Exoplanets are those that orbit a star other than our own, and in 2015 NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory was celebrating 20 years of discovering these other worlds. Marking the anniversary in a wonderfully out-of-the-box fashion, JPL created a set of mock travel posters for imaginary tourists of the future, advertising these exoplanets as desirable holiday locales, with their fantastical sights and experiences.
Each poster even has its own slogan, showcasing a feature of each destination. Some are humorous, such as this one for Kepler-186f:
And some are strangely poetic, such as this one for Kepler-16b, which plays on the fact that this exoplanet boasts two suns:
What really struck us about this mock travel bureau concept from JPL was how it reminded us of upcoming No Man's Sky from Hello Games. Check out the colour palettes used by Hello Games in the trailer embedded below (narrated by none other than Rutger Hauer), and it's almost like the posters have been brought to life. But it's not just the colours alone, it's the tantalising glimpse that JPL has conjured of a future in which these exoplanets will be an attainable experience hanging in space, waiting patiently to satisfy our curiosity.
This is the dream that No Man's Sky also seems to be tapping into, with endless exploration its key focus. The game's procedurally generated galaxy is not infinite, but with 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets to visit, it might as well be, as it would take 585 billion years to visit them all if you went to one every second. With these sorts of numbers being thrown around, it of course means that gamers will be exploring planets that potentially no one else will ever see.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Exoplanet Travel Bureau, and Hello Games' No Man's Sky feel as if they are both tapping into the same fundamental need we as humans have - that of extending our boundaries ever outwards, to see and experience the unseen and unknown.
No Man's Sky has a release window of June 2016, and for this writer at least, that can't come soon enough.
Writer: Garry Balogh
If you are wondering who we are, we're primarily a digital magazine for the iPad focused on the coverage of indie video games. Run by the former editor of Game Informer, you'll find worldwide exclusives, but also an interactive media experience unlike any you have seen before. If you have an iPad, you should check out the free sample issue at the very least, or enjoy one of our other episodes as listed below.
The biggest gaming show in Australia will return in 2016.
Without much fanfare, we just received a message from our contact at PAX AUS that included the above image and the words, "It's Official..." While not a big surprise, it's nice to know that the weekend starting November 4 is the one to lock away in the calendar. The show is really quite brilliant and talks to all formats, and we love how great a job it does in ensuring there is equal pegging between the big blockbusters and the indies. The crowd is fantastic and the talks engaging. If you're deeply into your gaming, it's an experience we highly recommend.
The official site has yet to be updated, but we expect yet another huge showing of indies as well. We made the indie PAX AUS guide for 2014, which you can grab here on iPad, and it contained 68 indies, with exclusive early access and interviews for every one of them. That's a lot of local developers that get to show off their wares, ensuring the event - having just wrapped its third year - is becoming an important part of the business of video games in Australia, and not just a public celebration. We can't wait.
Looking for games to play on your Apple TV? This 20 year old gaming icon, and ridiculously fun arcade racer have you covered.
Firing up a new gaming platform in the first few weeks of its lifecycle can be both an exciting and disheartening prospect. Once the wide-eyed and careful unboxing, the lounge room gymnastics of plugging in, and first ever switching on as you listen and watch for sounds and screens that will soon become old hat all pass, you're left with the games. And usually, as early adopters know, pickings are slim.
It's a price many are happy to pay, as a big part of the trade-off is the enjoyment of being there from the start, feeling like part of a community all sharing in the excitement together. While you know that apart from the handful of hyped launch titles the catalogue will be lean for a while, that knowledge is offset by the anticipation of the good times ahead. Simple bragging rights are a big appeal too.
After three generations of Apple TV, for gamers, the fourth was the charm. Armed with a shiny new SteelSeries Nimbus, this writer performed the ritual outlined above and went trailblazing through the big screen App Store's offerings in search of games.
There is no shortage of them, but the bulk at this stage are either simple one-touch affairs (eg. Mr. Jump and Jetpack Joyride) or multiplayer party games such as Beat Sports. Over the weekend in question, other warm bodies were thin on the ground, meaning party games were not an option, although we're keen to explore and bring news on those in the near future as the platform seems well positioned to capitalise on the genre. In regards to the one-touch joints, we've a feeling they're best left to mobile platforms where they shine.
We wanted to find the more traditional gaming experiences, the shooters and the platformers, adventures and RPGs. As expected, at this stage there aren't many, but there are some, and some of those are very much worth getting your hands on. We'll post a more comprehensive list of games that have meat on their bones in the not too distant future, but for now we thought we'd post a quick rundown of two that will help justify that secondary function of your Apple TV - that of a microconsole.
It feels like just yesterday we were holding a new born Xbox One in our arms for the first time, right?
Depending on where you are in the world, the Xbox One has either just turned two, or will over the course of the next 24-hours. On November 22, 2013, Microsoft’s third machine and its entry into the eighth generation of home consoles, arrived. It would be the last of the big three, arriving exactly one week after closest rival, the PlayStation 4, and one year and four days after the Nintendo Wii U, a console that had struggled to catch fire like its predecessor.
The Xbox One wasn’t the prettiest of the bunch; bigger, louder and with an archaic power brick. It had a rocky gestation, too, with the “always-on” strategy bringing with it a healthy dose of negative press, and the promise of a far more advanced Kinect 2.0 never truly utilised in exciting ways by developers. But it had an excellent controller, 22 solid launch games and a great online ecosystem, which was enough to keep fans smiling ear-to-ear through Christmas.
Can Claymore and Crescent Moon Games hit it big with old school gaming?
The recently announced NeoArcade - developed by Claymore Games and published by Crescent Moon Games - looks set to divide our couches into friend and foe, with a suite of two-player games clearly inspired by Atari classics. Bundled into the one app will be four games - NeoFire, NeoSmash, NeoTanks and NeoCycles. All will be playable alone versus AI, but we're thinking the optimal way to experience NeoArcade will be with a friend and a six-pack of beer.
It'll be interesting to see if a bright neon makeover will be enough to make these '70s classics appeal to gamers of the 21st Century. NeoFire looks to be a mash-up of bullet hell and air hockey, NeoSmash is the fresh face of Breakout, and fans can get their Tron on with Surround revived as NeoCycles.
Pictured above you'll see where much of this writer's childhood went - Combat. Those slow moving tanks pictured as the original below, compared to the NeoTanks refresh above, provided some truly intense two-player stand-offs as players rumbled cautiously out from behind cover to find a clear line of fire.
Back in the days when simple was the only option, and graphics were comprised of a handful of big fat blocks, fun was the key to success. Games such as Crossy Road are still harnessing and finding success with those key ingredients today, and if Hipster Whale can find fortune with a Frogger remake, then why not Claymore Games with Combat?
We'll be sure to check it out when it hits the Apple TV's App Store, which should actually be very soon, as Crescent Moon Games has recently revealed NeoArcade has been submitted for review.
The Apple TV as a microconsole is a brave new world for Apple. It remains to be seen if media consumers will turn to that secondary function of their little black boxes with the same sort of gusto as they did on their iPhones. For a look at the Apple TV from the developer's side of the fence, check out our interviews with Surprise Attack's Chris Wright and Cascadia Games' Chris Jorgensen.
Wargaming's seminal free-to-play multiplayer classic to be in PS4 gamer's hands in early December.
We've just received word that World of Tanks, already a phenomenon on PC, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and even the iPad, will be in PS4 players' hands before Christmas. Wargaming has revealed that the open beta will begin on December 4 and will end December 6, with 15v15 tank battles unfolding through the power of DualShock. Any progress you make during the Beta will carry across to the final game.
Mark it down in your calendar!
If you'd like to know more about the origins of World of Tanks and its rise to fame, we have an exclusive making of feature on the IP in Episode 5 of our iPad magazine, Grab It - you can "grab it" here.
In 2004, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas came out and pretty much changed the landscape of gaming; at least in terms of what we thought was possible. Four years later the game reappeared on Xbox 360 and gave a new generation of gamers a taste of its action. Strangely though, it never came to the PS3 in boxed form - only in digital form in 2012.
So, for whatever reason, Rockstar is rectifying that error in judgement and releasing the game on PS3 in boxed copy form. The game was resubmitted to the Classification Board here in Australia back in May, and will hit retailers on December 1 for a suggested retail price of AU$29.95. That's right gamers, you can finally complete that collection and look on your games shelf with pride.
If you're a GTA fan, you should check out our feature on the series in Episode 7 of our revolutionary digital magazine Grab It.
Did you know that you can also play GTA San Andreas on iOS? It's pretty fun on an iPad and you can grab it here. You can also play on iPad GTA: Vice City and GTA III.
Forget trick or treating, Halloween is really all about themed updates to our favourite games, and Ski Safari 2 has gone all out.
Sleepy Z Studios has added a whole new spooky fourth mountain to ski or snowboard on, appropriately titled Monster Mountain. The avalanche of Penguin Peaks has been replaced by a giant jack-o'-lantern that rages relentlessly on your heels, while you evade new obstacles and enemies all touched by a similarly demented hand. Eagles are now bats, bathtubs are cauldrons of bubbling brew, and it turns out - with the aid of broomsticks - penguins can now fly.
Even the music has been decomposed into a theremin-laden haunt.
The new mountain also comes with 32 new challenges to beat, and even the shop has been stocked with themed items such as rope scarves for those who just have to have everything.
For those who have thought Ski Safari 2 is all well and good, but maybe a little easy, this Halloween update includes a Frantic difficulty mode. Danger is ratcheted up to 11 with Jack giving you very little time to pick yourself up and get going again, while your trick combos can be stretched out to 32. Big risk equals big score multiplier.
We interview Chris Wright, the managing director of one of the world’s biggest indie games publishers, to see what his take is on the upcoming, games-focused revision of Apple TV.
It always seemed like a case of when, not if. Apple has the infrastructure, catalogue and controller support already in place to be a major player in the microconsole space, and the fourth revision of its Apple TV hardware will look to make that potential a reality. With a focus on streaming games, and a motion-based controller bundled in, Apple TV is set to succeed where Ouya, PlayStation TV and others have struggled.
We reached out to Chris Wright, managing director of Surprise Attack, ahead of his busy showing at PAX AUS - where his company will be displaying Dungeon League, Hacknet, Rogue Continuum, Screencheat (pictured above). Super Mutant Alien Assault, Vertiginous Golf and Western Press – to get his thoughts on the service.
The install size of upcoming Bethesda blockbuster Fallout 4 has been announced and it’s a heck of a lot smaller than we would have expected.
Anyone else remember the days when you could put a disc or cartridge into a console and be playing the game barely a minute later? It was an awesome time. Nowadays, you can spend all your available time just jumping through hoops waiting for your game to start. One of the more annoying situations modern gamers face – and something that is becoming a growing trend – is the scourge of the day one patch.
