Diablo 3

Since Diablo 3 is coming out on Tuesday, I've been doing some reading about the mechanics and watched some videos to learn more about the game.

This here is a great article by David Sirlin (sirlin.net / @sirlin) about the ability system of the game.
And here is a great post from the Blizzard Forums about character customization, with links to interesting Q&A videos with Blizzard's developers.

And, as a side-note, I found an unboxing-video of the collector's edition.

Teaser for upcoming adventure game "Stasis"

The game is currently in development by Chris Bischoff (@StasisGame on Twitter). It's a one-man-project and it looks very promising.
More infos, screenshots and a dev-blog can be found on the game's official website, www.stasisgame.com.

Aperture: Lab Ratt - Portal fan film

(found via Kotaku)

Indie Game - The Movie

Gunpoint

I've read about the game "Gunpoint" (by Tom Francis) a couple of times already and it seems very interesting. There's a preview on BoingBoing.

Sleeping Dogs Teaser

From what I've seen so far, this is going to be an open-world game, GTA-like. The combat seems to be a bit more complex than in GTA, maybe comparable to Arkham Asylum, with some Parkour-elements sprinkled here and there. "Sleeping Dogs" is not going to revolutionize the genre, but it may be a neat little game.

Mohamed Ali vs. Ryu

Source picture (small resolution, unfortunately)

(via Kotaku)

Best & Worst games of 2011

Gaming's biggest joys—and most bitter disappointments—of 2011 (arstechnica.com)

Portal short film

A Portal short film made by Eisenfeuer, sound by Hamster Alliance

Videogame art

The art of Christian Lorenz-Scheurer

The art of Craig Mullins

The art of Deus Ex: Human Revolution

And here are some nice Videogame wallpapers (links to Dead End Thrills)

Stealth Bastard

Found a review here.

Diablo 3 preorder

Goodbye Battlefield 3, hello Diablo 3 :)

Adventure / Puzzle games on the Nintendo DS

A couple of days ago I was browsing through video game articles/reviews (specifically for the Nintendo DS) and read something about the "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney" game-series. I had often heard and read of them, but they never really caught my attention. But since many people seemed to love them, I looked up the reviews and what I read actually convinced me to give it a try. I opted for the newest one, "Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney" (22 $ shipped from Amazon).

I kept reading and browsing, one thing lead to another and I ended up finding out about a whole bunch of adventure/puzzle games for the DS from the last couple of years I had not paid much attention to. It seems like there are quite a lot of hidden gems on that system.

I checked out the "Professor Layton"-series next and I ended up getting the latest installment, "Professor Layton and the Unwound Future". (15 $ from Best Buy, using 15 $ in rewards-coupons. Best part: the cashier had trouble at check-out and ended up giving me back 10 $ in rewards for the hassle. :)

Now defunct video game developer "Cing" has a bunch of interesting games as well. I bought their second DS game, "Hotel Dusk: Room 215", a loooong time ago (must have been one of the first games I got for the DS).
Their first game was "Another Code" (titled "Trace Memory" in the US, got it for 27 $ shipped from eBay) and they later made a sequel to "Hotel Dusk" called "Last Window: The Secret of Cape West" (16 $ shipped from eBay). This one only came out in Japan and Europe because Cing went bankrupt and closed their doors before they could release it in the US.

Other games I got:
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (28 $ shipped from Amazon)
Secret Files: Tunguska (15 $ shipped from Amazon) This is a port of a PC game, but it looks alright and I thought the price was okay.

These look like I might like them as well:
Ghost Trick
Time Hollow

A lot of these are a bit older and not all stores carry them.
What initially turned me off with these games is the graphics, they seemed to be aimed at a younger audience. But from what I read, this is a false impression for many of them.

Delivery day!

Got a bunch of packages today!



I had found a copy of "Heart of Darkness" for PS1 on eBay (like I said I would) for 10 bucks.
Then I ordered the documentary "King of Chinatown". I'll write something about it once I'll have watched it (quite a few fighting game documentaries out there, I'll write a separate post about those).
And finally, on Evo-weekend, I ordered a Hori Real Arcade Pro V3 SA stick and a bag for it. Hori had a 20% off sale on their website (thanks again for the coupons, Alex Valle!) and that was too good to pass on.

Dwarf Fortress

I saw a couple of articles lately about this game called Dwarf Fortress.
I'll just leave this here in case anybody (or I) ever feel like getting into it... :)

Dwarf Fortress: “perhaps the most complex video game ever made”
and
Online class to teach Dwarf Fortress
and
A Candid Look Inside the Weird and Wonderful Minds Behind Dwarf Fortress

Eric Chahi

There was an article on Kotaku about the game Another world (also known as Out of this world in the US), programmed by Eric Chahi as a one-man-project. The article was accompanied by the following video, which is a full walkthrough:



All this made me think of another game Eric Chahi worked on: Heart of Darkness. I have it for PC somewhere at home but I can't get to it now. I think I never finished it, I played it for a bit but haven't seen the ending. Now I'm thinking I should find a copy for the PlayStation and play it again (since my PS3 can play PS1 games).

Eric Chahi is currently working on a new game called From Dust. It's coming out now (or soon) for Xbox360 and PC and a PS3 version will follow later, I believe. I saw a video of it and it looks interesting.

GTA4 enhancements

I saw 2 things related to GTA4 today: One is a series of screenshots (enhanced, probably) taken from GTA4 running with various mods that make it look really sleek. The other is pretty much the same thing, but in motion:

Elemental Kombat

Outland

Outland is finally out on the US PSN (came out in EU almost two weeks ago). I had played through the demo and loved it, made it a day 1 purchase for me. The animations are as smooth as butter and the in-game atmosphere is great.
Here's a "behind the scenes with Housemarque":

Brink vs. Real World (Parkour)