Nuclear Monster

  • Evan Narcisse writing about the sequel to the Tony Hawk Pro Skater-esque 2D platforming skate-em-up OlliOlli:

    OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood will drive perfectionists crazy, because they’ll want to master everything about the each of the game’s intricately tricky levels before moving on to the next one. That way lies madness. And ridiculous amounts of fun.

    Out this week for PS4 and Vita, the follow-up for Roll7’s sharply-realized skating sidescroller improves just about everything that the first OlliOlli did. The visual approach is smoother and slicker, looking more like a playable micro-sized cartoon than a retro-pixel homage. It’s faster, too, with sections that require quicker, more nimble fingers to ollie over and grind through. Another improvement comes in the form of a dedicated quick-restart button for when you bail and want to get right back on your board. You’re going to be using that a lot because OlliOli2 is harder than its predecessor.

    OlliOlli 2 is one of the free games this month for Playstation Plus subscribers. New in this Olli are manuals and their implementation is more natural and easier to pull off than in Tony Hawk, so I’ve been loving the addition. Unfortunately, OlliOlli2 is locked up in some kind of exclusivity agreement with Sony for now. Though the original Olli is 75% off the regular price of $13 on Steam for the next 16 hours.

    If you’ve missed skating with Tony Hawk, you will love OlliOlli. OlliOlli2 is $15 without Playstation Plus for Playstation 4 and Vita.

  • Downloadable prequel to the New Order, $20, ships May 5th. Get psyched.

  • Why?

    No-longer affiliated with MTV, Harmonix’s Rock Band 4 ships later this year. Mad Catz is making the instruments and old DLC will be compatible. Most likely just from one console generation to another as opposed to cross manufacturer. They’re working on instrument backwards compatibility. No Wii version. That Penny Arcade guitar is possibly the most hideous peripheral I’ve ever seen.

    Rocksmith still seems more interesting to me, though it isn’t a party game at all.

  • Steam Link

    Also shipping this November for $50 is Steam Link, a dedicated streaming box for your TV that’ll have USB ports so you can plug in any controller, not just the Steam Controller.

    There was a product page on Steam for this which had some renders of the Link but it appears to be pulled. Google has a cached version.

    Not much to look at.

  • Ben Kuchera got a chance to try Valve’s Steam VR headset system using the just announced Vive hardware from HTC as well as an updated version of the controller for Steam Machines.

    On the VR System:

    The hardware is clearly a work in progress, and the fit and finish needs to be improved substantially before launch. The two controllers, one held in each hand, feature buttons on the grips; they feature triggers too, and a touchpad on the front that also works as a button. It’s an intense amount of hardware. We were told that to run the demos we were playing, you’d need a high-end video card and a very competitive gaming PC. Nothing about this sounds like a mass media product.

    So that’s the bad news. The good news is that the hardware is incredibly fucking cool.

    Read the rest of his article, his experience there sounds fantastic. Mark “Gaming Jesus” MacDonald also described the Steam VR experience Valve was demonstrating last year on this week’s Giant Bombcast.

    On the controller:

    The Steam controller is a big part of what makes a Steam Machine a Steam Machine; we were told that running SteamOS and being packaged with the controller were two of the main things that need to be included to use that branding. The controller itself has gone through a number of revisions, but we were able to use what Valve is calling the final version during GDC.

    The old Steam Controller given out at dev days was obviously a stepping stone to get somewhere else, I haven’t used it in months, and I can’t wait to try this new one. It’s particularly interesting how this newer iteration has the exact same X/Y/A/B button layout down to the color as the Xbox One controller. It’ll be $50 when it’s released this November. No price on theVive yet.