Rock, Paper, Shotgun

So this is moderately interesting: Joystiq noticed that Amazon have come crashing into the casual games sphere with a new repurposed portal that allows you to try-before-you-buy with around 600 games. There’s a time limited trial for each one, and they’re weighing in at around $7-10. Some notable names in there too: Kudos, Kivi’s Underworld, Jewel Quest, er… Chicken Invaders 3? (Two was clearly the classic iteration.) Anyway, there’s some free games on there this week, which always seems to go down well.

I love an Escape The Room game. This little lovely was spotted by the eagliest eyes in the world at Indie Games. It’s called Bars of Black and White, employing a barcode scanner as its central premise. this one’s by Gregory Weir, who you may remember from Majesty of Colors.

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Back in the slower, happier year of 1999 there were a number of contenders for victory in the first round of “proper-3D” real time strategies. The finest of these was known as Warzone 2100, and its base-building prowess was practically unparalleled. The game has been freeware for some time, but is now supported by the Warzone 2100 Resurrection project, which is doing its best to provide for, and improve on, the original game. I’ve been playing Warzone again in 2009, and I’ve posted some thoughts and impressions after the jump.

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And now, in a feature I like to call Forbidden Discourse: The Oily Fruit of the Broken Heart, we present an interview with Ice-Pick Lodge CEO Nikolay Dybowskiy and all-purpose Ice Pick developer Aleksey “the LxR” Luchin. Ice-Pick are of course the Russian studio responsible for the award-winning Pathologic and The Void, two fascinating PC games.

I could give this chat an introduction about how the attitude that comes across in it gives me hope, but screw it. Instead I’ll just say that this interview proves just how much these guys are Doing It Right.
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We spent January doing something a little different at RPS. Every year, websites do their “What’s New In The Coming Year” articles. And they’re splendid. We did it last year too. But we couldn’t help but think perhaps they were all missing something. They exist to talk about games which the vast majority of PC gamers already know and love. We thought that going the other way would be worthwhile: just concentrate on what’s exciting about the next eleven months which, in all likelihood, no-one else is going to mention. Games which the vast majority of gamers won’t even know exist yet. We ended up with eleven interviews and hands-on impressions of the Unknown Pleasures that await in 2009. And here they are…
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Waking up to Radio 4 mentioning of whales – God knows why, I was barely awake – makes it an appropriate day to link to the 2009 edition of Harpooned: Japanese Cetacean Research Simulator. It’s basically Moby Dick meets 1942 as Creative Directed by Jonathan Swift. New features? Online scoreboards, capturing protestors and – er – being on the Mac. Man! The videogame incarnation of Comrade Hobbes and my “Japanese Whalers Research Investigates Crucial ‘How Many Whales Can We Catch Today’ Issue” proto-Onion gag, you can download it from here. Alternatively you can find Whales to hunt here (If you live near Maine). But remember – do it sneakily, as apparetly it’s a bit naughty. Footage and tangential music linkage beneath the cut…
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For their contribution to the first Global Game Jam, in which thousands of people made games in 48 hours this weekend, Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel paired up once more to create AVGM. It’s possibly important to note the game carries the following warnings: “Excessive Nudity, Excessive Violence, Explicit Audio, Mild Text, Explicit Adult Themes”. Although only the most puritanical of people would take a great deal of offence. Screenshot espousing this content, and more details, below.

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The Jedi planet of Tython will apparently feature rather heavily in Bioware’s Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic. The developers have talked in some detail about the development of this region in a new video, which I’ve posted after the jump. The brief segment on “reveals” in level design, is lovely indeed. And is it me, or is that game looking rather far along, considering how recently it was announced?
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The future is, it seems, digital downloading of games. So what is the future of digital downloading? Well, perhaps it’s this: AWOMO, or “A World Of My Own”, is coming to the end of its public beta this week. You’ve got two days left to sign up and get Rome: Total War for free, if you’re interested in testing the service. It’s a rather neat idea: a download service that downloads content as you play. It delivers the essential files to get you started with just a short period of buffering, and then fetches the rest of the game once you’re busy playing. After the jump: more info, and a call for questions.

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Sundays are for heading into the Catacombs beneath Paris with thoughts of Deus Ex on my mind, seeing a smidgen of mass in Notre Dame before supping tea whilst overlooking a panoramic view of the city by the Seine. Okay, that may be just me. And maybe just today. But I’ll stop showing off and compile a list of interesting reading from across the week and strive to not include a link to something sound-based entirely unrelated to PC Games.

• Paradox Interactive’s Frederik Wester talks to Gamasutra about (well) Paradox Interactive. Proper company-model stuff, and very much the sort of space which this blog likes to see people exploring. Meanwhile, C&VG do a profile of Creative Assembly leading up to the release of Empire. Which frankly, I’m getting a little antsy over.
• While we’re talking Gamasutra, the oft-brilliant Chris Remo did an article about the new old wave of pc games. Yet again, this is what we’re all about.

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While I wish AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! every success, I can’t let the “there’s nothing like it” claim in the feature list go unchallenged. For the last two years Russian outfit Digital Dimension Development have been quietly peddling their own flying squirrel sim. BASE doesn’t have surreal skyscrapers, smashable panes or hand signalling, but it does have aerodynamic realism, a scary sense of altitude, and a demo that lets you hurl yourself off the top of Moscow’s loftiest landmark.

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