Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’m pretty chuffed with this enormous Chris Delay interview over on Offworld. It’s part of a series of wide-ranging chats I’ve been having with my favourite developers. Sample text:

Rossignol: You’re making programmer art an art style. You’re vindicating that approach: artists don’t have to be there to make games look good.

CD: There’s definitely a look and style to our videogames. I love sharp, vectorised lines, and work towards that. Look at the Darwinians, they’re a classic piece of programmer art that got promoted into the lead character of the game. They’re now our company logo too – what kind of logo summarised our design philosophy?

Go read.

I love hidden object gaming. And I don’t feel like I should have to justify that to you. Why do you get like this? It’s not like it’s some big deal for someone to enjoy a jigsaw puzzle, so why must you always look down on me for enjoying myself? Look, just leave me alone.

During yesterday’s happy-go-smiles over the Plants Vs Zombies video, I spied a recently released HO PopCap/SpinTop game, Escape Rosecliff Island.

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This is turning into RPS’ biggest Foot-to-ball day ever. Walker posts about little plastic men. And I, following up from last week’s post on Football Superstars, had an exchange of e-mails with CyberSport’s Creative Director on their Football MMO. Can RPS cram in more foot-to-ball before the end of the day? No. We probably can’t. In what follows, Steve is enormously expansive about the history of Football Superstars. This is fine reading for not just anyone interested in Football – but anyone interested in the still-unexplored possibilities of the MMO. Sez I.
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The initial RPS response to Legends of Zork, the just-released free(ish) browser reimagining of the old text-based adventure/RPGs, was that it’s simply too wretched and cynical to merit a post. Instead of ignoring it though, I’m going to pen a sort of open letter as to what’s wrong with it and what needs fixing to to rescue the fun concept underneath all the howling screw-ups. Why should I bother? I guess I’m a little saddened that a game-name of legend has been treated so cursorily. I’ve barely played the original Zork, but nonetheless this just seems like a bizarre waste of a license. Crucially, though, I reckon it can be fixed (this being web-based and free from expensive graphical shenanigans, it only needs theoretically cheap code-tweaks). Here’s how.

Gosh, I’m arrogant.
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Based on Eve chronicle The Breakout, this epic piece of fan film by Eve player Dire Lauthris tells the story of the early years of Eve’s faction warfare. Mr Lauthris explains the background to his work here on the Eve forums, including noting some mistakes in the narration. He’s been working on it since 2007. You should go watch, below. Thanks to Spiffeh for the link.

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While RPS’s understanding of foot-to-ball can be best summarised by this cartoon, we do have a slightly better grasp of foosball. First of all because it’s so much more fun to say. And secondly because all the little men have been brutally wedged onto a metal pole, like a giant’s scrawny kebab, and are then spun around and around, forced to hit the ball with their suspended heads. And yes, spinning is totally allowed. This is somewhat recreated in a new indie demo of Foosball Maniac from Hungarian team, Cybertron BT.

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I can’t tell you how crappy a day I’ve had. From stomach bug to exploding graphics cards, it’s been a stinker. So I would like to loudly declare the complete magical happiness that PopCap’s announcement has brought me. Plants Vs. Zombies looks like it will be PopCap’s interpretation of a tower defence game, but details at this point are scarce. What’s not scarce is a gorgeous song to accompany the news, with an adorable singing sunflower backed by a chorus of zombies. Who we don’t want on our lawn. Now with video below.

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I’ve been meaning to post this since we went back to play Planetside earlier in the year. Welkin4591 is a Chinese MMOFPS that is currently, apparently, in free open beta at the moment. Planetside players who have found their way into the Chinese-language game have set up a fansite here. The site features a bunch of impressions by the Western players getting onto the beta, and also features a bunch of instructions about how to get involved yourself, including beta download instructions. I believe it’s some kind of failed attempt to secure a Planetside 2 licence that has continued development within China, and it looks very similar indeed to the SOE game. You can’t expect a great experience from the far away servers, but it might be worth an afternoon of exploration for ardent MMOFPSers. A fan-made trailer exploring the many Planetside-like elements of Welkin4591 sits beyond the jump.
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The major surprise about Call of Juarez 2 is that the “Call of” turns out to be just as important as the Western-evoking “Juarez.” For while the first game was a bold melting-pot of stealth, exploration and apocalyptic Bible-quotation, it rather seems like this wants to be Call of Duty: Cowboy Warfare.
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When listening to the latest Three Moves Ahead about Demigod, I found myself over on Troy’s blog nosing around. In it, I find something fun from GDC which we missed – namely, Stardock having released a little walkthrough video including the first public (if early) footage of Elemental: War of Magic. You’ll remember Elemental from the memories laid down inside your noggin when we interviewed Brad Wardell for our Unknown Pleasures feature. Anyway – as the Elemental beta inches closer, time to see the fantasy/strategy/RPG malarkies Stardock are working on. Video beneath the cut.
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Open world racing game FUEL has us moderately excited. Not full-blown hype-arousal, but a mild kind of: “Hey look at that”. To find out why this is you should probably read our interview with Codemaster’s producer chap. If you’ve already been there and done that, you should click to the video below and raise a sceptical eyebrow at the claim of seventy vehicles being displayed therein.
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