The big surprise of the week for me wasn’t Will Wright “leaving” EA or the surfacing of Assassin’s Creed 2. No, it was the announcement of a new Painkiller game. Though it isn’t being made by the original game’s developer People Can Fly (who are now owned by Epic Games), it’s hard to imagine that a team (albeit one with no trackrecord to speak of ) using the same tech and the same gameplay framework could go wrong. Add co-op to the mix, and I’m on board.

Here in this video is an invaluable look at what id Software was like in 1993. Doom development was wrapping up with sound creation and performance optimization. It’s surreal to watch this video with the knowledge of what the shotgun will really sound like while watching John Romero play with placeholder sounds from Wolf 3D SNES. They had no idea yet.

From accursedfarms.com (episode 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12)

I purchased Mount & Blade during its Steam sale some weeks ago, but I still haven’t tried it out. So although I still haven’t played any of their games, Paradox is a publisher / development house whose games I’ve kept an eye on. There’s just something about them that screams “PC”.

Tim Schafer spills the beans on his Legend most Brutal. Very disappointed that no PC version was mentioned; Brutal Legend will be Tim’s first game without one — for now, that is. This is a two part interview; the second half is here.

Meta.

GOG.com is running a weekend sale until Monday, April 6th that’ll get you Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror and Broken Sword 3: The Sleeping Dragon together for just $9.98. Of the two games we’ve only featured Broken Sword 2, but I can also vouch for the quality of Broken Sword 3, so save a couple dollars with this pack while you can.

Transhuman is a four-issue science fiction comic book mini-series written by Jonathan Hickman, with art by J.M. Ringuet, published by Image Comics. It was collected into a trade paperback in January 2009.

Transhuman is a story about genetic engineering in humans told in the style of a mockumentary. Think This Is Spinal Tap, but not hilarious. Although a certain dark humor is apparent throughout, Transhuman takes a more serious tone as narrator Heinrich Dowidat guides readers through the story of two corporations racing to upgrade Humans to Posthumans. Along the way Heinrich gets first-hand accounts from the scientists, the suits, and test subjects that were involved in the genetic enhancement projects. Ultimately, Transhuman is a story about people, their ambitions, their hidden agendas, their politics, their spite, and their greed. It’s about capitalism.

Transhuman, just as Jonathan Hickman’s other works, blew my mind. Though beautifully illustrated by J.M. Ringuet, the book also features several of the signature layouts that Hickman’s books are famous for. Just as is the case with The Nightly News and the unfortunately scheduled A Red Mass For Mars, I can’t recommend Transhuman highly enough.

Issue #7 of Air was released on the week of March 18th for only $1. I looked around online and saw that it had been marketed as a good jumping on point for new readers. Before I dive in to this issue, I thought that I should post about this special price. I wish that I could have posted about the $1 issue before it came out, but I’m sure copies are still available for that price at your local comic shop, if not online. Do check it out.

Check the source link on the BigDownload post, there is a PDF of the PC Gaming Alliance’s 2008 report. It’s clear that the PC as a gaming platform is expanding (not shifting) to reach new people with the casual games market and MMOs. Knowing that the platform brings in more revenue anually than any other single gaming platform from Sony, Microsoft or even Nintendo ($11 billion world-wide – $6 billion in the USA and Western Europe) is some comforting information.

Though Joystiq neglected to mention it (despite the information being in the press release they link to), Max Payne 3 isn’t being made by Remedy (the developers of the original game and its sequel), but by Rockstar Vancouver instead. Max Payne 3 will be their first new game since shipping Bully for the Playstation 2 in 2006 (they’re credited with Scholarship Edition for 360 & PC, but I think those were outsourced to other Rockstar developers, for the most part).

I think this may be the first gameplay footage we’ve gotten. While most games press seems pretty excited for this game, I’ve remained skeptical. I’ve been burned so many times in the past by Batman games. Although I can’t figure out why there’s so many gargoyles hanging off the walls inside the Asylum, the gameplay does look fun and, dare I say, unique.

Classy.