By Alec Meer on May 7th, 2009.
Just a quick follow-up to last night’s nega-gossip that the Duke Nukem developer had gone the way of all flesh…. 3D Realms staffer Joe Siegler popped up on the official forums with a terse confirmation: “It’s not a marketing thing. It’s true. I have nothing further to say at this time.” Aw. Good luck to all who once sailed in the good ship 3DR.
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By Alec Meer on May 7th, 2009.
This maudlin wee thing has amused me highly. When The Bomb Goes Off is a cartoon dose of apocalyptic giggles, accompanied by a silent movie-style piano-noodling soundtrack. The world is going to end (via atomic explosion) in 5 seconds – within that oh-so-short time, you must complete an array of unnamed characters’ final acts. Catching a football, jumping off a building, kissing the one they love, making it to class on time, turning the shower off, saving a dog from being run over, jumping to the moon… Essentially, it’s Wario Ware: Armageddon Edition.
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By Alec Meer on May 7th, 2009.
Normally we save our excitement about temporarily cut-priced games for our weekly Saturday bargain bucket post, but this one’s a little bit special. Both Jim and I are devout admirers of sparkly indie tower defence game Defense Grid: The Awakening, but whenever we’ve written about it previously we’ve bemoaned its surprisingly high price. Get it under a tenner, we cried. Now there seems to have been some sort of glorious overcompensation…
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By Kieron Gillen on May 7th, 2009.
On my list of Games I’d Like People To Make is a space-ship- set RPG in the vein of Star Control. Exploration, team-management, bullying team-members into hunting down defenceless alien monkeys and selling them for gold. That kind of thing. So the alliterative space game Space Exploration: Serpens Sector caught my eye, which is a lo-fi but robust take on the genre. It’s currently in development, with its creator releasing builds sporadically to garner feedback. The plan is apparently to release the main game for free, then charge from add-on packs, which seems an interesting way of going about things. You can try out the latest build here and tell him what you make of it over here.
By John Walker on May 7th, 2009.
Mere minutes after we received a whispered tip from a hooded figure soothsaying the news, Shacknews are reporting that 3D Realms has closed shop. The twenty-two year old developer apparently suffered funding issues, according to Shacknews’ similarly anonymous source, and staff from the company have been let go.
By John Walker on May 6th, 2009.
You may remember I Wish I Were The Moon, a game delightful both for its romantic simplicity, and the correct grammar of its title. Creator Daniel Benmergui has returned with a new, and quite astoundingly beautiful game, Today I Die.
By Jim Rossignol on May 6th, 2009.
The swollen internet marketing thorax of THQ has disgorged another pair of Red Faction trailers for you to crack open with a click, and then discuss, as medieval crones might have discussed the entrails of a chicken. Does the chunky scenery speak prophecy of a genuinely destructible world? Does the game footage of much shootiness tell of glad tidings, or bad? It’s hard to be clear. Consulting the terrifying RPS crystal ball, we are forced to say that we’ll wait ’til we get some more hands on time, and then – only then – make final, immutable judgment.
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By Jim Rossignol on May 6th, 2009.
A new post over on the official World Of Warcraft website reveals that an “opt in” for the forthcoming Starcraft II beta has been added to your beta profile settings page on Battle.net. Needless to say, that’s only there if you have a Battle.net account. The US beta will apparently come online before the rest of the world. Thanks to Pat for the tip.
By Kieron Gillen on May 6th, 2009.
Schizoslayer pointed me at the trailer for the forthcoming Unreal Tournament 3 mod The Ball. It’s out on the 7th, and the trailer really looks quite exciting. It’s got a mesoamerican theme to its first person puzzling, and has the vague vibe of you being a tiny person in a world of Marble Madness. Except with stress on the word “Madness”. It’s got that horror-movie vibe about it. For more information, you can have a look at the site, but it’s best to just sink up the atmosphere from the trailer.
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By Jim Rossignol on May 6th, 2009.
And I cannot imagine the sum of the hours I have poured into that game. Nor do I imagine that I’ll ever play anything else on a regular basis for that length of time. Still, it inspired me to write the final chapter of a pretty good book. CCP say:
“In the past couple days we surpassed the impressive milestone of 300,000 active subscribers. That doesn’t include trial accounts. We’ve broken our peak concurrent user record 3 times this year alone, standing now at an impressive 53,850 in the same universe. That is exponential growth. We couldn’t think of a better birthday present than having more people playing EVE Online than ever before.”
Happy Birthday, you great big virtual galaxy. Here’s to a few more.
By Alec Meer on May 6th, 2009.
Don’t worry – I’m not going to inflict a blow-by-blow technical details post on you. This is more to point out that the Release Candidate 1 for Microsoft’s next operating system is now free to all comers, and to address the question of whether we gamers should care about it a lot, a little, or not even slightly.
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