Physics-based Top-down Shooter Radio Viscera Announced

Fire Face Corporation is an indie team perhaps deserving of more attention than it's received in the past. Since 2012 its released several small projects, but its largest so far is the Adult Swim Games project Small Radios Big Televisions. The puzzle game showed Fire Face's proclivity for experimentation and oddity. Now Fire Face is back with a new game named Radio Viscera, a physics-based top-down shooter that polishes Fire Face's uniqueness into something very curious.

In Radio Viscera, players take on a 1999 doomsday cult. That's as much premise as Fire Face has decided to share yet, though Radio Viscera's violent arcade gameplay makes up for it. Using an odd sort of hand cannon, players will blast through walls and obstacles in order to launch enemies into extremely violent traps. These traps include wall-mounted spinning blades and vats of acid, the placement of which clearly don't have workplace safety in mind.

Enemies and items littered throughout levels are all physics enabled, so that they'll bounce through the environment when hit with the player's weapon.  This allows for some creative executions from the players, as they launch enemies through various obstacles or even ricochet the obstacles into enemies. As such, each level seems to be a practice in optimally executing enemies. It should be no surprise then that Radio Viscera features leaderboards, as well as an automatic gif-maker for gameplay highlights. It's certain to be a popular option for speedrunners.

As for release information, Radio Viscera is currently listed on Steam as "Summer 2021." For the time being. Fire Face is asking interested PC gamers to add Radio Viscera to their Steam wishlists and wait for more information. Expect more information in the months to come.

Comedy in video games is a tricky endeavor. The medium is ripe for hilarious gameplay moments, but it gets significantly harder when the writers try their hand at cracking jokes with the characters. The following list will detail five games that will tickle your funny bone to no end, and five that try way too hard and fall mostly flat.

The latter aren't necessarily snoozers all the way through - some of them are quite funny in different ways - but great comedy knows when to not force their humor down the audience's throat. While games still have a problem being funny, they get better at it with the passing years.

The Borderlands franchise gets its hooks in gamers with its addictive loop of collecting progressively fancier loot with friends either on a couch or over the Internet. Where it fails, however, is in its writing. The world is a darkly comedic landscape where morbid topics like murder, torture, and corporate exploitation are treated with a light comedic flair. Every character is a psychopath who enjoys killing like they are long Sunday walks on a beach. When jokes work, they simply fade into the background among the thousands of moan-inducing punchlines. It would have worked better if more grounded personalities existed to contrast with the zaniness. Lilith is really the only character who acts like a human being.