Really Simple Syndicate: Satellite Reign Video Playthrough

Satellite Reign comfortably cleared its £350,000 Kickstarter target in July of last year, but that this Syndicate-inspired tactical cyberpunk game didn’t extend its tally into the millions was perhaps the first sign that i) the crowdfunding service isn’t a magic well full of money and ii) that we don’t live in the best of all possible universes.

One of the signs that our universe is still very good however is the first pre-alpha playthough of the game, embedded below. It’s dark, stealthy, cyberpunk, tactical, Syndicate Syndicate Syndicate. I like it.

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Machinamazing: Saxxy Awards Winners Declared

Whoa. Hey there. Sorry, I’m just coming round following the Saxxy Awards on Wednesday. I don’t even remember Thursday. There I was, seated between Morrissey and Prince, then I have a vague memory of Mozzer whipped out a hip flask that smelt like paint stripper and… nothing. It’s a blank. I don’t even know who won. I awoke in a cemetery this morning.

The Saxxies, of course, are the annual fan-voted awards for short films made in Valve’s Source Filmmaker. They’re short flicks about TF2, Portal 2, and Dota 2, but with the care Valve puts into developing characters and recording odd edge-case lines of dialogue, folks can be jolly creative.

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Think Of All The Things We Learned In Portal 2

Have you ever idly wondered whether GLaDOS might have been up to more research and testing than the Portal games let on? A study from Florida State University into the effects of playing Portal 2 on a variety of skills won’t do much to ease your fears, then.

According to the study, spending eight hours playing Portal 2 is more effective at improving a range of cognitive skills than a dedicated brain training program called Lumosity.

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Lonely Planet: EVE Online To Change Long-Distance Travel

This is interesting. CCP are making changes to long-distance travel in EVE Online, “with the aim of significantly increasing minimum travel times between two arbitrary distant points.” They feel that the current ease of movement around the space MMO’s galaxy has “shrunk the practical dimensions of New Eden considerably, to the detriment of the experience.”

Even small changes to EVE Online can have a huge impact on the game, because of its focus on player-driven experiences. The blog post explaining the incoming changes is therefore appropriately tentative, laying out the specifics of and thinking behind the changes in careful detail.

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Have You Played… Blade Symphony

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

Remember the multiplayer mode in Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast? It inspired a well-known piece of games writing, about the etiquette that its tight, frantic lightsaber duels inspired. Blade Symphony is a whole game built upon that multiplayer mode, with a more nuanced combat system than its obvious inspiration, and a better version of the same spirited community.

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Wot I Think: FIFA 15

FIFA – more than any other game – is a game you play co-operatively with your computer.

This is true of any game, of course; there is no play without the computer’s reaction to your inputs. But FIFA requires that you steer eleven footballers in real-time around a pitch you can see less than a third of at any given moment. To make that possible, you’re reliant on the computer to take hold of whoever you’re not directly controlling at any given moment. You’re reliant on the game to correctly infer your intent as you wrestle with umpteen buttons and twin analogue sticks.

In the space between those two outcomes – intent and action – is where FIFA happens. Everything that’s good or bad about the game exists in that ambiguity. It’s why I love and hate FIFA 15 for all the same reasons I’ve loved and hated the last four iterations.

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Sandbox Silliness: Amazing Frog Hopping Over From Ouya

The official tourism slogan of Swindon is, as far as I can tell, “For Town Centre Shopping Follow ‘Town centre’”. I suggest an alternative: “Home Of Amazing Frog?“. Question mark and all, it was one of the biggest Ouya launch games, turning the Wiltshire town in a wacky physics sandbox filled with trampolines, cannons, fans, bouncy castles, remote-controlled cars, space rockets, cats, skateboarding pigeons, explosive barrels, blimps, guns, and footballs for split-screen shenanigans. Now it’s trying to hop to PC via Steam Greenlight.

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