Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Phantom summarisers have today been filling the internet’s gossip-hungry dens with what they claim is the highlights of Game Informer’s Bioshock 2 feature. Go read if you’re desperate, but we’re not going to recycle it here, as a) there’s a big chance it’s nonsense and b) any shortening of this kind tends to leave a lot of stuff out in favour of cheering/whining about whatever most gets their mystery readers’ goats. So let’s wait until we’ve got a fuller picture, eh?

The speculat-o-game we will play, though, because we’re filthy gossip-mongers as much as the next tea-drinking PC games blog, is about the one concrete piece of information we do know: Bioshock 2 features a Big Sister. (It seems very likely right now that does mean just the one Big Sister, incidentally). This time, let’s put aside our feelings about the very concept of a (presumably) female reimagining of Bioshock 1′s most iconic castmember, and instead have a good old guess about what’s under that long-limbed steampunk suit. If that even is Big Sis, of course. RPS’s theories are beneath the cut. As well as a whole load of inevitably wrong/insane ideas, it contains a few Bioshock 1 spoilers, in case you’ve not finished that yet.
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Playing Quake Live is a troubling experience. It feels like a kind of monetised nostalgia. A browser-based themepark, or a visit to a mummified stately home. It’s wonderful to find servers heaving with people again after all this time – even though finding a game was seldom a problem – at least for a quick and dirty free-for-all. I still adore Quake 3, and my install has not left my hard-drive in a decade. But playing it like this made me realise what a mutant creature I actually fell in love with in the earliest years of this decade. What’s missing, particularly for an obsessed capture-the-flagite like me, is one particular map: Spider Crossings, or Q3WCP9. Without it, Quake Live cannot earn my love.
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Tom “Tom Bramwell” Bramwell sends me to play the Sims 3 and chat to assistant producer MJ Chun. Where I start like this…

“It’s a moment of strange and joyous freedom. I’ve created my two Sims, the lovely married couple of John Walker (lazy, slobbish, neurotic – and in the game!) and She-Hulk (athletic, flirtatious and a kleptomaniac – guaranteeing me outrage from Shulkie fans for my out-of-character characterisation). They’re in their house. All is well. It’s The Sims.

And then, with a scroll and a click, I send She-Hulk running across the road to start seducing the neighbours, while John watches helplessly.”

Write what you know. We should be getting some Sims 3 preview code soon, which we’re planning to do some fun stuff with. Unless we forget.

Destructoid report that Vin Diesel’s Tigon Studios has been working on an MMO, Barca BC, set during the Punic wars. Diesel had this to say about the notion of a “dream” game: “My dream game is something we’ve been working on in-house. We haven’t talked about it much because we’ve been mulling over how to do it just right. My dream game is a game that we’re developing called Barca BC… The reason why it’s my dream game is because it is an MMO and — remember you said funds were not an issue in this scenario, this is obviously a hugely expensive game — but, it’s a massively multiplayer online game where you create an avatar that lives in the reality of Hannibal Barca, the Punic Wars and life 200 BC.”

The game has apparently been in development for several years, and apparently won’t be seen for several more.

What’s your dream MMO, readers?

2K Sports’ Major League Baseball 2K9 has a demo out this week, letting you play a three inning match between the Tampa Bay Rays and my beloved Phillies. Which was nice of them. Although maybe it’s a psychic demo, and it automatically picks your team when you download it. It’s literally impossible for me to say based on the evidence of my download, so let’s say, given the evidence, that there’s a 50% chance it’s psychic, and 50 that it’s a coincidence. That seems reasonable. Anyway, blimey, I enjoyed it.

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Tonight, I’m the Dancing Queen, young and sweet, only seventeen.
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RPS knows all. Sometimes we don’t, though. Hush, it’s okay: don’t lose your faith. Gods can be flawed. For instance, we weren’t particularly aware of The Maw until Steam popped up a big splash-message about it a couple of days ago. It’s not our fault: we’re really very stupid. Also, there hasn’t been much of a pre-release build-up for some reason, and perhaps most importantly there isn’t a demo, the life-blood of unknown-factor games. So this is something you’ll have to take a gamble on. And you should because – woah nelly – I think this could just be our next World of Goo. Maybe.

Update – Heliocentric reveals there is a demo after all! Meer fails at basic research.

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Legally grey abandonware site Home of The Underdogs disappeared off to whatever under it is dogs come from a little while back, after the site’s hosts ran out of money. While we could all argue about the rights and wrongs of hosting out-of-print games without the blessing of their creators/owners until the undercows come home, it’s hard to deny it was a temptingly useful way to play the PC games of yesteryear. Even when did you already own dusty floppy copies of ‘em.

With it gone, tracking down specific retro PC games has become a whole lot harder, and that’s no doubt happy news as far as some are concerned. Seems the Underdogs might yet find a new home, however.
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For some reason I’d been ignoring Disney and Black Rock’s racing game announcement, Split/Second. Turns out the idea is quite clever: “Competitors in Split/Second don’t just collide with other vehicles to knock them from the track – they can also trigger explosive events that drastically alter the dynamics of the race. Players must use strategy and pinpoint timing to derail opponents, tactically alter the track or create entirely new routes.” This concept is illustrated spectacularly in the trailer, which sits beyond the click. It’s also oddly familiar, as if I’ve seen the idea somewhere before, but I can’t pinpoint it. Anyway, the game is due some time in 2010, and the official website which Disney announced doesn’t seem to live yet, but there is some additional fluff here.

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The launch cinematic for World In Conflict (below) amuses me. No game footage, but we had plenty of that here. In other news, the console versions of the game have entered a hazy “no comment” realm. Have they been disappeared? Possibly, as Ubi seems to favour Massive as a PC developer, if this piece on VG247 is to be believed. “Our priority is to the work excellent work that Massive has done on World in Conflict: Soviet Assault for PC,” says Ubi. And maybe they’re right to focus on that, as PC RTS games do seem to be the games of the year, it’s true.

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In an internet-shattering world-exclusive, RPS is the very last site on the entire web to report the hot gossip about Bioshock 2. Very soon, a pair of magazines will be spilling the details on the sequel to 2K’s Great FPS With The Terrible Ending – PC Gamer UK’s special 200th issue, and America’s Game Informer. The cover to the latter has been revealed, and it confirms one of the recent rumours about the game: Big Sisters. Or a Big Sister, anyway.

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