Developed by Tom Francis (formerly a games journalist with PC Gamer UK), Gunpoint is a game with a title that completely betrays how great the game is. It’s not one of the dime-a-dozen brown first person shooters that have been churned out lately by Activision or EA. It’s a neo-noir detective stealth puzzler. Interested?

In Gunpoint you play as Richard Conway, a freelance detective who just unwrapped and took a pair of Bullfrog Hypertrousers for a test drive. The main mode of transportation in the game, the Hypertrousers give you the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound, or just smash yourself through a plate glass window. The Hypertrousers set the tone of the humor for the rest of the game. The game has branching dialogue trees, and it’s up to you to make Conway a loose cannon detective with a loud mouth, or one of them strong, silent types, and the game rewards you for each personality in the end.

The game really starts to shine when you’re given the “Crosslink” ability. With one simple flick of the mouse scroll wheel you can see what every security camera, light switch, hand scanner, or even guard’s pistol is connected to. Then, you can rewire everything. Want one guard to shoot his buddy standing next to him? Wire that guard’s gun to a light switch. Flick the switch and one guard’s got a hole in him and the other’s got a murder conviction. Want the guard to open the door for you? Turn off the lights in his room and rewire the light switch he’ll go for to the door you want opened. Give that guard enough time to walk to that switch and boom, you’re in. The opportunities the game presents you for these sorts of things are always brilliant and they leave you feeling like you deserve to be wearing that fedora and trench coat, and that you have a reason to be dressing up like a MRA flasher.

The game is unique in that it doesn’t want you to feel bad for going through a level, beating every single guard to a bloody mess and jumping through every window, but it gives you the same amount of money that you would get if you  were as quiet as a mouse. The only difference is the grade it gives you after the mission, which doesn’t hinder or help gameplay in any way, and is only there for perfectionists.  

Everything works together in Gunpoint to make an incredibly exciting experience that leaves you feeling smart afterwards. As to be expected, there aren’t a lot of issues with a game that was developed by a man whose job it was to point out issues in games. That being said, the only issue I’ve experienced is that sometimes the controls go a little wonky and aren’t as precise as usual. More than worth the $10.

★★★★★

In Proteus, there are four buttons. W, A, S, and D. Clicking does nothing. Space bar does nothing. There are no monsters, aliens, zombies, or dragons to shoot or slash at. It’s just you and an island. Not an island like Far Cry 3 or Tomb Raider. An island covered in pastel pixels. There aren’t any objectives. No waypoint markers. Nothing to assassinate or steal. Just some animals, trees, and the sun. Proteus is a game in loose terms, a vacation in stricter ones. It’s magical.

Proteus begins with you in the ocean and a randomly generated island in the middle of spring slowly fades into view as you walk towards it. Once you hit land, you hear all sorts of sounds. The game generates it’s “soundtrack” as you move. Walk toward a frog and it will bounce away from you, making a chime that elevates in pitch each time it leaps. The game has a day/night cycle too, which drastically changes the music. During the night, you might be able to see swirling white lights in the distance. If you walk towards them, the season and soundtrack will change. Summer sounds upbeat, and Autumn is somber and slow.

The game has several events that can happen. You can learn how to stop time using the towers that may appear on your island, or by visiting mountaintop totems, a shadowy figure may appear that will run from you. Everything about Proteus comes together to make a beautiful and incredibly calming experience. While it may not be for everyone, it’s definitely worth checking out for on Steam.

★★★★☆

Good Job, Old Sport! of the day: Ever wanted to play The Great Gatsby as an NES video game? Well now you can! Thanks to designers Charlie Hoey, Dylan Valentine, Michael DiMotta, and Pete Smith, all you Gatsby fans can finally be Nick Carraway in the search for the reclusive millionaire, collecting bonus cocktails and defeating the evil eyes of Dr T.J. Eckleburg. It’s little more than a simple platformer, but it’s incredibly well detailed and hugely entertaining, and probably a lot more fun than watching Baz Luhrmann’s recent adaptation.

Click here to play the game

gamefreaksnz:

Grand Theft Auto V: massive gallery of new screenshots unveiled

Rockstar has released a huge new gallery of eye-popping screenshots for their upcoming blockbuster, Grand Theft Auto V.

The Game That Game Designers Should Be Playing

When you play a modern video game, you’re told how to do something, right? In the Portal games, you’re given chambers in which the game explains how the portal gun works. In Grand Theft Auto IV, it seems like you get a tutorial every time you start a mission. In Antichamber, developed by Alexander Bruce, you get nothing. It’s great. The game starts out and you’re in a, well, an antechamber with the controls on one wall. That is all you get in terms of instructions, and that’s a huge deal.

The gameplay of Antichamber revolves around non-Euclidian geometry. 3D spaces don’t work the way you think they do. For example: in one room in the game, you walk in and it’s empty. Turn around, and it’s a whole different area. The space you inhabit just doesn’t make any sense, and most of the puzzles revolve around that. The game makes you figure that out on your own and you get a much better sense of accomplishment for it. Eventually you get a “gun” that can collect and replace bricks around the “world” which becomes a focus of the puzzles. The gun gets upgrades throughout the game which allow it to behave in different ways. Antichamber makes you teach yourself how to use the gun by solving the puzzle. It relies on the intelligence on the players, rather than having a little bubble pop up giving you a quick run-down on the gun.

The presentation of the game is what sets it apart even more than the Escher-ness. The game embraces a white and black color scheme with multicolored lighting and cubes to designate certain puzzle mechanics. The ambient sound in the game is almost out of place, but it all works. As you shuffle your way through austere chambers you hear frogs, rain, wind through trees, and crickets, which help to bring the whole thing closer to a “dreamy” sort of feel. In almost every chamber there’s a black square with a drawing on it. Click the square and the image will turn into a very vague hint about the puzzle. Trouble with these black fortune cookies is that they rarely help, and you just start getting frustrated.

This isn’t a puzzle game where you can use a brute force approach and just start placing cubes everywhere. You need to use unconventional thinking to solve the puzzles. Most of the time, a hint saying “sometimes we need to dig deeper to find a solution” doesn’t do shit for me. I can’t go down in this room. I’d rather have no hint than a Hallmark card every time I walk into a room. All of the pictures related to the hints are put on a wall in the menu room and start telling a loose story of a man moving through his life.

Antichamber makes very interesting and deliberate choices when teaching you how to play it, and it all comes together to create a rewarding, if confusing experience. Even if it does fall short in the realm of hints & tips, this is a game that is well worth the £13 price on Steam.

★★★★★★★★☆☆

The Xbox 360 is old. The Xbox 360 is so old that when it first came out, I had an inferiority complex because my best friend had kissed a girl and I hadn’t. The Xbox 360 is one of the longest lived consoles of any generation. It’s no surprise then that the drip-feed of information about the next iteration of Microsoft’s console has started a feeding frenzy (no pun intended) on various gaming and tech blogs. Much like an actual feeding frenzy, this one starts with blood in the water. 

The last generation of consoles could be argued to be the pinnacle of the entire idea of a “video game console.” They offered amazing experiences in game worlds bigger and more detailed than any before. Aside from games, they eventually evolved through their life spans to become central entertainment units outside of video gaming. Currently, I can watch entire series of shows and catch up on my backlog of movies on the same machine that I pour hours of my life into Skyrim. I can surf the web and buy games from my living room, I can do pretty much anything within the realm of digital entertainment (shut up about mods!) from my couch in my underwear at 3am on a Tuesday morning. Consoles have never been this good. Oh, and if the current generation of games leaves me feeling like I’ve lost something since tossing my older hardware, I can pop in an old Xbox, Playstation 2 or Gamecube game with little-to-no hassle (at least on the PS3 or Wii) and enjoy some nostalgia. 

But all good things must come to an end. 

If you’ve been following reports on the next generation of consoles (except the Wii U), you’ve become aware of the startling truth that console gaming as we know it is about to be dead. As far as current reports have stated, the new Xbox and Playstation will both require constant internet connections to function (sorry, rural dwellers or people with low-speed connections), have measures against second-hand games (sorry poor people and used game store owners), and the Xbox will require Kinect 2 to function (sorry… everybody) and also continue with Microsoft’s “Make Everything Look And Act As Shitty As Windows 8” campaign (once again, sorry everybody). The shift is alarming if you like to own a system hooked up to your television that plays games; Sony and Microsoft don’t care. Actually, Sony and Microsoft are throwing you off the couch and telling you to go to your room, where your PC probably is. We’ve had it too good for too long, and as a million of the worst pictures on the worst Facebook profiles and worst blogs for the worst people say “love sucks and when it hits you it hurts like fuck.”  

There are a myriad of reasons why Microsoft and Sony think this is a good idea even though to you and to me and to millions of forum posters it seems like suicide and accepting that they know what they’re doing is a hard pill to swallow. It’s simple, really: games don’t make money. Not anymore, at least. The new strategy is a long war to take over the living room and monopolize entertainment. The new thing is for the console to do a lot of things, most of which aren’t playing video games. The new thing is going to be gamers singing Females Welcome by Trinidad Jame$ all night while they hope the laser in their PS2 can hold out for another 50 hours of grinding in Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne. We’ve been kicked to the curb in favor of people who buy more and complain less. The new thing will be buying a gaming console to play movies. The new thing won’t be stealing from poor beleaguered publishers when you go to purchase a game that has been out of print for 5 years at the shop around the corner. The new thing will be buying a console, setting up an account, and renting a bunch of content. Blockbuster got killed by internet piracy and Netflix, but only because it didn’t have the foresight to predict cloud storage and selling the same thing to people over and over again. The future is Blockbuster. The future is the putrid corpse of Blockbuster but without the rack of candy. The future is pretty bleak. At least you don’t have to worry about the disc laser giving out on your digital copy of whatever game you’ve purchased. So without backwards compatibility outside of repurchasing your entire back catalogue which will then be locked to your account on your system, mandatory requirement of a constant internet connection for the system to even function, no second-hand games, and in the case of the Xbox the requirement of a finicky and expensive hardware add-on, Sony and Microsoft have finally excised the demons plaguing their business model: happy gamers. 

The new generation of consoles is a message to gamers: we don’t need you, but you need us. You’ve been taking advantage for too long and we’re tired of it! Also, we’re taking the house and your parents. Since they’ve split and run off with some other idiots, you don’t even have to feel bad about returning to PC gaming so soon. Really, this break up was better for everyone.

CLICK THROUGH

No video game I played this year got it 100% right for me, and I played a few. Dishonored? A brilliant, open-ended game that used its narrative as nothing but a set of bookends. Guild Wars 2? A game that, despite being an MMO that integrates the idea of social connectivity into its gameplay so well, still manages to make me feel like a loner for most of its leveling content. Halo 4? The entry that took its single player component so seriously that it left the more important half by the wayside There are others, of course, but simply answering them like this would defeat the point.

The main thing I surmised from playing a variety of different video games this year was that, to enjoy most games, I needed to compromise. We might get a fully realised world,deeply entrenched in its own lore, but the same amount of time gone into the world weʼre planted in for the next however long has not been spent on actual ways to make living in this fantasy fun. We could be given a sprawling landscape that contains many different locations and environments for us to play around in, but there may be barely anything to do within it apart from see the sights. After months of reading article after article that built hype upon hype I started to become disillusioned with the whole process of waiting for a video game to be released. The trailers, whether CG or in-game footage, promise you feats of absolute wonderment that you can never quite recreate once you make your way through the game and the content spread across gaming publications are sometimes so overloaded with buzz phrases like “killer app” and “next-gen during this gen” that it becomes difficult to find out anything useful about the game. This can be seen particularly in the releases from the big franchises spread across consoles this year.

I am a massive fan of the Assassinʼs Creed series. I love the historical periods, their takes on them, the free running based gameplay style and yes, even the modern day story supplements. I was particularly excited for this yearʼs sequel, Assassinʼs Creed III, and was lured in by the “New game! New engine! New environment! New character! New! Yay!” hype locomotive that ran full steam ahead over me repeatedly after being overly disappointed with Assassinʼs Creed: Brotherhood 1.5 …I mean, Revelations. When I finally got my hands on it, from the get go I was let down. The prologue dragged on for what seemed like an eon, with four hours having been invested before even taking one step as the main protagonist, and when I finally got to be Connor, I had to wade through an origin story that not only bored me to tears, but somehow managed to fit an on-rails sequence in there as if the previous efforts to get this far werenʼt already some ploy for the development team to gain some sort of masochistic pleasure at my expense. The ending, to both the memories of Connor and Desmondʼs journey felt like a big massive “fuck you” with a chase sequence so frustrating that I actually had to seek help of a guide to finish (something Iʼm not too proud of to admit) and an abrupt turd of a final movie that indirectly tells us that weʼve got another trilogy to soldier through before we get anywhere again. To top it off, the game was (now thankfully patched) full of bugs and I felt like I had bought a AAA game that was only 3/4 finished. Usually, Iʼd take the time to clean out the collectibles and complete the meta-game with this series, but returned it to my local a week later.

Probably the biggest example of this discussion undoubtedly has to go to Mass Effect 3, and that ending. Itʼs no secret that Bioware really did a number on the finale to one of their biggest franchises, one that left a massively sour taste in a large portion of the seriesʼ fanbase. After racking up anywhere from 100 to a 1000 hours spent traversing the galaxy in the Normandy SR-1 & 2, and changing the fate of the species that inhabit it, most of us felt a little cheated that all our hard work and valiant efforts eventually boiled down to a colour scheme that painted a very similar trio of endings. I was initially okay with the ending, but it had been a long pan of time since I had played Mass Effect 2 and I could barely remember the first outing, so after I let it sit and retraced the steps I had taken over the course of my playthrough of all three games, it hit me that almost nothing I had done previously had meant anything other than a minuscule addition to that military strength bar that decided the “quality” of the conclusion. What followed then was weeks of uproar that probably couldʼve been measured with a seismograph, with the gaming community demanding at verbal knifepoint that Bioware go back and conjure up something that added a bit more palpability and sense to the endings and well, as many people know, persistent nagging gets results. The dev team served up an “extended cut” that was meant to deliver some sort of addendum without diluting the creative vision they had created in the first place but many were still seeking answers, now resigned to the fact that they got what they asked for, but still not what they wanted. The gameplay itself and everything else leading up to the end had been crafted masterfully and fine-tuned through the trials of the previous entries, so many people continue to ask even now why they had to simply just put up and deal with such a measly set of pre-determined fates that seemed to be a carbon copy of the similarly crappy “Door 1/2/3” conclusions waiting at the end of Deus Ex: Human Revolution that had come around just last year.

So as 2012 comes to a close, and with so many of its games offering up an experience that forced us to sit through its misgivings to get to the good bits, will next year learn from past mistakes? There is certainly a lot to look forward to, with Tomb Raider rebooting, Naughty Dog branching out with new IP The Last of Us and Platinum Gameʼs twisted take on Metal Gear with Rising: Revengeance being served up fairly early in the year, only time will tell how these and others end up. It isnʼt that we ask game studios to lock themselves away in a bunker until theyʼve given birth to the “perfect” game for such a term, in an artistic sense, is often subjectively perceived, but a game that delivers on its promises; a game that doesnʼt indirectly suggest we turn a blind eye to its sometimes major faults to enjoy it, and for Godʼs sake, Hitman: Absolution, a decent save system…please?

Before the big reveal of what you lot, our beloved readers, have voted for as your picks of the year, the Hitsville writers (who aren’t all trained chimps at typewriters… I think) have thrown together their favourite films, television, games and music to be released in the past twelve months (plus this way you know the polls aren’t rigged towards what we think is best). Here’s part one of what will probably be quite a few. Enjoy!

JOE O’BRIEN’S TOP FILMS (in no particular order):

• Looper
  Intelligent sci-fi and action done right. JGL and Bruce Willis, plus a ridiculously foxy blonde Emily Blunt. 
• The Perks Of Being A Wallflower
  Hits all the right notes on the emotional, comedic and dramatic fronts. Erza Miller steals it.
• Argo
  The opening scene was twice as engaging as anything Skyfall threw at us. Proper intense, and proper hilarious, too. 
• Ruby Sparks
  Can you say “adorable”? Genius, hilarious and truly heartwarming. If you don’t fall in love with Zoe Kazan, there’s something severely wrong with you.
  
• The Dark Knight Rises
  Never has a comic book movie had so much pressure riding on it, and delivered so emphatically. Pretty close to perfect, in all regards. 
• Prometheus
  One of the most visually stunning cinematic experiences of my life. It’s flawed, but a killer cast and that goddamn “abortion” scene make it one of the year’s best for me.
  
• Moonrise Kingdom
  Wes Anderson’s “live action cartoon” approach works ever so perfectly to make this the cutest, most feelgood film of the year. Never mind how good the A-list co-cast is, the lead kids absolutely nail it.
• The Hunger Games
  Also known as “How to Successfully Adapt a Young Adult Book Series” by Gary Ross. So much subtler and cleverer than people give it credit for, it’s a truly remarkable film; certainly better than the book. Gotta love that pushing-it-to-the-absolute-limit-PG 13 violence.
  
• The Avengers
  Despite including it here, I believe folk are jizzing over this one a bit too much. That being said, it’s still rather excellent. Joss Whedon was the perfect man for the job. His script is chocked full of hilarity and the cast have a ball with it. As passionate a comic book film as you’re likely to see.
  
• Cabin In The Woods
  Completely flipping the horror genre on it’s head. Funny and over the top violent. My sick sense of humor ensured that I laughed pretty much all the way through. So, so genius.

JAMES DALY’S TOP FIVE GAMES

1. The Simpsons: Tapped Out (iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch)
   This game may seem to be just another Farmville knock-off on the surface but it quickly established itself as a tongue-in-cheek pastiche. This game is addictive, easily transportable (being on iOS) and hilariously self-aware. 
2. Dragon Ball Z (Xbox)
   I’ve not really given Kinect a chance before but I can safely say that this new addition to Toriyama’s masterful franchise is the best effort so far to convert any gamers who stand defiant against exercising more than their thumbs. The signature art style and graphics work well to create the high-octane combat that DBZ is famous for, and acting out the Kamehamaha against Raditz is a dream most of us have ached to realise. 
3. Minecraft (Xbox) 
   Fans of the PC game will know well enough why this is here. In a game where one can create almost anything what is there not to love? The sensation of discovering diamond ore, the shiver when hearing a creeper’s hiss, and the joyful mischief of pouring lava on a friend’s wooden house are among the many reasons to keep going back for more 8-bit styled fun. 
4. Ninja Gaiden 3 (PS3)
   I’ve played this game only a handful of times, most recently on the Wii U, and I can safely say that it had gotten under my skin. The fluid combat, the exquisitely choreographed special moves, and the fact that you play as either ninja or kunoichi all had my inner child elated. I’ll also say that the Wii U version’s superiority has me even more excited about the next generation of consoles.
5. Halo 4 (Xbox)
   What else could it be? 11 years ago the Master Chief debuted in one of, if not the, finest FPS games ever made. With that kind of hype around a title it’s easy to understand the kind of pressure 343 were under to deliver but that is precisely what they did and the end result was sci-fi gaming brilliance. Of all the games on this least, it is easily Halo 4 that I’ll play again, and again, and again. 

An honourable mention goes Pokemon Black and White 2. I’ve yet to play this game but even if it is only half as good as its predecessor it will easily earn a place on a fair share of Christmas Lists.

MEGAN FOZZARD’S TOP TEN FILMS

• The Dark Knight Rises
  How could I not put this at number one? A guaranteed ‘film of the year’, The Dark Knight Rises fulfilled all my expectations. I spent the entire first viewing just smiling at the screen and looking a bit deranged, I don’t think I’ve been as excited for a film’s release in quite a while (is this how Twilight fans felt when Breaking Dawn: Part 2 was released?). Nolan pulls it off again; great characters and storyline balanced with great effects. The true master of the block buster.
• Killer Joe
  This film was massively underrated in my opinion, and if it hadn’t been ‘the year of TDKR’ this would be top of the list. If you haven’t seen this genre-bending redneck thriller come dark comedy, get it out on DVD. Superb acting quality from the likes of Matthew McConaughey, Juno Temple and Emile Hirsch that is just the right side of weird. One of the most twisted endings to a film I have seen this year, and let’s just say after watching this you will never look at fried chicken in the same way again.
• Skyfall
  For somebody who stop liking the Bond films circa Pierce Brosnan, I am now definitely back on the wagon. Bond goes back to basics, with all the elements you’d expect from the genre but with a knowing nod towards the 50th Anniversary. Like ‘The Dark Knight Rises’, Mendes has taken a character we already know and challenged them with more modern, more relevant threats.
  
• Amour
  I was a bit disappointed that Haneke wasn’t as harsh on his elderly subjects as he has been in other films, which I think tainted my viewing of the film in general. A bit slow and lacking any real tension like that in Funny Games, but an honest and brutal portrait of love deteriorating with old age. It’s more about what you don’t see than what you do, and once again Haneke’s framing and use of music is spot on.
  
• The Master
  Again, a little bit of a disappointment for me perhaps because of all the hype surrounding it. I still can’t honestly say I fully know what this film is about or what is going on, and I don’t think that I genuinely enjoyed it. The acting and the cinematic quality is absolutely top notch though so it deserves all the awards that it will scoop up for sure. Maybe a second and possibly a third viewing would help me make my mind up on this tricky one.
  
• Untouchable
  A French film about a rich paraplegic and a down and outer from the rough end of Paris that avoids being either too depressing or too clichéd. Who knew that disability could be the subject of so many laughs? It’s the second most successful French film ever made on box office figures and down as their entry into the Oscars this year, so hopefully it will get the recognition it deserves in the English speaking countries.
• Call Me Kutchu
  I’ve never considered putting a documentary in my top 10, but this one definitely deserves to be up there. It’s an straightforward, and at times brutal, portrayal of the lives of the LGBT community (called Kutchu’s) in Uganda where a ‘kill the gays’ bill is in the process of becoming law. The film shows the ups and downs of their struggle, focusing on David Kato, the first openly gay man in Uganda. It’s intense viewing and full of stories that are handled in a suitable manner.
  
• 21 Jump Street
  Film 2012 recently named this in their top 5 ‘cop duos’ and I’d have to agree with them. In a just about believable premise, two pretty shitty cops are sent undercover to a high school to bring down a drugs ring. When their false identities (jock and nerd of course) are mixed up though, they experience high school like the other one did. Bear with Channing Tatum’s acting and Jonah Hill playing well, Jonah Hill, and you have quite a clever comedy that references the cop film and the high school coming-of-age comedy.
  
• The Perks of Being A Wallflower
  I haven’t read the book (and I don’t really feel I need to since every other line is constantly reblogged on Tumblr) but even I knew that the film adaption of this book was going to be A BIG DEAL. For others who lived under a rock like me, ‘wallflower’ Charlie (Logan Lerman) is considered a bit of a weirdo in high school until he falls in with a kooky pair of siblings (Ezra Miller and Emma Watson). I found the dialogue a bit clichéd and the whole film looked a bit like it had been put through an Instagram filter, with The Smiths chucked in the background, but I think I’m about 4 years too old to love this film. And- all together now- in that moment, I swear we were infinite.