I’m not sure if I should seriously describe what World of LordCraft is or just cue up the laugh track and let it roll on for a solid ten minutes. If you haven’t guessed from the lawsuit worthy name, the trailer above for the upcoming MMO castle building game (I think that is what it is) is pretty much the biggest rip off of World of Warcraft ever made. They really don’t seem to have changed anything. From the art style to the story (the Horde battling the Alliance) GSprite, the game’s developer, has simply taken WoW and made it cheaper.

The money making scam game is about to go into beta the official site says, and you can log in and play now if you wish. One can only assume that we will be staring at mostly naked women advertising this game in the months to come, and then reporting on a lawsuit from Activision soon after that.

I choose not to speculate on the future and instead make fun of the trailer, which contains one of the best typos since “All your base are belong to us.” Sure, “Never surrender you freedom” is a much easier mistake to make when typing, but the fact that they missed that they left off the “r” is just as priceless even if their native language isn’t English. Also, the narrator is clearly just some guy they picked up off the street and asked to speak in a really low voice.

Greatest videogame trailer ever or greatest videogame trailer ever?

[Thanks, Darren C.]

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Let’s say you’re out for a leisurely cruise along the coast of an island, just off the mainland. The sun is bright and warm, the sea breeze is crisp, and everything seems perfect in the world. Then, you notice a strange mirage over the shore and maneuver your boat over to investigate. As you approach it, the distortion grows worse and worse, until it seems that the very fabric of reality itself has been ripped asunder, and the particles of the universe are laid bare in a tangled, congealed mass that defies all comprehension. Your mind cannot even think of a way to name such a horror, let along comprehend its true form. Terrified, you turn and flee, leaving the void on the coast, and vow never to return.

But what if you didn’t run? What if you decided that such a creature could bring you limitless wealth and fame? So you capture the abomination, and keep it secluded in a container as you bring it back to the mainland. But as you carry the container around, you slowly begin to perceive that something is not right with the world. Your records and documents online become a garbled mess of bits and dissonant noise, people begin to behave strangely, and the world seems to shift and change into nonsensical forms around you. Slowly, your perceptions of reality break down from the constant presence of the creature you caught and you eventually go insane; your mind permanently damaged by witnessing the laws of the universe itself break down in front of you. 

After reading this, you might think that I had just typed out the synopsis to an obscure HP Lovecraft short story. However, this is actually one of the more common interpretations of how the various infamous glitches in the original Pokèmon titles would behave in-universe. I’m using the Pokèmon series as an example of this because it involves so many different glitches, many of which have permanent and unpredictable effects on your game. Merely encountering MissingNo. will scramble your Hall of Fame data for good. Others can generate encounters with glitched trainers or Pokèmon cobbled together from random data sets, distort and garble the background music, transform your other normal pokèmon in PC boxes into clones of itself, and even transport you the infamous Glitch City.

_{You can check out anytime you like, BUT YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE.}

This especially disturbed me as a child playing through the games. I recall spending one summer sitting in our secret fort with my brother and my next-door neighbors (who were the epitome of “cool” in the neighborhood because they had all the Pokèmon captured or hacked into their possession, and a party of level 100 Legendaries), trying to find MissingNo. It felt like we were performing a secret ritual of forbidden magic, trying to summon an ancient demon into the game even though we knew full well the consequences of encountering such an abomination. We were quite willing to destroy the little virtual world that we had built up in order to earn the bragging rights of seeing it, and offered up the bits of information in a Red version cartridge as a sacrifice. This Pokèmon was never meant to exist, and yet we called it forth into Kanto, and faced the consequences of contradicting reality and playing God.

A big part of Lovecraftian-style horror involves the fact that humans perceive the world in a certain way, with certain assumptions based on what we can empirically observe and judge. However, this brand of fear postulates there are immortal beings in existence that contradict these assumptions on such a fundamental level that they cause our perceived reality to break down, and drive humans crazy upon seeing how insignificant we are in the universe. Glitches in games can be seen like this, where something goes wrong with how our universe is supposed to function, and we can temporarily glimpse the unfathomable void beyond the programming.

_{IA IA MISSINGNO FTAGN. BENEATH CINNIBAR ISLAND HE LIES.}

Remember Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem? Some of the best scares from that title came from breaking the fourth wall. The controller would mysteriously disconnect as your defenseless in-game avatar was slaughtered by a group of enemies, your head would blow up when trying to cast a spell, and sometimes the Blue Screen of Death would appear (despite the fact that you were playing on a GameCube). These events all occurred when the character’s sanity was at its lowest, and simulated that character’s perceptions of reality ripping apart at the seams due to the influence of powers beyond all mortal ken.

Despite this example, many “horror” videogames still only utilize methods that can be replicated by movies or TV. Dead Space is a pants-wettingly terrifying game, but it doesn’t use any methods of cinematography or framing that are different from, say, Alien. And even then, the scary images, sounds, and threats to personal well-being only really affect the main character, not the player itself. Even if you’re caught up the atmospheric tension of an area, or are taken aback by an enemy jumping at the screen, you can still turn off the system and walk away, knowing that the monsters can’t reach you in the “real” world. It’s the same way we’ve grown accustomed to glitches in a game. They may be annoying at times, but the occasional encounter with faulty collision detection, graphical hiccups, or freezes are never really scary in other games because we know why they occur, and are secure in our knowledge that such breakdowns in programming can’t affect “reality”.

What I want to see is a game where that comfort zone is forcibly taken away, where the horror elements aren’t just one-shot jump scares that are quickly forgotten. I want to see a character react as the game world around them slowly becomes more and more degraded due to some unknown force. I want the player to be able to question whether they’re really playing a game, or actually having some influence on an unknown universe separated from our own.

And I want the player holding the controller to fear — even for just a second — that if they take one wrong step, talk to the wrong person or be in the wrong place at the right time that the same will happen to them.

Sweet dreams.

The team at Square Enix has a lot to celebrate today. Final Fantasy XIII has sold over one million units here in America in the first five days that it’s been out. Final Fantasy XIII has now become the fastest-selling installment in the franchise’s history.

Square didn’t give a breakdown of whether FF XIII sold better on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 so we’ll have to wait for the NPD data next month to get a clear picture on that  …. along with a ton of console fanboy rage. With the release of XIII, the Final Fantasy series has now reached 96 million units sold worldwide since the first game appeared on the original Nintendo.

I’ve been hearing a lot of mixed things about Final Fantasy XIII. Some love it and others are bored with it already. How’s your experience been with Square’s latest offering?

Great. We’re pretty certain Square Enix is going to make another one of these videos now. With sales of “more than one million units in North America over the first five days,” Square Enix has good reason for that smug look on its face. Taking into account European sales, Final Fantasy XIII has “recorded the largest first-week sales in franchise history.”

A number of factors undoubtedly contributed to the record-breaking success of the latest iteration of the JRPG series. Not only is it the first numbered Final Fantasy game on a current generation system, but it’s also the first game in the franchise to appear on two platforms — and two continents — simultaneously. Finally, it’s been nearly four years since the release of Final Fantasy XII on PS2. Fans were clearly hungry for a real Final Fantasy fix.

Luckily for Square Enix, there’s much, much more Final Fantasy in the works: Final Fantasy XIV is due this year and Final Fantasy Versus XIII should be ready by the time Square Enix is done counting all this money.

Final Fantasy XIII fastest selling game in franchise, Square Enix claims originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Check out the video above for a brief teaser of the chapter’s events. Actually, it doesn’t look that scary to us. Madison climbs in a window, walks up some stairs, and accidentally intrudes on a woman taking a bath. What’s that? The woman is dead? Yes, well, that is significantly more upsetting.

Heavy Rain ‘Taxidermist’ DLC hitting PSN for $4.99 on April 1 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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“The Taxidermist” is the first in what will presumably be a series of a few additional short stories in the universe of Heavy Rain. At first glance, downloadable content for a game such as Heavy Rain seems problematic. Since the focus of the game is its ostensibly self-contained story, telling tales that exist outside the game’s narrative — yet within the Heavy Rain fiction — could conflict with the characters and plot established by the game itself.

That said, I was willing to play through “The Taxidermist” because I enjoyed Heavy Rain enough that I wanted to find out more about its characters (in this case, you play as journalist Madison Paige), and because I just wanted more of Heavy Rain’s adventure-game-like environment interaction.

[Editor’s note: This review contains spoilers for “The Taxidermist,” so don’t read it if you want to go in completely blind. -Samit]

Heavy Rain Chronicles, Chapter 1: “The Taxidermist” (PlayStation Network)
Developer: Quantic Dream
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
To be released: April 1, 2010
MSRP: $4.99

In “The Taxidermist,” you explore a Madison Paige side story that takes place in November 2009, about two years prior to the events of Heavy Rain. The episode does a great job of building Madison’s character; that is, it helps to legitimize her as a journalist, since it establishes that by the time she tracks down Ethan Mars at a motel, she has been working to uncover the identity of the Origami Killer for more than two years. Following this particular lead entails questioning the latest suspect, a 40-year-old former taxidermist named Leland White.

Madison parks her motorcycle in front of White’s home/office, which is located in a serene suburban neighborhood — some kids are playing in the front yard next door, even in the daytime downpour. You find that White isn’t home, so of course — intrepid reporter that you are — you break into his house to pursue a front-page scoop. White’s abode is suitably creepy, and that’s before you even factor in the numerous stuffed animals hanging on the walls or from the ceilings, and sitting around the living room.

As you explore White’s house more deeply, you find unsettling clues here and there — things that hint at a more sinister side to the taxidermist. Since the entire chronicle consists of White’s home and its immediate surroundings, it feels as if Quantic Dream packed more interactivity per square inch, if you will, into this DLC — although it may just seem that way to me. While some of the objects you interact with and actions you perform may not actually do anything per se, most of the things you can do in “The Taxidermist” combine to provide a sense of foreboding that has a satisfying narrative payoff — once you head upstairs to the second floor, where most of the windows are obscured by newspapers.

Trying to go back downstairs after you discover White’s secret will trigger a cutscene in which he returns home, which is when Madison realizes that the creaky floorboards upstairs mean that she might never make it out of 411 Harbor Street alive (and when the real fun of “The Taxidermist” begins). Yes, it’s possible for Madison to die in “The Taxidermist,” which, of course, is kind of a big deal because it introduces a major hitch into the Heavy Rain canon: namely, how the hell does Madison exist in the main game if she’s been dead for two years?

It appears that for “The Taxidermist” as well as for Heavy Rain, Quantic Dream sacrificed a coherent plot in the name of an interesting one. Having said that, I’m almost willing to overlook the glaring Heavy Rain plot hole that Madison’s possible death creates, because nearly everything that can happen after White gets back is tremendously thrilling and immensely enjoyable. And your interactions (or lack thereof) with the objects in White’s house can affect the outcome, so it’s not as if the story only begins at that point.

But ignoring the potential contradiction would force me to regard “The Taxidermist” as a story that isn’t a part of the Heavy Rain timeline, when it’s so clear that Quantic Dream wants players to consider it as such. Another curious facet of “The Taxidermist” — though one that I welcome — is its ending. When you complete the episode, the game presents you with one of five different newspaper headlines. The next screen lists all five endings, and it prompts you to load your save from outside the house, inside the house, or when White returns, so you can try to see all of the endings. (It only gives you the headlines, so you still have to figure out how to achieve those outcomes.)

I say this is curious because it exemplifies a completely opposite ethos from the one that David Cage and Quantic Dream have repeatedly espoused for Heavy Rain: that you should only play it once through. In the context of this downloadable content, though, it makes sense — my first play-through of “The Taxidermist” ran a mere 30 minutes, and I was taking my time. I don’t have a problem with Sony charging five dollars for the chronicle, but that’s only because discovering the other four endings provides enough playtime — and is entertaining enough — to justify the cost.

“The Taxidermist” also retains some of the annoying quirks of Heavy Rain. Madison’s voice acting isn’t spectacular, and White happens to share his voice with Scott Shelby, which is jarring. In addition, a possible death for Madison plays out with White stabbing her multiple times as she fails to start her bike. After killing her — in broad daylight, mind you — he slings her body over his shoulder and heads back toward his house, only to pause and laugh maniacally before he takes her inside. And you’d think that a journalist in 2009 — or a functioning adult, really — would keep a cell phone on her person. Like more than a few points in Heavy Rain, these moments test your suspension of disbelief.

Narrative-wise, “The Taxidermist” has a few problems, and it can produce a big one. But it also represents the best of Heavy Rain: character motivations, visuals (most notably, some tension-inducing split-screen cinematography), and game mechanics coalesce to create a gripping sequence of events that quickens your pulse and leaves you panting. I felt much the same way about “The Taxidermist” as I did about Heavy Rain as a whole — the story doesn’t always make sense, but it’s worth playing anyway for the sheer excitement of it all. If the more mundane parts of Heavy Rain left you unenthused — and if they didn’t, that’s even better — you’ll enjoy this exhilarating condensed experience.

Score: 7.0 — Good (7s are solid games that definitely have an audience. Might lack replay value, could be too short or there are some hard-to-ignore faults, but the experience is fun.)

Impulse purchasing may be in the stars this weekend if you’re a PC gamer without Mass Effect 2 yet — seriously, what are you waiting for? This weekend, Impulse has the regular and “digital deluxe” edition of Commander Shepard’s suicide mission for $30 and $40, respectively. That’s $20 off the regular price.

Other deals include indie darling World of Goo and the experimental Mirror’s Edge for $10. The full list of discounted games is after the break.

Continue reading Mass Effect 2, Mirror’s Edge highlight weekend Impulse sale

Mass Effect 2, Mirror’s Edge highlight weekend Impulse sale originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There has never been a videogame like SpyParty.

Most videogames deal in the epic, the explosive, and the impersonal. SpyParty deals in subtlety, misdirection, and observation. Many multiplayer games ask the player to expend thousands of rounds of ammunition toward the destruction of the player’s enemies; SpyParty gives you only one shot, and you’d better damn well make it count.

On the surface level, SpyParty is a two-plaery game about a sniper and a spy. The spy’s job is to walk around a party, completing missions without breaking cover. The sniper’s job is to identify the spy, and kill him. It’s the simplest setup imaginable, but I was positively blown away by the game’s depth and nuance after spending an hour with it at GDC. 

Hit the jump to find out why it deserves to be on your radar.

(Don’t mind the ugliness of that screenshot; though the basic mechanics are there, SpyParty is still a good two years away from release. Hecker promises that a sizable amount of that dev time will be devoted to making the game look like not-ass.)

SpyParty isn’t just a game about shooting people and completing objectives. If you want to look at it in the kookiest way possible, it’s actually a game based around the Turing test.

The game takes place in a party, full of about a dozen AI guests. As the spy, your job is to not only complete a bunch of arbitrary objectives (bug the ambassador, meet with a double agent, move a book from one bookcase to another), but to do so while appearing to be an AI guest yourself. If you do anything a bit too human — if you start walking around in circles or choose a weird path to one of your objectives — you run the risk of getting identified by the sniper.

Thus, the experience of controlling a spy is very much like that of being an actor: you try to suss out exactly how an AI character would behave, while also trying to find the right moment to complete your objectives. You’ll find yourself doing totally mission-unrelated things like staring out of windows or talking to other guests solely to keep your cover intact. Every moment of the spy experience drips with tension: did he notice that little stutter in my walk animation as I turned around? Am I standing too close to this bookcase? Oh god, his laser sight is pointed right at my head — does that mean I’m about to die, or is he just testing to see if I flake out and walk away?

Conversely, the sniper experience is much more about perception and deduction; if playing the spy is like being an actor, then playing the sniper is like being a detective. As the spy can choose as many or as few missions as he wants, the sniper has to be careful with where he focuses his attention. You can spend the entire round focusing on the ambassador so you can watch for someone to bug him, but what if the spy didn’t choose the ambassador mission? What if you try to focus on the entire crowd at once, at the risk of missing the incredibly subtle physical tells that every spy makes when completing a mission? Do you focus on only one or two people, possibly letting the actual spy get away with whatever he wants just outside your field of view?

As the sniper, you have to read the movements and actions of the entire party, narrowing down the number of possible spies until finally firing your sole bullet. If you hit the spy, you win the round. If you waste your bullet, the spy gets away. The sniper experience is one of constant uncertainty, making it that much more satisfying when you win.

SpyParty is as cerebral and personal experience as I’ve ever had with a multiplayer game. The mechanics are so straightforward that, after only a few rounds of play, I was already beginning to metagame. As the sniper, I’d aim my gun at the outside wall of the party, so the spy wouldn’t be able to tell where I was looking and adjust their behavior accordingly. As the spy, I’d constantly try to use other members of the party as cover so that even if I blew my cover, the sniper would still run the risk of shooting the wrong person and losing the round. Between rounds, Hecker told me that one sniper he’d playtested with actually started listening for the clicking of his opponent’s joystick, at which point he’d focus on any of the partygoers who started moving. Noticing this, the spy waited for an AI partygoer to start walking, then flicked the right joystick — the one controlling the camera. Hearing the flick of a joystick and seeing a partygoer suddenly start moving, the sniper aimed, shot, and lost.

Even in the early build I played with just one map and only four possible spy objectives, no two rounds ever played out the same way. Far as I can tell, SpyParty isn’t a game about memorizing map layouts or nailing an optimum strategy. It’s about improvisation, and reaction, and reading your opponent, and behaving unpredictably. Despite being two years away from completion, the early version I saw still remains one of the most subtle, enjoyable, and surprisingly playful multiplayer games I’ve yet played.

You can follow its development here.

Earning the “Spartans Stand Tall” Platinum Trophy in God of War III will get you a link to this Web site. There’s a compass and lots of rain, but not much else is going on. VG247 wagers it’s a teaser for some God of War III DLC but I have a JOURNALISTIC hunch that this is something far more sinister.

Would you say the rain on the “Spartans Stand Tall” Web page is quite … HEAVY?! Could we be seeing some kind of Heavy Rain meets God of War III collaboration?! This could quite possibly be the ultimate crossover, my friends. The combined power of a Spartan and some dude that wears glasses that sends him to Mars or whatever the f*ck that sh*t is all about will finally eradicate the Xbox 360 and Wii from the world!

No, that’s not what this is about at all, you idiot. It’s just probably DLC.

Secret God of War website pops up – what’s it for? [VG247]

We’re usually pretty competent parsers of corporate quotes, but we may need some help on this one. Referencing the publisher practice of putting free DLC in new copies of games, GameStop boss Dan DeMatteo said on an investor call today that “we have learned that the second-hand user is a value-oriented consumer … we don’t believe that a $10 add-on piece of DLC is compelling to a used game buyer.” So, they care about getting the biggest bang for their buck, but they just don’t care about missing out on free things?

Here’s another one: “Publishers can participate in our used business by offering add-on content for the most popular used titles, creating a win-win situation for publishers, retailers and consumers,” he said, according to Gamasutra. Wouldn’t the win for publishers and developers be to make money every time someone bought the game they made?

It may be that the statements are unclear, but it’s also possible that we’re just so unfamiliar with GameStop trying to be a team player that our primitive minds can’t process it. Hard to say.

GameStop: Used game buyers uninterested in free DLC originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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