Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Last year’s splendidly stupid RTS spectactular, Red Alert 3, is soon to be joined by an expandalone game, Uprising. This new campaign is set after the end of the story arc of Red Alert 3 and features much of the acting talent of the original. The trailer beyond the jump shows developer Mical Pedriana explaining just what is going on in Uprising. He introduces some new Gothic environments, and the toxic goo squirting Desolators. No mention of the critical, relevant, addition of Holly Valance to the plot, however.

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Well, this isn’t a micro-controversy I was expecting to wake up to. A previous-RPS fave and Gametunnel’s 2008 Innovation award winner has been pulled from Big Fish Games’ portal after climbing its charts due to – gasp! – salacious content. Cue casual fans getting distinctly less casual. The fairly-hefty eight-page comments thread has the full story, but the (minorly spoilery) details can be found beneath the cut…
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[EDIT: Actual price for this is $14.95.] Exquisitely clever time-bending platformer Braid will finally see a PC release on March 31st, and the $15 pre-orders are up on Stardock’s DRM-free digi-delivery system, Impulse. Blow says: “”I’ve signed the game with 3 different online distributors. One of them, Impulse, has already announced. The other two haven’t put out their press releases yet, so I don’t want to jump the gun saying who it is.” (Thanks, Paul.)

The IGF winner is one of the most heavily praised indie games of the past few years, and has caused many people to say “beeeeoooowwwoop!” in earnest. Creator Jonathan Blow gave a memorable keynote at FreePlay in 2007, in which he both talked up Braid and described the reward scheme of World Of Warcraft as “unethical”. Braid trailer after the click.

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Pawing through the dusty tomes of the RPS archive, it seems our selective history-making does not encompass a real-time strategy game going under the name of Stormrise. This is odd for two reasons. Firstly, because apocalypse-fiction RTSes tend to make us go ‘ooh’ and tremble slightly, like a baby deer in love. Secondly, because it’s made by the Creative Assembly – as in the Total War folks. How did we miss this one? It’s the hose again for us.
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Trumpet sounds: Valve have begun their now traditional countdown to the next Team Fortress 2 update, this time, as expected, for the Scout. This means there’s a new website up, and there will be new details about the additional features added every day. The final reveal will be next Tuesday, the 24th. And the first reveal? The Sandman. And it’s a doozy.

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What’s better than a new video? Two new videos. What’s better than two new videos? Three new videos. What’s better than three new videos? Four new videos. However, if you go any higher than that it loops around and becomes rubbish again, so it’s lucky Paradox stopped there when choosing to release a new mass of footage of RPS-Unknown-Pleasure Majesty 2. You’ll find it below the hut, complete with Paradox’s video titles.
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We’ve been stalking Frictional Games, the developers behind the indie horror series Penumbra, for a while now, trying to find out details about their new project. Along the way we asked them to look back at the process of developing Penumbra, what lessons were learned, which publishers were hated, and why horror is their passion. In a frank interview, two of Frictional’s four-man team, sound director Jens Nilsson and lead programmer Thomas Grip, talk us through the company’s past, all the while dropping a few hints about what’s next, before giving us the first solid details of their forthcoming, castle-based horror game.

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[When I was at NYCC, I found some time to have a quick crack at the games on the floor. Quick. As in, 10-15 minutes tops. I'm writing up some of them, before it all fades, fades away.]

A bit of an odd couple this pair, but – were I forced to conjure a link – I’d pair them as tangential twins of modern development harking back to a previous age of PC Gaming. Dragon Age is Baldur’s Gate re-concieved after Bioware’s console dalliances with modern technology. Battlefield 1943 is Battlefield 1942, but with a technological reboot and some minor tweaking.
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The Men Of War demo is here (250mb). The demo contains the first level of the game, which is a tutorial sequence in which you patch up a tank, invade a village, and then attack a German convoy. It does not show off all the best features of the game, but certainly encompasses some of the most vital, such as using the inventories on your little men, learning to use cover, and showing off the destructible scenery. It’s worth imagining, as you play this demo, what the escalation of the second (unfeatured) level is like; in which you have dozens of men, several tanks, and face hundreds of German soldiers and armoured vehicles. This is a game that is more than the sum of its demo. I’m certain we’ll be talking about Men Of War a lot more in the coming months, because it’s one of my favourites of the year so far. You should definitely play this demo.

They’re not messing around with the nomenclature. The Space Game is a splendid little browser-based real-time strategy. In it you have to build a grid of energy nodes, mining units, and defence towers, in order to complete the asteroid-hoovering tasks set for each mission. As the game goes on your mining grid is heading deeper and deeper into enemy territory, and the battles you have to fight to get your precious space rocks becomes even more intense. It’s beautifully constructed, and rather engrossing. Go play it. (Thanks to everyone who sent us the link over the weekend.)

EDIT: Interesting point made in the comments that Harvest does something similar, better. We talked about it previously here.

Secretly we were always on the side of the Russians in the America-invading alterna-history of World In Conflict – take that, Seattle! Ahem. New missions from the Russian perspective, multiplayer maps, and other bits for World In Conflict are, happily, going to arrive at last with the Ubisoft publication of Soviet Assault in March. The trailer, which we overlooked last week because we were too busy looking at the sky for signs of Armageddon, is after the jump.

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