Sam & Max, season three, “The Devil’s Playhouse.” First episode, “The Penal Zone,” April 15th.

In the new trailer, the subliminal glimpses from before have now been rendered visible and brought to the fore: Not only is the scene of Rembrandt van Rijn’s “Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp” replicated fully in the dream/nightmare sequence, the painting can also be seen hanging on the wall at the very left in the scene afterwards:

Similarly, the flight and fall of Icarus, a story from Greek mythology that has fascinated painters and writers throughout the ages, is now fully incorporated where the original teaser contained a shot of “The Lament for Icarus” by Herbert James Draper:

De humani corporis fabrica liborum epitome

There are other indiscernible paintings visible in the trailer, too, as well as what appears to be floor plans, designs, scribblings and other notes.

On the one hand, by suddenly visualizing all these images, the production has suddenly moved on from the esoteric to the (naively?) concrete. Vesalius’ “De humani corporis fabrica libri septem” conveniently on the desk… c’mon. Do you have a copy? What about in the year 2027?

On the other hand, all this is rather fitting, as the game is supposed to deal with the raw, tangible origins of augmentation in the Deus Ex universe, only some seventeen years from now. Instead of having elegant augmentation available like in the first and second game, the game presents to us a humanity that is only beginning to grasp the inner workings of the human body well enough to start augmenting it with functional, though crude, mechanical prosthetics.

2027 Fashions

The underlying thematics, then, point fingers at the potential Icarian qualities of meddling with the human make-up. In this way, my own interest in the game principally lies in the social and the sociological; early concept art illustrated highly well-motivated and -designed clothing and architectural choices that seemed to make perfect sense (see concept art on the right).

The game also promises to discuss the psychological and social effects of augmentation, including discrimination, in the form of augmentism: The earlier trailer contained many hints of this, including banners and signs toting “Augmented people enter from the back” and “We do not welcome augmented people here.”

The official site for the game can be found here.

When I linked these to a friend, he instantaneously called the new art “’special.’” Yeah… yeah: Even the poor little monkey responsible for numbering the sequel got a visual keelh… uh, overhaul.

If nothing else, contrasting the original with this all-new interpretation goes a long way in illustrating the amazing talents of the man behind the original cover, Steve Purcell. Steve, you’re awesome.

Looking back 20 years ago to 1990, a video game company by the name of SNK teamed up with ALPHA DENSHI (ADK) to develop a video game console. That console was made for arcades, yet at the same time was completely compatible for home use. It was called the “NEOGEO,” meaning “new land,” and owns a significant chapter in the annals of 1990s video game history.

The museum comes hot on the heels of a Japanese announcement that the company has also curiously restarted their repair service for the console. The service was previously shut down three years ago in 2007.

While the website remains relatively barren as-is, I fully expect the website to see more updates later, at the very least to the advertisement gallery. That being said, what I would have enjoyed the most is a crash course –like history into the extremely convoluted spelling policies of the console! Think about it: Neo Geo, or Neo-Geo? Or Neo•Geo? NeoGeo? All-uppercase NEOGEO!?

Taking on some geographical and narrative cues from the unreleased Van Buren project, the game seems tailor-made for the fans of the original RPGs, these rather eccentric shots (do check out those psychedelic super mutant shades on the left) also suggest that the game looks to be playing the stooge to Fallout 3’s straighter man.

The comedy act parallel doesn’t end there: Chris Avellone, lead designer of New Vegas, is also responsible for the New Reno area of Fallout 2, a sprawling, teeming mob haven that players could complete at their own pace – and become prizefighting champions and porn stars while doing so. At the time of release, however, the area drew some criticism from fans of the original, mostly for being overly colourful and idiosyncratic. An Edge interview with Avellone acknowledges this fact:

…Avellone’s contributions to Fallout 2 – most notably the entire, Mafia-controlled city of New Reno, with its bountiful side-quests and other distractions – were warmly welcomed, even if some Fallout zealots considered them tonally out-of-step.

In the recently-published GOG.com Fallout 1 and 2 editorials, Chris Taylor cited a lack of consistency in Fallout 2, while Tim Cain found both its humour and pacing to be “off.” Avellone himself wrote off these aforementioned issues due to a lack of resources, looming layoffs as well as the ridiculously modest development timeframe of 10 months.

Overall, criticism of Fallout 2 usually relates to its hodgepodge-like pop culture eclecticism, something that Avellone himself agrees with:

Overall, I think Fallout 2 is better scope-wise but poorer aesthetically. I don’t think there was a strong genre policeman overseeing Fallout 2, and it suffered for it.”

Even the game’s official press release promises that New Vegas “…takes all the action, humor, and post-apocalyptic grime and grit of this legendary series, and raises the stakes.” If New Reno is anything to go by, we already know to expect Avellone to stop at nothing in offering avenues of choice, alternative and possibility; according to Avellone’s Fallout Bible, he was the only person to pursue changed after-game dialogue in Fallout 2: “I think Matt and Ferg were thinking of cutting the Reno ‘after game’ stuff out since it was inconsistent, but I begged and pleaded so we were left with the inconsistency.”

In this sense, the dedicated craftsmanship illustrated by New Reno was by far the best aspect of Fallout 2 to many a player. Perhaps history will repeat itself in terms of the writing and design of the game, too? Be that as it may, here are the all-new screenshots currently circulating online:

This particular open source, GPL-licensed shooter was first released in 2005 and has since seen a vast amount of updates and improvements, including the addition of particle effects, bump mapping, modern shaders and a smoother netcode. The game also comes bundled with NetRadiant, the team’s own fork of GtkRadiant 1.5. Overall, Nexuiz has been downloaded by more than “4 million unique users”.

Now, here’s the news: Alientrap Entertainment have allowed another company, IllFonic, to adapt and revise the game for launching as a downloadable FPS, on the consoles:

IllFonic announced today its plans to launch the futuristic arena first-person shooter Nexuiz across downloadable console platforms in 2010. … IllFonic’s remake of Nexuiz for console gamers features a new Victorian influenced art style that is simultaneously futuristic and sophisticated.

IllFonic have also negotiated a license with LordHavoc, the developer of the DarkPlaces engine. According to IllFonic’s Kedhrin Gonzalez, shared PC/console multiplayer is not in the cards, nor are mouse or keyboard support. Alientrap Entertainment’s Lee Vermeulen also clarifies that

…the PC and Console version will be completely separate entities. Development of the cross platform Nexuiz will continue to be open. No new content of Illfonic’s art will be GPL or added to Alientrap’s development of Nexuiz, although the project will benefit from advances in the engine’s technology.

It certainly is a most titillating idea to think that a Quake 1 -based derivative should see a release on the very latest generation of video gaming consoles; the fourteen long years that have gone past since the original 1996 launch of Quake certainly speak for its age-defying durability, even if DarkPlaces is a rather massive overhaul of the original codebase.

The company has also started an underground advertising campaign for the game – one that might not reflect as well on the game’s profile as they might have hoped, for reasons that are rather out of the company’s hands: While Valve is going all out and wooing the games press with massive high-profile PR stunts like there was no tomorrow, all we got from Eidos was these lousy renders:

Then again, it seems almost cruel to expect the same level of commitment as we do from Valve at this point, so… in case you’re stoked to see these images, you should keep on checking out the official thread in the Eidos forums.

In the meantime, do check out our Deus Ex 3 teaser trailer image gallery which contains full captioned explanations for each subliminal image present in the trailer (It was a lot of work).

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike and Half-Life) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced Portal 2 for shipment this coming holiday season.

Portal 2 is the sequel to 2007’s Portal, which won 70 industry achievement awards

Even if the game is now official, the Portal 2 ARG, nevertheless, is hardly over: In the press release above, the underlined letters form the word “drattmannh0nee”, which in turn can be used to log into the BBS, as user “drattman” and pass “h0nee”.

Man. And it comes with co-op.

Anyway, in other related news, GameInformer’s April issue will come with neat Portal 2 wraparound covers:

Then, Ron Gilbert and DeathSpank.

According to EA Partners, DeathSpank will be published via Xbox Live and PSN:

EA Partners … and leading independent developer Hothead Games announced today an exclusive publishing agreement that will bring DeathSpank to Xbox LIVE® Arcade and PlayStation®Network in 2010.

Does “exclusive” mean what I think it means? In that case, I suggest a solution:

Now spank it
Into shape
Shape it up
Get straight
Go forward
Move ahead
Try to detect it
It’s not too late
To spank it
Spank it good

Spank you, Ron! Spank you very much. In the meantime, new screens for you console folks:

But did you know a sequel for the game exists and has been out for years? Running on the 3rd version of Deep Shadows’ Vital Engine, White Gold: War in Paradise was released in October 2008. The sequel, set on the Caribbean islands in the year 2010, very much structurally mirrors the first entry to the series: Like in the first game (which is called Xenus I in its motherland; the sequel is therefore titled Xenus II), the player is sandwiched in the power struggle between a government military, drug cartels, local natives and other islanders.

But that’s not nearly all; Deep Shadows have also published, in-between then and now, their other project, Precursors, which was released in Russia this previous December.

Precursors is characterized by the studio as a freeplay RPG/FPS/space combat mash-up with an economical component. This rather Outcast-looking game also contains vehicles, space shuttles for travelling in a seamless universe  as well as organic weapons that you have to feed and care for.

As influences, the developers have name-dropped David Braben’s classic Elite and Andre Norton’s science fiction novels; a presentation for the game wonders why the three aforementioned gameplay styles have never been combined before, perfectly illustrating the ambitious derring-do of the Russian studio.

Why have we not heard anything of these projects, then? Neither game is currently distributed in the English-speaking world, that’s why. While the developers worked with Atari on distributing Boiling Point, no suitable publisher has apparently been found for these two games. While there might still be some small hope left for Precursors, with more than a year having already passed with White Gold, I’m afraid there is relatively little hope of seeing an official English language release materialize for the game.

Therefore, the only concrete hope of playing either game in English are fan translations! In the Deep Shadows forums, dedicated Russian-to-English translation threads can be found both for White Gold and Precursors. While neither translation is close to being ready, some success has already been displayed, and since both games have been released on the same version of the Vital Engine, translators seem to have a good grasp of the situation (there are traces of unfinished English translations left in the Russian versions of the game) as well as access to a working SDK.

Here’s to hoping these two games will be playable sooner or later!

Halt. Enter The Metastreumonic Anarchist Conspiracy Movement website.

Confused yet? I know I am. The only thing that’s absolutely clear is that E.Y.E., by all means, is a labour of love (do check out the fantastic concept art above). In the game, players become a planted spy seeking to discover a traitor in E.Y.E., a twofold group of Secreta Secretorum monks fighting against the Federation:

The story takes place in a dark future that has seen unending wars between the Federation – a several worlds union, and the Metastreumonic Force – an ancient and mysterious power.

The player embodies an infiltrated spy in E.Y.E – a group of elite monk warriors – made up of two rival factions in constant internal power struggles, themselves serving the Secreta Secretorum you work for: a multi-thousand-years-old secret organization desirous to steal power from the Federation. The organization ordered your infiltration to control and survey E.Y.E actions, as well to unmask a traitor to the cause.

Metastr…? Secretoru…? (Scivela…?) Though there exists a wealth of background information on the game’s website, the more I learn about the game, the more confusing it gets, as much of the material available is multifaceted and obscure.

One simple explanation for the lack of en clair is simply that the team is all-French (a forum Q&A thread in French is available to those more fluent in the language).  Je ne parle pas français, alright, and therefore rendered unable to accurately present to you the game’s more elaborate fictions and features.

That being said, I can tell you what the core game is about: Futuristic monks, manipulation, secret organizations, strife, conspiracy, and Frenchness: In fact, the game aesthetically and thematically resembles the output of another French studio, Arkane Studios, including Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah and The Crossing, the latter two even more so due to its use of the Source engine:

The beginnings of the E.Y.E. project in fact date back to the year 2006, with the studio itself subsequently founded in 2007. To give you a better idea of the last four years of game development, an August 2007 launch trailer details some rather confusing and Half-Life 2 –textured action that is delightfully inferior to the team’s most recent 2009 trailer:

A visual layer of polish has been applied, and Streum On Studios have additionally chosen to delay the game’s original 2009 release in exchange for additional content. The curiously pitch-shifted voice acting present in the trailer above remains a curious discordant note in an otherwise polished trailer, but the controls and the HUD no longer display mod-ness, neatly illustrating the difference between a modification and a full-blown game.

Another reason for the complexity present in the documentation for E.Y.E. is that in all actuality, its origins trace into the late 1990s: In 1998, project lead Jonathan Cacherat designed a role-playing board game, AVA, that subsequently united the current Streum On Studios team. Their first finished project, also based on AVA, was the Half-Life 1 co-op multiplayer modification Syndicate Black Ops, released in 1999 and finished in 2001.

The game is still available for download and fully Steam-compatible, and positions players in the shoes of Syndicate assassins who are contracted for delicate cleaning missions and assassinations. The game displays a strange flair of humour (see weapon selection images below), a deviously high level of difficulty and, notably, vast, vast amounts of playable content. I found the game to be surprisingly fun to play with your friends, and it seems as though some of the ideas and content present in SBO will also been seen in the forthcoming game.

The developers have cited Warhammer 40K, Deus Ex and BioShock, (as well as Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell) as influences for SBO and E.Y.E., and the latter promises to contain a whopping 25 weapons, ten PSI/physical powers, 14 cybernetic implants, a separate hacking mode, and most curiously, “psychological and mental traumas [sic] management”. Also to come with the game are selectable classes and occupations. Like Syndicate Black Ops, E.Y.E. comes bundled with a co-operate campaign designed for 2-4 players, and additional missions for 4-8 players. The team also promises that single player, multiplayer and co-op are all interrelated in some way. Death, too, has no penalty; whether this means Vita chambers, regeneration, instant respawns or immortality remains to be seen.

Streum On Studios’ press kit optimistically targets the following platforms for release: “PC, XBOX360 (potentially) & PS3 (potentially)”. E.Y.E. was originally slated for a 1st quarter 2009 release, but is now delayed infinitely for an extra layer of polish.

Lost at the Sea

Fan games based on more or less commercially viable licenses have always faced the unenviable task of navigating the stormy, abbreviated seas of C&D and DMCA all the while keeping a low enough profile to avoid the aforementioned corporate shallows, at the same time maintaining a public enough face to attract necessary fan interest.

Some projects, like Indiana Jones & The Fountain of Youth and AGDInteractive’s remakes have surprisingly managed to stay afloat; others, like the very latest target of this type of license injustice, The Silver Lining, a King’s Quest fan game, are fish food:

In 2005, Phoenix Online Studios received a Cease & Desist letter from Vivendi Universal, the owners of the King’s Quest IP, in regards to our work on The Silver Lining. We complied with the request, and over the months that followed, we were able to work out a non-commercial fan license with Vivendi that allowed us to continue our work on the game.…

Recently, however, ownership of the Sierra IP changed hands and became the property of Activision. After talks and negotiations in the last few months between ourselves and Activision, they have reached the decision that they are not interested in granting a non-commercial license to The Silver Lining, and have asked that we cease production and take down all related materials on our website.

Closed Due to Tragedy

The Silver Lining was eight years in the making, and while this final blow in a long uphill battle must be a massive, massive disappointment to the members of the development team, it is also exactly that to the most dedicated fans of Roberta Williams’ classic adventure series; is it not the most interested of fans, after all, that come to develop, find out about and care for these underground fan games?

Obviously, fan games exist in the first place because of existing feelings of let-down: All these fans want is the current IP holder – be it Sierra, Vivendi or Activision – to respectfully commit and contribute to the existing franchise. Should they choose not to, for one reason or another, why should not the fans take the matters in their own hands?

The most overtly disappointing facet to this situation is the way Activision have chosen to treat a previous, working agreement, a move that comes off as petty, cold and corporate, as the Silver Lining team openly sought to negotiate their relationship with the IP holder with great openness and transparency. In this respect, The Silver Lining should be considered trailblazers of fan/company interaction, and Activision’s decision not to honour the agreement sets a nasty precedent and as such also strengthens the common argument for other fan game developers to stay offline and underground.

At the end of the day, it’s not too difficult to see the Pandora’s box –like qualities of granting non-commercial licenses: After all, sooner or later, the amount of interested parties knocking on Activision’s door for “non-commercial fan license” agreements would create an untenable situation for a major company. An astute observer can also obviously point out the dubious legal nature of most fan games, but it feels like a redundant argument in the on-line reality of the now, where video game companies highly value and even base games on user-created content, encourage remixing, support modding, and even offer free engines and SDKs.

Therefore, by far the easiest way for companies to deal with the issue of the fan game is to simply let fandom work the way it works: Mixing, remixing, reusing and ultimately producing all-new content for the most ardent of fans of various licenses to enjoy.

Was to Be a Joyous Occasion

The internet can be a very slanderous place indeed, but the argument for protecting the integrity of intellectual property in this manner, too, rings hollow as in my experience fan games are proven to be beyond respectful of their source material, often more so than companies themselves, with one minor exception: Some fan games do fall under the umbrella of parody or pastiche, both which are protected by fair use copyright laws in countries all over the world.

Therefore, a fan game takedown feels like a thing of the past, when your IP will take a life of its own online anyway; the question remains, and I think this is really the key here, do you want your reputation to be in the hands of /b/, or your most loyal, respectful fans – like the developers and fans of The Silver Lining? What was to be a joyous occasion is now a wasted opportunity of successful fan/developer interaction, and that is what makes me feel a great sense of loss.

The official website for the game has now disappeared off the Earth, as has the original RC1 demo for the game, but you can still visit a portion of their forums to discuss the matter. A King’s Quest IV-V-VI package was released at GOG.com last week.

Transformers: War For Cybertron was announced at the end of last year with a teaser trailer, showing pre-rendered carnage taking place on Cybertron. Details were scant at the time; Game Informer had the exclusive preview in a recent issue which revealed some interesting information. The game uses the Unreal 3 engine, and has a gritty, war-torn look a la Gears of War. The design of the characters lies somewhere in between Generation One and the Michael Bay films aesthetics, with changes not only to the characters’ looks but some of the transformations as well – Megatron’s alternate form is a hovertank, Optimus’ is a hovertruck without a trailer. In fact, all the ground vehicles have been changed to hover-something or other, to allow for a shared control scheme between the two forms.

Today a new trailer went up, with realtime footage using the game engine as opposed to pre-rendered CGI. While we still have no gameplay to make first impressions, one thing’s for sure: High Noon makes some epic trailers. I’m not exactly a diehard fan of the series, but I did grow up with the original animated show and toys, so I am excited by the promise of this title. A few gameplay impressions have gone up, Stephen Totilo’s at Kotaku gives a cautiously optimistic recap of the demo he witnessed. I only hope the game turns out better than the last game people were cautiously optimistic about.

As Totilo explains, there are two campaigns, the Autobots and the Decepticons, with up to three-player online co-op. Players choose from a selection of Transformers each with its unique weapons, vehicle and abilities. In the demo shown to the press, Optimus (not yet a Prime) had an area-of-effect stat boost called War Cry. Transformation between forms is done with the touch of a button and is smooth, keeping the momentum going. Joystiq remarks how the game plays a lot like linear third-person action games such as Ratchet and Clank.

High Noon may not have the best credentials with their previous less-than-stellar efforts in Daywatch and The Bourne Conspiracy, but they recognise the task at hand and assure that are trying to “make a great game” that is “true to the spirit” of people’s expectations. Transformers: War For Cybertron is due this May. After the jump, said epic trailers.

From the very early work-in-progress demo that was shown, it appears that the game is about infiltration and sabotage. Where Uplink was a game of hacking and espionage on the intangible, ethereal level of the internet, Subversion takes place on the physical, infrastructural level, with the same kind of goals to accomplish. In the examples given the player was tasked with finding a secure server room in an office building, and had certain tools at his disposal including a stolen keycard and a wallscanner. A second run demonstrated a brute-force approach with guns and explosives. The way RPS’ Jim Rossignol puts it excites me:

On a wider, genre basis, it sits roughly in the Commandos area of careful execution of planned procedures. Or perhaps it is to Syndicate as Thief was to the shooter tradition…

The visuals of the game will no doubt use the neon-retro style that Introversion is known for. As you can see in the early development screenshots, flat-shaded and wireframe graphics portray the city blocks and interiors. It suggests an abstraction of the action, placing the player in the role of an overseer, able to witness the situation from various camera views.

As explained in the blog posts (and in the video embedded below), the art assets like the buildings and room layouts are all created procedurally – that is to say, generated by a computer algorithm as opposed to hand-crafted by a person. Changing certain values or randomising them produces completely different results, and in this way whole cities and offices can be created. Perhaps this will be done every time you play a level in Subversion, which would mean that each playthrough would have different maps to infiltrate.

Update:
Chris Delay of Introversion has updated the blog with a post about the Subversion demo, with screenshots of the build shown. Hit the jump to check them out.

Chris explicitly calls the game a “spiritual successor” to Uplink, confirming our first impressions. Have a look at the post for more early information including the ambitious premise.

You will be using Sabotage, Social Engineering and Grifting, custom Electrical and Mechanical devices, Distractions, Hacking, Stealth, Acrobatics, Precision demolitions, Trickery, whatever gets the job done. In the best case scenarios your enemies will never know you were even there.

The game is still probably very far from completion, but be sure that I’ll be watching very closely for updates and will post them as they come. Below, the magic of procedural generation.

Pre-ordering the game will net you the ‘Bright Falls Bonus Pack,’ which offers “avatar gear, an Xbox LIVE theme, and a ‘making of’ video.” The Collector’s Edition will include a number of bonus items:

- Game Disc in box with unique art
- Exclusive In-Game Audio Commentary and Hints by Remedy
- “The Alan Wake Files” – a 144pg book that includes a short story written by Alan Wake and compiles the FBI dossiers investigating the events in Bright Falls, WA
- Exclusive Audio Disc with Soundtrack and Score
- Game Add-on token redeemable on Xbox LIVE for the first Alan Wake add-on content pack
- Exclusive Xbox disc with special content: Alan Wake Xbox Live Theme and Alan Wake Avatar for Xbox LIVE

The ‘add-on content pack’ possibly refers to the additional DLC promised earlier this year. The book sounds intriguing, providing substantial back story and detail to the world created by Remedy. I am impressed that there will be audio commentary, a feature very rarely offered by developers and one that usually proves insightful. After the jump, the new trailer unveiled at X10. It was nice knowing you, Alan.