Duke Nukem's on a Roll | A games store employee applying price tags supplies this zinger. Not sure I'd pick that up used. (via Reddit.)

More »

We saw a lot of Lego sets at the New York Toy Fair on Sunday. Sadly, Minecraft Legos did not make an appearance, but we did get to play around with figures from Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Lord of the Rings, and a whole bunch of superhero franchises. More »

Don't mind the detached plastic faces in front of them. These action figures, seen today at the New York Toy Fair, are totally precious. More »

The reboot of the car combat standard-bearer Twisted Metal arrives on Valentine's Day for PS3. Also, though you can't play them until Feb. 22, many of the launch titles for the PlayStation Vita become available in North America this week. UFC Undisputed 3 for Xbox 360 and PS3 also arrives Tuesday. More »

Each week throws off several new video game lists ranging from the humorous to the trivial. What's better? A list of those. Here's a roundup of the rundowns out there. More »

[Update 3:58 p.m. EST] On the Steam forums and via Twitter, Valve has said that a power failure in their data center's uninterruptible power supplies was responsible. "The power is back on now and we're working to get service restored as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused." More »

[This review of Hoard from Indie Royale's Valentine's bundle we co-run with Desura was originally written by Colin Brown on Backlog Journey.]

To paraphrase the official site, Hoard is a game about dragons. Ok, fine, I'll expand. In Hoard, you play as one of up to four dragons, all plotting to expand their hoard. As any good D&D player could tell you, dragons are notoriously territorial, and luckily Big Sandwich Games was around to capitalize on that territorial model for an arcade style video game.

While there's no particular campaign mode, there are quite a few maps packed into Hoard, with even more from the DLC (thankfully included in the Indie Royale as well). Your goal for each map is to hit the target score and earn a gold medal by any means you see fit. Each map is loaded with farms, cities, castles, trade routes and various other bits of medieval settings to do whatever you wish to. There are plenty of enemies running about as well; not only do you have to contend with your dragon rivals, but thieves, knights and archers will try to ruin your day. If you want a nice little bonus, you can intercept and capture princesses too. Ever wonder why dragons loved princesses? Apparently they convert to a hefty gold bonus after five seconds. Who knew?

Obviously burning down stuff gets you a little bit of gold, but you know what's cool? A lot of gold. There are other approaches; terrorizing a village enough will force the village under your fearful influence, which causes them to send tributes and assist you in battle. Burning down a farm right away will get you a chuck of change, but letting them send grain to towns will make them become riper targets faster. It's a very simple system to learn (burn everything) but Hoard is fairly deep for an arcade game.


There's a few little things wrong with the game, but nothing major. The main menu highly recommends using an Xbox 360 controller, and I'll second that. Like most twin stick shooters, Hoard works best with two analogue sticks and not as well on your regular keyboard mouse set-up. Secondly, the game is sadly lacking local play. You can play online, but there's no method for a split screen set-up. I'm guessing it's because some of the maps are too big to show all at once, but this game is just begging for local support. Finally, the game could have really used some kind of campaign or single player mission structure. Going for gold medals is nice and all, but a fleshed out single player component could have really improved things.

As it stands Hoard works well as a pick up and play casual title for a few rounds at a time, cause it's a great mix of arcade and strategy. There's enough different methods and tactics to keep you engaged and on your toes, and there's a fair amount of maps to sift through. I never would of thought a dragon's migratory patterns would fit in an arcade game, but I'm glad I was pleasantly proven wrong.

[Hoard, Lume, Soulcaster I/II, and Zeno Clash are available now in Indie Royale's Valentine's bundle.]

The human eye can only perceive 72 frames per second. We've been seeing games at 60 frames per second for some time. And as graphics approach photorealism with current computing power, some suggest that the days of giant leaps in visual quality are past us, and we'll be seeing smaller refinements going forward. More »

Skyrim Game Jam shows off the creative minds at Bethesda
The Gaming Vault
After the completion of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, everyone got together after and was given a week-long period to “do whatever they wanted.” As such, you can see some of the totally awesome ideas that the people at Bethesda have.

and more »

[This game profile from the currently in-progress Indie Royale Valentine's Bundle was originally written by Colin Brown of Backlog Journey.]

MagicalTimeBean has been getting a lot of accolades for XBLIG hit Escape Goat (speaking of which, let's get a PC version of that, Indie Royale), but they have a few other titles under their belt. Soulcaster is the illustrious world PC premiere in this package making its way over from the wild wild west that is Xbox Live Indie Games, and let me just say that I'm glad it made it.

The game is a neat fusion of dungeon crawling bits, roguelike elements and tower defence with cool retro graphics and a very good soundtrack. You are a wizard, but not just a regular wizard: you're a Soulcaster! Your wizard comes across the spirits of three long dead adventurers, and using your magic you can summon copies of them to protect yourself from the hordes of undead. In layman's terms, you run around the map with a limited number of available units (up to five) and try to keep the enemies from attacking you by blocking off chokepoints and setting up defensive perimeters.

There are three adventurers, each with their role along with a slew of pros and cons. You have the archer, who fires in a straight line and does the most damage, the warrior, who does low damage but can be used to block hallways, and the bomber, who does area damage but is weaker overall. It's probably a good thing there are only three units, because each one has a ton of conditional elements and weaknesses. The archer cannot fire over obstacles and allies, the warrior dies very quickly when surrounded and the bomber explodes on death, damaging enemies and allies alike. Add in a bunch of colour coded enemies that can counter your units, and you have a simple to learn but deeply sophisticated basis for gameplay.


Each level is littered with enemy spawns and obvious choke points, but the game requires you to think on your toes. Enemies will often ambush you, and occasionally the entire level conspires against you by shifting the layout (this is much more prominent in part 2, but still shows up in the first game). You'll definitely have to rework your layout on the fly, returning your souls and replacing them as needed to keep from being attacked. Your copies can also be attacked, but on death they simply return to your pool after a nominal delay. It's hectic and chaotic, and the best laid plans often go awry leading to tense moments when you attempt to regain control. Also mixed into the level is various potions and emergency AOE scrolls, as well as bags of gold and a merchant who levels up your dead adventurers' gear and also really seems to be into powermetal.

It's a really unique style of gameplay, and I have to say I have not seen anything similar before so major credit is due to MagicalTimeBean. The only minor complaint I have is the lack of control over the order your summons are recalled; often I would want to replace my archer with a bomber, but pressing the R key recalls my first summon, which is the warrior standing between me and the horde of undead rodents eyeing my brains like an overripe lump of gouda. You can usually overcome this limitation by planning the order you summon your fellows in, but some kind of control over recalling your dead pals would have made things a little easier to manage.


Soulcaster II is also included in Indie Royale Valentine's Bundle, so I should touch on that. It's not a lot different from the first title, to be honest, with new enemies, new locales, new levels and tweaked graphics. The engine is mostly the same on the surface, but the level design is even more devious and tricksy in terms of ambushes. Essentially it's a part two of the same game, but it adds a lot of extra maps to extend the fun. Genuinely unique mechanics, cool retro graphics and tons of tricky maps to get through. It's a great title, and I would probably say my pick for highlight of the bundle. Don't ignore it just because it's not on Steam, folks. It's quite a gem.

[The Indie Royale Valentine's Bundle, co-created by IndieGames.com and including this game, is available now at the official website - go check it out!]

[This game profile from the currently in-progress Indie Royale Valentine's Bundle was originally written by Colin Brown of Backlog Journey.]

Zeno Clash is weird. If I ever needed to review the game in four words and a number or less, I would have to go with "Half Life 2 on acid" and be done with it. I was even ready to dismiss the game right away; my dislike of non-Valve Source games has been well documented on my own blog before and I was expecting just another product that feels too much like a mod. Boy was I ever mistaken. Zeno Clash might run on the Source engine, but it's about as far from a traditional Source shooter as possible.

Zeno Clash is the first game from ACE Team, the fellows behind the delightful Rock of Ages, and it's a first person punching... thingy. Sure there are weapons and you can occasionally play the game as a regular old first person shooter, but sooner or later you'll get a stout headbutt, drop your piece and find yourself relying on your two best friends Law and Order. Righty and Mr. Lefts. Pride and Prejudice. Shock and Awe. I think I could do this all day, but I'll save you the anguish.

Anyway, the name of the combat game is punching, and it's incredibly fluid and surprisingly intuitive. You lock on to your enemy with the E key, and then let loose your fists of fury. You can dodge, block, charge forward, throw a haymaker or anything else using a combination of movement and attack keys. Moving the mouse can help you glance other enemies, which can be swapped to with the tap of a key. Combat basically revolves around knocking down enemies to keep them out of your hair, and then swapping to a new target while they recover. It's really fantastic, and I was quite surprised about how well the melee combat is pulled off. First person melee games like Skyrim should be taking serious notes.

But right, I mentioned acid and I mean it. The setting is Dali levels of nuttiness, with grotesque creatures and surreal architecture. The weapons are all based on real world analogues, but completely redesigned in the most bizarre way possible to suit the primitive world. To make sure you don't have a single leg to stand on, the game makes sure to throw you immediately in the deep end in terms of plot and backstory. But the presentation is very professional, with the traditional Source focus on great character models and fluid physics, plus fairly decent voice acting to boot. It sure does leave an impression as one of the most unique settings featured in a game ever. If you can get past the initial weirdness you'll find a game with excellent combat under the endearing surrealism.

[The Indie Royale Valentine's Bundle, co-created by IndieGames.com and including this game, is available now at the official website - go check it out!]

The highly anticipated—and it says a lot that term is being used with a flash game—Super Mario Bros. Crossover 2.0 is available to play now from Jay Pavlina and Exploding Rabbit. More »

North American gamers have been trying since about Friday to win their way into early access to the Mass Effect 3 demo, which begins on Tuesday. European gamers also get a chance with their own Facebook game. More »

No, we are not doing a special Whitney Houston-themed 'Shop Contest, as I threatened. We've got some Gotham City exploitables, courtesy of a viral marketing stunt for the game that released earlier this week, that are just waiting for you to apply some vigilante funny. To the ersatz Batpoles! More »

Nerdook's Super Samurai Sweeper is one of those games you should avoid if you're endeavoring to be productive. Essentially Minesweeper with a twist, Super Samurai Sweeper will have you playing the role of the 'lone-survivor-got-mad-with-a-thirst-for-vengeance'. After watching your village get butchered, you're currently on a quest to kill seven Daimyos and a Shogun. It's a tall order but someone's got to do it.

In spite of how basic it sounds, Super Samurai Sweeper is actually really, really entertaining. In each map, you'll get a Minesweeper-like playing area. Each square you click on may reveal anything from the Daimyo himself to monastries that trigger random events to Mooks (you should beat these up to ensure the final show-down doesn't consist of you, the Daimyo and two hundred of his men) to rice fields that give you HP. On top of all that, you'll also be able to purchase various upgrades using silver and experience points.

It's a pretty good romp and definitely worth checking out. With luck, Nerdook might even come up with a sequel. Play the game here on Kongregate.

Publisher Sega will release a sequel to Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing this holiday season, Kotaku has learned. More »

Good morning and welcome back to Talk Amongst Yourselves, where you may feel free to discuss all topics related to video games. Whitney Houston is not one of them, though I did put out a bounty to find a news obituary that led with her contributions to video games. Outside of the odd song in rhythm games, she made none, as far as I know. More »

After a successful PAX 10 showing, SpikySnail Games had gone missing-in-action for a while. The developers have broken that silence to reveal a new "flip" mechanic to their physics puzzler, The Splatters.

While the flip may look like simple time reversing, it is actually a neat way to redirect or manipulate an object's momentum before the game's physics kick back in. It seems useful for maximizing or honing splatter coverage, which aids in the goal of covering like-colored bombs with goo.

The Splatters (previewed here) was once called Confetti Carnival and was nominated in the 2011 IGF for technical excellence. SpikySnail has been working to deliver The Splatters by Spring on XBLA, but they haven't finalized a release date. The developers have stated that a PC version would come shortly thereafter.

Aside from the flip button being easily accessible, I wonder if touch or mouse controls would be more intuitive for picking the paint balls than the 360 controller. But I'm excited for SpikySnail to enlighten me at GDC 2012.

In 2005 film critic Roger Ebert set off a cyber lucha libre when he declared, “Video games can never be art.” In his own words, “No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of the great poets, filmmakers, and novelists.” Ebert delivered his statement through his Chicago Sun Times blog. Almost immediately, it was countered with a mix of arguments coming from game designers, gamers, critics, and scholars.

First to jump in the ring was game designer Kellee Santiago, who felt that Ebert was out of touch. “It doesn’t seem that Ebert has played many, if any video games. And if that’s the case, then his opinion on the subject isn’t relevant anyways,” claimed Santiago. The two squared off multiple times in the blogosphere with Santiago, concluding that Ebert’s argument was weak because he defined art as, “usually the creation of one artist.” In her Tedx Talk, Santiago cited two examples, “Flower” and “Braid,” as having been created and developed by individuals. In Ebert’s defense, Chris Baker, a blogger for Wired.com wrote, “And no one can say Ebert doesn’t understand or value the open-endedness of games, or the joy of exploring a compelling virtual world.” Baker offers up an example of a 1994 review of the game, Cosmology of Kyoto, where Ebert wrote, “The graphics are hauntingly effective, using a wide-screen landscape format. The individual characters are drawn with vivid facial characteristics, a cross between the cartoons of medieval Japanese art and the exaggerations of modern Japanimation. The speaking voices are filled with personality, often taunting, teasing, or sexy. There is a sense, illusory but seductive, that one could wander this world indefinitely. This is a wonderful game.” So the question was not Ebert’s ability to appreciate games, it had more to do with how he defined art. Ebert’s felt, “Art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist… Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion. Not a smorgasbord of choices.”

Tagged and ready to rumble, Clive Barker, a novelist and video game auteur said, “I think that Roger Ebert’s problem is that he thinks you can’t have art, if there is that amount of malleability in the narrative. In other words, Shakespeare could not have written “Romeo and Juliet’ as a game, because it could have had a happy ending, you know? If only she hadn’t taken the damn poison. If only he’d have gotten there quicker.” Then Ebert got trapped in a corner, when he referenced Andy Warhol. “I mentioned that a Campbell’s soup could be art. I was imprecise. Actually, it is Andy Warhol’s painting of the label that is art. Would Warhol have considered Clive Barker’s video game “Undying” as art? Certainly. He would have kept it in its shrink-wrapped box, placed it inside a Plexiglas display case, mounted it on a pedestal, and labeled it “Video Game.” In his attempt to personalize his attack, Ebert comes across shortsighted by not understanding Warhol’s relation to other twentieth-century artists, such as Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp was part of the Dadaist Movement that had only one rule: Never follow any known rules. Dada was born in Europe in response to the horror of World War I. It was created to promote an emotional reaction from the viewer (typically shock and outrage). In using Warhol as an example Ebert misses the bigger picture. Gaming unlike cinema is still in its early stages of development. The question of whether or not it is truly an art form may be premature. As a whole it reflects the same model as Hollywood with its thirst for popular, blockbuster-like titles. But very similar to independent film it is beginning to exhibit more sophisticated storylines and concepts that fully exploit the interactive medium. In recognition of this trend, the British author, journalist and critic Steven Pool writes, “A beautifully designed videogame invokes wonder as the fine arts do, only in a uniquely kinetic way. Because the videogame must move, it cannot offer the lapidary balance of composition that we value in painting; on the other hand, because it can move, it is a way to experience architecture, and more than that to create it, in a way which photographs or drawings can never compete. If architecture is frozen music, then a videogame is liquid architecture.”

It’s been seven years since Roger Ebert’s stated that, “Video games can never be art.” Huge things have happened since then. For example, in 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court recognized video games as art. According to the ruling, “They deserve the same First Amendment protections as books, comics, plays and all the rest.” This year, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art will open an exhibit titled, “The Art of Video Games.” Chris Melissinos, the curator believes that, “The responsibility of this exhibition is to enlighten and inform in terms of what games really are.” Visitors will get to play video games while looking at them through a historical platform. To add another dimension to the exhibit, the Smithsonian selected their games by launching an “Art of Video Games Voting Site.” Participants were offered a chance to vote for 80 games from a pool of 240 proposed choices in various categories. The show will span many eras from Pac-Man to Flower and everything in-between. Will this exhibit set the record straight once and for all? Perhaps it will, but what has become evident is that when it comes to art and in this case gaming, “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.”

Works Cited

“The Art of Video Games.” American Art. Web. 06 Feb. 2012. <http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/games/winninggames/>.

Baker, Chris. “Roger Ebert, Game Reviewer | Game|Life | Wired.com.” Wired.com. Web. 06 Feb. 2012. <http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2007/07/roger-ebert-g-1/>.

“Clive Barker’s Undying – GameSpot.com.” Video Games, Video Game Reviews – GameSpot. Web. 06 Feb. 2012. <http://www.gamespot.com/clive-barkers-undying/>.

“Faster Forward – A Conversation with Video Game Exhibition Curator Chris Melissinos.” Blogs & Columns, Blog Directory – The Washington Post. Web. 06 Feb. 2012. <http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2011/02/qa_with_video_game_exhibition.html>.

Poole, Steven. Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution. New York: Arcade Pub., 2000. Print.

“Roger Ebert’s Journal.” Chicago Sun-Times Blogs. Web. 06 Feb. 2012. <http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/>.

“TEDxUSC – Kellee Santiago – 3/23/09 – YouTube.” YouTube – Broadcast Yourself. Web. 06 Feb. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9y6MYDSAww>.

“Thatgamecompany | TGC » Kellee Santiago.” Thatgamecompany | TGC. Web. 06 Feb. 2012. <http://thatgamecompany.com/about/kellee-santiago/>.

“Why Video Games Are Indeed Art – Our Far-flung Correspondents.” Chicago Sun-Times Blogs. Web. 06 Feb. 2012. <http://blogs.suntimes.com/foreignc/2011/04/video-games-are-art.html>.

Welcome to your Sunday read of the week's best in web comics. Make sure to click on the expand button in the bottom right to enlarge each comic. More »