From the creators of The Incredible Machine comes Contraption Maker

From their website:

The team that created the original Incredible Machine^® is bringing all of the Rube Goldberg craziness to the modern age.

Solve puzzles involving ridiculous chain reactions full of hamster motors, trampolines, alligators, cats, and so much more. Then go to the powerful Maker Lab, where you can create your own contraptions. Everything you loved about the original game is back and improved with a new physics engine, high definition art, and new parts and programmability.

Our community features will allow you to share your creations with the world. Cooperative play, subassemblies, mods and more are coming soon. Keep a eye out for the Early Access (Alpha) release coming to PC & Mac this summer!

There are two possible reactions to this news. If you scratched your head in confusion and emitted something that sounded roughly like ‘buh?’, The Incredible Machine was a series of DOS games that came out in the early 1990s. They were puzzle-based – each level tasked you with accomplishing a goal of some sort (put a ball in a box, or pop all the balloons, for example) using a variety of levers, pulleys, boxing gloves and cats. Mostly cats. Yep, you basically had to make like Rube Goldberg and build some wacky machines. Are you starting to get it now? If you need more, worry not – I’ve embedded a video of the original The Incredible Machine after the break.

If, on the other hand, your reaction was something like this…

…then welcome, comrade! Also, you may not want to click past the break if:

a) You’re planning on doing anything productive in the near future.

b) Your nostalgia resistance is critically low.

Assassin’s Creed IV will fly the flag for the Golden Age of Piracy

It’s not much of a leap to link pirates with the Assassins, and this trailer does so rather straightforwardly. Disenchantment with order, devotion to freedom (and debauchery), and a certain predilection for pointed objects – they’re all present and accounted for. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag will apparently show us the “true story” of the pirates, “rough and unvarnished”. (The story, that is, not the pirates. You can’t varnish a pi- well, I wouldn’t want to be the one to try it, anyway.)

If you’re detecting a certain lack of excitement in these quarters, you’d be right. As a longtime Assassin’s Creed fan, I just can’t bring myself to get too worked up about this installment. After the agony and the ecstasy (mostly agony, though) of Assassin’s Creed III, Ubisoft’s next game really needed to sing a redemption song to get the franchise back on track. Instead, what we’re getting is another one-year-later sequel; but what’s worse is that it’s got a ‘IV’ tacked on to the end. Is Black Flag really going to be the bold next step for the franchise? When you consider that Brotherhood, ground-breaking in so many ways, didn’t get that honour, you have to wonder. I loved the naval combat in Assassin’s Creed III, but I don’t think that doubling down on one of the shining lights in an otherwise broken game is the way forward for Assassin’s Creed. Hopefully, Ubisoft and Edward Kenway will prove me wrong when Black Flag launches on October 29th.

Saint’s Row IV gameplay proves that laws don’t apply to the President, especially those of physics

Just a couple of days after Saint’s Row IV announced itself with dignity and grace (HAHA, no) comes our first look at the gameplay. Enjoy almost 7 minutes of Presidential carnage above!

I’ve gotta say, it doesn’t look much different from III graphically. There are already many people questioning why this couldn’t just be a large expansion instead of a full-fledged sequel, and I don’t see this video doing anything to silence them. Still, it looks to have inherited its predecessor’s absurdly manic notion of fun – even if it’s looking like I’ll have to endure a fair amount of dubstep if I’m going to play this game. 2013’s shaping up to be a stellar year for fans of open-world games with this, GTA V, Assassin’s Creed IV and Arkham Origins all on the horizon.

With great dubstep comes great responsibility, Mr. President – meet Saint’s Row IV

Oh God.

So, you remember how Saint’s Row III was pretty crazy, right? So it appears Volition’s decided that the best way to take Saint’s Row forward was to make the leader of the Saints the leader of the free world, give him aliens to fight and superpowers to fight them with.

I’m supposed to write words about this. Intelligent and meaningful words that will make you feel something about this game, about this franchise, or maybe even about the state of gaming in the world today.

Instead, all I can muster is ‘what is this I don’t even’.

If you’d like some bat-shit insanity with your thoughtful political commentary, Saint’s Row IV assumes office on August 20th.

0:49 made me laugh out loud. Even he seems embarrassed by that getup!

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is out today, here’s a video to show you why you should play it

Far Cry 3 did set the the bar fairly high when it came to developer diaries, but Blood Dragon simply smashes it out of the park. It’s not often a developer walkthrough manages to drop my jaw, but this one managed it on multiple occasions. If you’re still on the fence about Blood Dragon, watch this – you might love it, you might hate it, but it’ll definitely leave an impression.