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Fasten your seat belts – Bill and Ted are going on another ride.
In an interview with Yahoo, Alex Winter finally gave an update on the long journey to a third feature film in the Bill & Ted franchise. A 23-year journey, to be exact. Winter played Bill S. Preston Esq. in the original 1989 science fiction comedy Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and the sequel Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey two years later in 1991 opposite Keanu Reeves as Ted “Theodore” Logan. Now, everyone’s favorite time traveling slackers have gotten a little older.
“[Bill & Ted] will be 40-something and it’s all about Bill and Ted grown up, or not grown up,” Winter said. “It’s really sweet and really f—ing funny. But it’s a Bill & Ted movie, that’s what it is. It’s for the fans of Bill & Ted. It fits very neatly in the [series]. It’s not going to feel like a reboot. The conceit is really funny: What if you’re middle-aged, haven’t really grown up and you’re supposed to have saved the world and maybe, just maybe, you kinda haven’t?” In addition to the two films, the Bill & Ted franchise includes two television adaptations both titled Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures, one animated and one live action. Both Winter and Reeves haven’t reprised their respective roles since proving the voice for their cartoon characters in one season of the series in 1990, right before the first sequel was made.
So, why the delay? “The thing we had going against us is that word got out,” Winter says. “That was kind of a bummer. It just takes a long time to put a movie together. Now we’re having to build this thing in public, which is fine. I just feel bad [the fans] have to get dragged through this long, boring, protracted process.”
Original screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon have written the script for the film based on an idea formed with Reeves and Winter, and the team has secured a director in Galaxy Quest‘s Dean Parisot. “We’ve been working on drafts for the last couple of years,” Winter said. “The script’s been finished for a while, but comedy is so specific. We’re in that world where producers are on, financiers are on and we’re just working and reworking the script.”
Well, don’t work too much on it. Unlike Bill & Ted, we don’t have all the time in the world to wait!
Where has the Sun gone? The people on Earth pray for the end of night. It is up to me to find the Sun.
This week I decided to try out the recently released platformer 6180 the moon, a game created by South Korean Indie Game Studios, Turtle Cream and PokPoong Games. I came across this game from watching Totalbiscuit play the first 15 minutes of it on his channel. It really caught my attention and I decided to take a closer look into it to see what it offers further on in the game. I wasn’t disappointed.
In 6180 the moon you play as the Moon who is in search of the Sun which seems to have disappeared. As the people on Earth cry out for the end of night, the Moon sets out on a journey stopping at Earth, Venus, and Mercury as you seek out the Sun.
This game is a platformer that has an interesting mechanic. In most platformers if you fall off an edge into a void you die. In this game, the top and the bottom of the screen are connected, so you can jump and come up from the bottom of the screen, or you can fall and come out the top of the screen. You must use this to your advantage; sometimes having to fall off an edge to get to a higher point or jumping so you can bounce off a lower point. But be careful, if you make the slightest of wrong moves you can find yourself shattered on a spike, so you need to be quite aware where you will end up if you jump. When you start the game it takes a little while to get used to get used to this but as you progress you learn to think of the bottom half of the screen as more of the top of the screen.
As you travel from planet to planet to find the Sun, more obstacles and mechanics are introduced in the game. You start out with simple platforms and spikes, and then later the game introduces bounce blocks, disappearing/reappearing blocks, moving platforms, and also falling spike stars. Midway through the game you are also introduced to drops of light which were apparently dropped by the Sun. When you activate them, you are able to pause mid jump allowing you to get though some long dangerous paths as well as save yourself from hitting a spike. You are limited on how many are in a level and they can only be used once. So choose carefully.
As you progress you get more and more used to the wrap around screen, some of the later levels don’t seem as challenging as they could be. But right when you think you mastered it, they change it up on you. When you finish the main story, you unlock a new mode for the game which has you going back though all the levels backwards. And if you think that is no big deal, they also change up the “gravity” as you may say. So instead of resting on top of the platforms, you now rest on the bottom of the platforms. If you jump you go down and if you go off an edge, you fall up. This of course takes a while to get used to because you got so used to the old way it was. Also it messes with you at first because you don’t expect to fall up. I think this is a nice challenge they added to the game.
6180 the moon is a simple, fun platformer with a short, but charming story. The use of the top to bottom wrap around screen makes the game unique and fun to play and just when you think you mastered it they flip it around and challenge you with the harder mode after the main story. And while the art style is simple it works for the game and the music adds a lovely and calming atmosphere to the game that goes well with the story.
All in all this game is a fun take on a platformer and well worth the low price. Definitely a pickup for any platformer fan out there.
The last of the games shown in the first day of EGX’s dev sessions was a game called Never Alone, a collaboration between E-Line Media and Alaskan natives in an attempt to showcase the stories and culture of the indigenous peoples of the Alaskan area.
The talk mainly focused on how the project came to be, an investment and a partnership to boost the prominence of the cultures of the people and an attempt to use modern technology to tell stories passed down through many generations of families, especially to the younger generation interested in video games. The project involved visits to the settlements to get to know the people better and gain their permission for their stories to be told through the game itself. They hope that Never Alone might be the start of the rise of indigenous peoples’ involvement in the video game movement.
In the game itself, there are two characters, a girl and a fox and the game can be played in a 2-player co-op or with just a single player switching between characters but both are needed to solve puzzles and clear the way forward as they journey through a never ending blizzard. This isn’t a game about man verses the elements though; it’s taken from a tale in which the character learns more about the world around them and about how everything is in balance, how all must work together in interdependence.
David Braben took the stage at EGX today in London in all his glorious, tech loving, nerdy….glory. Much of the presentation was given to talking about the changes coming in Beta 2 of the game, set to release on Sept. 30th. I’ve already covered that in detail, and you can read the full article here. To hit the high points though, Beta 2 will feature:
500 additional stars and systems
New ships
Combat ranks
Faction reputations
Exploration
Braben also went into some detail about the way that the game will change as players begin to explore, with factions responding and moving into territory, sending small space stations to be expanded upon and how this ties into player dynamics. He discouraged the idea of a firm guild or clan structure for the game, and actively stated he is totally against any form of Pay to Win strategy in the game. In addition, he talked about the scalability of the game’s technology. When asked about 4k displays and their relative cost, braben replied that they were building their game to use all future tech they could get their hands on, citing the inevitable drop in price for said displays, as well as being eager to test out Oculus competitors from Sony and Samsung. It was an interesting presentation, and the hype for Elite is reaching a fever pitch as the game becomes even more fully featured.
The full presentation can be seen right here:
Will you be roaming the stars with Digmbot and Lonesamurai once Elite:Dangerous launches?
At the EGX conference, Creative Assembly revealed their take on the critically acclaimed franchise with their latest game; Alien: Isolation. At the conference itself, we learned that Creative have spared no expense in creating an almost living, breathing replica of the 1979 Horror film. By digging deep into the 20th Century Fox archives, CA have managed not only to find enough pictures of the original cast to rebuild the characters in a very well rendered style, but they have also managed to find the original analogue recordings of the soundtrack and sound effects. These finds have allowed CA to create a very impressive world that does a very good job of mimicking the tense, atmospheric feel that Alien delivered when it first hit the screens. CA stressed that they had spent a very long time replicating and expanding every detail of the film into the game, and this is shown in how even the everyday items like calendars are in the same place and position that they were to be found in the game.
One of the main points that came across during the stream was their emphasis on sound. CA talked about how sound made up a third of a good gaming experience, and they wanted to create a game with sound that evoke a subconscious emotional reaction from the player as well as music that would fit the horror theme and keep the player on edge without exhausting them. Alien: Isolation features a newly built context driven sound engine. That is to say, a sound engine that will change and adapt the music within the game based on events that play out as you traverse the newly designed ship “the Sevastopol”. The sound (adapted from the original soundtrack with some tracks from the film added in for good measure) will change in volume, pitch and even climax as the Alien hunts you down and attempts to dispatch you.
This brings me onto the third aspect of the game discussed at the conference; the stealth. Gameplay footage played during the stream showed the player (revealed as Ellen Ripley) creeping through an abandoned ship. As as the Xenomorph is constantly hunting you, you must avoid him by remaining quiet, hiding under desks or in lockers; even crafting improvised weapons to distract him quickly become necessary to complete the puzzles you are presented with and to ultimately stay alive throughout the game .The music is low and ambient, portraying a feeling of being hunted, like the Xenomorph is coming personally for you, despite the fact that there are multiple androids and other human’s on board. These other characters will often hinder you, either acting aggressively or causing a commotion, which inevitably attracts the Xenomorph to your location. Whilst on the subject of mechanics and gameplay, CA has informed us that they are working with Oculus to bring Alien: Isolation to the Rift, allowing the player to fully immerse themselves in the Alien world. Pre-order content has also been made available, however CA says that it will be purely additional content separate from the main body of the game.
Are you ready to take on Xenomorphs in their latest digital outing? Let us know in the comments below!
