Capcom took a similar approach in 2010 with Dead Rising 2: Case Zero, although that was turned from a demo into a 10 dollar downloadable title. Set in a small town entirely separate from fortune city, it still offered a streamlined version of the core Dead Rising experience – a sandbox Building Game packed with improvised weapons, hundreds of zombies, and scattered survivors to save within a set time limit. Players got a cheap taste of the full game without spoiling anything, and their stats carried over to reward the investment of their time and money. It’s impossible to say exactly how Case Zero impacted Dead Rising 2 in terms of sales, but I can testify that it’s what sold me on buying the full game.
The episode in itself offers a lot of promise for the rest of the announced episode, but it also cuts them short. The next slew of episodes will be adding new story arcs to the new Order of the Stone as they go on new adventures to build up their legacy. That being said, in the two hours it took to finish the episode to its completion, it made the entire premise feel very unimportant. So much had happened and so much story and character development was involved that Telltale could have made the entire plot itself into a single season if they wanted to. Some characters could have definitely used some development to give the story a little more depth and the entirety of Sky City itself has so much more that could have been explored. It's a little bit of a shame that what could have become a great season based on the new Order of the Stone's adventures was downgraded into a single episode that takes place over the course of about two days.
If you followed Gamescon this year, you'll have no doubt noticed that the word on the lips of every Microsoft,Sony, and Nintendo representative was "indie." Whether it be Sony revealing that Minecraft, Rogue Legacy, and The Binding of Issac would be part of the PS4 family, Microsoft unveiling a pretty daring new system to encourage indie development, or Nintendo showing that indie developers are fully prepared to make use of the unique capabilities of the Wii U, it became clear that both companies have suddenly realized that indies are no longer a niche market ran by eccentrics and snatched by the gaming version of hipsters, but a viable and exciting source of incredible new ideas, and creative final products.
Galactic Café went a step further with their Stanley Parable demo, creating new content not just for the free demo on steam, but for various venues that showcased the game. While all offered a short bit of meta-commentary on the nature of demos (pretty much the only way you could convey the core concept of the game without spoiling it), each was tailored to a specific scenario. The demo at PAX took some lighthearted jabs at Octodad (which was just across from it in the Indie Megabooth), and at one point made the player stand up and apologize to the audience for playing the demo so poorly. A special version made for Game Grumps addressed Danny and Ross by name. In this case, the demos were an unbridled success, building enough hype for the small indie game to garner 100,000 sales in 3 days.
Someone needs to have a nice sitdown with the gaming industry about VR and what it can and can't do. The ability to transport the viewer inside a scene is incredible, and if that scene happens to be in the cockpit of some kind of ship, then it opens up a whole range of movement options that would otherwise be a bad idea. Putting the player behind the eyes of a protagonist who walks around freely in the standard FPS viewpoint, on the other hand, is something that has only sounded awesome. It's hasn't been. Really, seriously, it's kind of sucked, and while wanting it to be different won't change that, clever viewing systems just might. So now Minecraft has official VR support, and it's taken an interesting approach to the presentation that's a little awkward but usable.
On the plus side, once you're in the Minecraft world the sense of scale is truly fantastic. Everything seems bigger somehow, more immediate and solid. A pit in a cave that would be little more than a hazard to plop a staircase onto is all of a sudden an ominous presence waiting to see you fall into its depths. Hills are more imposing, cliffs shoot dangerously into the sky and canyons are massive rifts in the earth, and the oceans go down forever. Even the standard block has a sense of mass, with its one meter cube transformed into a substantial chunk of scenery. Another side effect of the new sense of scale is that combat has become a little easier because the strike distance is so obvious. The move to VR has done a great job of freshening up an experience I've been done with for several years now, which is an impressive feat. While I'm still not completely sold on the viewing solution, it's something that works for now until a better idea is implemented.
The lore behind these creatures is unknown but likely unpleasant. It seems as if these warriors met their demise in the frozen parts of the world and returned due to dark powers. Who knows how many Strays are buried in the frozen ice and snow, just waiting for the player to come al
