Midweek Madness - Ninja Theory Developer Sale, 50-75% Off
Save 50% to 75% on titles developed by Ninja Theory !* *Offers end May 17 at 10AM Pacific Time
ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™ Premium Edition
Ninja Theory · BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment
- Released
- Oct 24, 2013
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- Eurogamer
Pocket City, urban deer and the rewilding of video games
There's a moment in an oldish film - I think it's Mad Dog and Glory but I wouldn't bet on it - where a guy is taking a photo of a New York street in the dead of night and a deer turns up. I can't remember the guy's reaction - I think it's De Niro but I wouldn't bet on it - and I
Original postThere's a moment in an oldish film - I think it's Mad Dog and Glory but I wouldn't bet on it - where a guy is taking a photo of a New York street in the dead of night and a deer turns up. I can't remember the guy's reaction - I think it's De Niro but I wouldn't bet on it - and I can't remember how it fits into the plot. Yet I remember, even as it happened, realising that it was too much, too good, too brilliant and clear and luxurious a moment for the rest of the film to ever recover from. It was a birthday cake dropped in the footwell of a car. A city street at night and here's this deer, this ghost of the wild. There's an unforced surrealism to it, the same surrealism I felt a few years back bussing through Hove at midday on a Sunday - it is always Sunday in Hove - when I spotted a fox standing insouciantly outside a mobile phone shop as if pondering a trip to Nero's.
Urban deers must be deployed carefully, I think. They carry such a weight of obvious meaning and emotion that they can become trite. And yet even at their tritest they have such a wonderful effect, such an ability to lift the mood and break the narrative and distract. I've been playing The Division 2 off and on, mainly off, over the last few weeks. The Division 2 is set in a ruined Washington DC where mankind's grip has weakened and nature is making a tentative comeback. Fireweed and saplings sprouting through the sidewalk, moss growing on the bleached faces of the great and good and forgotten. Often at the beginning of a mission you'll be crouched low and racing towards an enemy camp and there it will be, the urban deer, rising to its tottering legs and bouncing off. Headed to the next mission, presumably, where it will do the same thing again and I will stop, again, the magic weaving its spell for the nth time and against all odds.
I have seen this deer in a number of games over the last few years. Anywhere that cities have fallen and norms have crumbled. In Crysis 3, walking through a flooded valley, beautiful water glittering in Manhattan canyons, I looked up from my bow and there was the deer, startled, moving away. I wonder if I saw it in Enslaved, darting around a tree that had grown up through the middle of a skyscraper. Maybe not. Maybe I just imagined it. Maybe De Niro just imagined it.
- Rock, Paper, Shotgun
The 10 Best Games Based On Books
Books! They’re like films without pictures, or games that are all cutscene. Old people and hipsters really like them, teenagers think they’re like totally lame, and quite frankly we should all read more of them. There are countless games inspired by books – most especially Tolkie
Original postBooks! They’re like films without pictures, or games that are all cutscene. Old people and hipsters really like them, teenagers think they’re like totally lame, and quite frankly we should all read more of them. There are countless games inspired by books – most especially Tolkien, Lovecraft and early Dungeons & Dragon fiction – but surprisingly few games based directly on books. Even fewer good ones.
Perhaps one of the reasons for that is that a game can, in theory, cleave closer to what a book does than a film can – with their length and their word counts, their dozens of characters and in some cases even their own in-game books, they can to some degree do the job of a novel. They don’t need to be based on books – and often they can do so much more, thanks to the great promise of non-linearity. Of course, the real reason for the dearth is that novels are so rarely the massive business a movie is these days. You might get a forlorn Hunger Games tie-in here and there, but suited people in gleaming office blocks just aren’t going to commission an adaptation of the latest Magnus Mills tale, more’s the pity.
I suspect that, over time, we’ll see the non-corporate side of games development increasingly homage the written word, but for now, these ten games (and seven honourable mentions) are, as far as I’m concerned, the best, and most landmark, results of page-to-pixel adaptation to date.
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- Announcement
Midweek Madness - ENSLAVED : Odyssey to the West Premium Edition, 75% Off
Save 75% on ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™ Premium Edition during this week's Midweek Madness*! Follow a gripping, surprise-filled journey as two dissimilar characters form an uneasy partnership in order to survive through a perilous, post-apocalyptic America. 150 years in the f
Save 75% on ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™ Premium Edition during this week's Midweek Madness*!
Follow a gripping, surprise-filled journey as two dissimilar characters form an uneasy partnership in order to survive through a perilous, post-apocalyptic America.
150 years in the future, war and destruction have left the world in ruins with few humans remaining and nature having reclaimed the world. Mysterious slave ships harvest the dwindling population and take them out west, never to return.
*Offer ends Friday at 10AM Pacific Time - Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Wot I Think: Enslaved – Odyssey To The West
It’s been three years since Enslaved debuted on consoles, and it seems almost criminal that it didn’t get a full-price PC release at that time. Now though, someone has flicked the porting switch somewhere in the depths of Namco Bandai, and a PC version of the game has materialise
Original post
It’s been three years since Enslaved debuted on consoles, and it seems almost criminal that it didn’t get a full-price PC release at that time. Now though, someone has flicked the porting switch somewhere in the depths of Namco Bandai, and a PC version of the game has materialised on Steam. I had a play through Ninja Theory’s beautiful and ambitious action game, and the scribbled Wot I Think on the back of the internet.(more…)
- Product Release
Now Available on Steam - ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™ Premium Edition
ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™ Premium Edition is Now Available on Steam! Follow a gripping, surprise-filled journey as two dissimilar characters form an uneasy partnership in order to survive through a perilous, post-apocalyptic America. 150 years in the future, war and destruc
ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™ Premium Edition is Now Available on Steam!
Follow a gripping, surprise-filled journey as two dissimilar characters form an uneasy partnership in order to survive through a perilous, post-apocalyptic America.
150 years in the future, war and destruction have left the world in ruins with few humans remaining and nature having reclaimed the world. Mysterious slave ships harvest the dwindling population and take them out west, never to return.
Trip, a technologically savvy young woman has been imprisoned by a slave ship but manages to escape using her mental prowess. Monkey, a strong, brutish loner and fellow prisoner also gets free by virtue of his raw power and brawn. Trip quickly realizes that Monkey is her ticket to freedom and is her only hope to survive her perilous journey back home. She hacks a slave headband and fits it on Monkey, linking them together. If she dies, he dies and her journey has now become his. ENSLAVED centers on the complex relationship between the two main characters. Players take on the role of Monkey, utilizing a mix of combat, strategy and environmental traversal to ensure he and Trip survive the threats and obstacles that stand in the way of their freedom.
