Having picked up the Orange Box late last week, I finally got a chance to play through Portal this weekend. Despite its brevity (3-4 hours for the main story), I can say with conviction that it will be remembered as a classic for years to come.
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Portal · Xbox 360
A friend of mine from work got Joystiq’d today. In his free time, Renaud is the lead programmer for a game called Fez, a platformer game being developed by Kokoromi Collective, which is also entered in this year’s Independent Games Festival.
Having tried the beta firsthand, I think the game will be a strong contender. Similar 2D/3D mechanics have been explored in games like Super Paper Mario and Crush, but Fez has enough interesting twists to be original in its own right. The graphics are vibrant and have an Earthbound-like quality to them, accentuated by the intentional 8-bit look. Furthermore, the physics for jumping are as tight as any Mario game, which is essential in a platformer.
Best of luck to Renaud and Phil Fish in the IGF!
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Rainy Woods has been described as “Silent Hill meets Twin Peaks”, but it reminds me of the film Se7en more than anything. Either way it looks fantastic, I’ll be looking forward to this next year.
On a slight tangent, not only does the Orange Box come out this week, but it seems that Puzzle Quest is set to arrive on XBLA on Wednesday as well. With today being a holiday, this is shaping up to be one fantastic week. Happy turkey day, fellow Canucks!
All the hype and anti-hype about Halo 3 left a sour taste in my mouth and made me question whether or not I should bother writing anything about the game. While it certainly doesn’t deserve the release madness it has created, the fact is that Halo 3 is a very solid FPS with extremely refined balance and great production value. Taken objectively without the fanboy hype, the game is just good fun.
Considering the name of the site, it seemed oddly appropriate to post this video. Everything you see is true to life: we engineers frequently sit and play guitar in the middle of battlefields, and we most definitely wear orange helmets at all times. If you haven’t been following the amusing character profiles, you should also check out Meet the Heavy and Meet the Soldier. The cartoon-like visual style is really striking; I’m really hoping that the light-hearted approach translates into the actual game.
These videos are promos for Valve’s Orange Box video game compilation, set to be released on October 10th. The set is a bargain, including Half-Life 2, Episodes 1 and 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal for the price of one regular game. Furthermore, if you pre-order the game off Steam then you’ll not only get into the TF2 beta, but also get Orange Box themed Peggle Extreme (pictured above)!
Update: Rock, Paper Shotgun has been doing a really great 9 part series detailing each class in TF2. If you’re beta-less like me, this might help tide you over.
