Shooting

Finished The Longest Journey last night, and it was fantastic, if not a bit awkward at times. The "battles" are strange in that since I can't fail, I can stand completely still and do nothing while the monster just looks at me and waves its arms. I'm aware that Dreamfall has a combat mechanic but my friends tell me that it isn't very well done. I'm curious if something akin to Shadow of the Colossus (which I haven't played) or the new Prince of Persia would work here.

The Penny Arcade Expo is in full swing (I'd love to go one year…) and Capcom is on hand showing off not one, but two new gameplay videos from their upcoming on-rails zombie shooter Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles.

I've been hard on on-rails shooters over the past few years, and I'm absolutely awful at containing my contempt for the Wii, but I'm still looking forward to checking this title out when it hits shelves this December. Check out the first clip below, then jump past the break for the second.

So via Critical Distance I found this feminist critique of BioShock, written by Richard Terrell (who, you may have noticed, is a man). But it is really not sitting right with me. His thesis is that BioShock depicts women as weak and men as strong. So I thought the rest of the article would try to show how BioShock upholds patriarchal values.

As Gus Mastrapa writes in GameLife, Platinum Games's upcoming brawler Bayonetta will feature a mode which allows gamers to play through the entire game using a single button. The title, which will be released for the XBox 360 and the PS3, is, essentially, a mainstream one-switch game.

Dystopic... but not in a fun way.

 

HIGH I finally got to see what one of those T-600s with the rubber faces looks like.

LOW It's two hours long. And most of that is spent ducking behind cars waiting for AI to do its job.

WTF This is a Terminator future-war game. Where are the lasers?

Team Fortress 2's "classless" update dropped recently, adding the new King of the Hill game mode, several new maps and some pretty significant class changes (despite being classless), the most prominent of which are the return of the Scout's double jump while using the Sandman (at the expense of 30 health) and allowing the Engineer to repair one end of a teleporter (including removing Spy sappers) by repairing the other.

I think we were all pretty excited by the idea of Gore Verbinski directing the cinematic adaptation of 2K Games' BioShock. Unfortunately, though, the global economy and other issues killed that dream and cast the future of the project into doubt—at least it did until last night.

Variety is reporting that director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo is currently in negotiations to take over the project.

While Fresnadillo isn't a household name, he did direct 28 Weeks Later—which was nice piece of apocalyptic zombie cinema. The style he displayed behind the camera in that film certainly gives me hope for BioShock.

This isn't official yet, but I'll keep you posted as details emerge.

This new trailer for Capcom's Wii-exclusive Resident Evil title (subtitled The Darkside Chronicles) debuted at Gamescon a few days ago. I was saving it for a slow news day—and lo and behold, that's exactly what today is.

This new clip is almost three minutes in length. It doesn't show any gameplay footage, but does spend a lot of time fleshing out the title's story. Truthfully, the story sounds like your typical Resident Evil tale—scientists playing god create horrible monsters who want to kill people.

I'm still interested in checking out the game. I have a weird fondness for the Resident Evil series' wonky narrative stylings and my Wii hasn't seen a lot of action lately. That will hopefully change when this game hits store shelves sometime this December.