Dante’s what?

New information about EA’s upcoming hack ‘n slash game Dante’s Inferno keeps trickling in and, I must say, leaves me with a sort of ambiguity. Sure, the trailer looks grand and all that, but what the hell!?

Uhm yeah, the player takes on the role of Dante… Not Dante the scholar, writer or whatever, no… Dante the WARRIOR! His wife seems to be abducted by Satan himself and a beefed up Dante is exacting his revenge by taking up a large scythe and battling the demons of Hell! I wonder if Dante himself would ever imagine himself jamming holy crosses into people’s skulls.

Although Hell, as imagined by Dante Alighieri, could actually be a quite engaging setting videogame- and especially designwise, I’m not really excited by this vulgarization of what’s considered to be a literary masterpiece. Please correct me if you think I’m wrong!

On another note, I’m developing my own script for a game! It’s about William of Orange, considered to be the founding father of the kingdom of the Netherlands. In my game, also a hack ‘n slasher, the Prince of Orange singlehandedly wreaks havoc in the ranks of the Spanish army. It all culminates in a final showdown between the Prince of Orange and the Duke of Alva, mounted on a huge firebreathing gargoyle. You see, Alva has made a pact with the devil and… Uhm, well I’m not going to spend the entire story! For a comparison: it will be something like last years Conan-game. Imagine Conan being William of Orange, the thugs: random Spanish soldiers! As for the harpies, they will probably feature as demons under control of the Spanish!

Go William!

Oh my…

My blog is dabbling like the Zimbabwean economy and I deserve it! Too much stuff going on to put much on Science/Fiction, when I finally GET the time I can’t be bothered because I feel like I deserved some time off… When all else fails: post some random funny stuff! Thanks to Arno for bringing this wonderful mash-up under my attention, and the maker of this jewel: Stian Hafstad!

Greetings from ‘The Mall’

To all my American fellow students: Congratulations with your new president, I guess. Because it was more or less impossible to miss the inauguration on television, I decided I might as well view it myself. A bit discouraged with the answer I got when I asked an American “Does CNN feature the installation of the Dutch government and Prime Minister?”, I decided to see it anyway… As for the answer, it was: “Oh yeah, all the time!”. I might have actually believed it, if it wasn’t for the grinning and snickering. The ceremony was nice (is it always that pompous?), but there was something about the environment that I couldn’t really bring home.

Oh my! I’ve actually been there. Not physically of course, but the Mall of DC features heavily in Fallout 3! In very different way of course… In Fallout, the US is pretty much in ruins, the Mall crawling with big, fat Mutants and… Ok, so maybe not that different (Sorry, I had just had to say that. Too easy, I know!). Compare:

It seems Stephen Totilo of the MTV Multiplayer blog made a screenshot earlier, that's why I'm using this.

Creepy, no?

And then, after the ceremony they played all the songs from the Enclave Radio Station.

Anyone else had this dèja-vu?

Mea Culpa

Sorry for not updating as much as I should/would… What happened? Well, school’s definitely NOT out for summer, I have a lot of stuff on my hands etcetera.  On a positive note: I’ve played a lot of Fallout 3 during recent months which was pretty good! Bar the miserable ending, I found the experience very entertaining.

A pity for the broken quests and silly bugs but I found the game rich enough to overlook these flaws. On another note: My paper about comparing the books of Wendy Chun (Control and Freedom) and Alexander Galloway (Protocol) is nagging somewhere in the back of my head, so I’d better get back to work… Oh yeah, make sure to play Gears of War 2’s  ‘Horde Mode’!

Best wishes for 2009 and hopefully I will have more time for updating the Science/Fiction blog.

Best,

Stefan

That’s… not your boyfriend

Sorry for not posting anything for quite some time! Swamped in stuff for the University of Amsterdam, Gamekings and the copy of ‘The Ultimate Hichhiker’s Guide (of the Galaxy)’ I received from my girlfriend had me tied down to some extent! Not that this new post will entail much, just a weird anecdote I’d like to share with anyone reading this blog. Yes, all two of you! You know who you are, although I don’t… It’s just an example how people fail to grasp that stuff they put on the Internet can be SEEN!

Tantalus is my homeboy

I’ve been waiting several years to play the newest successor in my favorite franchise: Fallout 3. I managed to get a collector’s edition (before the official launch). My Xbox 360 is still being fixed after having a ‘general hardware failure’. I see people playing the game, and hear them discuss the game, bantering about the quality and the hilarity of their in-game adventures.

Life is unfair and then you die.

Revisiting the Wasteland…

In an urge of sentimentality, crossed with the anticipation of Fallout 3, I decided to play through one of my favorite games of the last century, all time, ever… namely Fallout. In this Role Playing Game from the team of Black Isle you play an unlucky individual, sent out into the apocalyptic wasteland that remained of the south-west of the USA after thorough nuclear bombing in the Third World War. Prior to the atomic devastation great shelters were made underground, to assure some people were left after the ‘The Big One’ hit home…

Xbox Live as a social network site?

Xbox Live

While my own Xbox 360 is still being repaired, a hapless victim of the dreaded ‘Red Ring of Death’, gamers everywhere are using the console’s social network programme called Xbox Live. Rightly so, I might add. Microsoft’s Xbox was the first gaming console to add an online social aspect to videogames. How does Xbox Live measure up against Danah Boyd’s (with capital ‘D’ and ‘B’) definition of ‘social network sites’? Microsoft’s marketing blurb is certain: It’s a social network!

Little Big Planet not so Web 2.0?

During the First Look event, held last saturday in Amsterdam, Sony Computer Entertainment’s Bernard Groenveld presented Little Big Planet, already presented in this post. Sony presented this “Make-your-own”-game as the gaming industry’s answer to Web 2.0 applications like Youtube.

Console Gaming 2.0 – Little Big Planet

Though ‘Web 2.0’ is primarily an affair concerning ‘teh intawebs’, the videogame market will strike back soon with ‘Little Big Planet’, developed for The Playstation 3 by Media Molecule. Although the game is not yet available in stores it has gone ‘gold’, which means the code is done and the game only has to be put on discs and shipped.