Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Sundays are for every organ in your body giving up the ghost and lying still, slowly twitching, as an enormous firey orb in the sky mocks you with beams of light. And slowly – ever so slowly – compiling a list of interesting game related reading we collected across the week for your delectation, while trying to not pollute what’ll surely be my last will and testament with a link to something music related. I’ve got to try, even though my will – and, in fact, everything else – is weak.

• From Yahoo Tech, I found this thought provoking - online life and real-world death colliding: “When Jerald Spangenberg collapsed and died in the middle of a quest in an online game, his daughter embarked on a quest of her own: to let her father’s gaming friends know that he hadn’t just decided to desert them.” More here.
• I’m not sure whether I’m relieved or disappointed that the whole Res Evil 5 racial-insensitivity thing is out of our purview. For the record, I think Evan Narcisse’s piece for Crispy Gamer is one of the clearest argued pieces on what the actual issues are. Well worth reading.

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Talking of Knights of the Old Republic, part two of my adventures as Simon Evil, the galaxies most evil Jedi, is up on Eurogamer today. After the squirm-inducing antics of Part One, Simon Evil’s continuing douchebagging his way around the planets seemed to become slightly easier. Perhaps too easy…

“Get over it,” I told Mission, the 14-year-old Twi’lek who had joined my party. She was confiding in me about the horror of her home planet being utterly destroyed. The Sith had completely obliterated the population of Taris, countless millions had been slaughtered, and everything she had ever known or loved, beyond one Wookiee, was gone. Move on, whiny child.

It continues here.

The news that Microsoft had abandoned another Train Simulator sequel didn’t dismay the entire rail sim community. Many would have been more disturbed had the mysterious code samaritan behind openBVE announced he was walking away. Michelle appeared from nowhere a year ago, declaring he was going to modernise frumpy-but-faithful freeware train sim BVE by rewriting it from scratch. True to his word, he’s done just that. Improvements include finer physics, external views (BVE is strictly cab-based) and animated scenery. Barring leaves on the line at Surbiton or escaped pumas at Chessington North, the first non-beta version of openBVE should enter service today.

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Bioware have continued to pump out the awesome preview content for The Old Republic MMO, this time with a detailed web page on the Bounty Hunter class. It explains the character type’s background, complete with some mini movie clips of the Mandalorian armour showing off its flamethrower and jetpack functions. See, not everyone will want lightsabres.

It’s that time again: the time when SavyGamer’s magnificent LewieP guides you in the direction of the best bargains. Ladies & Gentleman, please head calmly clickwards for all the necessary links to an amazingly cheap array of indie games. And watch out, it gets Steamy down there.

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Well, that’s what the trailer should have been titled. Actually it’s more about the goofy occult horror angle of the reworked shooter, showing off the reality-hopping “veil” effects and the green-emitting monsters that Nazi scientists have created to destroy Freedom, jazz and apple pie. There are also impossibly large guns. That’s right: it’s Wolfenstein, it’s coming this summer, and it’s a first-person shooter videogame. We like those.

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I’ve been meaning to play this seriously for a few weeks now, and it looks as if it’s never going to happen with my current work and gaming schedule. So I think it best I draw your attention to it, if it hasn’t been already, and sit back. I can’t remember if Robert Yang pointed me at Opera Omnia over at IndieGames first, or whether it was Jim – either way, it’s the sort of experimental, novel game which really isn’t like anything else I can think of. It’s a puzzle game based around you playing a historian, trying to create theories which would explain how a situation come to pass. You make simulation models explaining migration patterns, and is based around reversing the usual ways of thinking. As in, how could this have come to pass? Honestly, it’s very abstract, very strange and certainly worth playing and thinking about. Get it from here.

File under ‘so pointless it’s brilliant’. Via Ron Gilbert (one of the minds behind Monkey Island, and currently working on DeathSpank), one enterprising Spanish LucasArts fan’s DIY The Secret of Monkey Island Converse trainers:

One of a kind, baby. That image of the old guy by the campfire, from MI’s first scene, always throws me back about 15 years whenever I see it. Aw.

But could I, in good conscience, wear these? I suspect not, but I would gladly hang them from a nail on the back of my door. I’m kerrrrrrayyyyzeeee like that.

There’s a technique used in everything from reality TV shows about stranding fourteen strangers in a submarine on the moon, to Why I Love The Last Episode Of Why I Love, where the interviewee is asked to include the question in their response. Watch any of these programmes and you can hear the awkwardness as contestants and Stuart Maconie try to crowbar it in as they stare blankly beyond the camera. “I think I deserved to win the insides of a cat because the other contestants couldn’t sing the Ladder Song as loudly as me.” “My first memory of this episode of The Best Episode Of This Show Ever was being asked about my first memory of…” Never has there been a more spectacular example of this art form than Carmen Electra’s, in the new preview videos for the forthcoming Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust.

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“Rick Rocket has just saved the universe! Unfortunately, the massive destruction he left in his wake has caused a temporal anomaly that has reversed the flow of time.” This fantastic little shooter-rhythm hybrid game is smart and bonkers, but Rez it ain’t. You’re playing backwards in time through a battle that, in reverse, is a musical track. It’s a scrolling shooter, but the incoming lasers and outgoing projectile waves come with a beat: it’s even intended to work with guitar controllers. Yes. More after the jump.
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I wonder if Microsoft would still have closed down Ensemble if they’d have known Halo Wars would go on to shift an easy 1m units. Sounds as though the veteran RTS developers who comprised this former goliath of PC gaming aren’t wasting any time getting back on their feet, at least.

So far, there are three splinter companies, each promising happy days ahead.
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