This week the gang is in full force as Ben returns, and it’s time to talk about how we did (or didn’t) get to play Diablo 3! For everyone who couldn’t connect with Blizzard or have a ten year old PC, Jim and Aaron talk about Max Payne 3 and how you can shoot a lot of dudes in the face…a lot. We also answer your voice mails and emails, and give out bad parenting advice.

Here’s that dude that Ben randomly met who opened for MC Frontalot: http://www.bradpodraymusic.com/

We’re also giving away some stuff this week! OSMOS and Dungeon Defenders on Steam, and a Halo Banshee Avatar Prop for your Xbox. To win, tweet the following: “Suck it, @modeps. @phokal give me [Dungeon Defenders]!” (replace Dungeon Defenders with the prize of your choice). Aaron will announce the winners early next week.

As we rest on the precipice of another console cycle, used games continue to be a hot-button topic. From DRM to online codes, publishers have rolled out myriad draconian systems intended to stunt the used games market and filter those sales into their coffers. Wild speculation has posited that this is a major consideration for the next generation of consoles, with publishers pressuring hardware-makers into disabling used games for good.

At a quick glance, there seems to be some logic to the crusade against this secondary market. Used games rarely sell at truly significant discounts. Without them, the theory goes, surely consumers would just pay the extra $5 to buy the game new. That means more individual units sold, more profits, and a gaming industry suddenly flush with cash and unicorns.

Unfortunately for EA, Ubisoft, and the like, the logic of economics is rarely so simple.Unfortunately for the unicorn-loving upper-brass at EA, Ubisoft, and the like, the logic of economics is rarely so simple. Their theory is based on a snapshot of present purchasing, and assumes many things about consumer motivations that may be flat-out wrong.

When considering how to turn used-game buyers into new-game buyers, publishers are overlooking how that affects used-game sellers. No, not Gamestop and Best Buy, but their current new-game buyers that purchase with the expectation of recouping some of those gaming funds in the future.

Consider a rational purchaser of new games. The industry’s most prized customer; he buys only new games, at release, for $60. In the no-used-games model, we are led to believe he would be unaffected by the change. Perhaps he would actually benefit, seeing as the industry is now flush with cash and can now develop more innovative and riskier games.

However it’s naive to think this consumer is in the dark about the secondary market at the time of purchase. If someone buys a new game today, he has a reasonable expectation of being able to sell that game back at a later date for around half that. That means a net cost to the consumer of $30. Meanwhile, the used-game buyer is already used to purchasing his/her games after a price drop, so they are not likely to jump into the early adopters group without significant changes to the pricing structure. Cutting off the secondary market means, in order to keep all of its customers, the publisher needs to drop the price of its new games to this $30 price point.

Perhaps this drop in price converts all the erstwhile used game shoppers, but that still means the publisher would have to produce twice as many physical copies for the exact same gross dollars in sales. The added production costs – stamping discs, supporting more concurrent users, etc. – makes this a less efficient system than the current one.

The extra burden of risk on the consumer would be an effective death sentence to developers willing to take chances trying something new and untested.This effect reaches even further than in a single purchase decision, however. New-game buyers often use the resale of their games to fuel their next game purchase. Reselling allows them to stretch their dollar further, effectively cycling this used-game money back to the same publishers that lament its existence. In an industry that is already notoriously risk-adverse, the eradication of the secondary market would mean individual buyers would be able to afford fewer individual titles. The extra burden of risk on the consumer would be an effective death sentence to developers willing to take chances trying something new and untested. If you think Bayonetta’s sales figures were dismal, imagine how the title would have done in a marketplace where gamers have half as much money to spend.

Even with thorough market research, it’s difficult to conclude how new-games buyers – a consumer set that occasionally acts irrationally – would be affected in absence of the resale subsidy. What it does show us is that there are more market forces at play here than common sense would imply. The underlying presumption that sales of new games would increase in absence of a used game market is less certain than publishers would have us believe. Outside of third-party manufacturers of discs, I posit it’s unlikely anyone benefits from such measures.

Framed narratives have been in existence for thousands of years; in the art of video games, they’ve seen infrequent use but seem to be coming more into style of late. The concept is simple: a story within a story, like The Canterbury Tales or The Princess Bride. BioWare devoted a large part of their marketing campaign to the fact that Dragon Age 2 would rely on a framed narrative, which ended up being a failed experiment. Revisiting the Enhanced Edition of The Witcher 2 however, got me thinking about how to do framed narratives correctly in games, how to avoid overly cinematic presentations, and use the interactivity of this medium to great effect.

It’s such a jarring transition that even the main character asks why the hell the interrogators asked about her.I bit hard on the marketing of Dragon Age 2. To me, “framed narrative” was something fresh in the contemporary gaming landscape, even more so because they promised that the narrator wouldn’t be entirely reliable. The idea that what I played may not be what actually happened blew my mind. Since then, however, it’s become clear to me that framing devices have to be used judiciously when translated into an interactive medium. Many games already have a pseudo-framed structure in the dichotomy between game levels and (typically) non-interactive cutscenes. Adding an explicit narrator to the mix complicates the story, so there has to be a payoff, otherwise the transition from level to level can be more jarring than a traditional cutscene.

Hawke’s story starts ten years in the past, as told to a Templar Inquisitor by a former companion of hers. It’s an interesting premise but it quickly becomes clear BioWare arrived at this idea to justify the scope of the game rather than needing it to actually tell the story. One of the transitions skips right over a section of Hawke’s life I would have loved to play through: when she has to work for a mercenary to establish herself in Kirkwall. I resented the narrator skipping over this tale. The closest the “unreliable” narrator gets to affecting the story is at the beginning, when the player is forced to play a section over because he misremembered it. Conceptually this was a fantastic idea but the poorly tuned gameplay makes the sequence a slog to get through. The framing device didn’t help Dragon Age 2 tell a different kind of story; instead, it was just another RPG – and a middling one at that.

An even worse example of a framed narrative is Battlefield 3. People laugh when I try criticizing the game’s campaign, citing the multiplayer as the only reason to play it, but Bad Company 2 had a great one. In Battlefield 3, the main player character is being interrogated by two CIA agents as if he’s the enemy. Is he? It’s a premise Treyarch used to great effect in Call of Duty: Black Ops because the interrogation subject was pretty much insane, so the story didn’t need to make sense. The story here is just as confusing but by using a serious, even solemn, tone the plot holes become glaring. The framing device completely collapses when the interrogators ask about a jet pilot, I’m thrown into a bad rendition of Modern Warfare’s AC-130 level, and then I’m back to the main game. It’s such a jarring transition that even the main character asks why the hell the interrogators asked about her. DICE had to have an aerial level and that was the way they’d force it into the game.

If Battlefield 3 had been told from the present tense, I could have accepted the jet level as an interesting diversion. Told from a framed narrative, levels that don’t make sense or feel unnecessary collapse the entire story. The reverse was the case in Dragon Age 2. I resented the game for skipping over sequences that sounded quite interesting – more interesting, in fact, than the game I actually played.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings starts its story with a framing device. Geralt has been captured and is being interrogated about the events of the day that has just now ended. Over the course of the conversation, players complete the day in three separate gameplay sections. The framing element is filled with dialogue choices that add flavor to each subsequent playthrough but a more important difference between this and Dragon Age 2 and Battlefield 3 is that the three sections of the day can be played in any order. Play the last section and your interrogator will subtly turn the conversation back to the previous part of the day. There’s a particularly huge choice in the first section; the result of which comes up in conversation and makes a rather large impact once the interrogation finishes and the game proper starts. It’s a short experience, about two hours, but I’ve played it four times now and each time feels like I’m getting a slightly different story, not sitting through a bunch of passive cutscenes.

It’s still a traditional approach to framed narrative, just gameified. Sitting through cutscenes, even interactive ones, is not why I play games. But can the framing device be completely interactive? Yes.

Halo 3: ODST tells a very different kind of story compared to traditional game narratives. You start as the Rookie, waking up at night in a city overrun by the Covenant, but you dropped during the day. What the hell happened? You move around a mostly deserted city, skirting around Covenant patrols, trying to find clues concerning the fate of your squad members. As you find each clue, the game puts you in that squad member’s shoes during the critical events of the day.

It’s a premise Treyarch used to great effect in Call of Duty: Black Ops because the interrogation subject was pretty much insane, so the story didn’t need to make sense.The night and day levels of New Mombasa are quite different in tone and pacing. The story of the Rookie by himself at night frames the events of the day. Because the night levels aren’t cutscenes, it’s not obviously a framed narrative, but that’s precisely why it works so well. It also works to great effect as a pacing device, alternating between a somber night with solo combat and frenetic daytime with squad-intensive combat. Not everyone cared for the pacing but as a longtime fan of the franchise I loved how it told a different kind of story.

If developers want to use framed narrative, at least give me something akin to Witcher 2’s prologue. If they want to be daring, tell me a story like ODST. Games aren’t cinema and they shouldn’t use framed narrative the way movies do.

Late last week, the high profile Kickstarter project République concluded, and just made its goal of $500,000 in the final hours. With Metal Gear veterans David Hayter and Ryan Payton on board, it had the makings of something cool, but struggled to cross their funding goal unlike so many other high profile projects. Camouflaj, the primary development house, asked for half of what they felt it would take to make the game and will be relying on prospective investors for the rest.

… we believe that we can raise the necessary additional funds to complete République from potential outside investors, but there is some risk that our efforts will be unsuccessful.

In their own words, there’s no guarantee that République will be made, or at least, will be made the way they’d like it to be. Camouflaj is dead set on keeping their IP, so ‘actual’ investors will need take a leap of faith based off of this Kickstarter funding. Even with the funding, the results of this Kickstarter could also be looked at as a negative. They limped across the finish line with only 6 hours left where other exciting gaming projects were overfunded within days of launching. This could be due to Republique being a new IP, or Kickstarter burnout in general.

So, this whole thing is based on faith. In fact, that’s what most of Kickstarter is: Faith.

Thanks primarily to Double Fine’s Adventure Game (we’ve written about it previously), Kickstarter for use with game development has become a ridiculous phenomenon, bringing tons of projects out of the woodwork to get their funding. Instead of relying on their own pockets or investors like most have done since the beginning of time, developers and creators don’t have to worry about anything but production as long as enough people are interested in taking that leap of faith.

This faith-based model has been used to successfully fund games that may have never been made in the first place. Games like Brian Fargo’s Wasteland 2 and Shadowrun Returns are both exciting prospects, but no one knows if these are even viable today. It has also been used to goose funding on already in-progress projects like the Leisure Suit Larry remake, Grim Dawn (a project in development for 2 years and has already seen plenty of donation support from fans outside of Kickstarter) and most recently Carmageddon Returns, which was announced last year. What are people “kickstarting” on those? At least with the ones in-progress, there has already been some significant investment by the creators. But for many who use Kickstarter for funding? No risk.

With a Kickstarter model though, the risk lands almost solely on the backer of the game project.In business, managing risk is paramount. If you’re a health organization, bank, or pretty much any large institution, you must do system audits to assure that there’s nothing going on to increase your risk. If there is, you need to fix it. A risk is that the data will become compromised and you’ll be out of business after all the terrible stories break that you didn’t protect yourself. In video games, money is used to create a product you hope will sell well. If it doesn’t, you lose investment money and sometimes go out of business.

With a Kickstarter model though, the risk lands almost solely on the backer of the game project. The developer doesn’t have to necessarily put up their own money at all. They put out their idea, maybe some concept artwork and a catchy video, then wait a month. If it gets funded, rad, they can make something. If not they can just go back to sleep and dream up their next big idea. Little was actually ventured, and nothing was gained or lost.

Backers are pre-ordering before there’s even anything to pre-order.Eschewing typical monetary return on investment (ROI) for taking this risk, Kickstarter backers are given ‘rewards’. These boil down to some tchotchkes and a copy of whatever game for most modest donations. Backers are pre-ordering before there’s even anything to pre-order.

We have yet to see real gaming-fruits-of-labor funded by Kickstarter money and until then, we don’t know exactly what kind will come of the high-risk investment backers have made. Some of these game may never even come out, or take forever to do so, but there’s no recourse if that happens. Your money, after a successful Kickstarter, is gone much earlier than a simple pre-order. I’d rather give Steve Jackson $100 for a copy of Ogre.

“I will kill myself if I don’t finish this game,” proclaims Phil Fish, when asked about next steps if he fails to complete Fez, the game he’s been creating for over 4 years. People generally don’t mean it when they use that expression, but there’s an undeniable air of sincerity that accompanies Phil’s words. Why would a man be ready to kill himself over a game? Within minutes of watching Indie Game: The Movie, the answer becomes readily apparent.

Created by James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot, this documentary shares stories about the intense passion that indie video game creators have for their craft. You get to see Fez being prepared for its first public demo in 4 years,Super Meat Boy being prepared for launch, and Jonathan Blow reflecting on his hit game, Braid.

Indie Game: The Movie provides an unprecedented level of access to some of indie gaming’s biggest stars. Phil Fish, Jonathan Blow, and Team Meat share personal anecdotes about how they got into gaming, some of their overall game design philosophies and why they choose to stay independent. In a particularly touching segment, Edmund McMillen of Team Meat recounts how his game Aether, inspired by his niece, is meant to express some very specific life lessons. These anecdotes flowed naturally throughout the film, and were a joy to watch.

Beyond sharing stories of days gone by, it gives a glimpse at some of the drama that was happening to Team Meat and Phil Fish as they were filming. Team Meat was scrambling to get Super Meat Boy done in time for XBOX Live Arcade’s Game Feast promotion. As they got closer to launch, you get to experience how much of a physical and emotional toll this process is taking on them. Meanwhile, Phil was in the midst of a messy legal battle with his former partner that threatened to shut down Fez completely. Though the conflicts covered have already been resolved, the film captures the tension of these situations extremely well and any advance knowledge doesn’t hurt the experience.

Though the movie has obvious gamer appeal, the surprise here is that this is a bigger-than-a-video-game story. No matter how far it goes into the nuances of its subject matter, the human elements of passion, independence, and sacrifice always shine through. It’s easy empathize for Phil Fish when he’s shown fighting through the divorce of his parents, the break-up with his girlfriend, and the loss of funding to finish his game. It’s hard not to pump your fist in agreeance when you see Tommy Refenes from Team Meat rattle off all of his reasons for staying indie. It’s also heartbreaking to hear Edmund’s wife say that she only sees his back nowadays because he’s too busy working on his dream project. The best documentaries transcend the bounds of their subject matter to tell a compelling human interest story, which this movie does brilliantly.

Whether you approach this as a gamer or an average moviegoer, Indie Game: The Movie is an awesome film. The documentary does a tremendous job of sharing human interest stories within the context of video game creation.

SK: Besides the obvious nods to Eye of The Beholder and Dungeon Master, are there any other games that heavily influenced Legend of Grimrock?

Since Legend of Grimrock is a modern take on the old-school dungeon crawlers we were also influenced by modern CRPGs. For example the UI has been reinvented to meet modern expectations. Basically our approach was to take the original gameplay mechanics and combine them with a modern interface and usability while taking special care not to ruin the old-school gameplay experience.

SK: What makes Legend of Grimrock stand apart from its predecessors in the world of dungeon crawlers?

Well, in addition to the high standard 3D graphics and modern UI, the game has a points based skill system while Dungeon Master had an experience based system. The point based system gives more control and choices to the player. For example, you could gain points from combat and use them to level up your defense. Also the puzzles and combat have been taken to the next level.

SK: Did you ever consider making combat turn-based to match the tile-based movement?

Turn-based combat was never an option because our starting point was in the style of Dungeon Master, which is realtime. What we like in the realtime combat is that it brings in timing and skill of movement to the strategy. Also the puzzles, which are the core element of the game, benefit from using timing as a challenge. What we learned when designing Legend of Grimrock is that Dungeon Master had a relatively low frame rate which was actually an important factor in the gameplay. The frame rate was slow enough to give the player time to think between actions, and in that way it had a bit of turn-based flavor in it. We made a similar design in Legend of Grimrock that cools down the players attacks in order to give the player a chance to think about his strategy, instead of banging out attacks as fast as he can. In practice the player has to keep moving in order to avoid getting hit and gets an opportunity to decide his strategy for the next attack. Although realtime is a different approach that turn-based it does have a strategic element in the gameplay that can get pretty intense for time to time.

SK: With the recent popularity of more “action oriented” western RPG’s, where do you think the more “classic” style of role playing games fit in the market?

It looks like in recent years the big production RPGs are on a mission to please everyone and that leaves out place for smaller indie productions that actually love to focus on special niche genres. This setup is very welcome, because the niche markets are well suited for smaller teams that can do quite well with the lower sales of the niche market. It is great that niche groups start to finally get games that are tailored to their preference.

SK: Are there any plans to release a (non-beta) demo of LoG?

There are no plans for a demo because there has not been a significant demand for one. If you are a fan of Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder then you will most likely love Legend of Grimrock.

SK: Are you guys fans of PnP RPG’s as well?

Petri and Antti from our team have been playing quite a lot of PnP RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons.

Platform | Release Date
XBLA, PSN, PC | April 25, 2012
Developed by Telltale Games
Published by Telltale Games

The Pitch:

Lee Everett, a man convicted of a crime of passion, has been given the chance for redemption in a world devastated by the undead. Players will experience life changing events, meet new characters and familiar ones from the original comic, and also visit locations that foreshadow the story of Deputy Sheriff Rick Grimes. The Walking Dead offers a tailored game experience – player actions, choices and decisions affect how the story plays out across the entire series.

What is it about the undead that makes them so prevalent in modern pop culture? Zombies, on an individual level, do not terrify us in the same way Lovecraft’s eldritch horrors or Giger’s slithering xenomorphs do. Traditionally weak, slow, and easy to fool, zombies have somehow managed to become one of the most commonly occurring enemies in gaming; ascendant in the pantheon alongside alien warriors and mercenary thugs. As they shuffle forward, it’s their ever-growing numbers that frighten us. The scientific community has named our species homo sapiens sapiens. Translated as “wise wise man”, this demonstrates how much we value our intellect. Zombies serve as an affront to our hubris; amid scarcity and faced with an overwhelming force, our intelligence and technological advancements mean precious little.

The Walking Dead: Episode 1: A New Day is a game about zombies in much the same way Hamlet is a play about uncles. Though the zombie apocalypse propels its story forward, the game is wholly focused on the tenuous nature of civilized interaction and being resourceful enough to outsmart your circumstances. You are placed in the prison jumpsuit of Lee Everett, a man whose past crimes are shrouded in mystery at the game’s onset. Though a constant source of intrigue for the player, his pre-apocalyptic life feels like just one more obstacle stacked against Lee. His case was fairly high-profile, and even a casual aside in passing conversation might be enough to make a fellow survivor recognize him as a convicted murderer.

At the core, there’s a traditional adventure game to be found here. These games historically feature exceptionally simple mechanics whose only job is to stay out of the way of the story being told. Item management, pixel hunting, and dialogue systems are at their best when they happen without conscious effort. In classic iterations, there’s routinely a moment when you use the chewed gum on every other item in your inventory out of desperation. It’s in these moments that the game itself obfuscates the experience it’s intending to provide; a failure refreshingly unshared by A New Day.

Every potential pitfall of the genre seems to have been neatly sidestepped by Telltale games; formulas derived from years of similar games are finally seen through to their apex. Items share one single slot on the interaction wheel, and only items that can be used are suggested. The game will highlight objects with which you can interact, or not if you prefer to preserve the immersion. Telltale Games is so gracefully flexible in the way it allows you to operate in this narrative, but nowhere more so than in character dialogue.

Altercations, verbal and otherwise, ignite among survivors, and take on a life of their own if left to burn unchecked. During these heated moments, the dialogue wheel is accompanied by a timer; take too long to respond and the conversation will gather momentum without you. Defusing these situations requires equal parts wisdom and speed. Your fellow survivors have their own motivations, and often they stand in direct conflict with each other. Helping one inherently harms another, and these choices promise to carry forth over the expanse of this series.

For all its successes, there is a slowly advancing sense of dread here as well. One is left to wonder how many of the game’s most pivotal moments only work once. How many times can Telltale Games make Lee’s life-and-death choices feel weighty? The potential for future failure is plain to see in the stark relief of everything done right here. But if they continue to up the ante, stave off the creeping advance of heightened expectations, and somehow manage to shock us again when we are looking for it, Telltale Games may just provide us with the greatest episodic experience in gaming history.

After a successful community game night on Xbox Live with Trials Evolution, we debrief, talking about the fun times we had and how everyone wanted to know about Minecraft for the Xbox 360. So today we also talk about Minecraft for the Xbox 360 as well as some awesome ARPG lovin’ with the Torchlight II network test.

Platform | Release Date
360 | April 11, 2012
SEN | April 12, 2012
Developed by Autumn Games
Published by Konami

The Pitch:

Skullgirls is a fast-paced 2-D fighting game that puts you in control of fierce warriors in a Dark Deco world. All-new game systems test the skills of veteran fighting game fans while also making the genre enjoyable and accessible to newcomers. A modern take on classic arcade fighters with a hand-drawn high-definition twist, Skullgirls is a one-of-a-kind, action-packed competition complete with awesome combos and an intriguing backstory.

In the street-fighting world, hitting a series of high and low points is called a “mix-up.” It is difficult to defend against due to needing to alternate blocking both high and low. In the reviewing world, it is called a “compliment sandwich”.

Skullgirls is a technical two-dimensional street fighter that offers to teach a high level of play, and then immediately beats down players incapable of perfection.

The classic, 2D fighting gameplay revived by Street Fighter IV is present, but the first thing that will catch your eye is Skullgirls’ adherence to classic sprites. The hand drawn characters bob and weave somewhere between a high quality animation and a nicely done flash game. I dug the combination of HD presentation and style. While at first glance the game appears to be anime inspired, it is actually updating Tex Avery/Jessica Rabbit pin-up girls: like the ones a cartoon wolf would howl at and catcall. This is matched by a retro, jazzy menu system and musical score. However, most anime draws from, and updates, this same historical source material. The inclusion of a zombie cat girl and panty shots also hit some standard otaku notes. The presentation, speed of the game, and combo system feel very similar to Guilty Gear. Guilty Gear is also an anime inspired, 2D sprite fighter, and a personal favorite.

You should first check out the extensive and initially welcoming tutorial. Skullgirls provides the basics, but also includes and teaches the standard terminology you would find on Shoryuken.com or Eventhubs.com. Mix-ups, hitstun, and canceling are all referred in the same “plain English” that most fighting game enthusiasts speak. There are no wacky references to a “Roman Cancel” or deciphering the difference between a “Rage Meter for super moves!” and a “Super Bar for EX Attacks!”

It makes you feel like a Pro, right until it beats you down.

The tutorial has a steep difficulty curve and demands perfection. Complete 3/3 “Avoid a Throw” means complete the request 3 times in a row. Any failure resets your counter. Fail to deflect a throw? Back to 0, and it only becomes harder. It’s unfortunate that these tests couldn’t be separated into a trials mode that demanded the higher perfection, while leaving the tutorial more forgiving of failure. The training and main game are also suspiciously absent of a move list. Instead, a random loading screen tip requests you go to their website for a complete list of character specific attacks.

Skipping Training mode to immediately begin a campaign career would result in a rude awakening. Even on the easiest difficulty, your first opponent will throw out 6-hit combos or keep you on the far side of the screen with a near constant barrage of projectiles. I expected a tough time given the game’s marketing as a tournament level fighter, but the first opponent trouncing me was unpleasant.

The whole experience felt disengaged. Despite a unique premise, world, characters, and a catchy music, I was just working out the mechanics. I even had trouble picking a character I “liked” the most thematically. It’s almost like the game was grown in a lab to be the perfect street fighter, but it’s soul is hitting an uncanny valley. Most of the individual aspects of the fighting engine are strong and well thought-out, but together it never gelled into an emotional experience.

Once I found a character I wasn’t terrible with, I could march my way through the campaign (rarely losing) and didn’t notice any spikes in difficulty. It seemed like everyone just started out “hard” and stayed there throughout the campaign. Not bad for the pros who up the difficulty each time they clear Arcade, but very unwelcoming to beginners who want to bash on a couple warm-up opponents before shit gets real.

Still, the promise of systems that detect and defend against infinite combos and the ease of input for general combo progression is a fun one. While it is hard to say if Skullgirls is perfectly balanced, given the wide variety of tag-team options, they have several features in place specifically designed to alleviate frustrations found in other franchises.

Online play was relatively lag free, but feels a bit rushed in presentation. The tools provided are useful for challenging random opponents but lack community features. When creating a private room you have the option to invite your Xbox Party, however, only the first person to respond to the invite gets into your room. The private room is limited to a 1-on-1 affair and any other party members responding to the invite receive an error message.

There is no spectating or even a lobby. It looks like a partial implementation. Like they wanted to have lobbies and group sessions, but in the product available you can only match with one opponent. This is a huge letdown for anyone that wants to convince their friends to play with them in an inexpensive game, but can’t have more than one friend participate at a time.

Picking fighters is also not double-blind and if you want to get into a match quickly you give your opponent an advantage showing your team make-up. A lot of the rankings, titles, and other perks found in recent online focused fighting games are also missing. Perhaps they plan to expand on this with future updates but the current implementation is clumsy, especially for playing with multiple friends.

Despite its budget price of $15 dollars, I found the game far too difficult to recommend to most gamers and lacked the lobby features needed for friendly Friday Night matches with buddies over the internet. However, for a fighting game enthusiast with interest in dabbling in another well constructed system of combos and mix-ups, it has its merits.

Platform | Release Date
XBLA, PSN | May 1, 2012
Developed by Ronimo Games
Published by dtp entertainment AG

The Pitch:

It’s the year 3587, conflict spans the stars. Huge robot armies are locked in an enduring stalemate. In their bid for galactic conquest they call upon the most powerfull group of mercenaries in the universe: the Awesomenauts!

Awesomenauts brings team-based competetive arena play to a platforming perspective. Play and customize several Awesomenauts as you storm the online battlegrounds and unlock loads of new abilities and characters for your arsenal. Coming May 2nd 2012 to Xbox LIVE Arcade and Playstation Network!

Platform | Release Date
360 | May 9, 2012
Developed by Mojang, 4J Studios
Published by Microsoft Studios

The Pitch:

Imagine it, build it! Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition lets you create worlds from the comfort of your sofa. Play alone or play with your friends. Explore, build and conquer! At night monsters come out, so make sure to build a shelter before that happens. After that, your world is your imagination. Turn your hours into minutes with Minecraft!

At this point, it’s really hard to have not heard of Minecraft. Even if you’re strictly a console gamer Minecraft and its eccentric creator’s story is that of legend. Until now though, it has remained a PC only affair. Not content to sit by and ignore an opportunity, several pretenders have made their way onto Xbox Live Indie Games. The most popular being FortressCraft which to date has reached over 750,000 downloads so the demand is obviously there for this type of title. Now the real game is out for your Xbox console. Creepers! Pigs! Chunky butts! All at your disposal.

My affair with the PC version lasted quite a while but ended long before Minecraft hit version 1. Unlike what seemed to be everyone else, I focused on survival mode and rarely entered any online servers. My fascination was with exploration and the quiet solitude it provides, so perhaps the lack of a ‘creative’ mode in the Xbox 360 version doesn’t bother me. You’re still able to connect to your friends’ worlds and cooperatively work on shaping it, but you’ll deal with spiders, skeletons, and creepers in varying difficulties.

Man, those creepers…

Minecraft loves to mess with you. You’ll spend uneventful, in-game days crafting and working your way into the depths of a mountain, then one day on your way back to your storage hold you hear that awful hiss. Out of the perfectly crafted, blocky windows, a green head bobs up and down. It’s too late. The creeper explodes, ruins part of your fortress, and brings you to the brink of death.

The ever-present random world generation means that, no matter which direction you walk, you will find something interesting. The other night while looking for a place to begin, I came across a lush valley, containing a giant tree and basin of water. Towards the back side of this area was the beginnings of a mine, mineral rich stone, and protection from creatures. I dug in and took a screenshot after establishing myself.

After creating the humble beginnings of my fortress, I decided it was time for a bit of exploration and set off into my mostly uncovered world. Of course I discovered a cooler location for my home, but I also accidentally fell into an exposed mineshaft. It was likely the work of some long-dead adventurer as at the bottom, a vast, dark expanse lay before me. Close to death, I lit a few torches to see just how far it went.

Suddenly, an arrow stuck into the ground beside me, and another pierced my leg. I reeled, coming face-to-face with what seemed like an army of skeleton archers. Making it back to the bottom of the original shaft, I blocked off their progression and began a quick ascent. With the slightest breeze able to kill me, I hightailed it back to the safety of my fortress.

But I had left the front door open. Another archer was laying in wait and took me out before I knew what had happened.

I think that’s really the biggest achievement of Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition. The fact that those emergent moments of discovery – and panic – are still existent without having been compromised. Screenshots require linking your Xbox account to Facebook, but at least 4J has made it happen. Things have been updated to address console specific trappings, but you can still have incredibly entertaining and evolving experiences.

Take for example the way crafting is now handled. Instead of hitting a wiki to find out how to bake a pie, the game provides all the recipes and tells what ingredients you need. If you’ve got the materials, you’re a button press away from creating that item. Every item and creature has a tooltip explanation when you come across them which will help explain what the hell you use flint for, or what good wool is. You even get a map from the start!

The hardcore may look at these minor concessions as a “dumbing down” for the console crowd, but it honestly assists with accessibility. That’s a good thing in terms of helping define direction for a new player, or as a reminder for someone like me who hasn’t played in a long time. Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition is a wonderfully crafted title full of the experimentation, adventure, and creation of its big brother.

* All screenshots were taken in-game

SK: Does it have to be played co-op or will it scale for a single player?

JK: The campaign can be played either in single-player or Co-Op. The story is about the two central characters, but we tried not to over-complicate things. If you’re playing as either character in single-player, you’ll still hear all relevant story dialogue as a VO, but there won’t be an AI character running around. We’re still working on balance to ensure that the single player and co-op experiences are both satisfying and that neither is too difficult, or too much of a cake-walk.

JK: We’re sticking with the Apprentice, War Mage, and Nightmare difficulties this time around, but we’re doing a lot of tuning to make sure that the experiences feel right. Apprentice is actually getting the most changes. Since we’re still actively balancing the game, we don’t quite know where things are going to end up, but ideally the ramp between War Mage and Nightmare would feel like a natural progression in difficulty.

JK: Because of the way the levels are designed, and the fact that you aren’t generally in one for terribly long, we’re not supporting drop-in/out co-op. As for the rest, we’re focused on building a solid online co-op experience. There are a number of reasons, not the least of which being that we are using several of Steam’s online features in the game. While you’re playing with a friend, you’ll both get any earned achievements as appropriate as well as the appropriate skull rewards for completing a level. You’ll actually be able to co-op with a buddy who’s ahead of you in the campaign, as well. You can jump into a level with a friend that you haven’t gotten to yet. You’ll still have to unlock your way there to access it from your campaign menu, though, and only the player who’s actually progressed that far will earn the unlockable prize at the end of the level.

SK :What’s your favorite new trap?

JK: Personally, I’m in love with the physics traps – new and old alike. We rebuilt some of the ragdoll systems from the first game. Initially, getting a few physics traps to work together was a little bit hit-and-miss. With the new system, traps can be triggered by ragdolled orcs. This means that your dreams of setting up intricate mousetrap systems that fling enemies across a level on a system of spring traps and push traps is far more possible than before. With several of the new open areas featured in our Dwarven Mines maps, it’s a lot of fun to push orcs around the map and ultimately hurl them off a cliff edge to their doom.

SK: What were some inspirations for the new character designs?

Justin – Since most of the monster designs start in our art department, I went to Art Director David Kubalak for this one -

DK: There is no shortage of ideas when it comes to creating more opposition for players in Orcs Must Die! 2. We start by getting some directions from design on the behaviors we need from gameplay: The enemy needs the ability to regenerate, or needs to fly, or we need a fast moving enemy that can throw bombs from long range… and then we start exploring some ideas. We want to make sure the enemies feel like they would fit in with the orcs and Mob characters from Orcs Must Die!, so we trend towards the ideas of more traditional races like trolls, gnolls, goblins, and orcs but create it within the style of the Orcs Must Die universe.  We have a lot of fun exploring the personalities and details of all of these different characters, It’s always a little more fun to explore the ‘supporting characters’ or ‘bad guys’, because you can really push their personalities and character to the limits. There are so many of them that they can have strong features or personalities in one direction, for instance, a troll can be super tall and imposing, to imply that he’s going to take a lot of damage to bring down.

SK: NO MOD SUPPORT!?  WE DEMAND AN EXPLANATION FOR THIS!

Thanks to Justin Korthof, David Kubalak, and everyone at Robot Entertainment for taking time to talk to us.

Hurtling through time and space like a fat guy falling down a really deep hole, this week we find your fearless heroes discussing the best intro and ending sequences in gaming history. They also take pause from saving the universe to discuss Space Marine, The Walking Dead, and the untold stories of Fraggle Rock.

Geralt is a freak, or so I’m told by the vast majority of NPCs. He has white hair, yellow eyes, and one too many mutagenic potions has fried his memory . . . or something. But despite his amnesia, he’s a strong character with deep established relationships. Expect some hurt feelings – even looks of betrayal – if you make certain choices.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings – Enhanced Edition is rated B for Badass and contains the following:

• A heavily scarred hero carrying two full-sized swords.
• Full-frontal nudity within the first 60 seconds.
• An epic battle in place of a slow-paced tutorial.
• Choices that can result in hours’ worth of different content.

This is clearly a different kind of RPG.

Geralt is rarely faced with clear good versus evil choices and story outcomes aren’t governed by a morality meter. The conversation you thought was merely incidental can change your perspective about a quest hours later. Choosing whether to help an anti-human elven terrorist or assist a special forces commander known for *ahem* pacifying non-humans rewrites the entire second act. I’m thoroughly enjoying my second time through the story with the new Enhanced Edition.

Even after extensive rebalancing of the game last year, The Witcher 2 presents a very different learning curve from other western RPGs. Geralt is still trying to recover his memory from the first game. Okay, most games start you off weak, so how is that different? The surrounding world isn’t weak. In fact, it’s dark, full of monsters, and requires a deep understanding of the game’s mechanics to survive even routine enemy encounters.

The previous version had a separate tutorial section; it’s still present here but it’s not particularly helpful. For the Enhanced Edition, CD Projekt RED provides a much more seamless way to learn the game by flashing tutorial tips on-screen as new gameplay mechanics are added. Among the varying weapon types, traps, bombs, alchemy, and the deep magic system there’s a lot going on here. Even after thirty hours with the game, the hardest thing to wrap my head around is how preparation is central to combat. Get yourself in a fight that’s harder than you expected? You can’t chug potions to get yourself out of it. Instead of reloading and rushing back to the same fight, maybe you should meditate and down a health regeneration potion first. While you’re at it, set up some traps to lead the enemy through.

Though it’s no Dark Souls, combat in The Witcher 2 starts off challenging compared to most contemporary RPGs. Dodge the wrong way, miss a block, forget to lay a trap – a single mistake spells death. If you can get through the brutal early learning curve the payoff in terms of story and world-building is huge. Though the story can be obtuse at times, and is occasionally knocked off course by the Enhanced Edition’s added scenes, I love learning more about each character. Maintaining two separate playthroughs only enhances the experience, and it’s fascinating to see how choices lead to different outcomes, meeting different people, and even going to completely different quest hubs.

CD Projekt RED has a solid console control scheme and UI in place but it doesn’t keep pace with the PC version. Combat in The Witcher 2 requires constant movement, with heavy damage multipliers for back-stabs, and moving Geralt with mouse and keyboard feels slightly better. Targeting specific enemies is much easier with the mouse. Dodge-rolling is easier as well because hammering the movement keys ensures that Geralt will roll the instant he’s out of the current animation. The biggest annoyance on console, however, is that when you loot enemies or containers you have to take everything. This means plenty of time spent managing inventory as junk items keep cluttering up your pack. Both platforms’ UI suffers from a vague main map and a mini-map which frustratingly changes orientation based on where Geralt is pointing rather than being locked to a compass.

In adapting the game to the 360, CD Projekt RED put special emphasis on character model resolutions, so Geralt and his companions look rather nice even compared to the PC. I was shocked that the 360 version keeps the insanely detailed environments of the original game. Though the resolution and texture quality take a major hit, the forest surrounding Flotsam (the hub of Act 1) puts even Skyrim’s flora and fauna to shame.

The Witcher 2 is an impressive Xbox 360 title, with heavily saturated colors, a realistic-feeling medieval setting, and it is so realistic that my wife constantly came in from the other room swearing that birds were in the house. If you think that’s good, though, the game approaches photo-realism on the PC and is the prettiest game I’ve ever seen. It’s mind-blowing. The 360 version is a solid adaptation but it’s just that – an adaptation. I’d pick it up only if you lack a capable PC or just prefer gaming on the couch. Either way, this remains a “do not miss” for fans of western-style RPGs.

This week we talk about Trials Evolution and our upcoming Microsoft Community Playdate, which are OK for kids. Then we talk about Awesomenauts and Guild Wars 2, which might be OK for kids. Then we talk about Witcher 2 and The Walking Dead, which are NOT FOR KIDS. Also, Twitter questions!