A new Spelunker game, Minna de Spelunker Z, is coming exclusively to the . As you can see in the trailer above, much like Spelunky, Spelunker is a 2D platformer, where you venture into a cave, jump around, climb ropes, and collect treasure.
Minna de Spelunker Z is being developed by Tozai Games and will release in Japan on March 19. It will be free-to-play, and while it's not yet clear how Square Enix plans to monetize it, we can see an inventory system in the trailer where you can equip your character with different items and outfits.
Numerous Steam machines debuted at CES 2014, but Alienware's solution, the Alpha, stood out from the pack. It wasn't an underpowered or rebranded product, and it also wasn't sitting next to a four figure price tag. Alienware's little box looked to be the most viable looking console-sized and console-priced offering of the lot.
Alienware started shipping the Alpha late last year for $549 (the high-end version with a faster CPU, more RAM, and an SSD costs $849), but it recently cut that price down to $499. The Alpha is still more expensive than consoles, but also fairly cheap as far as gaming PCs go. Obviously it's not as powerful as the quintessential PC gaming tower, but it may give Sony and Microsoft's latest consoles a run for their money.
With a slightly overclocked 860M GPU based on Nvidia's GM107 chip (the same one that's found in Nvidia's 750 Ti desktop GPU), 4GB of RAM, and Intel's Core i3, the Alpha has all the makings of a good, entry level gaming PC. The 5400 RPM hard drive is a slight disappointment, and it's likely the source of the Alpha's occasionally long loading times. Otherwise, the rest of the components make for a surprisingly capable gaming PC given the Alpha's relatively low cost.
System Specs
Hardware
Alienware Alpha
CPU
Intel Core i3-4130T @2.9GHz
GPU
Modified Nvidia GTX 860M
RAM
4GB DDR3L
Storage
500GB 5400 RPM 2.5" Hard drive, 6Gb/s
The Alpha doesn't offer an experience that's as composed or seamless as a console, but Alienware has done a decent job of consolizing the PC, outpacing the competition in some meaningful ways. The UI creates the illusion that using a console, and it's a disappearing act that almost works 100% of the time. Though you can't tap into Origin or Uplay within the Alpha's console mode, you can if you boot into the Window's desktop. Though the Alpha isn't quite a console, it offers so much more as a PC than the Xbone One or PlayStation 4 ever could. Taking the Alpha out of the home theater and putting it on a desk with a mouse and keyboard open a wealth of functionality that cannot be overlooked. Apart from being able to upgrade the GPU and motherboard, you can do anything with the Alpha that you could with an equally powerful, traditional desktop computer.
With this in mind, the Alpha is a great value. It may be more expensive than consoles, but the difference of $100 is a small price to pay for a console-like gaming device that doubles as a Windows PC. If you like the convenience of the console experience, are interested in the hundreds of excellent games available on Steam, and could benefit from a new desktop PC, $500 is a very reasonable asking price. It may not blow consoles out of the water when it comes to performance, but it comes close. Manage your expectations accordingly and you won't be disappointed by the Alienware Alpha.
Oh, Dying Light, how I love you. I love the way you let me leap across rooftops and climb tall towers like an acrobat with endless supplies of energy. I love how I can dropkick a zombie and watch its flailing body knock over others like a fleshy bowling ball. I love looking over my shoulder as I run through the darkness, only to see a crowd of undead sprinting towards me, growling hideously and baring their ghastly teeth.
But oh, Dying Light, how you irritate me. I hate you for the gunners that ambushed me as I swam underwater, because there was no way to know how to react until I emerged and discovered that I wasn't meant to peek my head out--not yet. I hate you for that time you filled the screen with so much haze and bloom during a boss fight that I couldn't see properly. I hate that sequence when you made me leap from one pole to another, because you made it hard to get a good look at my surroundings, and your button prompts are hardly generous. And I hate these moments most because your systems are strong enough to let the open-world gameplay do the heavy lifting. The harder you try to direct the action, the weaker you become.
Fight or flee? It's a decision as old as humanity itself.
If you count yourself among the
Dying Light succeeds when it remains confident in its systems. The combat isn't as fulfilling as it is in Dead Island--you won't be breaking any arms--but out in that wild world, you aren't meant to wade into the horde anyhow. What drives the action is the promise of discovery and self-improvement. There are locks to pick and supplies to nab before the opposing faction gets to them. The balconies harbor new people to meet, who share their stories if you stick around long enough to hear them. When a zombie or six draw near, you swipe, kick, and bash until the blood is flying and the grunts are silenced, and you can return to your pillaging. Dying Light most often approaches greatness when it allows you to improvise your own tune instead of clumsily trying to conduct the entire orchestra.
That a game of such wild fluctuations can still give rise to so much fun speaks well of its high points. Those peaks rise even higher when other players are involved, and you have a few friends (up to three) join you, distracting the speedy virals while you take care of a ground-pounding beast swinging his giant hammer around. Competitive zombie invasions are liable to have you tensing your muscles even further invasions when they turn the game into a nighttime arena. This is Be the Zombie mode, and while using your tentacle to grapple your way around as a zombie is enjoyable, it is the tension you feel as a hunted human that makes these moments stand out. You can tweak your setting to allow or disallow these sudden multiplayer matches, and there's no shame in wanting to explore without distraction. But if Dying Light's nighttime pressures appeal to you, allowing zombie attacks further extends that drama.
I am rooting for Dying Light's success, even as I shake my head at its avoidable foibles. I understand it, I get it, and so I find pleasure in it even as it disappoints me, even when I land between a fence and a rocky cliff and get stuck there, even when I don't grab a ledge or pole after a jump for reasons that I can't quite understand. My dearest Dying Light, I am so grateful for your specialness, for it shines through even when I am prepared to damn you to hell.
Kevin Spacey has given the undead exo-suits and it's up to you to kill them all. Join Rob & Danny as they explore the latest zombie DLC for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
Last week saw a brand new PAX appear in an already bursting calendar of game events. So did San Antonio's humble first PAX live up to its siblings? Or have we reached peak PAX?
Join in us over the next few days as we look at all of the leading games consoles and platforms out right now and try to convince you why you should spend your hard-earned cash. Today, Kevin VanOrd tells you why the PlayStation 4 is the console to own in 2015.
The PlayStation 4 has had undeniable market success, so it seems pointless to regale you with tales of sales numbers and game attach rates. Needless to say, if you buy one, you will have no trouble finding a community for the online games you love, and you'll have all of the multimedia applications you should expect: YouTube, Netflix,
GameSpot's gaming deals posts always highlight the best deals we can find regardless of retailer. We also occasionally use retailer affiliate links, which means that purchasing goods through those links helps support all the great content (including the deals posts) you find for free here on the site. Got questions? Email news@gamespot.com or ask us in the comments!
GameSpot's gaming deals posts always highlight the best deals we can find regardless of retailer. We also occasionally use retailer affiliate links, which means that purchasing goods through those links helps support all the great content (including the deals posts) you find for free here on the site. Got questions? Email news@gamespot.com or ask us in the comments!
By name alone, that this beta constitutes the game's launch. Nonetheless, it comes with the bugs and glitches associated with a game in progress. There are times when your vampire may refuse to completely vault over a ledge onto a rooftop, which is particularly bad during a hasty escape, when his pallid backend may become a pincushion. Worse, however, are the rare connection errors with the server, which vary in range from bolas and arrows flying through enemies, to warping from one wall back into the original without warning. But these are standard-issue problems for the most part; what stands out above all is the fickle party system. At times, accepting an invite doesn’t place you in a party according to your screen, though the host’s screen shows otherwise, and trying to join a match with a broken party never works. But at least that isn’t as bad as when the game decides to crash, which it does on occasion after you accept a game invite.
Nosgoth is surprisingly fun, given the glaring problems. Sure, matchmaking is a mess and glitches need to be ironed out, but Nosgoth at its finest is still a promising multiplayer game, and I look forward to seeing how far it goes. It does need more: more classes, more maps, more game modes, more everything. And for the most part, the developer has been upfront that updates are coming quickly, starting with a new map and a female vampire class, both to arrive in the following weeks, with a new human class to arrive soon after. No, Nosgoth is not the Legacy of Kain everyone wanted, and it isn’t exactly bold or fresh either, especially considering that it evokes bitter memories of a failed game from 2007. But with additional content, bug fixes, and needed matchmaking tweaks, Nosgoth could be something that stands strong on its own, worth returning to time and again.
"It was a dark and stormy night." So wrote novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, creating the writing cliche to end all cliches, and inadvertently describing Life is Strange's opening scene. There's also a lighthouse in this scene, that old signaler of melodrama to come, rising above you amid the falling rain. The torrential imagery bookends the first episode of this five-part adventure, but most of the drama is of the teenage type. There are snotty girls to contend with, and privileged jocks accustomed to people bending to their will. Students fuss passive-aggressively on social media, and older adults are either mentors or bullies. This is the world seen through a young adult's eyes, a world in which every sight, sound, and whisper is full of life-ending, life-making meaning.
The particular young adult you play is Max Caulfield--no relation to The Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield it would seem, though Life is Strange’s references are not subtle, so I presume that Max’s similarities to her namesake are not accidental. Like Holden, Max attends a private school, though her primary interest is photography and not football or fencing. She’s back in her Oregon hometown to attend school after spending the last several years in Seattle, where life wasn’t quite what she had imagined. "When we would play pirates in our room and in the woods, it seemed like Seattle was that fabled faraway island of treasure and adventure that we were always seeking. With coffee shops," writes Max in her diary. "But Seattle wasn't like a fable."
The art style has a haze to it, as if the game is a memory.
As it turns out, life at Blackwell Academy isn't idyllic, either. After a stern lecture by her photography professor, Max wanders through the school’s halls to the bathroom. She’s out of sorts: she had what seemed to be a nightmare in class--that dark-and-stormy-night scenario that began the game, and which showed a tornado roaring towards the town. As Max, you walk past blue lockers covered with posters that admonish students not to text and drive, and comment silently to yourself about the classmates you pass. When Max plugs earbuds into her ears, you hear the light indie-rock you imagine an angsty teen from the Pacific Northwest might listen to--the kind that plays when you enter a Starbucks. This may not be your reality, but it is easy to believe is it Max's. The themes and characters are familiar, in any case: the aloof school principal, the quiet religious girl, and the anxiety of being called on in class when you don’t know the answer.
Well, there is one aspect that is decidedly unreal: you can rewind time. You discover your special skill during your restroom visit, when a heated confrontation between a psychopathic rich kid and the girl that confronts him ends with a bullet in the young woman’s abdomen. In that moment, you reach out to help and time quickly zips back to minutes before, when you are still in class. Now you know the answers when Prof. Jefferson asks you. Now you can tell him what he wants to hear about the photography contest he wants you to enter. And now you have a chance to save an old friend's life.
Don't like how she reacts? Rewind time and do it again!
Time reversal is Life is Strange's most unique element, but also its most problematic. The game is rooted in the adventure formula that has made Telltale Games's Walking Dead series so popular. You walk around the environments, interacting with people and objects, and making choices during dialogue that turn the story in a particular direction. "This action will have consequences," the game tells you, and you then wonder about the potential consequences, and mentally note them when they occur. After a single episode, it is hard to tell how intervening when a security officer is harassing a student will shift the future, but should you not like the immediate reaction, you just rewind a bit and do it over again. It's a nifty effect at first, but the rewind as a whole undermines one of the formula's most treasured elements: ownership of your decisions.
Granted, there are limitations, so you can’t return to the moment of truth when a consequence becomes apparent hours later. But undoing a line of dialogue because a classmate reacts poorly to you diminishes the choice's power. I rarely sweated my decisions, because I could just try again until I landed on the one I liked best. I suspect that I may come to regret seemingly easy choices when more episodes are released and the repercussions play out. For now, however, I don't feel much ownership of Max; In , it was clear that I was playing my Bigby, but after a single episode of Life is Strange, Max isn't my Max--she's just Max.
Someone needs a Xanax.
The rewind mechanic also allows for a few light puzzles. When you rewind time you keep what you have recently picked up, and of course, you have new information you didn’t have before. As a result, you might be able to perform new actions and have new conversations. Rewinding only affects the people and events surrounding you; you remain in place, with any items you may carry, while time retreats everywhere else. In this sense, rewinding your surroundings is like fast-forwarding your own body. You can avoid falling objects, for instance, by rewinding time, moving forward, and resetting time with you further ahead than when you started. Annoyingly, however, Life is Strange breaks its own time-bending rules when it suits the narrative. When you first discover your skill, for instance, you are moved back into your classroom seat, and do not remain in the bathroom. Developer Dontnod has its cake, and eats it too.
Inconsistencies of time reversal aside, Life is Strange is an involving slice of life that works because its situations eloquently capture a peculiar early-college state of mind. Some of the characterizations are too on-the-nose: of course Max’s rebellious friend Chloe smokes weed and talks back to her stepfather, because that’s what rebellious teens do, and of course that stepfather is an ex-military authoritarian with a buzzcut and a bad temper. This is storytelling shorthand, but much of it rings beautifully true. When Max is reunited with Chloe, the tension chokes the air: Chloe feels abandoned and angry at being left behind when Max moved, and at being ignored when Max returned to town. Max doesn’t necessarily have answers for all of her choices, only apologies. These interactions can break your heart specifically because you might have had such conversations yourself. The performances, especially those of the actresses that play Max and Chloe, amplify the laughs, the groans, and the tears in equal measure, even when the dialogue takes a clumsy turn. (As it does, for instance, when you meet Blackwell's creepy janitor.)
Victoria is not a nice person, but you can always kill her with kindness.
Life is Strange sets the stage for later conflict, foreshadowing the storm to come and informing you of a young local woman gone missing. At the same time, the game makes everyone look like a guilty party. The rich frat boy with a gun, the smug school administrator, the stepdad in need of anger management skills--these and other characters have plenty to hide, though it’s impossible to guess what all their secrets might be. The looming tornado and the inconsistent time mechanic seem almost unnecessary as a result, for Life is Strange’s most important drama is the one developing in Max’s own mind.
We need more heist games in our lives. Stealth games are a dime a dozen, but only in heist games are you required to play with confidence. We need the thrill of strolling into a heavily-guarded museum or bank and lifting priceless items from under everyone's noses. And we need to feel vindicated and smug as we walk out of the place with no one the wiser. That's the essence that The Marvellous Miss Take attempts to embody, steering you to fearlessly swipe paintings and sculptures under the careful watch of patrons and guards. But though the game wants you to feel like you're overcoming incredible odds thanks to your innate cunning, its unreasonably small levels and erratic enemy behavior destroy the very confidence it demands of you.
But first, you're eased into a life of crime. You play as Sophia Take, an art enthusiast who saw her great aunt's collection swindled away and split among greedy one percenters. She takes matters into her own hands and sets out to steal the art back. (She even resembles everyone's favorite world-class educational thief, Carmen Sandiego.) Though Miss Take is brimming with resolve, she soon reveals that she's a little unsure of herself to Harry Carver, a well-to-do and benevolent master thief who she bumps into in the middle of a caper. Together with Harry and pickpocket Daisy, Sophia slowly accumulates more and more of her great aunt's collection, gaining more confidence with each heist. These three figures form the core of the game's story and characterization, and, though it's tempting to paint them as one-dimensional afterthoughts, the game pulls off some subtle tricks to fill in the gaps.
You'll learn to hate the color blue after seeing so much of it in this game.
Sophia's initial uncertainty carries into the player experience as well. You must abscond with all the art on the current floor and then either board an elevator or make your way to the exit. Guards' fields of vision are represented by giant blue cones that protrude from their eyes as you look down on the floor from a semi-isometric view. The levels themselves are cramped, with guards' vision often filling 75 percent of a room, making success seem impossible. But the game invites you to overcome these feelings by trying to gradually make you realize the ease with which you can accomplish your goals. The controls are dead simple, as the game can be played solely with the mouse. Just click on a spot, and Sophia moves there. Hold down the left mouse button and she starts running, though her haste makes noise that attracts guards, as does whistling by holding the mouse button down over her.
You start the game feeling intimidated by the sheer number of blue cones covering the levels. You feel shy about walking up to grab a painting while a guard's back is turned, but you learn to time your pacing in order to boldly walk to your target before the guard is any the wiser. You're afraid to set foot in a heavily-guarded area for fear of stepping into a guard’s field of vision, but being seen doesn't get you caught immediately. Instead, a glimpse of you only gets a guard's attention and lures him or her to the last point at which you were seen. Stay in sight too long and you alert the guards, but duck out of sight in time and you can lure guards to wherever you need them to be.
The UI is super stylish, which makes the plain look of the rest of the game even more disappointing.
Even Sophia’s partners' side missions encourage you to come out of your shell. Harry has a leg injury and needs a cane to walk, so he's unable to run. This means that his heists happen at night when guard activity is at a minimum. He must sneak around armed with only a weird ball-like contraption, which makes noise when thrown against a wall. This teaches you not to rely on running to and fro and also encourages you to actually use the many power-ups the game gives Sofia, such as smoke bombs that block vision or teleporters that let you make a quick getaway. Daisy's missions, on the other hand, require you to get up close and personal with guards, picking their pockets to get keys and make off with a safe's contents. Though Daisy's prowess at pickpocketing means that she can approach guards without them becoming suspicious, it teaches you, when being Sophia, not to be so timid when it comes to worming your way through the guard-filled minefield. When you start getting the hang of navigating the security and playing the guards like saps, your confidence starts to snowball until you feel like a master thief. And clearly Sofia does too, as after clearing a level, she puts her hand on her hips and throws heavy shade at the mooks she just put to shame.
The moments in which you should be slipping past a heavily-guarded room to snag a bust are often ruined thanks to a guard who happens to turn the wrong way.
At least, that's the experience the game wants you to have, and occasionally it succeeds. But, though the game attempts to convey scenarios that make you feel like you're succeeding against all odds, the game commits the sin of actually stacking the odds against you. The fact that most rooms are bathed in blue does make the levels somewhat unmanageable even when you learn all the tricks. The cramped corridors and tiny rooms make maneuvering more of a chore than it needs to be. Worst of all is the inconsistent enemies, who, aside from the frequency with which they change direction, are completely unpredictable. Guards patrol in whatever direction strikes their fancy with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Now, not having predictable patterns isn't necessarily a bad thing if a game is designed with unpredictability in mind, but with so little space to work with and only one tool at your disposal at a time, you often find yourself waiting for an enemy to happen to wander to just the right spot so that you can enact your plan. This also means that the moments in which you should be slipping past a heavily-guarded room to snag a bust are often ruined thanks to a guard who happens to turn the wrong way. This takes your supposed skill out of the equation somewhat and makes the game a frustrating slog.
Glue freezes enemies in place for a period of time.
It also doesn't help that the world itself isn't terribly interesting. For a game that seems built on slick intrigue, the levels themselves all play just about the same, albeit with varying degrees of frustration. Each floor you have to tackle is just a bunch of hallways connecting a bunch of bigger rooms. You barely ever get to use the environment to your advantage in clever ways, adding a thick layer of monotony to proceedings. Gimmicks such as dogs who can smell your footsteps, security cameras, and lasers add some much-needed variety, but once you encounter them once, you've seen all they have to offer. Levels also offer no visual panache, looking very sterile and plain, which is disappointing because the game's soundtrack embodies the slick, stylish world of high-class thievery.
The Marvellous Miss Take aims to be a different kind of confidence game, one in which you stroll into a level like you own the place and take whatever you wish with ease. All the pieces are in place to build you up and make you a virtual master thief, and Sofia's journey is the perfect embodiment of this process. It's just a shame that the game's level design and enemy combine to short-circuit the experience throughout, because there are so many individual pieces that make the game really easy to like. Sofia deserves better.
PC or Console? Alienware's $500 Alpha tries to tackle both.
Kevin Spacey has given the undead exo-suits and it's up to you to kill them all. Join Rob & Danny as they explore the latest zombie DLC for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
Microsoft rolls out Xbox One sales details, Ubisoft cracks down on “fraudulent” game copies, and find out what games you can get for free next month!
Last week saw a brand new PAX appear in an already bursting calendar of game events. So did San Antonio's humble first PAX live up to its siblings? Or have we reached peak PAX?
Watch extended gameplay footage from Dying Light Co-Op featuring the Giant Bomb crew.
