Rock, Paper, Shotgun

As far as taglines for demos go “When aliens attack, monsters fight back” is one we can get behind. I mean, that is true. Who could argue with that? Unless it’s subtextual meaning is that society should release neo-nazis against new immigrants to the country who are taking our jobs, etc – in which case, we’d disagree with it a lot. Anyway, this is the demo of the game of the new Dreamworks film. You can download it from here, for about half a gig of Monster/Alien demonstration action – that is, three levels staring the leads (A sort of puzzle/platformy thing, a racing dodging thing and a fighter-thing). And here’s a couple of videos…
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It’s not all that often that I peer curiously at a flight sim these days, but when I do I absolutely relish the chance to bring out ol’ faithful. I’ve been lugging the Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 joystick around with me for years, even though it’s been out of print since around 2002 and is no longer supported by Microsoft. It’s a relic, but God help me, it’s one of my proudest possessions.

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And it’s ArmA2. This is fascinating. The situation where a developer keeps the technology and the publisher gets the name is common enough. There’s always obvious competition between the keeper of the flame and the keeper of the name (e.g. Football Manager versus Championship Manager, Far Cry 2 versus Crysis, etc). But Bohemia, in a recent press-release, have made that incredibly explicit. To quote the opening: “Is the upcoming Codemasters game really ‘the much anticipated return of the genre-defining military conflict simulator’ Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis? Is it really ‘the official sequel to the multi-award winning Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis’? Bohemia Interactive says: ‘No! What matters is the game, not the name.’” Seeing Bohemia’s fury at Flashpoint 2 being described by Codemasters as the “return of” or “official sequel to” is without precedent in recent gaming history. Read the whole thing for more. Crikey.

We took the opportunity to chat to Bohemia CEO Marek Spanel about the whole situation…

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I believe the children are our future. Well, the MMO industry’s future, anyway – colourful online words aimed at rugrats look set to be the next great white hope, now that people seem less keen on trying to snatch a piece of tasty WoW pie. I’ve just been wandering around the beta of Freaky Creatures, which is best described as City of Heroes’ character creator (only with super-deformed cartoon monsters) meets Pokemon’s arena-style fighting and The Sims’, um, sleeping.
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Just spotted this on VG247, LucasArts are setting the scene for upcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic with a webcomic. Looks like the individual issues are going to be fairly brief, and the art is only so-so, but it’s a cute idea. This kind of extra effort bodes well for the full game, in my mind.

Dreamfall Chapters news comes rarely, and often without detail, but Funcom’s Ragnar Tørnquist has sneaked out a couple more bits and pieces. Bits and pieces he’s quick to stress are unofficial, from him, and not representative of Funcom. First and foremost, that it definitely still exists. In the sense that it hasn’t been given up on. While Funcom is in a bit of turmoil, making a sizeable loss and losing their CFO, it’s good to know that Tørnquist and his The Secret World team (who have a lot in common with his Dreamfall team) are still continuing at full speed. And it’s good to know that the thinking is long-term, and that Chapters is still to come. Now a few more details about how Chapters will work have appeared.

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I’ve been meaning to post about League of Legends for a while now, and this new trailer gave me a suitable nudge. It’s the debut game from Riot Games, who I believe previously made the Warcraft 3 super-mod Defense Of The Ancients: Allstars. It looks like Riot have captured and reworked the cartoonish essence of Warcraft III brilliantly for their own game, and the trailer shows a champion-led RTS game that’s looking like a lot of fun. There’s a beta sign up on the main site right now too, so that might be worth a look, assuming this captures your interest. No dates yet, but I guess there’s a good chance loads of you will be just waiting for Demigod…

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My review of Empire: Total War has just gone live over at Eurogamer. I have to run to catch a train, so a quick link is all you’re getting for now. Expect RPS’ Wot I Think from Mr Stone early next week

Picked this up from IndieGames via John Walker and having given it a shot, have moved it into the “Worth being aware of but probably not play yet” file. Raycatcher is a sorting puzzle game, with beams of light falling from all directions with you rotating your device in the centre so the correct colour bulb ends up with the correct beam. But there’s a twist! Ala Audiosurf you can put your own MP3s into it, which will generate beams from its patterns. Which sounds interesting but isn’t actually in the demo version – it’s functionality which is reserved for the full version. Which the demo says is available on the site, but actually isn’t yet. Which is – er – probably a bad move in Indie marketing on at least two levels. Pah! Video beneath the cut.
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We’re all agreed that Escape The Room games are great, now that the dissenters have been killed. Sagrario’s Room is one of the finest I’ve played, and you should too. It’s also one of the toughest, but helpfully, the most rewarding. A very barren room sports a plastic chair, screwed to the floor and blocking the handle-less door, and a briefcase on the floor against the opposite wall. Some panels on the wall hide further secrets, with many more hidden details concealed throughout. The challenge, as ever, is to escape the room.

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It’s always fun to hear about what new retro sweetmeat has found its way to Good Old Games‘ DRM-free servers – to sigh and think of times gone by, to think of how silly our hair was in 1995 and to wonder whether the Manic Street Preachers would be any good today if Richie hadn’t gone missing.

Today, it’s the turn of Duke Nukem 3D, along with a host of other old Apogee stuff. It’s almost odd to think of people paying hard cash for Duke 3D these days – so many FPSes of that era simply haven’t aged as well as their less graphics-reliant strategy, RPG and adventure contemporaries. Of course, Duke earned some 21st century stripes last year, with the well-received XBLA port, so it’s nice to see him back on his original home too.
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