The weekend is upon us yet again! Though gamescom has been stuffing us full of news and trailers all week (keep up with our recaps here), we still have some other videos to share for Film Friday! Enjoy the latest flicks from Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Mad Max, Pillars of Eternity, Shards Online, The Sims 4, and Trans-Galactic Tournament.
Welcome to the final article of our E3 recap series here on ZAM!
Yesterday's last E3 main event (3 of 3) was the PC Gaming Show. It was a brand-new event, and likely the start of a new E3 tradition.
All Events: Bethesda, Xbox, EA, Ubisoft, Playstation, Nintendo, Square Enix, PC Gaming
Over the last few years we’ve seen plenty of game companies go the Kickstarter route: Double Fine Productions with Broken Age, inXile Entertainment with Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera, Harebrained Schemes with Shadowrun Returns, Larian Studios with Divinity Original Sin and many more. There’s been a great deal of success from these early Kickstarter projects, but also some failures along the way. Broken Age had to be split into two halves because there was too much to put into one game and meet their release window. Peter Molyneux’s Godus is pretty much an all-around mess.
That brings us to now with yet another high profile Kickstarter project finally releasing. Obsidian Entertainment’s Pillars of Eternity started as Project Eternity back on September 14, 2012. They were one of the most successful game Kickstarters ever, blowing past their $1.1 million goal in just over 24 hours, passing stretch goal after stretch goal until they finished ahead of Double Fine Adventure’s Kickstarter at $3,986,929 ($4,163,208 with the PayPal pledges). With all of those stretch goals adding to the scope of the game though, plus your typical schedule slips, the game went from an estimated delivery of April 2014 to coming out March 26, 2015, nearly a year later.
So was all that time and money the fans put in worth it? Did Obsidian make a great RPG in the vein of Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale? After 42 hours, the first two acts’ worth of story and a whole lot of sidequesting, I can safely say that I’m absolutely satisfied with my Kickstarter pledge.
This week, I have discovered the true horror of being a grown up. While I have the means to purchase a PlayStation 4 and Bloodborne, I’m not going to because it would be irresponsible. It is with a single, dignified tear rolling down my cheek I type this, a stoic icon of duty.
That has nothing to do with anything, I just wanted to share it with you to demonstrate how brave and remarkable I am.
Bloodborne, like Dark Souls before it, knows exactly what kind of game it is and every element of it is a cog in an elegant machine. The games aren’t for everyone, but in terms of design they are masterful, and have probably redefined the RPG for the next generation.
As you may be aware, I am a massive nerd for game design; it colors my thinking toward certain games to the extent that I need to be aware of it to be genuinely critical of the experience as a whole. It’s a little silly, but so is being a massive nerd for anything, so I find it’s best to just like what you like.
Lindsay "geektr0n" Ferguson hosts ZAM's latest installment of Friday Update Arcade! Topics discussed include the launch of Bloodborne and Pillars of Eternity, another Batman: Arkham Knight delay, the Twitch password reset and more.
