By John Walker on January 21st, 2009.
In good good news news, 2D BOY have released the soundtrack to World of Goo. Anyone who has played the game will know what a fantastic score the game has, and quite how sickeningly talented Kyle Gabler is to have written it all himself. What price would you pay for the lot? Well, it’s free.
By Jim Rossignol on January 21st, 2009.
The boss of virtual world tech company RedBedlam, Kerry Fraser-Robinson, has said that companies must find a way to bring virtual currency trading into their games. The must, he argued, accept that virtual currency trading will take place in games that have an economy. “Trying to stop that happening is literally like telling the tide not to come in – you will fail.”
The comments were part of a wide-ranging interview over at GI.biz, in which Fraser-Robinson slammed the idea that gold trading could be forced out of virtual worlds. More thoughts on this issue after the jump.
By Alec Meer on January 20th, 2009.
Here comes an awkward metaphor: Mirror’s Edge (the delayed PC version of which was finally released last week) is hiding in the closet. Unsurprisingly, this only makes life difficult for it. For every moment it pretends to be an FPS, it feels wrong, and to any onlooker it’s visibly uncomfortable in this assumed role. If only it would cast off this sham and reveal its true colours – well, then we’d have a game proud of itself. Mirror’s Edge is a racing game, but it doesn’t have the courage to admit it. Be proud, ME. Tell the world what you are, cry it from those rooftops you spend so much time gallivanting across: “I AM A RACING GAME!”
Read the rest of this entry »
By Jim Rossignol on January 20th, 2009.
The seventy brave souls who will represent us in the blogwar in Planetside have now received their keys and begun getting organised in the game. We have a RockPaperShotgun outfit (guild) already formed, with lots more information to be found in this forum thread. Do read it first, rather just posting “OMG HELP”, eh? If you didn’t get a key but still want to help in the war effort there are still some options.
By Jim Rossignol on January 20th, 2009.
Rather than following up on previous experiments in ultra-violence, Hitman, or Kane & Lynch, Danish devs Io Interactive have decided to head for the cell-shaded hills and create a cute action game entitled Mini Ninjas. As you might expect from the title, it’s a game that features diminutive dudes with sharp sticks, and some kind of Kung Fu cliché. A worthwhile new direction after the Kane & Lynch controversy? Or did Io actually take the time to watch the Hitman movie and decide that their next brush with Hollywood had better be via Pixar? Whatever the motivation, I have to admit I like the look of the giant lumbering evil samurai, and the fact that there’s a happy panda involved. There’s far too many sad pandas around these days, and this is all very cute.
Debut teaser trailer post-click.
By Jim Rossignol on January 20th, 2009.
CyberSports have sent words that their foot-to-ball massively-multiplayer virtual world, Football Superstars, has now hit the 250,000 registrations mark. It’s an interesting proposition, not unlike the quite-good-and-similarly-free-to-play Empire Of Sports, with players able to create their own ballists and then partake in games from 3-a-side up to full 11-a-side matches. Foot-to-ballists grow in competence over time allow you to increase “stats” as you “progress”. And it’s a real-time action sporter too, unlike the similar sports-fixated Football Manager Live.
It’s all rather mysterious to us, of course, since we recognise none of the terrain, shotguns, or base-building that we find to be essential to a real game. Perhaps you understand what this foot-to-ball phenomenon is all about?
By Kieron Gillen on January 20th, 2009.
Relatively late to this, but picked it up from Qt3 over the weekend and do like it a lot. It’s the new game by Derek Yu who you’ll best know for his involvement in the IGF winning Zelda-but-a-fish (With lots of other stuff) Aquaria. It’s called Spelunky. It’s basically Rick Dangerous meets Nethack: An underground platformer where each level is randomly generated whenever you play. By widening the skill-set slightly and allowing a lot more expression than you’d expect in what looks like Rick Dangerous, it really minimises the horrific-death-happy repetition which blighted Rick. About the only cost is slightly akward controls. This is clever and neat. See it in action beneath the cut…
Read the rest of this entry »
By Kieron Gillen on January 19th, 2009.
Armageddon Empires was our favourite turn-based strategy game of 2007. That Cryptic Comet’s next project is a political wargame set in hell is enough to get us to say things like “We’re hoping that Solium Infernum will be the greatest use of extraneous latin in a videogame since Deus Ex” with a straight face. We talk to Vic Davis about putting the Demons in Democracy and reveal the first in-game shots…
Read the rest of this entry »
By Jim Rossignol on January 19th, 2009.
We want to know a bit about your digital download habits, like whether you’ve bought a game via digital download in the past year, and how many you’ve bought. If you want to tell us, then hit the polls after the jump and click truthwards.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Jim Rossignol on January 19th, 2009.
GameDaily has the lowdown on a talk given by Valve’s Jason Holtman at the Game Business Law summit in Dallas last week. Holtman argued that “Pirates are underserved customers.” Looking at it this way, he said, allowed Valve to make some “interesting money” from it. “The reason people pirated things in Russia,” Holtman explains, “is because Russians are reading magazines and watching television — they say ‘Man, I want to play that game so bad,’ but the publishers respond ‘you can play that game in six months…maybe.’ ”
When Valve worked to time distribution in Russia with Western releases: “We found that our piracy rates dropped off significantly.”
Even more interesting, to my mind, was this tidbit of Steam’s development philosophy: “”We’re not just a way of selling game… What we are, actually, is a platform.”
By Jim Rossignol on January 19th, 2009.
Bioware CEO Ray Muzyka has told CVG that PC gaming’s health depends on diversity and accessibility. He says that making games easy to access need not stop them being “deep” experiences.
Read the rest of this entry »
