At one point, before we were all born, Duke Nukem Forever looked somethng like this.
Rumors about upcoming video games are always weird to deal with. Even when you hear something and know it to be true, you usually don't know enough of the how's and why's to piece it all together. The Duke Nukem Forever/Gearbox rumors went around for a bit, and earlier this week we had them all but confirmed to us via a series of winks, nods, and knowing glances. But even once I knew that Gearbox was really going to be announcing a Duke Nukem game at PAX, I had no context... and in a tale as long and convoluted as Duke's, context is everything.
We'll look to get that context later on during an interview or two here at the Penny Arcade Expo. But in the meantime, Duke Nukem Forever is a video game, and it's being shown here in playable form via a two-level demo that sets its tone right out of the gate by putting you at a urinal and informing you that the right trigger will, in fact, "piss." Duke's not one to disappoint, so it looks like he'll go for as long as you hold down the trigger. The rest of the bathroom is also a good throwback to the interactivity of Duke Nukem 3D: the soap pump works, the sinks all function, and the mirrors are totally functional... except for the part where they're all horribly cracked.
I can't think of a good enough joke involving Duke and "head" right now, but you get the idea.
This first sequence quickly turns into an updated re-creation of the boss fight at the end of Episode 3 in Duke 3D. After running around some tunnels and locker rooms (where you'll be able to draw on a dry erase board using the left analog stick), you'll head to a football field and fight a large Cycloid boss. He's not especially tough, but it's meant to be a prologue. After kicking the beast's tongue through the uprights, the scene pulls out, revealing that the prologue takes place on a TV in Duke's mansion, and he's playing while receiving oral service from two ladies. Classy.
From there, the demo transitions to something labelled "level 15." It opens with a driving sequence, putting Duke behind the wheel of a monster truck. If you spent any time digging through the different leaks that sprung out in the wake of the game's previous "death," you've probably seen some of this section already. After the truck runs out of gas, Duke hops out and continues on foot. This sequence appears to have been put in to let players try out a variety of wepaons, including a rail gun--which seems great for shooting pig cops in their pig cop faces--and the shrink ray, which works as advertised, allowing you to stomp out tiny enemies after you blast them. The classic Duke shotgun also makes an appearance. The shooting is handled console style, with the left trigger used to aim down the sights of the gun and the right to shoot. Though the demo stations were set up with 360 controllers, the game was actually running on PCs.
Or maybe it was all some sort of beautiful dream? The notion of Duke Nukem Forever somehow continuing to be a product that now, perhaps more than ever, looks like it's actually going to be released in stores as a product you can purchase with money is extremely hard to wrap my mind around. But that's the plan. Unless this is the world's most expensive and elaborate prank, Gearbox is working on Duke Nukem Forever right now and is looking to release it in 2011 on PC and consoles.
At this point, you may have seen the screenshots and trailer for Bastion. But it's hard to get a sense for what the game actually is through any of those methods. Some of the comments we've been seeing in our past coverage compare it directly to the Diablo series. Sure, makes sense. After all, the game is billed as an "action-RPG," it's set at an isometric angle, and, well, those guitar chords that open the trailer certainly send a pretty specific message.
Others compare the game's art style and colorful presentation to games from Vanillaware, like Odin Sphere or Muramasa: The Demon Blade. Some came away from the trailer sensing that some world-building would be involved, like some kind of new-fangled ActRaiser. A couple of you thought the narrator in the trailer might be Ron Perlman doing his Fallout narrator voice. None of these are quite right, but initial impressions, at least, place Bastion in some pretty good company.
We were able to play a brief piece of of Supergiant's new project, which is the same version that will be on display at the Penny Arcade Expo this weekend in Seattle. Before we go much further, maybe you should take a look at the first few minutes of this prototype version.
The way the narration reacts to what you do, as you do it is the first big stand-out thing about Bastion. The way it keeps up with you as you're finding new things almost feels like magic... or play-by-play commentary from a sports game applied to a game where you're swinging a giant hammer at guys made out of gas. These early portions in the video feel pretty chatty, but since you're being introduced to a bunch of new things right at the start, it seems to make sense. Also, the narrator is a great introduction to the tone of Bastion. He's not talking about ghosts and slimes. He's talking about "gas fellas" and "scumbags." You aren't just picking up "rock" or "gem" upgrades. You're finding "somethin' heavy" and "somethin' shiny." Bastion strikes that very deliberate tone right out of the gate, and it leaves you wanting more of that style at the end of the demo. The narrator is why we've decided to run some raw gameplay footage--talking over the whole thing in a Quick Look would sort of defeat the purpose.
The Kid, Bastion's lead character, has more mobility than you might expect from an action-RPG. By default, he's got a roll move that you can use to either escape incoming attacks or roll into objects to bust them up. And once you're armed--you'll quickly find a hammer, a repeater, a bow, and a large shield in the version being shown at PAX--you can cancel out of those rolls directly into an attack. Standing still lets you execute stronger attacks than you can if you're on the move, and well-timed presses of the shield button let you bat projectiles back where they came from, which is a handy way to take down turrets. While you'll start with those few weapons--or, at least you will at the moment, since we're talking about a game that's probably around a year off--the guys at Supergiant told us that you'll encounter a lot of different weapons, many of which make the game's time period hard to nail down. There's nothing especially modern about a hammer or a bow and arrow... but how the heck did a carbine get into this world? You'll be able to swap your weapons out for others at designated areas, and different weapons enable different special attacks. You can also equip different evasive maneuvers, such as one that replaces your roll with a rolling leap.
As you probably noticed in the video, The Kid seems to be heading in the direction of the Bastion, a designated spot for the people of his once-whole city to head for in case of emergency. Once you get there, you'll be able to rebuild it, adding buildings that allow you to swap out or upgrade weapons, or another that lets you enable various beverages that confer specific bonuses, such as the ability to carry more health potions. The early part of the game shown makes it sound like the basic loop would be to go out into an area, collect objects, then bring them back to your base of operations, where you'll attempt to reverse whatever it was that caused your world to get blasted apart into sections of flying rock in the first place. The developers didn't want to elaborate on their plans for the later parts in the game, but as you might expect, it sounds like there's more to it than simple collection. On top of that, there are plans in the works for an asymmetrical co-op feature. I asked, but wasn't getting anywhere when trying to get more details. It sounds like there's a lot more to Bastion still to be revealed.
And the plan is for us to be there to reveal it. We'll have the team from Supergiant Games on our Big Live Live Show: Live on September 9, including Greg Kasavin, who joins Bastion's development team today as Creative Director on the project. We're also planning a regular series that will let you guys ask questions and check in to see what the heck it's like to be a small team chasing your indie game development dreams. I should also state here, up front, before we get going, that due to the way we've decided to create ongoing programming based on Bastion and its developers--one of whom was a close coworker of ours for a lot of years--we're opting to not review Bastion when it's released. I suspect that, by the time it's finished, we'll all be a little too close to it to render an untainted verdict, so it's best to just state that now, so everyone's clear. Cool? We'll have more on September 9, and we hope you enjoy seeing what we've got planned for the months ahead.
OK, so I think some of the details on what's being unveiled tonight might have leaked out or something today, but whatever! I'm in Los Angeles for a Call of Duty: Black Ops event, where we'll be hearing more about the game's multiplayer modes, and I'll be attempting to use my cell phone to deliver portions of the event to you via our official justin.tv channel, helpfully embedded below! Alternately, you can also watch the stream from the awesome new Giant Bomb chat page.
Of course, this being Los Angeles, and AT&T being AT&T, my cell signal has been absolute garbage since I hit town. So we're kind of at the whim of AT&T's 3G coverage... sounds hopeless, I know, but it'll be fun to give it a shot either way. So join us, won't you? If it doesn't work, well, then at least Drew came along with me with the real camera. So we'll get what we need either way.
The event should start around 6PM (Pacific time, ask your Internet to figure out what that means in your timezone!) with a brief presentation, followed by some hands-on time. I'm not exactly sure what they're letting us shoot (my guess is that I won't be allowed to just point the phone or our cameras at a TV and shoot footage for an hour), so we're sort of playing it by ear. If you're around and are willing to come on an adventure with me, well, come back around 6 and we'll all find out together, cool?
Oh, after the presentation, I'll probably start and stop the stream in spots to conserve battery or, like, go to the bathroom and stuff. With the way the iPhone app cuts off right when you hit stop (instead of streaming out its entire buffer first), the cuts may seem abrupt. Consider yourselves warned!
As I promised back on Sunday, here are some more screenshots and the first trailer for Bastion, a new action-RPG from Supergiant Games. It's currently set for a 2011 release on PC and consoles.
It's the narration--which plays a pretty significant role in the actual game, by the way--that initially made this game stand out to me. Here's the first batch of screenshots to go with the video.
There's a real responsiveness to the action in Bastion that you wouldn't initially expect when you hear the term "action-RPG." On Thursday we'll have a chunk of in-game footage from the version that'll be on display at PAX this weekend and I'll talk a bit more about how it all handles. Oh, and speaking of PAX, the guys from Supergiant Games printed up some Bastion postcards that they'll be handing out during the show. Consider that your "free stuff alert" for this weekend.
Psst. Hey, kid. Want to see something you haven't seen before? Yeah, I know, we normally don't traffic in exclusives, but this one's something you'll want to keep an eye on.
(Oh, hey, get a larger version of the shot right here, cool?)
That right there is a screenshot of Bastion, an action-RPG set for release in 2011 on PC and consoles by Supergiant Games. It's one of the selections for the PAX 10 this year. The PAX 10, in case you didn't know, is an annual collection of 10 independent games, whittled down from a stack of over 100 submissions by a rigorous selection process run by the Penny Arcade guys. Bastion is in pretty good company this year, alongside games like Altitude, Super Meat Boy, and Retro City Rampage.
All 10 of the selections will be shown at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle next weekend, but we'll have some information on Bastion in the days before the show that you'll almost certainly be interested in seeing. After that, we'll spend some time during September 9's Big Live Live Show: Live with the team currently working on the game to find out how their PAX debut went and what lies ahead as they continue building Bastion.
So here's something you might not know about me. I typically don't take notes while reviewing games. The usual exceptions would be, like, if a specific line of dialogue jumps out at me and I want to make sure that I'm quoting it correctly or something like that. But I tend to go with the "if I can't remember it, chances are it doesn't necessarily make enough of an impact to be a point in the review" approach. It's served me pretty well over the years. In fact, the only times when this approach does me wrong is in cases like the one I'm currently facing.
I played Halo: Reach today. Before doing so, I signed a big ol' non-disclosure agreement, which covers things like not spoiling the story twists and not using footage of specific areas, and so on. It's nothing fancy and it comes with the territory. Some folks are quick to jump at moments like this as if it's some sort of shady dealing, but it's a standard part of doing business. When companies give you early access to their marquee releases, they want some legal backup to keep you from going hog-wild and posting video of the entire game online or something, and the agreements never encroach on a reviewer's ability to do his or her job. At least, none of the ones I've signed have been that way.
But that's beside the point. The difference with today's play session and subsequent legal agreement is that there are a couple of levels in the Halo: Reach campaign that I can freely talk about right now. Right this second, I could be typing it up instead of writing this nonsense. That is... if I could remember what those two levels entailed.
It's tempting to go and find some other outlet's writeup of the two levels and skim them, if only to get a quick refresher course. But that'd be cheating! Gah, but it'd probably only take a sentence like "and then Noble Six cracks a dude in the skull on a bridge" to jog my memory. Wait... maybe I can't talk about the skull cracking or the bridge.
I guess it speaks to the different mentalities of the previewer versus the reviewer. I'm interested in taking the entire game in as a whole when I'm working on a review. Don't take this as me saying "most parts of a game aren't important" or anything like that. The individual moments are important when they're happening, but they're quickly culled down to a general feeling along with a few specific sequences to support points made in the text or accompanying video. Usually, by the time I've finished playing a game, many of my thoughts are organized well enough to begin writing almost immediately, though some games require a bit more thought for one reason or another.
Man, I should have just taken some effting notes instead of being all high and mighty, like I'm mister "bringing a notepad just slows me down." So here are a couple of things I can say about these two levels--whichever two they actually are--in Halo: Reach.
I still enjoy the guns-followed-by-melee approach that has served the Halo series so well for all these years.
The armor abilities make for an interesting addition to the standard Halo gameplay... in these two levels, of course.
I should really go play those two levels again and take notes instead of being a total jackass.
As an aside, I threw up the following post on Twitter before starting on this little not-write-up:
NOTE: TAKE THE ABOVE AT FACE VALUE
That was immediately met with people trying to find hidden meaning in the message, as if this was some sly missive with loads to say about the quality of the Reach campaign. I swear, sometimes I think you guys at home are getting just as big on the misquotes and the art of the "scandalous" headline as some games writers are. Gross! Not everything has a double meaning. Sometimes my inability to parse and store level names is just my inability to parse and store level names, OK?
Wait! One is the sort of... stealthy mission, and the other opens with all those Warthogs going balls out, right? Jeez, hope I'm right...
