The GameShadow Blog

Audiosurf is a big name in indie circles, and soon it’ll be a big name everywhere - it was released this weekend for just $9.95, which, frankly, is insultingly cheap.

Audiosurf dynamically converts mp3s into race courses, the rhythm of the music controlling the dips, twists and turns in the course. You then race the course, hitting coloured power-ups in time to the music in the background, competing for online high scores. That doesn’t really do it justice - this is a whole new way to interact with your music.

What’s more, the game’s actually incredibly strong. It will work with pretty much any mp3 - which means Guitar Hero is finally pipped for ‘best music game’ - and the framework around the game is second to none. Upload high scores, compare them with locals, go for achievements… everything you’d want is here.

At under five quid from Steam, there’s just no excuse. Do it, now. You won’t regret it (until you realise you’ve spent all day playing it).

http://www.audio-surf.com/

Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, made infamous for his ridiculing, fast paced video reviews, has a huge back catalogue of reviews, articles and… games over at his fullyramblomatic.com website.

Of all his games, Trilby is one of the best, and most accessible - ie it doesn’t involve trolling through reams and reams of text. It’s a retro 2D stealth game, and completely free. Well worth the download.

Ron Gilbert announced on his blog yesterday that his upcoming comic adventure, DeathSpank, would be published by Hothead Games, with Gilbert also becoming a Creative Director at the company.

As yet, there’s little info about the game, beyond the fact that, after a fifteen year break from adventure games - during which he produced adventures for kids, Total Annihilation, and most recently the upcoming Penny Arcade game - Gilbert is coming back with a vengeance.

The game is described as a cross between Monkey Island and Diablo, and follows the exploits of DeathSpank, a comic character brought to life on Gilbert’s GrumpyGamer blog - which, incidentally, is the best place to get more info.

I’ll never cease to be impressed with the community following Portal has garnered in the short time since its release. User-made maps were always a given, but the wealth of goodwill and talent that’s seen plush companion cubes, Half-Life 2 mods and cut-out paper models rise in its wake is fantastic to be a part of.

The latest is Portal: The Flash Version.

It’s 2D Portal in your web browser. What more needs saying?

Experience 112 looks exciting. Genuinely exciting.

It’s another in a recent spate of European games that take the adventure genre into new territory. It’s developed by Lexis Numerique (very French website alert), the team behind In Memoriam. What do you mean, you’ve never heard of it? Fine, it was an alternate reality puzzle game, and one of the first to really enter the PC gaming arena.

Experience 112 positions the player as one of two survivors in a mysterious facility. The objective is to guide Lea, the other survivor, through the complex, and to discover what’s going on. Pretty standard.

The twist is that all interaction is via the facility’s security system. The player character is never on screen, instead, your PC is the player character. By manipulating security cameras, door locks and communicating with Lea, you guide her progress through the levels, watching it on the camera.

The game’s due out sometime in December, and there’s a new trailer explaining what’s so special about it far more eloquently than I can.

At his Montreal Game Summit keynote, Jonathon Blow (the one man band behind 2008’s time-warping platformer, Braid) has railed at the McDonalds-esque game design in MMOs and in Bioshock.

“MMOs have empty gameplay, but keep players hooked with constant fake rewards,” said Blow. His concern is that, like fast food, MMOs are empty, and ‘nutritionally’ bereft - they’re a shallow, meaningless experience that nonetheless becomes addictive, resulting in a poor quality of life for its players.

He pointed out how McDonalds has faced criticism from commentators, and that World of Warcraft’s method of teaching players about routine was similar and “akin to advertising”.

And he’s completely right. MMOs have no soul. They thrive on just two things: social networking (something Facebook does better), and constant reward. Few players ever take the time to realise how empty these rewards are. What value does the +3 sword have in the real world? The difference between game design in MMORPGs and traditional RPGs is vast - Knights of the Old Republic 2 has strongly tactical combat, and a rich, meaningful storyline. WoW has XP grind and not much more - just enough to keep players playing.

I take issue with MMORPGs for a different reason to Braid, though. He’s concerned about the social impact of these games on their players - but if players really want to waste their lives, then so be it. I’m just more worried that if designers can get away with bland gameplay like this - and come out with one of the most successful games of all time - then what future is there for games with genuine depth?

Blow also took issue with the hype surrounding Bioshock, claiming that despite wide praise, the game “sucks” and that “the designers of this game are trying to manipulate your emotions in a clumsy way. BioShock claims to be about altruism and humanity but what it really teaches you is how to headshot someone from as far away as possible. It’s a very weird game that we couldn’t proffer as an example to normal humans.”

I don’t know how he does it, but he’s bang on again. Yes Bioshock is pretty, yes it’s partly inspired by an obscure Russian-American philosopher, no, it’s not really doing anything all that special. And the twist was average in the extreme.

I don’t know if Braid will be the game to reverse these trends - while it looks great, it doesn’t look all that unique to me - next year will tell.

In a recent post on his own blog, celebrity indie developer Jeff Minter has hit out against the Xbox Live consumers.

“Not seeing a lot of reason to continue even trying to make games, at this point, when a remake of Frogger, one of the worst games in the history of old arcade games, can outsell Space Giraffe that we put so much love and effort into, by more than ten to one, in one week.”

“OK, we get the message. All you want on that channel is remakes of old, shite arcade games and crap you vaguely remember playing on your Amiga.”

“We’ll shut up trying to do anything new then.”

“Sorry for even trying.”

It’s easy to see why he’d be upset - very easy. While he’s clearly striking out at the wrong people - it’s not the fans or the core gamers that aren’t buying his product, it’s the uninformed casual market that’s hoovering up Frogger - it raises the larger issue of poorly-made games selling well.

I haven’t played Space Giraffe - though after this it’s on my to do list - so I don’t know whether his outburst is justified or not. His later posts suggest he’s turned back to development, but remains resentful, but they don’t address the key issue.

Crappy games sell, and the people who can distinguish between quality and pap before making their purchases are too few and far between. That’s true of all artistic industries - but crucially, gaming hasn’t worked out a way to support the quality material in addition to the lowest common denominator stuff.