During GDC, the Ripten crew was privy to an exclusive invite-only shindig presented by the good people at D3Publishing. What did we do? Well, we sat down in front of some system-linked Xbox 360s and proceeded to tear the shit out of each other in a few rounds of Digital Extremes’ new game, Dark Sector.

Steve Sinclair, Project Lead for the game, ran through a bit of the single player with us first. He showed us what is essentially the tutorial, the events leading up to Hayden (Dark Sector’s main character) getting infected with awesomeness, and then skipped around to later levels to show us some upgraded bad-assery.

As you probably know by this point, Dark Sector is synonymous with “giant throwing star thingy that looks like it’s from Krull” — a reference to Hayden’s main weapon, the glaive. Later in the game, you can enter a bullet-time-like mode where the glaive flies through the air in slow motion and you get to steer it around like a UFO.

You can use this time to appropriately slice and dice your enemies, literally. Body parts are sent airborne in the process with a playful amount of gooey redness, just enough to make Jack Thompson weep for the children. Josh Austin, the game’s producer (and the guy holding the controller), said there is even an achievement for cutting off two heads in one throw! Slightly more understandable now as to why it’s banned in Australia, eh?

So after our appetites are adequately whetted (with the thirst for blood, no doubt), we are handed controllers and sent off to kill each other.

The game controls much as you would expect a third-person, over-the-shoulder shooter to control. It does feel slightly slower than, say, Gears of War, as if the character is a little floaty. Maybe I was just used to playing other games, but it didn’t matter — I got used to it in 5-10 minutes.

There were two multiplayer modes available: Infection and Epidemic. Infection pits one buffed-up Hayden character against a group of normals — regular old hazmat-suited soldiers. Whoever takes down Hayden becomes him in the next round. Epidemic is team-based, with one Hayden on each side. He serves as the team’s VIP — protect your Hayden while trying to kill the other team’s Hayden.

Both game types are fairly straightforward, but they offer something most other multiplayer games don’t: bots! Both game types can house up to 10 players, but if you don’t have (or want) enough actual people to play with you, you can fill out the remaining slots with AI-controlled fodder. This is a great feature, something I never understood why it wasn’t implemented in more games.

I was Hayden in the first round of Infection, and I got two kills before being gang-banged. After that it turned into an every-man-for-himself type of deal because everyone wanted to be Hayden. There was very little team play, but I think that’s just because everyone I was playing with was a selfish bunch of dicks. Then again, where’s the motivation to team up and take this guy down if your best bud becomes your enemy? It really is just an exercise in kill-stealing, but it was fun.

In Epidemic, my team was slaughtered repeatedly until I got my turn as Hayden. Once that happened, we won 5 rounds in a row before I was dethroned by a backstabbing insta-kill (sneaky bastards!). Steve showed me where to get a freeze power-up for my glaive, which I then used to “ice” one of my opponents. Ha, see what I did there with the words and stuff? Needless to say, Epidemic was the favored of the two modes.

Overall, the game looked fantastic and felt pretty solid. Steve and Josh both stressed that the single-player game will be constantly evolving, giving you more powers and more things to do. “Never stop learning,” they say. That’s what keeps people interested and driven forward. As for the multiplayer, it will ship with just the two modes, but more are being considered.

Dark Sector is scheduled for a March 25 release on the PS3 and Xbox 360, and I’m itching to play it again.

Dark Sector Screenshot Gallery

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Now that the Game Developers Conference 2008 has come and gone, we here at Ripten are taking a look back on the past week using the magical art of photography. Hippity-hop to check out the gallery.

(Click the images again to enlarge)

GDC 08 - A Pictrospective

109 Photos

 

As you may have noticed, Day Three exploits are going up a little later than usual. Unfortunately, we had a run-in with the Blaznatz chewing up our bandwidth, so we were unable to get a good connection. Damn him and his chainsaw bayonet…

We’ve decided to combine our day three info with day four, which would officially make this Ripten’s GDC 08 Coverage: Day Seven. Read on for all the goodness.

A lot of stuff happened over the past two days. Everything will be explained in more detail by the peeps that were there, so don’t bust my balls if I don’t deliver the full monty right now.

We got a sneak peak at a bunch of upcoming Xbox Live Arcade games, courtesy of the XNA dev tool. There were a few titles that actually haven’t been announced yet, so stay tuned for that.

We also met with the Zeitguyz team for Recoil: Retrograd, and saw quite a bit of Havok stuff (which you can read about here).

Jon ran off and did a bunch of interviews while Chad and I went to the Microsoft keynote. A lot of good stuff was talked about there, including Ninja Gaiden II, Fable 2, Gears of War 2, and XNA 2 — er, just XNA. Sorry, I got on a roll there with the 2s.

We got some coverage of the IGF and Game Developer Awards, had a Q&A with Sid Meier, saw new footage of Mercenaries 2, Prototype, and The Force Unleashed, saw RealTime Worlds’ new MMO, hung out with the peeps from X-Play, and had a quiet evening with Will Wright.

Of course there are other things we did, too, like your mom. Oh, snap! Seriously, though, we attended quite a few events and will give you the complete story shortly.

In the meantime, rest easy knowing that I was only once almost run over by a speeding fucktard in a BMW, and Chad was kind enough to half almost attempt to save me. Thanks Chad!

We also had a kind soul offer to taxi us back to our hotel for just slightly more than the cost of taking an actual taxi, but this ride had the added thrill of almost getting us murdered. The dude was kind, but very strange. He called us “country bumpkins” and never really answered me when I specifically asked whether or not he was going to kill us. I take that as a definite “maybe”, but perhaps he just didn’t do it because he knew we were expecting it.

Moral of the story here, kids, is that you should never cross the street — ever, and under no circumstances should you get in someone’s car before asking if they are going to kill you. Wise words from your good pals at Ripten.

Unlike most sequels, the Game Developers Conference Day 2 did not suck. The Ripten crew actually did stuff today! Amazing!

We met up in the press room to get our schedules straight (again), eat muffins, and get our daily recommended allowance of Mountain Dew. Jon Zungre drew first blood by attending the Independent Games Festival Mobile Awards, making us all look bad with his go-getting initiative.

When Jon got back, we headed over to the D3 Publisher’s GDC 2008 Press Event. While we were there, we got some hands-on time with the Dark Sector multiplayer, which we can’t talk about, and got demoed three more upcoming games.

The first and only game we are allowed to talk about was NARUTO: Ninja Destiny for the Nintendo DS. It was surprisingly solid for a handheld 3D fighting game. Look for our full impressions of the game later this week.

The other games we were shown were Bangai O Spirits and an as-yet unannounced game that we will spill the beans about next week, so be sure to check back for that. We were treated to some cheesecake and cupcakes before heading back out into the recently nerdified San Francisco. We had a few things to see, so we split up from here.

Jon and I went to see a new game called Freaky Creatures, an MMO game from Abandon Interactive. The concept was actually very cool, and even though all of the art and effects weren’t in the game yet, we walked away pleased. Look for our full impressions of the game very soon.

We headed from there to a press conference about the Emotiv headset, a device that reads your thoughts, emotions, and facial expressions. The event was almost a complete train wreck, mainly because the douchebags in the audience refused to disconnect themselves from dork headquarters — all those wireless signals in the room were messing up the headset’s reception. They promised us some hands-on time with the thing tomorrow, so hopefully we can get a better idea of whether it’s actually cool or just another expensive way to make me look more retarded.

While we were doing all that, Chad went to an ominously vague PC announcement, which turned out to be this. The invite did a good job of making it sound extremely important while also not saying anything at all. Those crafty bastards!

He then met up with a few others at the Sony Online Entertainment party. Apparently, Sony really wanted to solidify the competition they have with Microsoft by throwing an equally shitty, fallopian tube party — the female version of Microsoft’s Sausage Fest 2008. Packed with a bunch of old ladies, Chad fled the scene before the combined might of their mental undressings left him naked (the room was cold, too, so we couldn’t have that).

After that, we all took refuge in our overpriced dumpster that is somehow considered to be a hotel. As I said before, we don’t get to bite into the meat of the GDC sandwich until tomorrow (or technically today, considering what time it is), so things will only get better from here on out. If we somehow manage to stay awake and experience it, we’ll be sure to tell you all about it first because you are our very bestest friends.

If you had ever wondered what it would be like to meet up with a bunch of nerds and go to the Game Developer’s Conference, then wonder no more. We’re here to walk you through the ins, outs, and slightly-to-the-lefts of GDC day one.

The people at Ripten lucky enough to get out to the Game Developers Conference this year (Head Cheese Chad, Jon, Mike, Andrew, Emily, and myself) all met up at the San Francisco Airport on Sunday. Mike was kind enough to let a few of us crash at his place, even though he was supposed to spend time with Jessica Chobot. What a true friend…

We wake up late on Monday morning, obviously, and head into the city. Rays of light surround us and angels sing out in immaculate chorus as we stroll through the doors of the Moscone Center. We go to the Super Awesome V.I.P check-in area to get our badges, and we are instantly recognized.

Okay, so maybe I embellished a little. Nobody really paid any attention to us, and the closest we got to being recognized is when a guy asked which one of us was Chad.

There’s not a whole lot going on for press on Monday and Tuesday, as the main focus is on (surprise!) game development. It’s mainly just classes and lectures, so we spent a lot of the day going over schedules and talking about prenuptial agreements. We also get better acquainted with one another since this is the first time any of us had actually met in person. A lot of high fives and ass-grabbage ensues.

We eventually get around to checking out one of the tutorials and a completely non-mechanical flight simulator (more on that later) before heading over to the Zeemote party. We have our fill of rolled-up cheese and pot stickers (which I never heard of — basically, they’re like Chinese dumplings), and then play it casually cool as we skip out to the Microsoft Casual Games party next door.

Surprisingly, the Microsoft party was in the same size room as the Zeemote party, with the exception of being completely packed and lacking in the Lara Croft impersonator department. We stayed just long enough to say, ” Let’s get out of here.” and then did just that. Unfortunately, none of us got to try the “Casualtini” in the less than a minute we were in there.

To top off the night, our hotel room’s thermostat was broken, so we cracked a window. Unfortunately for Chad, we were on the seventh floor, so we dangled him out that window, Schwarzenegger-style, and demanded our monthly allowance of peanuts. Chad subsequently had us moved to the third floor and blamed it on the thermostat to save face, but really it was because three stories would hurt less.

Overall, it was a fairly mild day. Perhaps if I was a drunk or a budding game developer (or both!), I would have found the day much more entertaining. The event gets more interesting tomorrow but really ramps up when they open the expo floor on Wednesday. Look for our updates throughout the week on the exciting (or sometimes not so exciting) experience that is the Game Developers Conference 2008.

Also, let us know in the comments section how you feel about prenuptial agreements.

Petri Purho, the creative genius behind Kloonigames, has created a unique puzzle game that just looks like a bunch of crayon scribbles. Looks can be deceiving.

His game, Crayon Physics, actually has you drawing objects with your mouse, which are then physically applied to the game world. The goal is to pick up stars with a little red ball.

It’s fairly simple and only required about 10 minutes for me to beat the seven levels packed in the game (including the tutorial). I must also mention that the music track playing in the background is incredible.

Petri is currently working on an expanded version, dubbed Crayon Physics Deluxe, that would allow much more complex shapes and objects to be recognized. He demonstrates putting objects on wheels and watching them roll around, as well as spinning shapes on a fulcrum, in this video:

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Crayon Physics Deluxe was recently selected as one of the twelve finalists in the 2008 Independent Games Festival Student Showcase, as well as for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. All of the finalists are scheduled to be shown at the Game Developer’s Conference in February.

Crayon Physics Deluxe in on track to be finished by the end of the month. In the meantime, you can download the original Crayon Physics for free by clicking here. You can also check out the other games on Petri’s site, all of which are pretty impressive given they are mostly all developed in less than a week. Petri claims to have developed Crayon Physics in only five days.

It certainly makes me feel like a moron considering it took me almost 2 hours just to write this little piece. He’s damaging my self-esteem with his superior awesomeness.

Petri also mentions something on his site that I’d like to bring up.

“Most of the [time] I just end up wasting the development time in the parts of the game where it matters the least: graphics [instead of staying] focused on the stuff that matters: gameplay.”

This is a statement that I think rings very true with Petri’s games. All of them are a blast to play even though they aren’t much to look at. Gamers today seem mesmerized by fancy graphics and forget about what matters most: how fun it is to play. I think that’s a mindset we need to get back to.