Endweek News – Colour Me Intrigued, Release Date City and Videos and Trailers

Hey everyone, it is Sunday again and as usual it is time for the News! Last week I epically failed in that I posted the news from the previous two weeks but then completely forgot to post the Colour Me Intrigued, Release Date City and Videos section. That means that actually this week  this part of the Endweek News is actually THREE WEEKS worth of stuff as opposed to just one… Yeah I know, failure at it’s finest…

However, the normal Endweek News section will just be the news from the past week and I hope to have that uploaded later today as well! Anyway, enough talk! What has been intriguing and awesome in the last three weeks? Check after the jump to find out!

 

Colour Me Intrigued

 Colour Me Intrigued is the section of the Endweek News where I talk about projects and games which have sprung at me and have caught my interest. They tend not to be mainstream games and are the sort of thing which are often hit and miss. But those games which are a hit of these tend to be absolutely awesome. It’s all about the interesting, the new, the exciting and the weird! So what caught my eye recently?

 

First up, you may recall that a while ago I did a small video and an impressions on the indie horror game Slender from Parsec Productions. The game was one of the scariest things I had played in a while, despite there not being much to it, and focuses on the internet myth of the Slenderman. Now a group of modders are in the process of making a Source Mod of Slender and are quoting the Slender game as their main inspiration.

This game will be an, up to, four person co-op game where you and your friends will take on the role of four teenagers dared to look into the myth of the Slenderman and it will involve collecting 15 creepy dolls (it’s always dolls…) across two maps: a abandoned hospital and a forest, although there are plans to add in more maps up to a total of eight. The main idea of the game is that it will be as scary as Slender, even though you have people watching your back and helping you out. They say:

 “You’ll know that the co-op feature in those scenarios don’t necessarily deprive the game from scaring the players. The Slenderman will still scare you, even if your friends are watching your back. No direction is safe, no areas are safe. You’re vulnerable everywhere.”

The game will be using Half-Life 2 as the base for the mod and I am already looking forward to it. If it sounds like the sort of thing which would interest you as well then you should head over to it’s ModDB page to show your support for the game. It will hopefully be making an appearance in Q1 next year, so that’s something to look forward to already!

 

Next up, the developers of the recent Game of Thrones RPG, Cyanide Studios, have announced that they are now working on a PC strategy game called Impire which is also due out in Q1 next year. The game will focus around you playing as Báal-Abaddon as powerful demon summoned into the body of an Imp. You then work your way up through the imp ranks and spend time using your demonic underlings to protect your base from heroes and champions of light and all of those silly folk that might interfere with your nefarious deeds.

The game actually sounds, and looks a lot like Overlord from Triumph Studios and as that was a game I absolutely loved playing then I find myself reasonably interested in this one too! For the trailer of what will hopefully be a silly, but fun, game you can check the videos section!

 

Next up we have two games from the Vancouver Film School’s game design program (yeah that one that we’ve all heard about). First up from the Pixel Pi team is a horror game dubbed a “suspense/survival” game called Pulse. In the game you play as a blind girl who has to find her way through a giant cavern filled with monsters via a Daredevil-type sonar system. The girl throws around forest sprites known as Makos which emit noise and then the noise helps her visualise her surroundings. And of course, the noise also attracts the monsters.

The game actually looks more cartoony and bright and shiny than one would normally associate with a horror game, but there does seem to be a lot of potential in the idea. There is already a free build available for download but people at Pixel Pi have said that they would like to expand beyond that and hone the game further, turning into about four hours of ever-changing gameplay. They also are hoping to have versions available for download on both PC and Mac and via the new Steam Greenlight system. Honestly, I am all over this thing!

The other game from Vancouver Film School seems a little less innovative but is still looks pretty cool; The Mask of Qi. Coming from Team Kronk the game is a third-person action and platforming style game which features gliding and hitting things. While the Mask of Qi doesn’t strike all the same chords that Pulse does it does look like it could be fun and once again is available for free download (or one can play a low resolution in-browser version).

Both of these games have trailers which you can check out in the videos section!

 

Next up we have another game by developers The Chinese Room who are fast becoming more well known for their innovative games. They are the same company bringing us Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and gave us Dear Esther earlier this year. This time the game is called Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture but it’s a little closer to Dear Esther than another game which famously involves Rapture… The game will be in real time and is set in rural Shropshire an hour before the world ends. It will be set in a large map which will take 20 minutes to traverse diagonally and will feature six characters, although it seems that these “characters” might not even be people and were described as “kind of memory traces of people that were there”. Riiiiiiight…

Unlike in Dear Esther you will be able to interact with the game and your actions and interactions will have an effect on the world around you. You also, as the game is set in real time, will only have an hour to play the game and discover all you can before the world will then end. And then you have to play it again.

Honestly this is precisely the sort of thing which belongs in this section. It sounds intriguing but also pretty bizarre and I’m not sure how much fun it will be, I mean you play the game for an hour and then you die? Well, it’s still one to keep an eye on folks! You can follow the game here at TheChineseRoom.

 

Next up we have the game Maia from indie developer Simon Roth. The game will focus around you playing as a group of colonists on a new world where you will have to excavate underground and build you base there to escape the hostile surface world. You must mine for materials and minerals in order to expand your colony and you will need to build houses, find sources of food, water and power and build defences for your colonists. All in all, it sounds pretty damn cool! There isn’t much to go on yet other than a few screen-shots which show a 70’s style sci-fi world (with dark humour apparently) but the idea of the game is pretty cool. You can head over to the website to find out more and to check out the screenshots in question (although I will warn you that the interface of the website is really annoying…).

 

And last, but certainly not least, in this weeks extravaganza of “woah this looks cool” is a first-person survival game coming from Rock, Paper, Shogtun writer Jim Rossignol no less, and his indie gaming group: Big Robot. The game takes places in procedurally generated and very British moors and involves running and fighting a bunch of robotic poachers and their robotic dogs. Sir, You are Being Hunted was described by Rossignol as “[combining] elements of my favourite things: exploration, AI interaction, survival, robots, hot drinks, and blends them into a rich pixelly pulp”.

While it isn’t due out until next year at some point I have already made a massive tick in my “things-to-keep-an-eye-on” list. Also! Be sure to check out the trailer down below which quite makes one wish for a more English style of game than those rapscallions over in the colonies keep delivering…

 

 

 

Release Date City

While the previous section is full of the intriguing and the exciting. This section can be full of whatever it needs to be. It’s all about the release dates of various games as they are narrowed down by their respective developers and publishers. Nothing too exciting, but important nonetheless!

A couple of weeks ago saw the release of the DLC Cold Stream for Left 4 Dead 2. The DLC’s long-awaited release contains five maps: Crash Course; Death Toll; Dead Air; Blood Harvest and Cold Stream and is available on PC, Mac and (after a little trouble with the release version) Xbox 360.

Next up we have Blizzard finally announcing the impending release date of the next expansion for their giant MMO World of Warcraft. Featuring a new continent, a new race (the first completely new one) the Pandaren, a complete overhaul of the talent systems and of course new raids, areas and thousands of new items and quests Mists of Pandaria will be released on the 25th of September for both Mac and PC and will probably cost around £29.99.

Next up we have Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 from Namco Bandai which has been delayed from it’s previous release date of the 21st of August all the way back to the 15th of January next year! Some delay…

2K Games have finalised the release date of their own game XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The strategy game will now be releasing on the 12th of October on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. It also will be released a few days earlier on the 9th in US, as usual.

The Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition’s release date is also fairly soon and will be coming to PC on the 18th of September this year, Beamdog have announced.

Now here is something that actually is rather interesting… it would appear that EA have announced a new Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel which will re-set the whole game world and will have a “more intense, mature, and grittier tone”. I debated giving this it’s own news-post but as the second one was so completely disappointing I’ve decided it’s just not really worth it… yet… The game will be released sometime in March next year.

And finally, for those of you purchasing Assassin’s Creed 3 on PC you’ll be pleased to know that it will actually arrive less than a month after the console versions (which is the quickest any AC game has ever managed). You’ll all be able to kill and murder without thought or apprehension on the 23rd of November! Let’s get stabby with it!

 

 

Trailers and Videos

So… So… Many videos… Holy shit man… I don’t even know how you can possibly get through them all… Rather than speak much about them I’ll just give you a list and then let you jump down to them.

If at any stage you feel your brain starting to melt from too much information and/or too much awesome I’d suggest you jump to the bottom where we have our song of the week! It’ll put you back in the mood to keep at this backlog!

• Impire
• Pulse
• The Mask of Qi
• Sir, You are Being Hunted
• Star Wars 1313 – gameplay videos
• Tribes: Ascend Twinfusor Update
• Transformers: Fall of Cybertron (featuring multiplayer footage)
• Shadowrun Online prototype gameplay
• A Portal speedrun which is finished in 8 minutes… Yeah you heard me right… You’ll want to full screen this shit…
• An Assassin’s Creed 3 trailer which hints at the multiplayer story and a trailer which shows of the AnvilNext engine
• A Far Cry 3 trailer detailing the co-op play
• Parts of the film 300 masterfully re-created in Skyrim!
• A trailer for Mass Effect 3’s Leviathan DLC
• An amusing trailer for crazy game Runner 2
• A trailer showcasing the guns of Halo 4
• An in-game video from Dishonored showing off some of the insane ways you can kill folks
• And finally we have a masterpiece from Cyrtek showing off their amazing new CryEngine 3… Which just looks gobsmacking…

 

Oh god… This is taking forever…

Okay, relax folks! Just enjoy MMGaming’s Song of the Week: Batman Maybe!