By Jim Rossignol on January 6th, 2009.
Modding mecca ModDB has announced its Mod Of The Year Awards 2008, and you lot need to get voting, especially since the awards seem to have expanded to include a gamut of beloved indie games, such as Mount & Blade. It’s all fairly easy – find the mod you want to vote for on the ModDB pages and click the rather prominent button.
Wait. What was mod of the year? If you guys have any nominations for the RPS crew to vote for then post their ModDB links in the comments below. Go!
By Alec Meer on January 6th, 2009.
It’s shaping up to be an all-indie day for Stone, Parchment, Blunderbuss, so let’s continue this proud trend. Next up is Ten Ton Ninja, concerning a treasure-hunting wee fella who’s too porky to move on his ownsome, but can heroically shunt and swing himself all over the shop thanks to his magic ninja grappling hook.
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By Jim Rossignol on January 6th, 2009.
The winner of last year’s $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the Independent Games Festival was Crayon Physics Deluxe. Finally, on January 7th 2009, we are able to buy the finished game. Has that extra year and financial aid helped the hand-drawn physics puzzler maximise its potential? Or did Petri Purho end up eating all the crayons and sitting in the corner? Having played that finished version, here’s Wot I Think.
By Kieron Gillen on January 6th, 2009.
Poisoned Sponge urged me to play this. I now urge you to do likewise. It’s from Blendogames (aka Brandon Chung), built on the Quake-2 derived KMQuake2 engine and is intellectually a cross between Hitman, No-one Lives Forever and Team Fortress 2, with a big splash of arthouse gibber. It’s also the wittiest game I’ve played since… World of Goo? Yeah, sounds right. And best of all, prominently features music from much-beloved-by-RPS-film Brazil. Get it here and play it – and remember F6 is Q2′s quicksave for the jumpy bits – and a little bit of spoiler-heavy analysis beneath the cut.
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By John Walker on January 5th, 2009.
So this is the new year. Do you feel any different? When thinking about what 2009 holds, I want to think slightly beyond the many exciting games we’re looking forward to and get a bit more thematic. On what journey should gaming take us in the following year?
2008, despite containing a ton of great games, felt a bit of a filler year in terms of progress. 2007 felt so huge probably purely thanks to Portal, and the impact that had on our expectations of gaming. But did it have an impact on last year? I’m not sure it did, beyond a few games making references to it (World of Goo Sacred 2 to name the first that springs to mind). Will the last year of the decade see us beginning to define what the twenty-teens will be about?
By Kieron Gillen on January 5th, 2009.
Many wonder whether there’s a secret to getting your game posted on RPS. There is. Firstly, if you’ve done something we’ve liked, we’d normally link it. Secondly, if your game features an enormous head of a childrens’ TV presenter, that works too. OddBob has done both, creating a semi-sequel (Spiritual Sequel, if you will) to his 2008 pico-Epic War Twat which also features the head of famous revealing-aller Johnny Ball. It’s called SYNSO or “Squid Yes! Not So Octopus!” for long and is a one-life one-screen blaster where you have to score nine points. It is available from the internet. Here. Press tab to call up the menu and amp up the visual effects though. War Twat veterans will be attracted to the “Are You mental?” option, clearly.
By Alec Meer on January 5th, 2009.
Stretching, yawning, RPS emerges from its brief hibernation, scrabbling through inboxes and RSS feeds in search of nutritious PC gaming info-nuggets. But is there much, if anything, for this small beast to feed upon in these desolate Winter weeks? It sniffs the ground disconsolately. There, a futile-looking Wii-style controller for PC. Here, a flight sim sequel. Satisfying to some, perhaps, but nothing of substance.
Aha! The shivering creature’s tired eyes finally catch a glimpse of something more fatted, juicier. It’s definitely a decent info-nugget – not the tastiest kind, but it will do. RPS takes a bite and finds…
Mmm. Official specs for the Sims 3.Yeah yeah, system spec stories are usually as invigorating as visiting Cumberland Pencil Musuem, but it’s different in The Sims’ case. Read the rest of this entry »
By Jim Rossignol on January 5th, 2009.
This is a piece about Russia, Ukraine, and the future of PC gaming. It is about creativity, piracy, and thirteen tonnes of software every day.
A version of this article, which is based on my trip to Moscow and KRI last April, appeared in the May edition of PC Gamer UK. I’ve updated and expanded it for RPS, and broken it into two parts for ease of reading. Here’s part two.
By Tim Stone on January 4th, 2009.
For those of us that like our strategic entertainment martial and historical 2008 wasn’t exactly a stellar year. AGEOD kept their end up well enough, Matrix Games produced the odd semi-precious gem, and Combat Mission: Shock Force finally started looked like the game thousands of CMx1 fans hoped it would be, but overall it was a stale, depressing twelve months. The famine may explain why I’m moderately excited about War Plan Pacific, a pared-down WW2 wargame from new outfit KE Studios.
By Kieron Gillen on January 4th, 2009.
What’s Sunday For? Well, prompting long discussions about whose dad is hardest, it seems. Will it happen this time? Well, we’ll only find out after I’ve presented this compiled list of fun smart writing of the last week or so which tries hard not to include anything about pop music whatsoever…
By Jim Rossignol on January 2nd, 2009.
The first issue of the Dead Space comic is up over at Newsarama, for free. It’s a special thing, drawn by one of my personal favourite comic artists, Ben Templesmith, and written by the excellent Antony Johnston. I believe the full piece is collected as a hardcover from Image, which you can probably get your local comic shop to order for you. AMONGST OTHER COMICS. Yes.
