Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Looks like id’s usually impenetrable marketing fortress had a crack in it after all. Actor Brad Hawkins chatted to GGL Wire about the motion capture work in the FPS sequel, which was enough to reveal that the game would feature large-ish squads of human fighters working together – a mixture of soldiers and civilians. Does this mean D4 will chronicle an invasion of Earth by Hell-sent legions? Who knows, but it was a snatch of gossip too far for Doom devs id, who summarily had the interview removed. It’s even gone from Google’s cache now too. Once again, the forces of light have won out against the terrible evil of people getting excited about an upcoming videogame. Hooray for truth, justice and corporate paranoia!

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We haven’t heard much of Raven’s new shooter, Singularity, since E3 last year when the first trailer appeared. Now a blaze of virally teasers are appearing, and while it’s not showing us any game footage, it’s making the thing seem damned interesting. We’ve got the latest stuff below, and they’re really good.

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News broke yesterday that Paradox, no strangers to the world of Digital Downloads, were launching a new label specifically for indie games. Mezmer Games aims to create a forum for indie games, merging the retail and community ends and… oh, one of their first two games is cheery RPS-hype Stalin Versus Martians. Hell, yeah! We grasped the opportunity to be the first to talk to Fredrik Wester, Paradox’ Executive Vice President, about their plans for Mezmer…
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As you’ve probably seen on various news sites that really should know better, tomorrow the streets of London will endure some feline-mounted advertising. Specially-trained black cats will stalk the pavements bearing FEAR 2-emblazoned jackets. The link? Well, tomorrow is Friday the 13th, the unluckiest day of the year. And black cats are also bad luck. And being superstitious is sort of like being afraid, and thus directly relevant to FEAR 2! Their plan is genius in its simplicity.

I’m really not impressed by this most tenuous of logic, so tomorrow I will lurk doggedly by my window watching out for one of these little frackers. When I see one, I’ll spring my scathing counter-attack…
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This week we took some time to talk to Lee Hickey, Malcolm Reed, and Mike Faraday from independent British RTS developers Game Faction. They have made a rather excellent real-time strategy, called Project Aftermath. The most recent demo, 1.13 – which you should obviously take the time to play – is here (230mb). Beyond the jump I quiz them on independence, real-time strategies, and other surprisingly relevant topics. (Demo also here.)

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[I was at New York Comic Con last week. Between doing what I do at comic cons (i.e. drink), I found some time to have a quick crack at a load of games on the floor. Quick cracks. I'm going to write up the ones that stick in the memory.]

A kid in his early/mid teens – 14 tops – is watching me play for all my time with Prototype. As we walk away, he virtually gasps “I am so getting that”. I can only agree, and I’m not that surprised that he said so. Despite being an adult game, it’s the sort of adult game that not-too-strictly-adults are going to adore.
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The general consensus seems to be that the upcoming Watchmen game is an affront to God’s own eyes, but someone in the comicky-book movie adaptation’s marketing department apparently has a slightly better understanding of the source material. There’s now an browser-based, 8-bit-esque coin-op arcade machine starring the Minutemen, the Silver Age team who preceded Rorschach, Ozymandias et al, over yonder. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a spooky coincidence. I was just about to start writing this when my girlfriend passed me the post. I open a jiffy bag and – strike a light! – it’s got some review code of Codename Panzers: Cold War. Shall I play it? No, I won’t. Because my Gaming PC is still kaputt. So I equally won’t be able to give some impressions on the just released still-fashionable-just-under 1-gig demo for demo for the selfsame game. Instead, I’ll play the video whilst leaning close to my laptop monitor whilst making brrrrmmmm! and dakkadakkadakka noises. Join me!
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Electrogame samplebit! Grand Ages: Rome! This is, in case you forgot (or didn’t know), Imperium Romanum 2 – which I’m sure will offend all the many devoted fans of Imperium Romanum. Seriously, you don’t want to offend the Imperium Romanum fans. Theys Meanies! I heard they shot a games reviewer just to see him die. Anyway, this is that fashionable-900Mb size and can be got from here and features a demo of Grand Ages: Rome. Which is always a good move for a demo of Grand Ages: Rome. Anyway – you’ll find a couple of videos of this city builder below.
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The matter’s settled. The DLC for Left 4 Dead will be absomolutely free on PC and 360. Valve have proclaimed the good news about the L4D Survival Pack, which we describe in words here. Quite how Valve have managed to get something out on 360 without forcing the masses to tithe to the Redmond Beasts we don’t know, but that’s not our problem anyway.

The Survival Pack will include the mysterious “Survival” multiplayer mode (I’m going to take a guess – it’s a mode where you see how long you can survive for, without safe rooms?), as well as Versus modes for Death Toll and Dead Air. And of course the PC version will come with the much-awaited SDK gubbins. Carry on.

As I’m already atrophying my feeble soul by posting about viral marketing, I might as well show you this too. THQ decided to build a real-life Space Marine Rhino APC to promote the upcoming Dawn of War II (on which we hope to have a Wot I Think soon-ish). If a picture speaks a thousand words, then a short video of a science-fictional tank crushing a car should certainly make up for the brevity of this post’s word count: