There isn’t a single in-game trailer or screenshot available for DOTA 2, Valve’s sequel to the Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients. Yet, remarkably, they are showing the game off publically for the first time by hosting a huge tournament for it. For the next few days, you can watch the action live, right here. There’s also a CGI trailer out, which I’ve embedded below.
I didn’t play the original Warcraft 3 mod, but it is widely heralded as one of the best of its kind. Mixing tower defense with real-time strategy elements, you control various ‘hero’ characters and their allies against other teams, while defending your own base. Valve have never made anything outside the FPS genre before, so I’m curious to see how this turns out.
I was watching the live feed earlier, and from first glance I can see it has plenty of character and style to it. Embarrassingly, there seems to be some lag, and the match was paused by the ‘referee’. Technical hiccups aside, this is a really interesting way of unveiling a new game. It’s clear that Valve are trying to get a slice of the RTS tournament pie, spear headed by the likes of Starcraft and League of Legends. DOTA has a huge fanbase, so there’s a good chance this will get a decent following when it’s released. The only remaining question is whether it’ll be free-to-play or not.
I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
Is bingeing bad for us? It seems an obvious question, but I have been thinking about it lately, while revisiting Lost, the tv show that started 22 years ago (cripes, I feel old). Back when it was airing, my friends and I watched it religiously every week, talked about it in great detail, eagerly awaiting the next episode. It was the definitive show of its time, sparking debates and endless theories. It felt great to be a part of that, the sense of all experiencing the same thing together over a long period of time – most seasons had over 20 episodes, which is way more than most shows get these days – and they aired one by one, every week for several months. In today’s age of bingeing a show from beginning to end, I wonder what we are missing by not taking our time.
Well, fuck. A FPS horror game, set in a mental asylum where all the patients are violent hyper crazed lunatics, and you are a guy armed only with a night vision video camera and can’t fight back? Better get Clarkie to play that shit.
I’m not sure what to tell you about FF7. Simply put, it’s one of my all-time favourite games, and the hordes of fans it has makes me feel like a bit of a cliché to even include it in this feature. But I have to. It changed my life, I think. Before this, I had not played a game with such a deep and engaging story, an epic tale about a host of very likable characters, all unique and fleshed out with interesting back stories. It’s just wonderful.
Don’t kill people. That’s the ARC’s job. Make no mistake, I ain’t no softie. Just coz I won’t attack you first, don’t mean I won’t defend meself from a rat bastard who likes the look of my backpack! The rustbelt is a volatile place. I’ve seen what it’s done to us. What it does to the mind. But we gotta stick together, fight for humanity, and focus our efforts where it truly matters – FOR SPERANZA!
