VentureBeat » Portal 2

Quick-time events are holding back the development of video game storytelling

Community Writer — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 02:55:04 +0000

All right, quick-time events. You’ve served your purpose. Please exit the premises, or I’ll have you tased. Yes, that means now. Yes, Tasers hurt. A lot. How do I know? Well, I’ll tell you this: Never take your pants off when you’re — wait a minute; quit stalling. And stop crying. You’re embarrassing yourself. Look, you’ve had a good run, but let’s face it: You were a stopgap at best. No, you don’t get a severance package. Stop giving me the finger; it’s juvenile.

Best I can tell, game designers have used quick-time events in the same way that rednecks use duct tape. They asked themselves how they could best convey complex in-game cinematic moments in a way that still engages the player, and (after three beers and a hearty shrug) decided that a series of predetermined button presses at just the right moment could hold the whole thing together while they waited for a part to come in the mail.

Unfortunately, it took over a decade to get the part, and in the meantime, they had company over and had to make the duct tape look attractive, so they decided to draw some designs on it. Then they forgot it was there for a while, and by the time the part showed up, they’d already started doing meth and had completely forgotten what the damn thing was for and — OK, this metaphor seems to be getting away from me. Let’s take a step back.

I don’t know that quick-time events were ever intended to be a permanent solution, but they’ve certainly become pervasive. If you have a narrative-heavy video game, then by god you’re going to have some quick-time events. How else are players supposed to feel like they’re part of an interactive storytelling experience? Actually control it? Madness.

Not that we can really blame game designers. They’ve been grappling with the magnificence of their own creation. Utilizing a relatively new artistic medium to tell stories in ways never before told isn’t exactly a precise science. As graphics, physics, story quality, acting, control, and every other aspect of game creation has improved and evolved over the past decade, the delivery method for these cinematic moments has remained decidedly unchanged.

My reaction to quick-time events in modern games is akin to watching a prerendered trailer. The hero does amazing things that I’m completely incapable of doing once it’s my turn to guide the action. This disappointment was one of the very reasons I joined the masses in uproarious applause after seeing the first demo of Watch Dogs last May. I knew it was gameplay all along, but it wasn’t until the protagonist entered a car and sped off into the night that I realized Watch Dogs was a sandbox game. At any point the player could have veered off in a completely different direction, handling the presented situation in her own way. The inherent cinematic elements of the game would then turn those choices into something amazing.

Source: Sega AM2

More amazing than dodging cardboard boxes by pressing “A”? Witchcraft!

Time is eventually going to make a fool of quick-time events (there’s a really bad pun in there somewhere). They served their purpose for a while, sure, but we seem to have broken through the barrier that was preventing us from experiencing in-game narrative in a truly unique way. We’ll have it all: The cinematic benefits of quick-time-event-driven experiences like Uncharted or Heavy Rain and the gameplay mechanics of a sandbox title. No more strings to hold us up. The player is left in complete control of the cinematic aspects of gameplay. The story will be written for us, but the nature and quality of the action will be a direct product of our play style.

And that would seem to be rub, wouldn’t it? To break the chains of Hollywood’s linear storytelling guidelines while utilizing its refined means of character conveyance. The story must be told to us, but we must simultaneously tell ourselves the story. We must control the actions and decisions of the character but not in such a way that completely derails a well-crafted tale.

Or at least be tricked into thinking that we’re in control.

In February, Gabe Newell took to the stage with J.J. Abrams to discuss methods of storytelling in film and video games. In the midst of some awkward scripting, bad jokes, and clips of movies that everyone has seen and games everyone has played, there was one absolutely brilliant insight from Gabe Newell in regards to Portal 2.

We had to spend a bunch of time with the Portal 2 ending … to the point where not only did it seem possible that you could to shoot a portal to the moon but [that] it was the obvious choice, and yet the player felt incredibly creative for coming up with that as a solution … . When players are constantly trying to optimize, we give them a focus that allows them to isolate on the variable that we want them to optimize.

I felt clever when I shot that portal to the moon. There was no other decision to make, but for some reason it was my decision. Though, I do like Newell’s use of the word “allow” when speaking of manipulative methods of controlling the player’s decisions — quietly making us tell Portal 2′s story with our own hands. Still, this is a beautifully conceived, brilliantly executed replacement mechanism for the shoehorned monstrosity that is the quick-time event.

Source: Forbes

You magnificent bastard.

Part of me can envision a world in which quick-time events still have their place. A world in which the iPhone generation saddles its withered, girdled frame to a dusty old 3D TV in the game room next to the ping-pong table and mindlessly presses square, triangle, circle, or x while they wait for that hot nurse to bring them their meds. They hope that their grandkids are coming for a visit today, but a combination of dementia and — “Ooh, look at that Nathan Drake and his toned buttox! Hey, Skyler! You remember the good old days when games were really games and not these brain-operated whatevs that the kids are using these days? Lawl!” Then their colostomy bag bursts. And while that might sound a little depressing, fret not: It’s pizza day in the commissary!

I just made myself sad. I’m going to go do something youthful and reckless while I play with my smart phone.

Filed under: Games

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GamesBeat weekly roundup: THQ asset auction, Legend of Zelda in HD, and Atari is bankrupt

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:30:37 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, THQ’s assets went up for auction, leaving Darksiders and its developer Vigil Games without a parent company. Nintendo threw a mini-E3 announcement revealing Wii U updates and an HD remake of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, and the long-troubled Atari files for bankruptcy protection.

You’ll also find reviews for Tokyo Crash Mobs and The Cave, as well as previews for Phone Fight and Dead Space 3.

News:

Mobile News:

Interviews:

Previews:

Reviews:

Community Spotlight:

Pieces of Flair:

Filed under: Games

The GLaDOS recruitment agency: Using Portal 2 to find employees

Dan Crawley — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 21:13:13 +0000

San-Francisco based startup WibiData is gamifying its recruitment process by using a modified version of the puzzle game Portal 2 to help find new employees.

Any software engineers wanting to join WibiData’s 22 employee roster must first steer their way through five custom-made test chambers housed beneath a virtual reconstruction of the company’s offices, as reports the New York Times. Level designer and modder Doug Hoogland, a computer science major with aspirations of working for Portal publisher Valve, flew to San Francisco for the architectural plans of the space before going on to create the WibiPortal experience.

Potential applicants are tasked with recovering a lost PIN for the WibiData website in the mod, but they must cope with a sinister, and potentially malfunctioning, A.I. while doing so.

The backstory for the mod maintains the same playful, Machiavellian spirit of the original Portal 2 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. “Unfortunately, I’m a little booked right now, what with the new recruiting website A.I. acting buggy and trying to kill the new applicants,” reads a fake e-mail on the WibiData’s website. “The automated PIN recovery system should be almost working; the fatality rate is down to 92 percent. If your day is booked putting our logo on a new T-shirt or something, ask the new hire for help.”

The A.I. in the game, which sounds a lot like GLaDOS (the A.I. from the original Portal and Portal 2 games), greets players by saying: “Hello, and welcome to the WibiData offices. Oh, you again. I thought you were dead. Continue testing now.”

Christophe Bisciglia, WibiData’s chief executive officer, got the idea for the project after seeing an in-game marriage proposal that Hoogland had previously created for a Portal 2 fan.

“It makes me feel like I exercise the same part of my brain that programming and problem-solving does,” Bisciglia said of Portal 2 in an interview with the Times. “I think a lot of people will think, ‘That’s really cool that they created a video game to recruit people. I want to work there.”

You can download the WibiPortal mod directly from WibiData website. The trailer for the mod is below:

[Game images via rocketrascal64/YouTube. Featured image via pasukaru76/Flickr]

Filed under: Games

ROUNDTABLE’D! Game characters solve violence in video games!

Rus McLaughlin — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 17:00:49 +0000

Once again, we turn to our expert group of video game characters to bring peace to the land!

Guns! Guns! Guns! If you aren’t clinging to them and your religion, you’re beating them into plowshares. But the recent spate of mass shootings has everyone looking for a simple, understandable root cause. Spoiler: It’s video games. Duh! Regardless, Vice President “Joltin’” Joe Biden told Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello that the game industry has “not been singled out” for blame … because they’re nailing everybody to the wall! Just days later, President Obama asked Congress for $10 million to fund research into the long-term effects of violent television, movies, and games on young, impressionable minds.

Well, we’re here to help. And because Mr. TV gave us short attention spans, we’re going to skip the research and go straight to the answers. What say you, panel of experts? What can we do about violence in video games?

Launch the gallery and be enlightened!

Filed under: Games

Video game characters modeled after famous people (gallery)

Samir Torres — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 18:00:28 +0000

Games don’t have to be based on movies or sports teams to feature real humans. As 3D rendering technology advances, more and more developers turn to flesh-and-bone actors, and models to give life to their protagonists and antagonists.

In the case of Far Cry 3′s Vaas Montenegro (top image), Ubisoft hired Canadian actor Michael Mando to portray, voice, and provide motion capture for the sadistic madman as well as star in promotional material. Vaas’s appearance (combined with Mando’s performance) give the title an extra layer of realism.

I made a list of 20 celebrity sightings in modern video games with side-to-side images of their in-game models next to their real faces. Hover the cursor over the image below to launch the gallery.

Filed under: Games

The funniest Achievements and Trophies ever, part one: Failures

Evan Killham — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 19:00:28 +0000

Whether or not you care about your total Xbox 360 Gamerscore or that weird “levels” thing that PlayStation 3 Trophies add up to, it’s nice to know that some developers take a little extra time to try to make their virtual awards for performing in-game tasks entertaining. This week, we’re showcasing some of the funniest imaginary prizes in video games.

Today, I’m looking at some rewards that may not technically be rewards by any reasonable definition. These Achievements and Trophies feature failure, whether on your part or someone else’s.

The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai — “The Peter Moore Achievement”
Value: 8G
“Pay homage to one of our generation’s greatest rock performances ever.”

The press briefings at the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show always generate some genuinely awkward moments. When Microsoft’s then-vice president of Interactive Entertainment Business strapped on a plastic guitar to help developer Harmonix reveal its music game Rock Band at E3 2007, he continued the time-honored tradition of people in suits embarrassing themselves onstage.

The relevant incident comes at the 2:30 mark in the above video, when Moore brings the demo to an abrupt stop by accidentally pausing the game. Two years later, developer Ska Studios commemorated this moment in its Xbox Live Arcade beat ‘em up The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai. The title includes a guitar-solo rhythm minigame in which you must push buttons in time to score points. Pressing the Guide button on your controller during one of these sequences will pause the game, unlock the Achievement, and ruin that whole “ending in zero or five” thing your Gamerscore had going on.

NBA Jam — “Too Late”
Value: 20G/Silver Trophy
“Go up for a game winning dunk, only to have time expire while in mid-air.”

Achievements and Trophies often serve to reward excellent timing and impressive feats. NBA Jam’s “Too Late” celebrates both, but in an “Opposite Day” kind of way. As if it wasn’t enough to require you to lose to get your 20 points or Silver Trophy, this “award” also demands that you spend the entire game setting yourself up so that you’re behind by exactly one point, getting into a position to even attempt the game-winning dunk, and then timing it accordingly. It’s probably easier if you play in multiplayer, but that’s still a ridiculous amount of prep work just to lose.

Akai Katana Shin — “UUUURRRRGGGH”
Value: 5G
“Died immediately after starting the game.”

The nature of the bullet-hell genre demands that you will die a lot. Developer CAVE takes this premise to ridiculous levels for this Achievement for the Xbox Live Arcade port of its arcade shootsploder. You know you’re going to die, anyway, so why not get it out of the way at the start? Your Gamerscore will thank you a little. “UUUURRRRGGGH” also makes this list for having one of the funniest, most on-the-nose names of any Achievement I’ve ever seen.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 — “Afraid of the Dark”
Value: 10G
“Get the ball within a few inches from the hole without sinking it.”

While “Too Late” awards you for setting yourself up for a very specific kind of failure, Tiger Woods 09′s “Afraid of the Dark” Achievement throws some pity points at you for almost succeeding. You might have seen one of these scenarios play out in real life: The golfer makes a few dozen phantom putts before taking his shot for real, the ball rolls toward the hole, and it’s a special event indeed when a guy is standing there to lift out the flag to clear up all the space that the ball is surely going to need. And then … nothing. The ball stops short, and that poor fellow is just standing there holding the flag and exchanging looks with the crestfallen golfer that say, “We did not anticipate this at all.” It’s a strangely satisfying moment, provided it’s not happening to you, and you’re kind of an asshole.

This Achievement wins bonus points for trying to play it off all cool, like it’s the ball’s fault it didn’t go in.

Hybrid — “Cool Story Bro”
Value: 10G
“Get executed by an enemy Preyon while using Taunt.”

The Taunt feature is one of those weird things that pop up in a lot of games and make no sense. Presumably, it’s designed for players for whom yelling at polygons from their couch is not enough; they also have to know that those polygons realize that someone is mocking them. With a finite amount of controller buttons available to developers, it’s interesting that anyone would decide to dedicate an input to something that serves no tactical purpose and actually does not hurt your enemy’s feelings because they’re only so much data and do not understand our human emotions.

Developer 5th Cell’s (maker of Scribblenauts) Hybrid is a multiplayer shooter, which is one of the few genres in which a Taunt function makes sense — although that doesn’t necessarily make it any less sad to imagine in practice. Even more puzzling: Taunting in Hybrid is an ability that takes up space in your loadout that you might use for something else that could, perhaps, actually help your team win. To earn these 10 points, you have to fall victim to a Preyon while Taunting. Preyons are A.I.-controlled robotic ninjas that automatically seek out and kill the closest enemy player — basically, this game’s version of the Mario Kart series’ Blue Shell, only more ninja-like and stabbier. Like “Too Late,” this Achievement requires a Perfect Storm of fail.

Hasbro Family Game Night — “Enough Already!”
Value: 10G
“Shook the Boggle box for longer than 10 seconds.”

Say what you will about video games based on board games; sometimes they just get it. Take “Enough Already!” in developer Electronic Arts’ Family Game Night, which, like the Yahtzee Cup Slam or the “This is why we never play Monopoly” fist fight, celebrates a universally known part of playing these games. This Achievement simulates playing with the interminable box shaker, a Boggle player so earnest and determined that they rattle those little dice around like they will be able to force them into cooperation through sheer violent will. But the game is on to you, box shaker, and neither it nor the people around you will stand for it.

Portal 2 — “Pit Boss”
Value: 30G/Bronze Trophy
“Show that pit who’s boss.”

At one point in Portal 2, semi-villain Wheatley incites players to jump down a pit after failing to kill them in a more direct way. Doing so unlocks a 30-point Achievement/Bronze Trophy and kills you so you can respawn and listen to that dialogue all over again.

Secret Service — “Expert Marksman”
Value: 0G
“Fired an entire magazine without hitting anyone.”

You’ve really got to hand it to this one. Not only does it require you to blatantly and purposefully fail at one of the shooter genre’s most basic actions, but doing so will not even raise your Gamerscore. “Expert Marksman” is apparently for people who crave completion and feel no shame in going out of their way to suck in the name of checking an item off of a list.

Metal Gear Solid 4 — “Handle with Caution”
Value: Bronze Trophy
“Broke off the most important part of a statue.”

The grabbing of crotches is one of the Metal Gear Solid franchise’s most venerable traditions. It is not my purpose here to try to figure out why that is — I would be likely to run out of Internet long before getting to the bottom of it — but a Trophy in the series’ fourth installment puts a disconcerting twist on the motif.

The game’s hero, Old Snake, has an OctoCamo suit that changes color to allow him to blend in with his environment like some kind of Land Octopus. Early in the game, he can use it to hide among some statues. And apparently, if you really want to escape detection, you have to grab a handful of metal wang and keep your head down. Do it three times for some alarming results.

This Trophy may not really belong on this list, since its completion does not in itself involve failure, but let’s face it: Once the hunt for virtual rewards leads to players clutching an in-game statue’s penis enough times to snap it off, someone might have made a mistake or two somewhere.

If you can’t get enough metagaming humor, be sure to check out the other articles in this series:

Part Two: Murder is fun(?)
Part Three: That’s so meta
Part Four: I see what you did there
Part Five: And the rest

Filed under: Games

A year later, Intel’s ‘perceptual computing’ initiative is becoming more concrete

Dean Takahashi — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 23:16:52 +0000

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Intel says it is making progress on its “perceptual computing” initiative to make computers more intuitive to control.

Last year, Intel talked about how it wanted to go beyond touchscreens and equip everyday computers such as desktops and laptops with technologies such as gesture control, face recognition, voice recognition, and eye control. This year, those initiatives have all taken shape, said Kirk Skaugen, the vice president of the PC client group at Intel, in a press event at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas today.

Back in September, voice recognition firm Nuance announced it would provide technology for a series of Dell ultrabooks, or thin and light laptops. That fulfilled on promise of perceptual computing.

Intel showed a demo of Valve’s Portal 2 being played with gesture controls, using motion-sensing technology from Sixense. That game shipped last fall, making it possible to play it by waving your hands around in front of a computer.

“Gaming is very interesting, but we can do other things with this technology,” Skaugen said.

For instance, you can hold more interesting video conferences with coworkers. Using a technology from Personify, Intel showed how you can hold a video chat with coworkers and insert their images into the presentation that everyone is sharing. Since each person viewing the presentation can see the expressions of coworkers, they can more easily tell what kind of reaction coworkers are having.

Skaugen also showed that — not only is gesture computing good for computer games — it is also useful for computer security. He said that face-recognition technology using special webcams is coming along. And both face recognition and voice recognition will provide for much better computer security in the future. Skaugen noted that a recent breach of passwords showed that the top password that people use is “123456.” To get around the problem of character-based passwords, Skaugen believes that perceptual computing will provide security that will be hard to defeat.

Filed under: Business, Gadgets, Games

10 female characters not featured in their game’s cover (and 10 that are)

Samir Torres — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 18:00:58 +0000

Roles for female video game characters are not exclusively reserved for princesses in distress or oversexualized bimbos. Strong, independent ladies like Samus Aran (Metroid) and Faith Connors (Mirror’s Edge) don’t need men to rescue them. Sadly, sexism is still a problem that affects every aspect of game design, including box art.

In a recent interview with VG24/7, The Last of Us creative director Neil Druckmann said that Sony asked him to focus on Joel (the male protagonist) for the game’s cover and push Ellie to the back. Everyone at Naughty Dog refused. Druckmann added: “I believe there’s a misconception that if you put a girl or a woman on the cover, the game will sell less.”

I browsed through some of my favorite games to see how many of them feature their lead female heroines on the cover. See the result of my search in the gallery below.

Filed under: Games

Valve gives Plantronics the rights to officially brand headsets with Aperture Laboratories and Mann Co. logos

Jeffrey Grubb — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 16:27:46 +0000

Gabe Newell — whoa, relax! I just said the guys’ name; you don’t have to lose your mind.

I understand a lot of you gamers have a bit of a thing for the managing director of Valve and everything he does. Well, the publisher and digital distributor is teaming with consumer electronics company Plantronics to release four officially branded gaming headsets.

The two companies partnered to slap logos for Dota 2, Counter-Strike, Mann Co. (Team Fortress 2), and Aperture Laboratories (Portal) on the Plantronics Commander and 780 lines of personal audio equipment. The headsets are available now exclusively from the Valve or Plantronics stores.

This collaboration between Valve and Plantronics doesn’t end at some words on headphones. Valve will support the products with in-game promotions and online tournaments.

In-game promotions for a product that you wear on your head? Sounds like a perfect opportunity for:

Filed under: Games

Portal’s GLaDOS is a movie star — we’re not joking

Jeffrey Grubb — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 00:35:00 +0000

Back in October, sites like Movies.com reported that the voice actress who played the Portal villain GLaDOS would also have a role in director Guillermo del Toro’s new movie, Pacific Rim.

What no one said at that time is that the voice actress, Ellen McClain, would be using the exact same GLaDOS voice in the film. Check it out in this trailer:

You heard that, right? Apparently, del Toro is a huge fan of Valve’s games, and he needed a voice for a computer in his new movie, so he went out and got the best voice for a computer that there is.

For the unaware, GLaDOS is an evil computer that torments the protagonist in Valve’s first-person puzzle series Portal. She was evil but also lovable thanks McClain’s delivery and really funny writing.

Pacific Rim is about an alien invasion on Earth that comes from the sea. How does that happen? Through a portal at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Yeah, a portal.

All art is now Portal.

Filed under: Games

Concept art vs. character models: A visual comparison (gallery)

Samir Torres — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 18:00:33 +0000

Every video game character you’ve ever loved (or hated) started as a rough sketch during early development stages. Some artists nail the appearance of the hero, villain, monster, or scenery on the first few tries, but designers usually go through dozens of doodles before reaching the final, definite look.

Check out this hand-drawn concept art from 15 popular characters and see how much they resemble their finished in-game 3D models.

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat weekly roundup: Humble THQ Bundle, sexism, and The Walking Dead Episode 5

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 20:55:17 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, THQ releases Saints Row: The Third and more of its popular games in the first non-indie Humble Bundle, women in the games industry talk about about the sexism they face in the workplace, and Atari celebrates Pong’s 40th anniversary.

You’ll also find reviews for Portal 2 In Motion, Crashmo, The Walking Dead Episode 5, King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North, Adventure Time, and Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified.

News:

Mobile news:

Reviews:

Interviews:

Pieces of flair:

Filed under: Games

Portal 2 In Motion adds three mechanics, subtracts one plot (review)

Evan Killham — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 15:07:42 +0000

Valve Software’s brain-loosening puzzle-platformer Portal 2 came out aaaaaall the way back in April of 2011, but the developer has continued to support it through add-ons like free downloadable content (DLC) and a level editor for the PC version. This month, PlayStation 3 owners who sprang (or fell, depending on how you feel about it) for a Move motion controller received their special Valve time with the release of the platform-exclusive DLC, Portal 2 In Motion.

Developer Sixense, which also programmed the motion controls for the main game (available as a free update) created 13 additional test chambers which add a few new ways to play with the familiar “go in here, come out there” setup.

WHAT YOU’LL LIKE

Cool new mechanics…
After you pick up an item, you can hold out your Move to activate One-to-One, which you can use to rotate objects in real time (hence “one-to-one”) by turning your controller. You can also get boxes across gaps, through holes in walls, and around obstacles. It has a bit of a learning curve, but it makes sense and feels natural once you’ve done it a few times.

Portal Surfing lets you grab a portal you’ve already placed and drag it along a wall or rotate it. I didn’t see its value at first, but then I learned that the game knows which side of the hole is “down,” which means that you can reorient portals to do things like launch Repulsion Gel across a room by turning the portal upside down or accessing a hard-to reach spot by turning the portal sideways and sliding it into a narrow space that you wouldn’t normally be able to fire at. On a more basic and functional level, though, Portal Surfing is a quick and easy way to fix those times when your placement is just a little bit off.

Scaling allows you to resize a crate to hit two buttons simultaneously or make a giant, heavy box to break through a glass floor. It’s also a really cruel way to destroy a turret. Scaling also presents some interesting new possibilities for puzzles; in one room, I had one box that I had to use to hit three switches. The solution involves stretching the square crate into a rectangle and extending it through different portals. It required the kind of weirdo lateral thinking that we’ve come to expect from Portal games, and the “A-ha” moment when I figured it out was as satisfying as any in the main game.

Of the three additions to your scientific arsenal, One-to-One is by far the most ingenious addition for its sheer simplicity and the options it opens up. Adding that third dimension to item handling could have created a depth-perception nightmare, but Sixense deftly avoids that by adding little lights to switches; the lights turn on when a box is over the button. And setting turrets on fire using a laser beam and a reflective cube is extremely satisfying and fun.

…and they work.
That is the important question, right? Do the motion controls work in the motion-control-centric DLC? Well, they do. And extremely well.

I’ve been slow to see the appeal in waggling, especially after the time someone saw me using my Wii Remote as a pretend saw in Capcom’s Zack and Wiki without seeing the onscreen log I was miming at sawing in half. It was the sort of Naked Lunch moment that made me question the value of the whole concept. Is pretending to saw a log in half by wanking a white plastic remote control really better than doing the same thing but with buttons? I decided it isn’t, and it doubly isn’t if anyone catches you doing it.

Having said that, I’ve developed a respect for gesture-based gameplay done well, with one caveat: For me, as soon as the game asks me to move my controller toward the screen, it’s over. This is the one input I have never gotten to work right on the Wii, whether I’ve been attempting a forward sword thrust in Skyward Sword or trying to guide an endoscopic tube down a patient’s throat without bumping into anything important in developer Atlus’ medical-drama simulator Trauma Team. It just doesn’t work for me.

One-to-one, arguably the key mechanic in all of In Motion, involves moving the controller toward the screen, and guess what? It works perfectly. Likewise with Scaling and Portal Surfing: I never had any issues getting the game to understand what I was trying to do, with one very specific exception that I’ll get into in the next section.

WHAT YOU WON’T LIKE

Puzzle solutions are occasionally inelegant
In Motion contains moments at which progressing depends on forces out of the player’s control, and that’s kind of a big deal.

I admire the Valve-designed puzzles in both Portal games for their almost mathematical precision. The actions and inputs that get you from one of the facility’s ubiquitous inter-chamber elevators to the next typically follow a clean, logical sequence that is always satisfying to discover. Sixense’s solutions largely fit in with Valve’s, but one test required me to drag a portal along with me as I walked, which is fine in theory but sadly messy in execution. It was a little difficult to keep myself in the right position relative to my cargo. I had less trouble with this during my second playthrough, but it still felt a bit sloppy, like I was exploiting a shortcut … except that I was doing exactly what Sixense wanted me to do.

In another level, you use portals to paint some walls with Repulsion Gel (which makes you bounce when you touch it) and cover a floor with Propulsion Gel (which makes you run faster). But in the course of painting the walls, I got some bouncy gel where the speedy gel should have been, and when I tried to put more speedy gel on top of it, I accidentally got some of that where I needed the bouncy gel. It all felt a little “I Love Lucy,” which is unfortunate considering the clever precision of some of the other puzzles.

The final test chamber drops a cube you need within firing range of a group of turrets. You can’t drop portals to bring it over to where you are; you have to run out there, take a few hits, and risk death before you’ve done anything else. It’s a weird design decision, and I have no idea why Sixense made it. The “solution” requires you to drag the resized box around as a shield, which works about as well as dragging that portal around did earlier. Success felt more up to chance than any skill on my part, and getting past these parts wasn’t nearly as satisfying as unraveling the more logic-driven rooms.

It’s entirely plot-free
In Motion plays like an extended tech demo, albeit a pretty good one with the highest of production values. Its $9.99 price tag gets you a few hours’ worth of puzzles, which is probably enough value for your money, but the expansion is also devoid of any plot or context. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, except that it’s DLC for a series known for its story and clever writing.

Each of the two main groups of puzzles — “Basic Skills” and “More Challenges” — start and end the same way. At the beginning, series hero Chell gets off of one of those accursed elevators. At the end, she gets onto a different one, and then the credits roll. The add-on gives no indication of when its events are happening or why, which is fine, but it’s also a giant missed opportunity.

To be fair, I don’t expect full voice acting and cutscenes, but a little context would have been nice. As they stand, these puzzles take place in a vacuum, and it’s a bit jarring. This isn’t the biggest strike against In Motion, but superfans hoping for more of Portal’s trademark wit or a clever in-universe explanation for these new mechanics will get neither.

CONCLUSION

Portal 2 In Motion offers some cool new tools and a few more hours playing around in the Aperture Science Test Facility. While it’s occasionally sloppy and too isolated to hold its own against Valve’s best, it does have solid motion controls and a lot of neat ideas that I would love to see more of in the future.

Score: 78/100

Portal 2 In Motion was released November 6, 2012 for the PlayStation 3. The developer provided GamesBeat with download codes for both Portal 2 and the DLC for the purpose of this review.

Filed under: Games

Save Clementine all over again with these The Walking Dead-inspired custom figures

Giancarlo Valdes — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 00:00:16 +0000

I could never get into collecting toys. Except for my one-time splurge on a really awesome 12-inch figurine of Raiden from Metal Gear Solid 4, I’m too cheap to buy them. But when I saw artist Shaun Nakasone’s custom pair of vinyl toys based on Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead adventure-horror game, I had to physically stop myself from reaching for my credit card.

Under his Sciurus Customs label, Nakasone enjoys sculpting these figures for people partly because they were originally meant as gifts for his friends. “A few of them urged me to post [the figures] online and it pretty much went from there,” he said in an email interview with GamesBeat. “Some are based off commission requests but most are just characters I have an attachment to and I guess others like them, too. The characters I sculpt usually don’t have many figures based on them, and I think people appreciate the fact that there are some [like them] out there.”

Whether he’s re-creating comic book superheroes or video game characters (more pictured in the gallery below), Nakasone always starts off with a blank canvas. He uses collectible vinyl figurines as a base for the characters: Hasbro’s Mighty Muggs line and Kidrobot’s Munny toys.

“By poring over reference materials, painting, and sculpting, you really get a good idea of the design that made the character: What makes them work, and what makes them distinct,” he said. “It’s a pretty meditative process and its interesting to discover small details that you [didn't see before]. I also enjoy the sense of progress after each figure, learning from my past mistakes and improving on ideas and methods.”

For The Walking Dead, Nakasone had the added challenge of adapting the game’s comic book-inspired graphics. “I sketched out the designs of the figures on the computer, getting as much references from books or the Internet as possible,” he said. “It’s really important to study the references, seeing what aspects of the design that make the characters and dissecting what makes the art style the way it is. That is most of the work for me: staying true to the character no matter the change in media or proportion.”

“Lee and Clementine have a different style to most of the custom figures I make,” he continued. “There’s a really sketchy, grungy quality to the [way] characters are rendered in the game: lots of lines of varied weight and smudged color caked on top of each other. I wanted to make sure that aspect of the art style translated to the final pieces, since it really informed who the characters were.”

Nakasone wanted to send both pieces as a donation to Tested.com’s second annual Octoberkast, a 24-hour live podcast that raises money for Child’s Play, a nonprofit organization that donates games and toys to hospitals for sick children to play with. Among this year’s Oktobercast participants were a number of staff members from Telltale Games, including The Walking Dead story consultant Gary Whitta, creative lead Sean Vanaman, and lead designer Jake Rodkin.

Unfortunately, Nakasone wasn’t able to finish Lee and Clementine in time. So he set up his own auction on eBay, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to Child’s Play.

“I ended up doing Lee and Clementine from the Walking Dead on one part because of Telltale Games’ link with Octoberkast, but mostly because of my emotional attachment to the game and its characters,” he said. “Telltale Games really did a fantastic job getting me to really care for [them]. Everyone I know who played the game really empathize with Lee and has a protective/paternal feeling for Clementine, which I’ve really never seen a game do to this degree. That pretty much made them the perfect choice for characters I wanted to make for the charity auction.”

Like his earlier work, Lee and Clementine will mostly likely end up being one-of-a-kind. He doesn’t have any plans to make other characters from The Walking Dead. But even if he does, don’t expect him to include Kenny. “He ended up pretty dislikable in my playthrough,” he said.

Filed under: Games

Game industry pros confess their piles of shame!

Rus McLaughlin — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 13:00:52 +0000

I have never, ever played a Fable game. I always intended to throw on one of Peter Molyneux’s fantasy epics and take it for a spin, and hey, I still do. Someday. Really.

But the simple fact is this: If you game, you’ve got a pile of shame … that list of titles you haven’t played yet but fully intend to. Someday. Really.

Nobody likes to admit it, but few of us have the money and time to play everything we’re interested in. In fact, the number of missed opportunities just grows and grows as shiny distractions (work, family, newer games that look really cool) come into the picture. So as we come out of the summer doldrums and into a very busy gaming season, we asked some of most influential names in the industry to publicly humiliate themselves by telling us what’s still on their piles of shame.

And they didn’t all answer. But here’s who did.

Cliff Blezinski: former design director, Epic Games (Gears of War)

I’ve yet to go back to Batman: Arkham City because I can’t find the darned disc in my cluttered setup.

Jenova Chen: cofounder, Thatgamecompany (Journey, Flower)

I haven’t played Deus Ex: Human Revolution after the first boss. It’s the game of the year for our lead engineer, John Edwards, so that means a lot. But I haven’t got time to go back to it yet.

Dan “Shoe” Hsu: editor-in-chief, GamesBeat

Mass Effect 2. I don’t understand what all that hub-bub was about the ending to the Mass Effect storyline. We’re still not even halfway through the trilogy, right? Right?

Sigh … yes, this is my big shame game. I’m not even finished with Mass Effect 2 yet. I know it’s something I need to get through — Mass Effect is a major franchise in gaming, after all — but I just can’t seem to find the time. Actually, that’s not true. I somehow scraped together 188 hours for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

I honestly don’t know what it is about this series. I loved the first game, but it took me over a year and a half to beat it because I was constantly leaving it, then coming back, and then leaving it again. For all of 2012, ME2′s been sitting next to my TV, beaming subliminal messages to my brain: “Play me … play me. …” But it hasn’t worked. Now that Borderlands 2 is here, and all the other fall games are arriving soon, I’m afraid part two of this sci-fi trilogy will just have to wait a bit longer.

Morgan Webb: co-host, X-Play

Spec Ops: The Line. Everyone tells me it’s really good. Everyone tells me about the crazy tough choices you have to make. And I even bought it. It is still in the plastic and will likely remain so until about January. It’s not a very large pile. I try really hard to keep up with things. And seriously, Shoe needs to play Mass Effect.

Frank O’Connor: franchise development director, 343 Industries (Halo 4)

Working on Halo is a pretty involved process. There’s the work, of course – story, universe building, endless meetings, travel … most developers know the score there. But you compound that work with home life, raising an angry 3-year-old, taking out the trash, fixing the sewer, making dinner – there just aren’t that many hours in the day. And so when I do play games in my downtime, they tend to be Halo. Take-home tests, matchmaking, just a ton of Halo stuff. So my pile of shame is almost limitless. And to prove that point, my main shameful miss is a couple of years old, and I still haven’t gotten around to it properly. It’s Red Dead Redemption.

Hardly unusual, but when I did finally put it in my drive, I immediately knew this was a place I wanted to inhabit. And I got as far as the first horse race, couldn’t beat Bonnie around her ranch, and that’s where I left it. Right back to Halo stuff. I also have a miserably small completion ratio of Forza, and in fact I have not unlocked the Halo Warthog that’s squirreled away in there. The least dusty, still-shrinkwrapped item on that pile is Borderlands 2.

I still haven’t seen the new Batman, either, and I only saw Cabin in the Woods because it was on my plane. I genuinely feel actual shame because part of my job is to understand why other games are cool and expose myself to new experiences. I feel like I should really just take a couple of months off to reengage and immerse myself in what’s new and what’s awesome.

Filed under: Games

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The DeanBeat: Raptr’s gamer data shows that building real communities pays off in profits (it’s the community, stupid)

Dean Takahashi — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 15:00:31 +0000

It’s the community, stupid.

Game publishers may wonder what it takes to get loyal users. Well, the trick is obvious, according to gamer social network Raptr: You have to create a great game. Then you build a community around that game that generates goodwill among gamers. And that translates into better user engagement, revenues, and profits.

Most companies are using their analytics and data about gamers’ preferences to milk them for all they’re worth. They want to target gamers with services and goods that the players will pay for. But that’s a shortsighted approach, and the games-as-a-service business model isn’t as complete as the community-as-a-service approach, says Dennis Fong, the chief executive of Raptr.

“Games-as-a-service has a lot of rhetoric, but it’s mostly about monetizing the user,” he said. “In our view, it’s a missed opportunity. It’s really a chance to build a long-term relationship with the user.”

And Fong has some data to back up his beliefs in a new Raptr Report, which is mined by Raptr’s community of nearly 15 million gamers. The data show that it really does pay to establish trusted relationships with players through community services (which appear to cost money), such as livestreaming, eSports events, loyalty programs, or free modification tools.

Most companies don’t see the light here. They realize that giving to the community generates goodwill, but they worry about the cost and the impact on monetization.

“If you take a player-first approach, it’s good for business,” said Fong. “Companies need to do more, and we have the data to show why.”

Case study: Portal 2′s map creator

A good example of putting the community first is Valve’s recent behavior. In April 2011, Valve launched its big hit, Portal 2. The game was popular, but it had low replayability. In May 2012, Valve released its free map-creation tool that let players create their own maps and share them. Players created an astounding 35,000 levels, which were downloaded 1.3 million times during the first week after the launch of the mod tools.

Portal 2 saw an 806 percent increase in daily active users (the number of users who play a game in a day) the day after the tools were out. A month later, there were still 40 percent more people playing the game daily compared to before. Valve saw a 2,218 percent increase in new users. After release of the tools, they accounted for 18 percent of all daily active players. A month later, Portal 2 still had 28 percent more new users than before. Portal 2 also saw a 1,113 percent increase in bringing back lapsed players the day after the release; about 46 percent of all daily active users were returning lapsed players. A month later, there were still 15 percent more returning players than before.

The average daily playtime per user grew 36 percent from 1.4 hours to 1.9 hours per day. A week after release, people were still playing 29 percent longer per day than before. A month later, playtime was 17 percent higher. Valve’s goal was simply to extend the life of the game for existing players, said Fong. But the actual impact was clearly far greater.

Case study: DayZ user-generated mod breathes life into Arma II

A second example is from the military shooter game Arma II, which Bohemia Interactive released in May 2009. The game wasn’t particularly successful, with flat sales after its launch. Then one of the designers at Bohemia decided to create a zombie-themed mod of Arma II as a proof of concept for a game he wanted to create. Within a month after the release of the DayZ mod, sales for Arma II spiked 400 percent to 300,000 units. Within four months, more than 1 million gamers had played DayZ.

A week after DayZ’s release, Arma II daily active users were up 36 percent. But the game gained momentum over time. A month after release, daily active users were up 847 percent. The Dayz mod brought in a 1,343 percent increase in new players in a month. These players accounted for 15 percent of all daily active users in the first month. Returning users were up 20 percent in the first week and 101 percent in the first month. Players also spent 36 percent more time in the game, from 2.2 hours per day to 3 hours per day. The week after launch, players played 23 percent more than before.

“It was like they created a whole new game,” said Fong.

Case study: Riot Games gets players engaged even when they aren’t playing

League of Legends took off in October 2009 as Riot Games published the free-to-play fantasy multiplayer online battle arena game. The title grew steadily to tens of millions of players. On average, League of Legends grows its user base by 7.6 percent each month.

But by turning the game into an eSport, or a spectator sport that was broadcast online, Riot Games was able to bring a consistent boost to the audience. The MLG eSports finals and the Dreamhack competitive event boosted player activity from 3 percent to 10 percent in daily active users. Overall, playtime was up 3 percent to 8 percent following the events. New player rates jumped 10 percent, and returning players were up 12 percent. The League of Legends Season One finals drew 241,000 peak concurrent online viewers, who watched more than 3.6 million hours of video.

“No one really knows if a holding a tournament is good for a game,” said Fong. “We dug into it and found it was true.”

The stats go on and on

Of course, you would expect Raptr, a social network for gamers, to say that social work pays off. Fong said that when Blacklight: Retributions developers engaged the Raptr community in a long question-and-answer session, the number of daily active players increased by 10 percent and playtime increased 19 percent. Players asked 1,600 questions and viewed 60,000 pages during the session.

Fong says it’s critical to know who the loyal players are, where they come from, and what their habits and behaviors are in the game. OGPlanet launched a loyalty program with Raptr Rewards (where brands give rewards to players who play a game a lot). The program helped increase daily playtime per Raptr user by 97 percent. The game saw a 400 percent increase in new players and a 180 percent increase in returning players on the first day of the program.

The conclusion should be clear: Don’t just milk your users. Give them what they want, and they will pay you back many times over.

“Lots of companies treat community as an afterthought or a charity,” said Fong. “It’s a huge missed opportunity.”

Filed under: Business, Games

If Portal’s Chell had a dating site profile

Mike Minotti — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 19:19:02 +0000

Everybody needs love. Yes, even fictional characters. But where do our favorite heroes and villains from gaming go when they’re looking to find that special someone? Hey, this is the digital age! They’d go to a dating web site, of course! A place where gaming characters could search for their soul mates. Well, such a place could look something like Extra Hearts, our made-up dating site for fictional digital people.

This time, we look at Chell’s profile. Will the hero of Valve’s Portal series find true love online? Hopefully, she’s as good at romancing as she is at puzzle-solving.

Likes: Large, open spaces.

Dislikes: Science, quitters, sarcasm, the color orange, and science.

Background: I’m just getting back on the dating scene after spending a significant amount of time enslaved in an underground lab by a crazy artificial computer. Years of isolation may have made me a little socially awkward, but I’m sure we can get past that.

Also, could you bring me some clothes?

Favorite Movies: The Great Escape, Escape from New York, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Escapist. Love of 2001: A Space Odyssey is a deal-breaker.

Six things I could never do without: My “Aperture Science Advanced Knee Replacements.”

My best friend, the Companion Cube. I <3 you back, buddy!

The portal gun. This thing’s a lifesaver when I have a hard-to-reach itch on my back.

That’s kind of it. I haven’t had many possessions lately.

You should message me if: You’re willing to give me plenty of space.

Comments:

More Profiles:

Filed under: Games

A working Aperture Science Sentry Turret from Portal

Jeffrey Grubb — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:48:30 +0000

The talented Kiwis down in the WETA Workshop have begun sub-contracting for Aperture Science.

WETA is the New Zealand-based special-effects company, best known for bringing life to The Lord of the Rings series of films. Game publisher Valve worked with the company to produce a real-world version of one of Portal’s iconic weapons:

That’s an Aperture Science Sentry Turret from the Portal series of games with fully functional parts. It collapses and expands just as the equipment does in the first-person puzzle games. These operations don’t happen at random either. WETA packed in a motion sensor so the turret knows when and where to fire at human targets.

Are you screaming: “Shut up and take my money” in the general direction of the southern hemisphere? Well, WETA says it’s possible it could sell these to consumers if Valve agrees to it, but the price would be exorbitant.

“It’s a little less pricey than a piece of military hardware from the U.S. government — and a bit more expensive than a piece from the New Zealand Government,” WETA Workshop director, Sir Richard Taylor, told the N.Z. branch of Stuff magazine.

Filed under: Games, Science

Borderlands 2 nearly perfects the blend of shooter and role-playing game (review)

Mike Minotti — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 04:00:56 +0000

Loot. It is the desire of every fan of role-playing games. The need for better stats, the want for something that looks cooler, the desire to know that your items are better than your friend’s.

Guns. The addiction of the shooter player. They come in many shapes and sizes, but they all serve one goal: killing.

The original Borderlands gained a lot of praise for combining the shooter with loot-based RPGs like Diablo. Developer Gearbox Software basically invented a genre. And now, it nearly perfects it.

WHAT YOU’LL LIKE

Bang for your buck

Borderlands 2 is a huge game. Completing the story while doing only a fraction of the side quests takes about 30 hours. Now, add to that all of those extra missions, and you have an even longer experience. If you still crave more, you can then replay the game with four classes, each with three different skill trees that alter their styles.

But I’m not done! After you beat the game, you unlock a harder difficulty to challenge your decked-out character. Simply put, I’m not good enough at math to properly calculate exactly how many hours you could spend playing Borderlands 2. Let’s just say it’s a lot.

To me, the best RPGs smother their players in content. Borderlands 2 does exactly that, but with action that’s far less likely to get dull than the boring grind of turn-based battles. Something’s gone right when you’ve spent 30 hours on a game and know that you could easily spend another 100. I can’t ask for much more than that.

Claptrap and the funnies

It may seem weird to devote so much of a review to a character who primarily serves as comic relief, but I freakin’ love Claptrap. The lovable little robot from the original Borderlands returns with an expanded role, especially in the early parts of your adventure.

I experienced something that I call “so funny I have to pause.” This is the rare occurrence when a game gives me a case of the giggles so hard that I have to pause the action. Few games achieve this. The last that I can remember was Valve’s hilarious Portal 2. But Claptrap had me bursting in fits of laughter several times, with lines that I dare not spoil for you (besides, they’d lose their effect if you don’t hear them from his funny voice).

Claptrap isn’t the only successful humorous aspect of Borderlands 2. Gearbox Software littered Pandora with quirky, memorable characters, including a 13-year-old demolitions expert and a grotesquely overweight mechanic. Even the text that flashes on the screen upon completing quests contributes to the game’s great sense of humor.

Idealized customized

Borderlands 2′s marketing materials proudly proclaim that the game has “bazillions of guns.” While I didn’t actually count, I can confirm that the chests and corpses of Pandora spew out a “crapload” of munitions. While guns come in only so many types (shotgun, pistol, sniper, and such), a multitude of variables make each firearm stand out. Besides from the usual stats (damage, accuracy, and things like that), guns can deliver different types of elemental damage. Some abilities are more unusual, like weapons that shoot out a rocket while you’re reloading them.

It’s even more fun seeing how different all of the guns look from each other. I can’t imagine how many models Gearbox had to create for this ungodly arsenal, but in 30 hours of gameplay, I never felt like I had two guns that looked alike.

You can also customize your character with skins (these drop from enemies). Some skins drastically change the appearance of your Vault Hunter while others just mix up the color scheme. Still, it helps to differentiate your adventurer from the hundreds of thousands of others that would otherwise look exactly like them.

You can grab all of these, plus equally varied grenades, shields, and other buffing equippables, from hundreds of boxes, carts, chests, and even Porta-Pottys. Plus all of the items that drop from killed enemies. Oh, and rewards for completing quest. Plus all of those vending machines. So, yes, Borderlands 2 has a lot of loot.

Filed under: Games

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GamesBeat weekly roundup: Sound Shapes, Penny Arcade, and Mists of Pandaria

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 20:49:58 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Telltale revealed that the majority of The Walking Dead players try to do the right thing, legendary game artist Paul Steed passed away, and GameStop beat Wall Street’s low second quarter expectations.

You’ll also find reviews of Persona 4 Arena, Sleeping Dogs, and Darksiders II, as well as previews for Forge and Black Ops II.

News

Game guides

Sleeping Dogs game guide: unlocks, collectibles, and easy money

MMO news

Financial news

Gaming gear

Interviews

Reviews

Previews

Filed under: Games

Portal 2 puzzle editor pops in co-op support

Stefanie Fogel — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:55:58 +0000

Portal 2 fans can now create co-operative maps (called “test chambers”) and share them with the Steam community, thanks to a free update for the game’s puzzle maker, publisher Valve today announced.

Valve says over 170,000 single-player test chambers have been made using the in-game editor, called the Perpetual Testing Initiave, since Portal 2′s release on the PC and Mac last May. But this is the first time the community will be able to create puzzles that requires two players.

The free update also introduces a new “Quick Play” feature that allows players to quickly access top-rated maps.

To entice gamers into trying the new content, Valve is offering current Portal 2 owners a 75 percent off coupon on digital distribution service Steam to give away to other Steam users.

Filed under: Games

Papo & Yo and 10 other games that feature graffiti

Stephanie Carmichael — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 14:26:27 +0000

Graffiti has been used throughout history to spread political messages and liven local communities. In Papo & Yo, it’s a way to encourage players to “get lost” in a fantastical Latin American setting.

Developer Minority Media’s upcoming puzzle-based platformer invites players on an emotional journey to an authentically Chilean world. Pablo Aravena, a graffiti expert and filmmaker born in the South American country, helped make the environments resemble the cultured neighborhoods and stacked buildings of the port city Valparaiso. Celebrity graffiti artists Sebastian Navarro (aka Charquipunk), Simon Paulo Arancibia Gutierrez (La Robot de Madera), and Inti Castro (INTI) also added their touches to the game.

As unique as Papo & Yo is, it’s not the first game to feature graffiti on its streets and city walls. Here are some more examples you might be familiar with. Can you name any others?

Papo & Yo hits the PlayStation Network on August 14.

Filed under: Games

Coolest class ever: Valve brings Portal 2 to schools

Sean Ludwig — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 19:00:59 +0000

One time in high school, I was able to convince a stern teacher it was “essential” that I play Grand Theft Auto III for a presentation. It was easily one of my favorite experiences at school simply because I was able to mix gaming and education. Now with video-game publisher Valve’s new “Steam for Schools” initiative, other students might get the chance I had to add video games to the classroom exercises.

The “Steam for Schools” program is Valve’s newest foray into the world of “edutainment” and its Teach with Portals site details the program’s goals. Teachers and other education professionals can now apply to be part of the beta program. If they are accepted, they get access to version of Valve’s digital distribution service Steam with Portal 2, a level editor, a workshop for housing user-made levels, and the Valve Education forum, where teachers can share their insights. Educators receive dministrative control of the programs.

Ideally, Portal 2 will help teach students about physics, math, spatial reasoning, and problem solving. With level editor access, they can also put their creativity to the test and challenge each other with different maps and challenges.

What’s especially awesome about this is that this version of Steam for educators will be entirely free, even out of beta. Valve is receiving no outside grants, which makes this quite the contribution, and it’s a direction we hope other companies eventually go in as well.

Check out the video below to see how a group of seventh graders visited Valve and used its Hammer Editor for learning:

Photo credit: Valve

Filed under: Games

Quantum Conundrum is an unbalanced measure of brilliance and flaws (review)

Rob LeFebvre — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 14:00:41 +0000

Portal is one of my favorite games of all time. I love it so much that I even learned to play “Still Alive” on the ukulele. Knowing that Kim Swift, the Portal designer who went on to join Airtight Games, led Quantum Conundrum’s development only added to my intense anticipation for this title.

Journalists have quoted Swift saying that she wants to create games that are accessible to a wider market with enough challenge to satisfy more experienced players. Quantum Conundrum is a fantastic attempt at doing just that even if it doesn’t quite hit all the bullet points that such a widely appealing yet core-gamer-pleasing experience would need to have. It isn’t perfection, but it’s a brilliant try all the same.

Players will take on the role of a young child, aged somewhere between 10 and 12, who visits his wacky mad-scientist uncle’s house every year. This time, the boy arrives to find his relative missing and only able to communicate by voice. Professor Fitz Qwadrangle is the uncle’s name, and science-juice-fueled dimensional trickery is his game. With the aid of a dimension switching glove and several “batteries,” the player must move through each environment to ultimately restore power to three generators throughout the seemingly endless corridors and rooms of Qwadrangle Mansion.

WHAT YOU’LL LIKE

Dimensional shifting is a delight
The central gameplay mechanic here is that of changing the environment’s basic physical laws along fairly straightforward lines to access areas and avoid obstacles along the way.

In the fluffy dimension, all objects weigh far less than they otherwise would. Players can pick up and fling safes and couches with ease. The heavy dimension is the polar opposite: Objects have incredible weight, allowing cardboard boxes to trigger pressure plates and open remote doors. The gravity dimension reverses that force of attraction so that items will fall up. The slow dimension forces the flow of time to a crawl, allowing all sorts of tricks to occur, like jumping through a deadly spinning fan blade or tossing a table to jump on to float over and across large expanses of flooding, fatal science juice.

The real fun, however, comes in combining the different dimensional shifts in concert and with precise timing to achieve the goal in each section. Later levels have players manipulating time, gravity, and weight to move a safe from point A to point Q past laser beams, walls, conveyor belts, and more just to drop it on a pressure plate to open a door. When the player shifts dimensions correctly, he’ll experience an amount of zen concentration not unlike that of an conductor waving a baton to keep an orchestra playing along masterfully.

Level design brilliance
If one thing shines forth in Quantum Conundrum, it’s the beauty of the level design. Even the brutally difficult areas contain their own solutions, which become obvious with some attention, observation, and testing. None of the stages felt unfair or simply tricks: Each well-executed set of obstacles and solutions felt extremely satifsying to both suss out the answer and then execute perfectly to reach the end area.

Even the levels that required twitch-perfect timing and near-genius platforming skills felt like I could master them with just another try, just one more go. The puzzles are never too hard to figure out yet remain just one step ahead of the previous solution to constantly guide players to ever more epic amounts of effort and insanity.

Voice-overs matter
Professor Qwadrangle is a brilliantly acted character voiced to melodramatic perfection by John DeLancie, best known for his role on Star Trek as Q, the multi-dimensional being from the Q Continuum. His character in Quantum Conundrum is at turns hilarious, sarcastic, acerbic, and informative. He shows concern for his nephew throughout the twists and turns of the mansion but never as much as his worry for his house, his possessions, and — heaven forbid — the amount of damage players need to do to progress to the next section.

Qwadrangle never quite reaches the genius malevolence of GlaDOS, Portal’s antagonist, herself, but his constant companionship provides a needed through-line for players to want to reach the next section, the next checkpoint, and, yes, the end of the story.

Humor is key
This is a cute game, but mostly, it is funny. The pictures on the wall change with each dimensional shift, which alters the subjects of each painting with fluffy outfits, gravity-defying situations, or heavy medieval armor, depending. Little collectibles on each level holler out inappropriate noises, like dolphin, eagle, or cheetah cries. The written dialogue can be hilarious, and the death screens detail the numerous things players won’t be able to experience now that they’re dead. Each one is a joy to see even while screaming in frustration from a just-missed jump to a floating safe.

Filed under: Games

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7 awesomely geeky video game marriage proposals

Stefanie Fogel — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 16:33:32 +0000

For centuries, men have found creative ways to propose marriage to that special someone. Here are seven examples of how some awesomely geeky grooms-to-be used video games to pop the big question.

Nothing says romance like boiling lava

Indie sandbox building game Minecraft allows players to create some pretty wild and imaginative things, so it was only a matter of time before someone used it to pop the big question. Last year, an unnamed BioWare employee proposed to his girlfriend by writing “Marry me?” in lava in the game world. He also built a gigantic engagement ring. According to the video, she said yes.

“I got better things to do than help some schmuck hit on his main squeeze!”

Leave it to Gearbox Software to come up with a totally irreverent and hilarious way to propose marriage. In this video, foul-mouthed Borderlands mascot Claptrap is coerced by an off-screen developer into asking superfan Tora if she’ll marry her boyfriend, Ben, but not before he hits on her himself. Ben tells Kotaku that playing Borderlands together “easily made that awkward starting out stage of any relationship go extremely smooth.”

Hacker puts his skills to good use

YouTube user TheRealPfhreak originally wanted to propose to his girlfriend at Mount Baker in Washington, the site of the couple’s first date. There was no discreet way of getting there, however, so he did what he thought was the next best thing and digitally recreated the mountain by hacking a copy of role-playing game Chrono Trigger. “I spent a long time debating whether or not this proposal was awesome or incredibly stupid,” he explains. “Her friends and my friends helped talk me into it, and it was a huge success!”

Now you’re proposing with portals

When Gary Hudston wanted to ask his girlfriend, Stephanie, to marry him, he enlisted the help of level designers from Portal 2 mapping community website ThinkingWithPortals.com — as well as Valve’s Eric Wolpaw and GlaDOS voice actress Ellen McClain — to build him a very special proposal, according to Time. “You can say no,” GlaDOS says. “I’m sure he’ll get over it … eventually.” Luckily for him, she said yes.

Love and marriage in Little Big Planet

Listen closely and you can hear an audible gasp when gamer “DimmuJed’s” girlfriend discovers his proposal in a custom-made level of Little Big Planet called “Love and Marriage.” “She was so shocked she kept playing and knew I was filming. Afterwards, we hugged, she cried, and I gave her an engagement ring,” he writes.

A Mobius Proposal

A Mobius Proposal is a co-op puzzle platformer created by Matt Gilgenbach for the sole purpose of proposing to his girlfriend. Players in the game are on opposite sides of a Mobius band and must work together in order to overcome obstacles. “I incorporated the proposal in the game by displaying a fake low battery message and hiding the ring inside the battery pack of the controller,” Matt writes. He then secretly turned on his webcam to record the above reaction.

There’s an app for that

Jen is a verifiable fiend for iOS puzzle games, according to Cult of Mac, so her boyfriend, Joe, asked Foozle creator William Thurston to create an in-app proposal. Thurston agreed and worked the message “Jen, I love you with all my heart and nothing would make me happier than to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?” into his physics-based puzzle game. Beneath the message, there was just one button: “YES.” Not only did Thurston agree to create the proposal for free, he even offered the game as a free download for a limited time.

Filed under: Business, Games

Super-cool minimalist video game art posters — which one is your favorite? (gallery)

Sebastian Haley — Sat, 26 May 2012 22:15:48 +0000

We love video game fan art here at GamesBeat, but we don’t get to share it out as much as we’d probably like to. It’s usually just an internal email or Facebook post saying, “Hey, look how cool this is!” But there’s times where we have to break the rules and share something that’s too awesome to keep to ourselves. This is one of those times.

The following gallery is a selection of stylish art posters by Ron Guyatt and his girlfriend, Indy Lytle. Each piece is available for purchase on their Etsy shop for $20, or at discounted rates if purchased in bundles. Enjoy!

And for those of you more interested in movies, jump to the next page for a Guyatt and Lytle’s movie art gallery.

Filed under: Games

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(Updated with new pictures) Student reveals the origins of his real-life Portal turret

Mike Minotti — Sat, 12 May 2012 16:22:44 +0000

Making a working turret that tracks movement and shoots at its targets is challenging enough, but Penn State University student Kevin Swanson had an extra objective for his final Advanced Mechatronics project; it had to look like a turret from Portal, the popular puzzle game/shooter from Valve.

“My professor, who is obsessed with Portal, told us as a semi-joke [that he'll] only allow it if the turret looks like the Portal turret,” Swanson told GamesBeat in an exclusive interview. ”I just kind of ran with it from there.”

The robot uses an IP webcam to track targets and fire bullets. “The idea started with us playing with one of those USB desk turrets, and we wanted to automate it with a camera for our final project,” said Swanson. Don’t worry, this machine isn’t deadly. It just fires soft Nerf darts, but the bizarrely adorable device still talks to its would-be-victims, just like in the game.

“It’s not done yet,” Swanson told us. He’s still working on the familiar, egg-shaped casing for his machine. “I’m looking at about another month, and it should look just like the turret form the game.” We look forward to seeing the final project…as long as it’s still loaded with just Nerf ammo.

You can see the robot in action and learn more about how it works from Kevin’s video, posted below.

UPDATED: Kevin was kind enough to send us some pictures of the development of his incredible machine.

Filed under: Games, OffBeat

Portal 2 Perpetual Testing Initiative Begins May 8

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:01:34 +0000

If you’re longing to keep testing in Portal 2, the wait is nearly over. Valve announced today that a free Steam DLC update for Portal 2 on May 8 will roll out the Perpetual Testing Initiative, or a level creator.

Players will not have to leave the game in order to create, edit, and share levels with friends. The puzzle maker directly publishes content to the Steam Workshop where users can browse, comment, and vote on their favorites. Downloading new maps is simple and will automatically install in Portal 2 when selected.

Valve plans to reveal more information about this DLC on its blog.

Image courtesy of Valve

Filed under: Games

How gaming’s biggest blockbusters affect monthly sales (infographic)

Mike Minotti — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 05:56:29 +0000

If you ever doubted the impact that blockbuster games have on monthly software sales, then this new infographic will convince you of the importance of AAA titles.

The image below (created by the fine folks at Statista) shows the year-over-year change in monthly software sales while noting big releases. The last four months have experienced the largest declines seen on the chart, which shows data from all the way back to 2006.

However, hugely-popular titles like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Batman: Arkham City helped the 2011 holiday season perform slightly better than the previous year’s. The largest increase from 2010 to 2011 occurred in April, when Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat brought some heavy-hitters to what is usually a quiet month.

Be sure to click the infographic so you can see the full-sized image.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your early-bird tickets here.

Filed under: Games

The Fez soundtrack’s hidden images and how they got there

Evan Killham — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:01:28 +0000

The soundtrack to developer Polytron’s Xbox Live Arcade-exclusive puzzle game Fez has only been out since Friday, but a group of industrious fans has already discovered a number of secret images hidden in individual music tracks and shared their findings in the game’s discussion board on GameFAQs. The stealthy pictures can be found by importing the compositions into audio editing software and poring through their spectrograms, particularly in sections containing mysterious hisses or odd silence.

Tumblr blog Black Coffee Spirit has posted several items from the soundtrack’s mysterious cargo. Some samples are below.

The track entitled “Beacon” contains a picture of the first footprint Neil Armstrong left on the Moon in 1969.

Greta Kempton’s 1949 portrait of President Harry S. Truman is hiding inside of “Flow.”

“Majesty” includes Salvador Dali’s painting Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) (1954).

Lost fans should recognize the guy peeking out from the spectrogram of “Beyond.” It’s John Locke. Why is Terry O’Quinn stashed inside the soundtrack to Fez? I don’t know; why is anything?

The most cryptic of the images is a QR code that reveals a series of ten four-digit numbers (probably years). Internet detectives haven’t figured out what, if anything, any of this means, but the clue hunt is certainly giving fans a lot to talk about.

Portal 2 players might remember a similar Easter egg in which developer Valve broadcast a slow-scan television image over certain in-game radios. Whoever put the secret goodies in the Fez soundtrack used software like AudioPaint to map out frequencies and amplitudes based on the positions of the pixels in the images and then spliced the resulting waveforms into the music tracks. If you’d like to see the process in action, check out the below video, courtesy of YouTube user gigafide:

Filed under: Games