Full Sail University, apparently another student-fuelled game haven waiting to be pillaged, have overseen a small group's idea to produced a rather nicely designed Dead Space-inspired freebie. Noxious has a somewhat familiar plot of a scientist being trapped in a facility that, for some reason or other, contains deadly test subjects that have naturally escaped and are on the loose. I can forgive a well-travelled plot line if the game can make up for it in other ways.
The game doesn't hide it's Dead Space affection and the devs have stated quite plainly that it is DS inspired but don't hold that against it. Noxious is a very professionally designed game with a proper menu, decent music, help popup, skippable cutscenes and other trimmings you expect from a triple A title. The voice acting is shite as can be expected and the character model is a little wonky with no standing rotational animations and a woozy camera but it gets so many other things right that you just give it a pass. The controls are tweaked well, respond accordingly and that core gameplay is not easily achieved - this is where many games fail and Noxious does it right. I will be keeping an eye on Full Sail and look forward to what new treasures await.
Renegade X has been in development for five years now (seems longer). Originally built as a an Unreal mod, it has since become a stand-alone project. Renegade X is meant to be the first person shooter Command & Conquer game that Renegade should have been with RTS elements and better multiplayer. Black Dawn is in fact only a 1-2 hour single player campaign clocking in at 3.9GB. Pretty hefty for what is essentially a demo, five years in the making.
4GB for 2 hours seems pretty unfair to the bandwidth restricted but what is there is damned impressive right from the opening cinematic - again, minus the voice work. More gametime would have been largely appreciated and the lack thereof may lead people to believe the project has some serious problems (cough, Black Mesa, cough). I can only imagine that the multiplayer is garnering the lions share of dev time, but I certainly hope that there is more singleplayer in the pipe as well.
You will currently have a hell of a time loading their site or getting a download started but a sister site has since been set up for posting fresh mirrors in the meantime. You can also find other download options on sites I can't mention, hell I'm afraid to even use the 'T' word in case someone reports me to the mafia MPAA or one of the other real Governing bodies of this planet, but persevere and you will be rewarded with some wow hammer for your eye sockets.
I owned a Dreamcast, still own a Dreamcast - even functional and despite Half-Life never being released on the DC, I played it sir. Full disclosure here, yes I pirated it. Who wouldn't have when it was touted as an unreleased and unattainable version of Half-Life and Blue Shift for the Dreamcast console. At the time of release the DC was pretty much abandoned with only a handful of bad titles left on store shelves. This duo of titles would never see the light of day and I for one wanted this little piece of video game history in my collection.
Fast forward a (cough) year wait and you too can now experience what would have went down on that ill-fated console. Half-Life: Dreamcast is now a mod for the Steam version of Half-Life, painstakingly ported (and how pray tell did you do that without a copy?) by a trio of the Sega faithful. There are not huge differences between the DC and the vanilla versions, but you can now check it out without subjecting yourself to that god-awful DC gamepad.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this will get pulled before long, so grab it while you can.
And the retro hits just keep on coming... Another Space Quest game is free and available right now: Space Quest: Incinerations by Box of Mystery looks to be the most ambitious of the three latest offerings. Apparently originally in development and aborted as an unofficial Space Quest 7, Box of Mystery went the safe route and created a wholly separate game to avoid those pesky lawsuit ninjas. To read more about the development, check out their FAQ or this wall of text press release over here, if you are into that sort of thing. Here is the full version of their stunningly fabulous Impress-O-Blurb™:
“Incinerations” is a non-commercial 2D adventure game from the mind of Chris Ushko, developed in Chris Jones’ AGS Engine and rendered with 3D software. In it, you must help Roger and his friends take on a legion of villains in his quest to rescue the woman he loves, stop the universe from going up in flames, and heroically recover his missing luggage!
Features:
Over 45 minutes of fully-animated cinematics!
Nearly 100 CG-rendered backgrounds!
More than an hour’s worth of original music!
Dozens of original new characters!
Tons of classic adventure puzzle solving!
Lots of comedy and drama set against an intergalactic thrill ride of a story!
Unlockable Achievements and Trophies!
Alternate endings!
Bam! Pretty impressive for a fan-made adventure game you've never heard of but the one thing they are lacking is voice acting (Wilhelm scream here). This will be coming in the future and could be a blessing based on what usually passes for VO work in fan games. Either way, I'm downloading and playing this sucker pronto...
I don't normally post on Flash games as they are full of ads and you can't (generally) download them for offline play - wonder if those two points are related? Abobo's Big Adventure is a huge exception and something that every self-respecting Nintendo 8-bit gamer needs to play. You will be generously rewarded with a fantastic trip, filled with comedy and nostalgia that should bring a tear of joy to your jaded little hearts.
Built by three people over the course of ten years, ABA deserves your attention. Self-described as The Ultimate Tribute to the NES, I'd be hard pressed to find a game more elaborate and well executed - Even the fantastic Super Mario Crossover loses it's lustre after playing ABA. For Comic Con, the team whipped together a fake arcade cabinet that was a huge success, it's a shame that the game is not available as a NES rom - that would truly have been amazing.
It may seem that I am gushing heavily on this but it's just that good. Having lived through that era and played everything on display within the game, I just couldn't put it down - or stop laughing for that matter. The website allows you to donate funds to the devs and for your hard-earned cash, you get a downloadable version of Aboboy's Little Adventure, a game that will only be available through the site, via donation.
This little overlooked title from the folks at Keldyn Interactive was originally available on GamersGate and can be added to your account for free as we speak. You can also go to the Dead Meets Lead website and use the free code for activation on their download page. It seems the company is no longer supporting the title and as a goodbye present is giving it away freely.
Here's the blurb:
Dead Meets Lead is every bit and piece of what a challenging zombie-slaying action game should be. Enter the role of the 18th century commander who’s on a mission to obliterate evil, by fighting your way through the island of El Mirando. A mystic plague has consumed the inhabitants of this island and you'll have to liberate their souls by sword, and travel deep into the island to find and stop the dark minds behind the cursed disease. You’ll have to act, think and move fast if you want to survive the horrors of these wicked parts of the world. And do not hope for any rescue or help, it’s all up to you and you alone!
The story is hokey but the gameplay looks frenetic, seeming like a twinstick shooter crossed with an action RPG. I had spotted the game on GG but with so many new games to play at the moment, I felt it would get completely ignored. Now I can play it at my leisure.
DigiPen once again brings us some amazing free gameplay in the form of a racer, done the DigiPen way. Nitronic Rush is a sexy and sensationalistic take on racing with some pretty amazing visuals. It's a twitch racer, no simulations here my friend, just speed, flash and epileptic seizures. I continue to be amazed at the talent of the folks at DP and their ingenuity gives me hope for the future of gaming.
If you previously downloaded the game, it has now been given a second update which includes a Christmas themed level while the first update added an additional 5 levels of play.
Infamous Adventures, creator of the Kings Quest III Remake, release yet another fantastic game - this time from the Space Quest series. Vohauls Revenge manages to keep the retro, yet updated look of the later Sierra Adventures, complete with voice, and gives us hope for a continuation of this fine trend. Space Quest I had an official VGA remake and Part IV (my personal favourite) also contained lavishly crafted 16 bit goodness but Part III: The Pirates of Pestulon still languishes in an 8 bit world. PoP has a special place in my heart as it was the first game in the series I bought, played and beat and I can only hope that it too will be treated to this treasured attention.
Fans may also want to check out Vohaul Strikes Back, a fan-based "feature-length" sequel.
The fantastic minds at the DigiPen Institute have concocted yet another fantastic gem, twisting an existing idea into some free fun. Void takes on the idea of Time Travel and places it into a binary state where using an optic lens, you see one "time" from the existing one you are in. Using a glove, you pull a section of the other "time" into yours to solve puzzles.
Process is an adventure game that gives you 20 minutes to stop a railway train from destruction and thus, you. Unlike Source Code you will not be chatting up Michelle Monaghan or trying to get Russell Peters to be funny, in other words: no feats of impossibility. What you will be doing is travelling between rail cars in a steampunk universe, attempting to convince the onboard AI to abort. The game is fantastically atmospheric and originally Russian so you will need Google Translate to read all more interesting bits on their website.
Saints be praised, a few classics got a well deserved (fan made) sequel. First up is a new campaign for the classic dos shooter Blood, a game which I love to quivering little pieces. Back in the day when this game first came out, a friend of mine called long distance across a 28.8 modem connection just so we could play together - yes, believe it or not kiddies, there once was a time without internet. It was a gaming polaroid moment for me and one that I will always cherish. Thirteen years later, in comes Death Wish with a 30 level sequel to the original. Yes there are many level packs in Blood's history but none that started in 2010, taking advantage of the many evolutionary nuances that the FPS genre have enjoyed. There is a story to this opus, really, complete with cutscenes and if there wasn't I would still play the crap out of it. Maybe I can con my friend into a a little IPX tunnel co-op after all this time, sans LD charges. You will need an actual copy of Blood to play this expansion as there is no updated engine to run it on, so head on over to GoG for some DRM-Free goodness.
Next up is a sequel to Rise of the Triad that requires only the Zdoom engine to play. No IWADS, no original content, just download and enjoy the crap out of. Return of the Triad, and you just know that's what it would have been called, contains no story - just like the original. What it does contain is a faithful recreation of the classic in graphics, sound and bloody gibs. Again, I have fond memories of playing this game all night and into half the next morning before giving up and passing out. Big, dumb, fun, download.
Treasure Adventure Game is an open-world platformer that would get more praise with an upgrade to the graphics department. They are almost forgettable but the breadth of the game makes up for it with varied locations and gameplay.
Dangerous World is a Japanese platformer with a little more graphic panache and a more direct approach to gameplay. The menus are in Japanese as is the website but there are no dialogue trees to parse here, just blasting, jumping and slashing.
Hyper Princess Pitch is a SmashTV, fast-paced action game with a Christmas-themed, cutesy graphic overlay. The gameplay is still fantastic though so jump in for the fun.
Continuing in the Christmas theme we have Johnny Platform Saves Christmas, a commercial endeavor on the 360 that is yours free because you own a PC - Merry Christmas.
Danger! Energy is a commercial-quality puzzle game originally only available in Russian but now translated into English. The game is a little hard to get into at first but gets enjoyable as you progress.
Finally we have an oddity that the old-school can truly appreciate, a remake of Canabalt on the C64 called C64anabalt. It can be downloaded right now or purchased as an actual 16k Cartridge for those of you who are still rocking the classics - read: OLD. The SID chip music conversion of this game is truly amazing, watch a video and hear for yourself.
