Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Yes – you could be the proud owner of a videogame written upon by a real human female. Specifically, by Keeley Hawes – the agreeably posh voice of Lara Croft, face of ‘er out of Ashes to Ashes and of course, most famously of all, silent subject of the video for geriatric pop gibberish-spouters James’ She’s A Star. SHE IS A PRETTY LADY. She is also able to write her own name – three times, in fact, for that’s how many signed copies of Tomb Raider Underworld we have to give away. And it’s the game we’re really interested in, of course.
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Continuing our irregular series of previews for the year ahead’s more offbeat games, we now turn to uber-independent developer/artist Edmund Mcmillen. You’ll know him best either for his work on gleeful, gooey physics-platformer Gish, which scooped the IGF grand prize in 2005, or for last year’s naughty-naughty headline-maker C**t . He’s an outspoken, uncensored fellow – as you’ll tell from his remarkably candid comments about the Independent Games Festival further down this post.

Edmund’s also a massively prolific game-maker, as evidenced by his stuffed Newgrounds page and his recent anthology of 10 years of his output, This Is A Cry For Help. Hence, it’d be wrong to focus on only one of his many upcoming games…
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With the news that Eve Online is to be re-released by Atari as a retail box, along with a major new expansion named Apocrypha, I thought it might be timely to point out some of the extra-curricula Eve Online writing I’ve been doing. Then I go on after that to rant about Eve’s principles of human interaction.
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TIGSource links us to this rather polished indie third person shooter. Caster is the work of one Mike D. Smith, aka Elecorn, and he’s done a superb job of creating an action game where you run, jump and hurl spells into a colourful 3D world. I particularly like the little ripple effect when you super-jump back to Earth, there’s some vague Anime overtones to it. I’ve only had some time with the demo, but I’m reasonably impressed by what I saw in there. The full version is available on both PC and Mac. Trailer after the click.
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Variety have published a piece about the Writers Guild videogame award nominees, which awarded its first round of awards to videogame writers last year. This year there’s only one game that isn’t on PC, and another game that springs straight from the heart of the indie community.

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Barnett pointed me at this, via twitter, appropriately enough. Sam Houston is maintaining a list of twitter feeds of people in the industry who don’t mind it being public. And what a list for cheery stalking. For example, we can swiftly find out that Ragnar Tornquist‘s favourite comfort movie is Lost in Translation, George Broussard‘s wondering where the Pizza has got to and Valve Software – er- want us to know that there’s some deals on Steam. Well, it’s not all stalking on there, mores the pity.

As a matter of interest, how many RPS readers are on Twitter? I’ve done a poll beneath the cut. Feel free to explain your reasons in the comments.
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Lionhead aren’t good with interfaces. Black & White’s wavy-hieroglyph spellcasting is infamous, of course, and I spent a little too much of the Christmas just gone swearing at the agony of magic selection and food-eating in Fable 2. Revisiting Fable the first though, the sequel comparative;y seems like a masterclass in elegant menu-making. This action-RPG’s wheezing, long-winded inventories, quest logs and maps are what you’d expect a taxman to come up with should he sidestep into game design. What game in its right mind would hide Quit under options? I wonder if it’s a failing that started at Bullfrog – Evil Genius and Republic, by that other ‘frog splinter cell Elixir, were similarly blighted by awkward menus. They’re like a great writer who’s never quite mastered apostrophes, and moreover doesn’t care. As long as he gets his point across, he’s happy.
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Just in case you’re casting about for something to play in the dark hours of our Northern Hemisphere winter (damn you, Southern Hemisphere dwellers!) Cliffski has put up a new demo for the rather realistic governmental simulation Democracy 2. It’s a genuinely excellent game with lots of icons, and we all love icons. But there’s more than icons: there’s brains too. And they’re not so visible. Anyway, Kieron discusses the game in a bit more detail here. The new demo is here, and there’s a patch out for those of you who already own the thing.

Last week I talked a bit about the excellent Crayon Physics Deluxe, and if that interested you in the slightest then you should probably take a look at the demo, which Kloonigames have posted up over the weekend. A splendid illustrative slice of the game, it gives a much better idea of where the concept is now, rather than the tech demo released ages back. Have a play, you might like it.

Saints Row 2 is out now on PC in the US, both at retail and on Steam. It doesn’t reach Europe until the 30th January. The delay is apparently due to localisation, which seems odd for a months old console game. I’ve had a copy for a while now, and below is Wot I Think of the single player game. We’ll take a look at the multiplayer once the game arrives in Europe.

It had me with the shit-spraying. Of the very many non-story tasks available in the sandbox world, the one that made me realise I love this revolting game was the septic tank challenge. I was tasked to reduce the property prices of an area for a corrupt real estate agent by coating the buildings, the cars and the people in gallons of faeces. The police keep coming, and I kept splattering them in the brown stuff until their cars careered of the road, and the officers lay drowned in the crap. Enough damage racked up, the challenge was complete, and offered me level 2. Then 3, 4, 5 and 6.

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Anyone wondering whether troubled contemporary wargame Combat Mission: Shock Force is now fit for duty should definitely give the new 1.11 ‘Marines’ demo a spin. Battlefront have lashed together a bland training scenario, a dreadfully imbalanced armour clash (‘Smashing Metal’ – play as the Syrians if you want any sort of challenge), and – thank God – two variants of a quality FIBUA engagement, to showcase a year’s worth of improvements. I still have a few issues with the full game, but nervously hunting Syrian airborne troops through the streets of Tadmur (‘USMC – Going To Town’), it’s impossible not to admire what CMSF has finally become.

Read on for a few beginner’s tips.

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