Jane Jensen sur Kickstarter

Le nom de Jane Jensen ne vous dit peut être rien, il s'agit pourtant d'une des créatrices de jeux vidéo les plus renommées notamment auprès des fans de jeux d'aventure. On lui doit en effet la naissance de la trilogie culte Gabriel Knight, qui reste une référence encore aujourd'hui, diverses adaptations en point & click de romans d'Agatha Christie et de la série Women's Murder Club et, dernièrement, Gray Matter.

Le développement de ce dernier a été particulièrement complexe à financer, aussi, Jane Jensen a décidé de se lancer, comme de nombreux créateurs, dans l'aventure Kickstarter. La créatrice a fondé un tout nouveau studio, Pinkerton Road, qui produira ses jeux via le support financier de la communauté.

La créatrice a plusieurs projets dans ses cartons lesquelles se feront selon l'argent récolté. D'une part, si le Kickstarter récolte 300 000$, Jane Jensen pourra développer un projet de livre interactif pour enfant et un tout nouveau jeu d'aventure. Le choix de ce jeu reviendra à la communauté qui décidera lequel il sera développé par le biais d'un vote à partir du 1er mai. Trois projets sont proposés : une suite à Gray Matter, Moebius, un thriller où l'on incarne un antiquaire embauché par un milliardaire pour trouver un trésor, ou encore Anglophile Adventure dont l'histoire et le principe seront prochainement dévoilés sur la page de financement. Le projet qui recevra le plus de votes des financeurs sortirait en début d'année 2013 sur PC.

Mais ce n'est pas tout, si le Kickstarter dépasse 600 000$, un deuxième projet pourrait alors être financé (l'un de ceux au dessus ou bien un autre s'ils n'ont pas suscité suffisamment d'intérêt) et ce dernier sortirait lui en juin 2013.

Selon le financement injecté dans le Kickstarter, vous aurez droit à différents bonus, à l'un des deux jeux ou bien aux deux jeux. Ces derniers seront par la suite vendu en dématérialisé bien sûr pour ceux qui n'auraient pas pu financer le projet ou qui attendent de voir la tournure qu'il prend. L'initiative est en tout cas intéressante et les (exigeants) fans de jeux d'aventure ont tout intérêt à se renseigner sur le projet et, qui sait, à le financer !

L'image illustrant cette brève est un artwork du projet Moebius.

· Page Kickstarter de Jane Jensen et Pikerton Road

Final Fantasy VII a 15 ans

Il y a exactement 15 ans jour pour jour, le 31 janvier 1997 sortait dans les boutiques japonaises un certain Final Fantasy VII sur la PSOne. Un épisode fondateur pour le genre puisque c'était la première fois qu'un RPG de cette taille débarquait sur un système aussi puissant (sur trois CD, tout de même). La suite, vous la connaissez, Final Fantasy VII est certainement l'un des RPG japonais les plus marquants du XXème siècle, doté à la fois de graphismes sublimes, d'un système de combat addictif et de personnages tous plus charismatiques les uns que les autres. Son trailer devrait d'ailleurs vous rappeler quelques bons souvenir :





Pour les retardataires, on vous rappelle que Final Fantasy VII peut désormais être acheté sur le Playstation Network et que son spin off sur PSP, Crisis Core, est certainement l'un des meilleurs action-RPG de la console portable de Sony.

Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown les développeurs parlent

Prévu pour cet été sur le Xbox Live et le PSN (ou plutôt le SEN : Sony Entertainment Network) Virtua Fighter 5 : Final Showdown se voit décortiqué par ses géniteurs dans une vidéo fort intéressante.

On apprend ainsi que certains personnages intégrés dans cette édition avaient du être abandonnés lors du développement de VF4 du fait d'une technologie encore inexistante. Le temps a passé et l'équipe a pu développé des outils plus précis et automatisés pour, par exemple, modéliser des corps mous comme celui d'un sumo. Les animations ne sont pas en reste et on apprend que les développeurs ont souhaité faire ressentir la douleur des combattants par les joueurs lorsqu'ils encaissent des coups.

Tout ça et plus encore vous attend dans la vidéo ci-dessous.



· Voir la vidéo de Virtua Fighter 5 : Final Showdown
· Forum Virtua Fighter 5 : Final Showdown (PSN)

Un nouveau Bundle Indie Royale disponible

Régulièrement, depuis quelques mois, les bundles de jeux indé fleurissent. Comme les bundles Indie Royale par exemple, qui débarquent une nouvelle fois avec leur lot de jeux à tout petit prix.

Et cette fois-ci, c'est Halloween qui est à l'honneur, avec une petite collection de jeux semi-horrifiques qui réjouira les amateurs de jeux indépendants. Ainsi, il sera possible de découvrir Evilquest, un action-RPG old-school qui permettra d'incarner un méchant, un vrai, en la personne du chevalier noir de service. MacGuffin's Quest pour sa part, nous mettra dans la peau d'un sorcier malencontreusement transformé en loup-garou, qui devra se tirer de son mauvais pas en résolvant diverses énigmes dans un univers haut en couleur.

Il sera ensuite possible de découvrir Home, un jeu d'aventure horrifique doté d'un design pixelisé franchement réussi, d'un scénario et d'un gameplay au poil. Pathologic pour sa part, plongera les joueurs dans un jeu d'horreur à la première personne. Crée par les auteurs de The Void, il ravira assurément les amateurs de jump scare. Enfin, dernier jeu présent dans le pack, et pas des moindres, Sam & Max : The Devil's Playhouse nous permettra de replonger avec délice dans les aventures déjantées de ce couple atypique.

Comme toujours avec ce genre d'opération, le pack est disponible en pay what you want, et se dotera de petits cadeaux si l'on paie plus que le prix moyen du moment. Pour toute informations complémentaires, c'est par ici que cela se passe.



· Consulter le site du Halloween Bundle

2012-12-21-437

Active Media Products Announces Koala USB Flash Drive

Active Media Products (AMP) has unveiled the Koala drive, adding on to its lineup of Endangered Species Series (Panda, Penguin and Polar Bear drives) launched earlier this year.





Measuring 43 x 33 x 20mm, the compact USB 2.0 Koala drive is encased insoft non-poisonous silicone rubber, which makes it water-proof andshock resistant. The Koala flash drive comes bundled with a keychainand keyring, and will be available in 2Gb, 4Gb, 8Gb and 16Gb at a MSRPof USD$10, USD$13, USD$23 and USD$40 respectively from Amazon.

News via [AMP]

2012-12-21-276

55nm R680, RV660/670, RV635 & RV620 In Q4 2007

According to the latest AMD desktop graphics roadmap VR-Zone has seen, all nextgeneration GPUs will be 55nm based even for the highest end GPU supporting DX10Unified Shaders, Crossfire, HDMI, HDCP, UVD and PCI Express 2.0. R680 will bethe successor to R600 for the enthusiast segment slated for launch in end of Q4and mass production in Jan 2008. There will be UVD for R680 this time round.There is a new performance segment with RV660/670 while RV635 will succeed RV630for the mainstream segment and RV620 to succeed RV610 in the value segment. Theyare slated for sampling in Sept while mass production in Jan '08.

comix month, take ii charles burns’ “x’ed out”

Granted, this book is very nearly two years old, but I’m reviewing it now because a) I was concentrating solely on film reviews here at the time this came out, and b) the second part of the as-far-as-I-know untitled “magnum opus” by cartoonist extraordinaire Charles Burns?this book marked the start of,?The Hive, is coming out in a couple of months here, so it’s apropos, in my own humble view, to re-examine this introductory chapter as we whet our appetites for the the next one.

For those of you who may be largely unfamiliar with Burns’ work, suffice to say it’s really in a class by itself. His career spans all the way back to the early days of Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly’s legendary?Raw, and while certain themes — adolescence and its attendant mysteries (both physical and mental), altered states of consciousness (often drug-induced), inexplicable and frequently grotesque biological phenomena, and a childlike sense of wonder at even (sometimes especially) the ugly side of life — run throughout his oeuvre, it’s probably fair to say that he’s grown both more obsessive about both exploring this stuff and detailing it meticulously via his superb illustrations as time has gone on. He’s been at it for a few decades now, and it still feels as though he’s just getting started.

Put it this way — if you could put Herge, William Burroughs, David Lynch and David Cronenberg into a blender, you?might come up with something that approximates Burns’ singular worldview. Oh, and you’d have to throw some seriously potent acid into the mix, as well.

After finishing what many —myself included— considered to be his masterpiece , the sublimely alienated and warped?Black Hole, it was an open question as to how he was going to “top himself,” so to speak, and his new series, presented Tintin-style in 56-page oversized hardbound volumes published by Pantheon Books, answers the question for us — he’s heading, as ever, into unexpected, even previously?unimagined territory, all the while wearing his influences on his sleeve but striking out on a decidedly independent path?(even though the cover itself is an open?homage to the classic?Tintin adventure?The Shooting Star, and the interior artwork bears a closer resemblance to Herge’s style than ever before).

The story in X’ed Out?at least seems? to revolve around a loser-ish late-teen character named Doug, who wakes up in a strange bedroom with no idea where he is or how he got there, and a hole in the wall of the room ends up leading him into an?Interzone-type world-within-a-world that seems, for some reason, to revolve around the trade of giant spotted eggs. We’re given a series of flashbacks to Doug’s “normal” life as the tale unfolds, but to say we have?any idea as this point where things are headed, either in terms of what happened in the past?or what’s happening in the present would be premature. So far it’s one pleasingly absurd enigma after the next, and while I admit this may make tough going for a newcomer to Burns’ work — do yourself a favor and go with?Big Baby or?Black Hole first — for those of us who have learned to trust him implicitly over the years, it represents a very strong start to what’s certain (we hope) to be another groundbreaking, classification-eschewing lengthy work, and all presented in glorious, hand-done color, no less!

On the economic front, I’ll admit that twenty bucks (assuming you pay full price, which I don’t know if anyone does these days) for 56 pages is pretty steep, but this is one of those books where the first thing you’re gonna do when you’ve finished it is read it again, and you’ll find yourself flipping it open pretty often in the days, weeks, months, and yes, at this point even years, subsequently, and that each successive reread will reveal not just new details, but new ways to look at the whole thing (or what we have of it so far at any rate) . Right now I don’t know exactly what it is we’ve even?got here, much less where’s it’s headed, but I do know that I?like?it. A lot.

the search for the plotless movie is over all hail “king frat”!

“Holy Shit! A fart contest!” ? ?? — J.J. “Gross-Out” Gumbroski, “King Frat”

Does that quote tell you literally all you need to know about “King Frat” (also released under the titles “Campus King” and “Delta House,” among others)? Probably. But just in case you want some more information—

In 1979, hot on the heels of “Animal House,” some Canadian investors, lead by producers Jack? McGowan? and Reuben Trane, figured they could make a quick buck by knocking off AH’s success and shooting a cheap rush-job imitation with no established(or, for that matter, future) stars,? an low-cost production crew, and, at the time, no script. To that end, they hired screenwriter (and I use that term loosely)? Ron Kurz (credited under the pseudonym of Mark Jackson) and director Ken Wiederhorn (who would go on to helm “Meatballs 2″) , who went on to, respectively, cobble together a “script” and get a cast and crew together to go down to Florida and make a fraternity movie of their own. The rest, as they say, is history.

At Yellowstream college (Get it?? If you don’t, rest easy, the movie will explain it to you in great detail),? Pi Kappa Delta (or the “Pi-Kaps,” as they’re better known) is the rowdiest, hardest-partying? Greek house on campus. They live to drink and—well, drink some more. And some more. And some more. And some more. I’m sorry, am I repeating myself? Well, so does “King Frat.” A lot. This is a movie that doesn’t rest until each and every “joke” is literally pounded into your head with a goddamn sledgehammer. The Pi Kaps’ head-honcho hellraiser/low-rent John Belushi clone is a guy named J.J.? Gumbroski, better known around campus as “Gross-Out” (played by John DiSanti, who was—get this—42 years old at the time).? Our guy Gross-Out basically has a routine of farting, drinking, eating, drinking some more, farting some more, drinking some more, farting some more, and—okay, you get the idea. Oh,and when he’s not drinking, farting, and occasionally eating, he fucks blow-up dolls. So you basically know everything about Gross-Out that you need to. Suffice to say, when the college announces that they’re having a campus-wide farting contest (with farts measured on the precise scientific instrument known as a “fartometer”—automatic disqualifications issued for “drawing mud”—and yes, you guessed what that means correctly),? Gross-Out is the guy to beat.

And that’s the plot. Really. Okay, there are a few little sidebar items thrown in so the whole thing isn’t over in ten minutes—the Pi-Kaps cruise around campus in their house care (a hearse), Gross-Out moons the dean while driving by, farts on him, and kills him; they have a party; they crash the deans funeral and make off wish his casket and corpse for no other reason than—hell, they can; Gross-Out meets up with an old girlfriend with even more wretched hygienic habits than him; a Pi-Kap named Chief Latrine fills us in on the history of the school’s name (as mentioned earlier) and reveals the secret that the school is built on his tribe’s land; they throw beer cans on the lawn of the preppie jock-asshole house and get in a big fistfight with them towards the end; the new Dean is out to shut down the Pi-Kaps by any means necessary (think “double-secret probation”); the Pi-Kaps go on trial — okay, that’s about it.

I mention these various subplots offhandedly because none of them amount to squat, for the most part, and the movie is really more a strung-together series of scenes than an actual, coherent story with a beginning, middle, and end. Shit just happens. In fact, one could state in all fairness that “King Frat” doesn’t so much as have an ending (it’s implausible as all get-go and completely arrives out of nowhere) as it just stops.

All of this probably leads the reader of average or better intelligence to conclude that I think “King Frat” is stupid. I do. In fact, that’s not an opinion, it’s just a fact. “King Frat” is stupid. It’s stupid beyond the mere capacity of language to describe. Said reader of average or better intelligence would then most likely assume that your host hates this movie. That. dear reader of average-or-better-intelligence, is where you’d be wrong.

Fact is, I love “King Frat.” There, I’ve said it. Not in spite of its unparalleled idiocy, but because of it. “King Frat” is truly the bottom of the bottom of the bottom of the bottom of the barrel, and it pretends to be nothing else. It’s not seeking to make you laugh. It’s not seeking to make you like it. Hell, it’s not even seeking to do anything. It just is. If you were going to crank out a quick “Animal House” knock-off and wanted to spend no money doing so, this is exactly the film you would make. Your only hope to get noticed (and “King Frat” did have a modestly profitable run, particularly on the drive-in circuit) is to be grosser, louder, and dumber. You don’t need a plot. You don’t need characterization beyond a few crude stereotypes. You don’t need “motivations” for what takes place. You don’t need anything but the grossest set in movie history, the grossest character possible, the grossest excuse for “humor” the human mind can conceive of, and some people to run the cameras and lights and play the parts. Apparently “King Frat” was made for less than $100,000, and honestly, I don’t know where most of the money went. Probably on developing costs at the lab. And as a viewer, all you need to do is watch the thing. There’s nothing to “understand.” Nothing to think about. The film not only has no plot, it has no point. This in itself is a marvel to behold.

Your host first encountered “King Frat” in its purest form—we had an old beat-up copy of it on VHS at my fraternity house in college. And while “Animal House” and “Revenge of the Nerds” are rightly considered the Holy Grails, if you will,? of all fraternity movies by frat boys, “King Frat” is so mind-bogglingly meritless, tasteless, and clueless that I actually prefer watching it to either of those two (admittedly far better, but what’s that got to do with anything?) films.

In the years since its release, in addition to becoming a staple viewing item in Greek houses everywhere, “King Frat” has also enjoyed a healthy (in terms of size, if not mental capacity) fan following in the UK, where there is apparently quite an interest in American fraternity and sorority “culture” since they don’t really have a direct equivalent to it in the British university system.? Several British dudes on a forum I frequent (http://www.gallifreybase.com —best Doctor Who forum on the web) have mentioned that this movie was on TV all the time over there for years (although presumably not on the BBC) and that people loved it.? There are also “King Frat” t-shirts, as shown above, and there’s? even a dedicated fan group for it among the Netflix movie “communities.” One thing there never was, though, at least in the US, was a “King Frat” DVD release—

—until now, that is (come on, you just knew that was coming). While it’s been a popular cult cinema item on Region 2 DVD in the UK for years, it’s never been released here until this year, when we have been “blessed” with not one, but two “King Frat” releases in less than 6 months’ time.

The first, as pictured at the top of this review, came out in May from an outfit I’ve never heard of before (and presumably never will again) called New Star video. It’s a bare-bones release with no extras, and looks like a direct-from-VHS transfer. Which is absolutely appropriate, when you think about it (or even when you don’t). Crap should look and sound like crap. Next up, though, as pictured below—-

—is a release headed our way next month from the (I thought defunct since the days of VHS) Saturn label, who are back on the scene with a new series of low-budget in-no-way-gems under the “Saturn Drive-In” tagline. These will be double feature releases and “King Frat” is paired with a movie I know nothing about (but it’s safe to assume it’s another college “comedy”) called “Cheering Section.”? I have no idea what this will look like or sound like, but I’m betting that a widescreen anamorphic transfer and a 5.1 surround mix aren’t in the works.

I’ll leave you with an anecdote direct from the IMDB. A guy posting on there was apparently a member of the band that played in the party scene in the film. He and his bandmates went to see the film when it came out in their area, and the audience reaction was about what you’d expect. Thrown popcorn, soda, even a few tomatoes. An usher (remember them?) walking down the aisles shortly before the movie was over recognized the guys from the movie and, fearing for their safety,?? offered to get them bags to put over their heads so they could leave the theater without being recognized.

And that,? like the line from Gross-Out quoted at the beginning, probably tells you everything you need to know about “King Frat.” So we’re back where we started, a perfect circle. I didn’t even come up with a coherent reason along the way for why I like this movie, let alone why you should see it. I just scribbled down a run-down that has? no beginning, no middle, no end, and quite likely no point.? More by accident than design, it seems? I’ve just written the perfect “King Frat” review.

comix month, take ii “before watchmen silk spectre” #2

Okay,?now we’re getting somewhere. While the first issue of Amanda Conner and Darwyn Cooke’s?Before Watchmen : Silk Spectre miniseries had a bit more substance to it than the previous week’s?Minutemen #1, it still felt more or less like all set-up material and not much else, and it’s only with this second installment that it feels like we’re really getting into the teeth of the story itself. Which isn’t the end of the world in and of itself, I suppose, but it does mean that by the time we actually have some sort of clear indication of where things are heading here, the series is already half over, given that it only runs for four issues, but I’m beginning to realize — not that I actually?condone this, mind you — that cheating the customer as far as getting their actual money’s worth from a book goes is part and parcel of the modern mainstream comics industry. But I digress (as I’m so often wont to do).

Anyway, a teenage Laurie Juspeczyk, sick of her retired heroine mother’s meddling in her life, has run away from home with her high school boyfriend, Greg, and now they’re in San Francisco during what I assume to be the height of the Haight-Ashbury period, living with some friends, one of whom has the incredibly stupid name of “Chappy,” in a communal-type Victorian house. Laurie’s got a gig waiting tables, they’re all getting high a lot, and man, they’re just?being, can you dig?

There’s a dark shadow falling over the Haight, though — a cat who goes by the handle of (speaking of stupid names) Gurustein (a black hippie with a Jewish-sounding name, way to prejudice the reader against?three groups of people in one go!) has devised a plan, together with local mobsters, legendary acid chemist Owsley (who actually makes an appearance in the book) and “Merry Prankster” Ken Kesey (who does likewise) to get the kids hooked on a new type of hallucinogen that will turn them all on to the groovy vibes of mass consumerism now that the corporate world is taking a hit thanks to the “peace and love generation” figuring out that we don’t all need separate washing machines, refrigerators, stereos, TVs, or even clothes and records! Sharing, in other words, is a real?bummer as far as “The Man” is concerned.

All of which, goofy as it sounds, has some basis in reality. Sort of. There’s ample evidence to suggest that LSD itself was introduced on a mass scale by our good friends at the CIA in order to de-radicalize and de-politicize the emerging youth culture of the late 1960s before it could actually present a threat?en masse to the status quo (after all, you’re less likely to give a shit about all the various causes you’re wrapped up in while you’re spending half the day in la-la land), and — sorry if this bursts anyone’s bubble — there’s also pretty solidly-sourced material out there indicating that leading proponents of “LSD culture” such as Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, and yes, even Owsley himself were, in fact, intelligence assets in one capacity or another.

Sure, this might all sound like it has nothing to do with a fictional “consumer drug” being developed, but it’s not as great a leap as it might first appear to be when you consider that the first few CIA directors were all former Wall Street men and that “The Company” has basically operated as a clandestine front to advance US business interests from its outset (and, yes, continues to do exactly that to this day). So things here aren’t nearly as far-fetched as they may seem, even if Cooke’s dialogue and characterization are, at times,?painfully clumsy (he seems much more at home dealing with the ’40s than the ’60s).

Oh, and somewhere in the middle of all this Laurie has her first official “costume” made and goes out crime-fighting on her own for the first time, but that’s almost?incidental, at least at this point, to the main thrust of the story here. Anyway, Conner’s art is, as I’m quickly coming to expect, gorgeous as always, it’s great to see her continuing to employ Dave Gibbons’ classic nine-panel grid while not being afraid to express her own style in her own manner, Paul Mount’s colors are flat-out superb, and both covers (as shown, respectively) — by Conner and Josh Middleton — wrap the whole package up in a pleasing form. Cooke’s scripting is still miles away from even attempting to ?match Alan Moore in both form and execution, but this series is at least headed in an interesting direction, even if the going is a bit uneven and the gulf between the quality of the artwork and that of the story remains pretty wide.