems for its citizens, now Venezuelan gamers have to worry about jail time for pursuing their favorite hobby.
A law, passed last November, banning “the manufacture, import, distribution, purchase, sale, rental, and use of violent toys and video games” has gone into effect.
Lat/Am Daily has the following translations of what exactly the law deals with.
This week’s episode of the NGCast has me injuring myself in the name of vanity and Wardrox making friends all over the videogame blog world via social networking websites. I have also finally gotten round to using a USB microphone so your ears will not be punished as harshly this time round. Some other topics include:
Ubisoft, Activision/Infinity Ward, Sony, what ARE you like?
Not content with making all Ubisoft games that come with their new DLC unplayable for one Sunday afternoon, some ne’er-do-wells have “attacked” Ubisoft’s servers again, causing a second day of trouble. Announcing the news via their twitter, the company admitted their “servers are under attack again. Some gamers are experiencing trouble signing in”.
With the admittance that this isn’t, as previously claimed, simply “exceptional demand” questions are now being asked as to the identity and motivation of the assumed hackers. All signs indicate there is some form of DDoS attack taking place, which could spell almost certain doom for the DRM route Ubisoft have chosen. The current system requires your game to contact their DRM servers, however if their DRM servers are offline or can’t be reached (if they are under DDoS attack, for example) it’s bad-news-bears all round.
The Annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco is gearing up for the Moscone Convention Centre for March 9-13 and Negative Gamer will be nowhere in sight (apart from Dan Rosenthal). However, we will be watching from afar and filtering the news coming from larger, more established sites who have sexy and trendy staff in attendance. Not that we don’t have sexy and trendy staff here at Negative Gamer. Those of you who have seen Sam Jordan sporting an ascot with a t-shirt and muddy jeans know exactly what I’m talking about.
Though the conference is specifically for game developers there are usually a few announcements and interesting tidbits that come out of GDC. Highlights of this year’s conference will likely include John Carmac’s Lifetime Achievement Award, a presentation by acclaimed game writer Susan O’Connor who has worked on Bioshock and Gears of War among others, and of course Sid Meier’s much anticipated presentation “The Psychology of Game Design (Everything You Know is Wrong)”.
Check back on the site throughout the week for stories and discussion of the week’s developments. Also, don’t forget about the forums. The first livestream looks to be G4tv’s coverage of Sony’s GDC Press Conference at 7pm Est on March 10th.
TeamXbox have withdrawn their recent Final Fantasy XIII review after overwhelming reader response at their controversial 5/10. Despite stating clearly in the original review, (available cached for limited time here: page 1 and 2 [thanks Shane of Sarcastic Gamer]) that the reviewer was rating his experience up to a game breaking debug glitch on the third disc of their press copy, the score and subsequent public furore led the site to censor their own output.
In a recent note, Andy Eddy, editor in chief, attempted to “clear up” the reason for the article’s removal and editorial “step back”, citing “[sensitivity] to the potential for disappointment by readers who may have had high hopes for a title, but have those hopes dashed by a critical review”. Although the about turn was no doubt painful for the journalistic integrity of both the website and Andrew Fitch’s original critique, Eddy stands firm in asserting that:
For the record, we were confident that the review we put up earlier critiqued the elements of the game fairly and adequately, but the result of this process will be a review that’s complete beyond the shadow of a doubt and a full assessment of Final Fantasy XIII for Xbox 360.
Oh dear, David Cage. Back so soon? I suppose that I suspected this might happen, in a way. My previous Ranticlimax might be thought of as some kind of scouting operation, perhaps, in preparation for what would be the final assault, today. However, Heavy Rain happily manages to avoid swerving into insanity in the same way that Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy did. In fact, aside from some dubious storytelling choices that could have an article all to themselves, the game largely stays on good terms with reality.
So, what’s the problem this time? After getting to the final scene of Heavy Rain I got the impression that the situation wasn’t nearly as tense as the game wanted me to believe it was but I couldn’t put my finger on why. Thinking about it some more has led me to the conclusion that there is a fundamental difficulty with the game’s approach to interactive narrative.
[Update] Ubisoft, by way of a tweet, are claiming the server disruption was caused by attacks on their servers. They also say that 95% of gamers were unaffected.
If only we could have predicted that when a service requires 100% uptime of both the company’s servers and your internet connection the results would not be good. If only we could have told Ubisoft “no, this won’t work, you’re just putting your insatiable greed before any notion of customer care.” If only I could take this smug yet disappointed look off my face.
The Assassin’s Creed 2 forums are slowly filling up with angry Europeans unable to play their single player game. The cause? Ubisoft’s have-to-be-online-to-play DRM servers are having a bad Sunday. Within a week of the game coming out in Europe and with only two days until its North America release, the server issues could hardly have come at a worse time. Yet somehow, this all seems so predictable.
Still, it’s assumed that behind the scenes there are servers being kicked and swear-words being said, hopefully resulting in the servers getting back up to full capacity soon (quite a few people are reporting they’ve been able to connect). At the time this post was written the word from Ubisoft was that they’re “working on the problem”.
It is a sad fact of life that games devoted to monster trucks are mostly terrible. But what if they weren’t? Here are my top 5 all time top monster truck based games that sadly don’t exist (yet).
Talking to Negative Gamer at GDC, Sixense, the makers of the TrueMotion controller, have said that whilst they would like to see their controllers become “completely ubiquitous” they are going to remain PC exclusive for the time being.
OnLive, the streaming gaming service 
The parliament of the German state Baden-Württemberg has released a set of recommendations on how to prevent killing sprees in the future. Most of the 100 points are reasonable, like the plan to employ more teachers and psychologists. Others are a bit much, like the recommendation to install a signal similar to the fire alarm that tells the students to clear the school or stay in the classroom.
As if Venezuela’s 
Not content with making all Ubisoft games that come with their new DLC unplayable for one Sunday afternoon, some ne’er-do-wells have “attacked” Ubisoft’s servers 
The Annual 
TeamXbox have withdrawn their recent Final Fantasy XIII review after overwhelming reader response at their controversial 5/10. Despite stating clearly in the original review, (available cached for limited time here: page 
[Update #2] 
