The past two days have seen something incredible. Hundreds of women games developers, journalists and culture commentators have poured out their anxieties, passion for their craft and how there are some in the industry and culture who make them think about leaving it all behind.
History is a funny thing. Napoleon said “History is a set of lies agreed upon.” Easily misread, misunderstood or misinterpreted, it is written by the victors and those who do not remember it are condemned to repeat it. Perhaps that is why Assassin’s Creed III comes to deliver a bloody rendition of the American Revolutionary War in video game format.
I have spent six hours with the latest tale of Assassins and Templars, learning, scheming, killing. After everything that has happened, most of all I know I have only scratched the surface of the story Assassin’s Creed III wants to tell.
Kill me once, shame on you. Kill me twice, shame on me. Arkane Studios have announced three upcoming packs of DLC for pseudo-Victorian stab-them-up power fantasy Dishonored. The first, a set of challenges of skill separate from the game proper, is coming as soon as December.
This had passed me by completely. After almost three months on XBLA, Deadlight -a side-scrolling platformer with a strange mash-up of old-school mechanics and zombies – is hitting Steam today. We have a very dark trailer to give you a taste of delicious, delicious infected flesh.
It’s not all blood, gore, rats and farming equipment at Reticule Towers. Sometimes it is pleasant to pick a game with a slower pace, gentle music and some pretty pictures and Jason Roberts’ Gorogoa – winner of this year’s IndieCade Visual Design Award – fits that description to a tee.
It is almost time for Connor Kenway to slash and burn across the American east coast, slaughtering royalists and pseudo-revolutionaries and bears alike. In this launch trailer, we see a little of what’s in store and how the boy Ratonhnhaké:ton became the killer in the white hood.
The drip-drip-drip of Absolution trailers continues, like an expertly inflicted and historically questionable Chinese torture eroding your (my) armour of cynicism and doubt. The latest session reveals the many outfits the dear old mass-murdering clone can don in his bloody work.
Poor Jason Brody. He is on the trip of a life-time, jet-skiing and hang-gliding around beautiful tropical islands with girlfriend and best buds when everything goes to hell. Girlfriend and mates kidnapped, with psychotropic drugs flooding his system and manipulating his senses, he has the bad luck to meet lunatics like Buck and Vaas.
Are you familiar with the details of the American Revolutionary War? How about the specifics of the Battle of Bunker’s Hill? And John Trumbull’s painting of the Death of General Warren? Then Ubisoft, developers of Assassin’s Creed 3, want you… to go pixel hunting in their Hacked History webgame.