Rock, Paper, Shotgun

This is just lovely, just a simple idea executed with real charm. Headspin Storybook is a spot the difference webgame, with a storybook motif. By spinning the objects on the right you have to make them mirror those on the left within a time-limit. Succeed, and you go onto another level with more things to spot and/or less time to do it. The design is simple and obviously compulsive, but the ambience is what makes it. Hell, my lunch today was soundtracked by Headspin Storybook bubbling along in pastoral bliss, which I suspect is good for my digestion. Play it at lunch today then. Or, at least, listen to it.

Moscow-based developers Panzer Studio have announced that they’re going to be using CryEngine 2.0 to develop their multiplayer fantasy combat game Forged By Chaos. They also claim that their spectacular “tech demo” video was “recorded during actual fight on the test arena”. If that’s true then this game embodies a rare kind of stupid cinematic magnificence. It also seems to have been influenced by something familiar. I can’t quite put my finger on it… Judge for yourself below.
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NCSoft’s MMO-with-wings, Aion, has been showing off its floaty environments with quite spectacular results: lots of floaty things, both animate and inanimate. The flight aspect makes this rather more interesting than your normal MMO world, because there’s a whole lot of vertical detail to deal with. Oddly, NCSoft recently announced “flying transformations” for the new continent of Lineage II, which seems a bit like stealing their own thunder. Surely you keep the best for your big launch? I suppose Aion has been out for ages in Korea already, but still… Anyway, prettiness below. How I envy the environment artist.
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RPS is very pleased to have been one of the first websites in the world to see Mafia II running. We took a trip to 2K Czech, in their Czech Republic headquarters, and saw how the game is coming together. So far, so good. They were allowed to continue with our blessing. Below are detailed impressions of the game at this stage in development, along with five brand new screenshots (click on them for the full versions).

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We’ve been playing Zeno Clash. Developers Ace Team were kind enough to suggest that we should furnish you with the world’s first review of their insane beat ‘em up. Our razor-sharp analysis of defeating elephantmen and bludgeoning lunatics follows.

Jim: Right, our subject today is the esoteric fist ‘em up, Zeno Clash, by Chilean types, Ace Team.
Alec: I liked the bit where I repeatedly punched a bird-man in the face.
Jim: Bird-men are scum.
Kieron: Shall I do a brief fact-o-list of the game so we have the FACTS on the table?
Jim: Yes, facts, because facts are super-true.
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Cleverman make cleverthinks! Fresh from the Web 2.0 expo earlier this month is this entertaining and educating half-hour talk with Will Wright about everything including but not limited to his career and games to date, what’s next, lessons learned from Second Life, the intersect between games and reality and -ooh missus – Spore’s controversial DRM and the business considerations around it: “These people have paid money for a game, and you don’t want to be treating them basically as criminals”. On Spore itself, he observes that he wanted it to be almost more of a toy than a game per se – something else for the game’s many critics to chew on, then.

Also especially salient is an observation that gamers are basically narcissitic – “the more you can make the game about that person, the more interested, the more emotionally involved they will get.” A theme which, clearly, has run through a number of his games. LET THE MAN SPEAK.
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With Mafia II news due to break any moment, this week seemed a sensible time to go back and play the 2002 original. Which is what I did, and is now up to read on Eurogamer.

“Mafia is still a radical game. In 2002, just a year after Grand Theft Auto III had shaken up everyone’s expectations of sandbox gaming, Illusion Softworks’ open city went deeply against the grain. Rather than embracing the freedom of choice a living city offers, it chose to make a tightly scripted, extremely linear story with little else to do. And thank goodness, because seven years on, Mafia is still compelling despite its aging technology.”

It carries on here.

Tonight we will have the very latest information on Mafia II right here on RPS. Be here.

I’d love to have commemorated the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Raszyn by announcing that Jean-Michel Mathe had finally finished his Napoleonic opus HistWar: Les Grognards. Sadly I can’t (he’s still drilling his TacAI and personally sharpening and polishing every single sabre and bayonet in the game) so instead I’ll mark the day by drawing your attention to a darling chunk of much lighter Nap strategy. Read the rest of this entry »

Sundays are for having too much work to do, yet finding yourself compelled to punch horrible looking people in the face, and then perhaps kick them a little. But as a break from that, it’s probably a good time to compile an list of interesting reading from across the web on the subject of electronic videogames and try desperately not to include a link to some manner of popular musicality. GO!

• Fanboy rewrites of gaming ending’s are dangerous, self-deluding things. There’s always more going on, y’know? Exception/Rule: PC Gamer’s Tom Francis on how he’d have ended Bioshock, which is just plain lovely. On a similar note, his feature on Bioshock 2 in the current issue of the magazine is the best coverage of the game so far, and well worth reading.
• Lewis Denby writes about the problem of Death in videogames over at Resolution, interviewing Mr The Path, Mr Joystiq. Plus Walker and I, in a particularly prickly demi-aggressive mode. We probably should play less violent videogames, eh? Strong stuff, and well worth reading. That is, generally. Not just Walker and I.

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Frozenbyte’s beautiful-looking fantasy platformer-meets-Crayon Physics cleverness, Trine, is revealed in even more detail in their latest video. The footage shows the drawing-as-magic mechanic in more detail, as well as illustrating some of the co-op play that the game will offer. We’re quite excited about this one, and we’ll soon be talking to the team about their work in a splendid RPS interview.
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Those precious pennies you need for food and soap? There are better destinies for them. Specifically, this slew of flashing-pixel-based bargains compiled for us by Savygamer‘s patriarch of the piggybank, LewieP. Management, army-smashing and face-pounding take the spotlight this week…
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