Two astronauts are dead. And they represent one of my greatest achievements in a video game.
Of course it's terrible that the two Kerbals--an entire species of little green alien men who feel like an unholy combination of the Minions from Despicable Me and the Irken race from Invader Zim--are dead. I managed to keep them alive through disaster after disaster, spending hours ensuring to their survival in the cold black of space. Test missions were flown; probes collected scientific data; rockets would refuse to leave the ground and would explode or launch and then immediately tip over because the balance was wrong. These two died based on the collective knowledge of a thousand failures. And it was beautiful because they died crashing into the Moon.
Sorry, the Mun.
It doesn't really cover it to say that Kerbal Space Program is a space sim. For one thing, no matter how serious things get, you're still playing in a world of little green cartoons, which the game never really reconciles with its overwhelming physical realism the further along you go. But for all the things that feel brain-bending and sciencey, there's still a mild sense of approachability, like the fact that trying to plot a flight path that puts you in orbit with a different planet is essentially a really touchy and precise game of Bop It. The game surpasses that categorization because of that sense of constant discovery and innovation. Making a mistake never felt like a punishment, as if the game had placed an insurmountable obstacle in front of me and laughed as I flailed wildly at it. It felt like growth. Failure is a teacher here, one that challenges you and doesn't compromise by handing you all the answers. But it is most certainly a teacher that wants nothing more than for you to find enlightenment.
You will fail at this game. It will demoralize you and it will stress you out, but, more often than not, it will soothe, quiet, and inspire you. Innovative muscles will be stretched here that aren't stretched very often by games, and more complex moments require a sort of zen beyond being simply twitch-ready for a surprise attack. Even failure imparts a lesson. No matter how big or small the achievement, anything else that can be done is limited only by your imagination. Even with its cartoonish humor and quirks, Kerbal Space Program has an almost sacred respect for the tiny miracles involved in space travel, and even at its most difficult, it deserves that respect in return.
PT has been taken off the PlayStation Network. But it's only one of thousands of games that will be lost to time unless copyright law changes. Danny travels to the Oakland Museum of Arts and Digital Entertainment to uncover the sad, legal truths restricting game preservation.
Build your vocabulary and your putting skills with Vertiginous Golf. This sports game might be one of the most awkwardly titled releases of all time, but its bizarre blend of steampunk and mini-golf adds up to an experience that is almost as appealing as it is peculiar. The developers have created something truly unique here, mashing together the world's greatest first-date sport with steampunk Victoriana so that you can putt to your heart's content on courses in the clouds. And it all works, with the bizarre background and the elaborate design of the courses turning a familiar and predictable sport into something new and intriguing.
Floating islands high in the sky is the domain of Vertiginous Golf. The game is set in an alternate dimension where the upper crust dwell in a pristine cloud city called New Lun-donne while the plebs get by far below in the polluted burg of Scudborough. One of the only joys of being down on Earth is being able to hook up to a virtual reality gadget that uses electrical blasts to fire this vertigo-inducing golf game straight into your head. Gameplay itself, however, is grounded with rules that include fairly typical golf stroke play, speed rounds, arenas, and a driving range. Multiplayer support is offered both locally and over the net, although the empty servers sure seem to indicate that virtually nobody is playing the game online.
Story mode courses in Vertiginous Golf don’t add much to gameplay...though they sure do bring the weird
No tour or career mode means that all matches are one-offs, and the three-course story mode telling the tale of a society revolt in Victrola-played snippets is a poor substitute. While these courses are spectacularly hard (it took me close to 100 shots to beat one of them on my first try), the dialogue is made up of annoying Clockwork Orange-styled future slang and sci-fi claptrap that's impossible to follow. Nothing you do on the greens affects the plot spinning away in the background, either, so forget about starting the revolution with a cool hole-in-one.
Only the cash made on each hole serves to tie things together, as it accumulates steadily regardless of the mode of play. These purses can be used to buy smart-looking clubs and clothes, although both are of questionable value. The clubs don't seem to improve your skills and the clothing is only visible when you're first sliding into the virtual reality machine, as the game is played with a first-person camera where all you can see on-screen is a floating club.
Its bizarre blend of steampunk and mini-golf adds up to an experience that is almost as appealing as it is peculiar.
All this trial and error can be frustrating, and I initially felt like I was being cheated. But the sheer necessity of learning holes also pumped up the replay value, as I kept going back for more. Such intense early difficulty pushed me to better my scores. I particularly enjoyed the speed rounds and the driving range for their many challenges, which made them feel as much like logic puzzles as mini-golf. Discovering smart routes to pins and then actually pulling them off was incredibly satisfying.
A few problems are caused by the visuals and the controls. The camera can be very awkward to maneuver, mainly when you're close to the cup, as these areas are often enclosed. Shooting with the ball up against a grilled glass wall can be nearly impossible simply because you can’t get a good look at the hole. Controls are a little lacking in finesse, no matter if you use the mouse, keyboard, or gamepad. Instead of the expected light touch, the club pulls back in a somewhat jerky fashion. As a result, it is all too easy to fire a rocket when you want a gentle tap. In-game physics are very rigorous at the cup, too. Any ball moving a touch too fast will skip past the hole, and balls only rarely grab the lip and roll in as they will in real golf.
I'm not sure how big the audience for dystopian steampunk mini-putt in the sky is. But if you've got a hankering to see what fictional high-tech Victorians would do with this staple of modern amusement parks, you can find out with the oddly captivating Vertiginous Golf. Its puzzling, challenging, and deeply weird characteristics make for a unique and engaging experience that brings new life to the staidest of sports.
You’d think that being alone and adrift in outer space, with neither a ship nor a way to communicate with civilization, would be a slow affair (and almost certainly lead to a depressing death). You might expect to gradually float through the void, pondering your life choices as you starve to death. According to Lost Orbit, however, you can make it home in one piece as long as you hurtle past asteroids, orbit some planets, avoid some lasers, and make a robot friend along the way.
You are Harrison, a maintenance worker sent out alone to repair a comm relay far from civilization. While making the repairs, your ship blows up, leaving you with nothing but a spacesuit that evidently has an infinite supply of thruster fuel. At first glance, Lost Orbit resembles an old-school arcade shoot-em-up. You can only move left and right at the bottom of the screen as the action automatically scrolls forward. The biggest difference, though, is that there is no shooting here, only dodging. You want a high score at the end of a level? Then you're going to have to dodge stuff while moving really fast.
Space into dreams.
The breakneck speeds you can reach in Lost Orbit evoke some of the same excitement you might get from a fast, arcade-style racing game. Boosting and zig-zagging your way through clumps of asteroids and other obstacles isn't too different from weaving through traffic in a game like , have spoiled us with their instant restart abilities.
Due in part to its brevity, Lost Orbit isn't the most memorable of adventures. You barrel through its levels quickly, and unless you want to try for faster time trial scores, there's not a lot to come back for. Still, the rush of speed and the simple charms of the animation and narration make this game a blast while it lasts.
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The new Assassin's Creed game set to be revealed next week is entitled Assassin's Creed: Syndicate and stars an assassin named Jacob Frye, according to promotional material leaked to that track with a game set during the Industrial Revolution, but specific story details and even the title remain unofficial.
Koji Igarashi's long-running involvement with the series where various game developers share their thoughts while playing games they either love and/or worked on, Igarashi--also known as IGA--sat down for some time with SotN. He's joined by Double Fine senior gameplay programmer Anna Kipnis, who describes SotN as her favorite game of all-time. The two take turns playing while Igarashi offers various thoughts over the course of two-plus hours.
Igarashi went on to contribute to more than a dozen other Castlevania games. He's currently working for Japanese company ArtPlay, which he says is trying to "create new experiences for mobile and consumer devices."
Sega today announced vague plans to pull certain mobile games that no longer meet its standards, though it isn't saying which games will be affected.
"At Sega we are committed to making fun, high-quality mobile games and it is with our fans' best playing experience in mind that we announce the removal of a number of games from our back catalog," Sega said in a post on its ).