Rock, Paper, Shotgun

This was something of a saga. Ossian studios, a team of modders gone pro, were making the first Neverwinter Nights 2 add-on pack. It’s now available to buy from Atari’s shop in the US for ten dollars and from DLGamer for everyone else for just shy of ten quid. Which is pretty atrocious, but not why the game’s already somewhat infamous. Go read Wikipedia for the full story. The game seems to have been finished towards the end of 2007 and ever since then has been delayed for mysterious reasons. Initially it was claimed that they were waiting for a security system to be put in place but… really? Eighteen months to patch in some DRM. Crikey. Anyway, it’s out now and you’ll find its trailer beneath the cut.
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We’ve not seen much of Possibility Space’s free “action” MMO Warrior Epic, but having poked around the assets they’ve so far released via their website, it’s looking fairly promising. Obviously there’s a potent whiff of Diablo heritage in there, and the visuals have a certain Blizzardian mimicry to them, but as a free MMO it’s probably worth a look. Might pass the time until Diablo 3 hits, anyway. Lucky for us, the beta sign ups are now live. (Obligatory glimpse of game footage via trailer below.)
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VG247 have been grilling outspoken EA Sports boss Peter Moore in a multipart interview. One of the headlines that has emerged from that is EA Sports intends to abandoned the boxed product for PC, because Moore believes “the future is online and connected.” This doesn’t mean they’re abandoning the PC, of course, so foot-to-ball remains safe. But it could radically change how you pay for EA Sports games: “You’re going to see us take a lot of our learnings from what we’re doing with our games in Asia, where I’ll give you the game for free, or a certain level for free,” said Moore. If all this is to be believed then we could be looking at a micropayment future for freely downloadable EA Sports games on PC. Update: Part two of Moore interview.

Positech have been busy capturing the essence of spacewar for their new strategy/management/simulation game, Gratuitous Space Battles, and we get a glimpse of it here: giant, glacial capital ships firing colossal beam lasers through swarms of tiny fighter craft. Yeah, that’s the stuff. Cliffski knows what to do. Now go! Witness those titular space battles below. (And I have to say, this one really interests me, and not simply because I’m an unmitigated spacewar nerd.)
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So, this has perked up my interest in the forthcoming Bat-brawler. This new Batman: Arkham Asylum trailer shows the caped protagonist beating on the nasties in a knuckle-crunching fashion. It looks remarkably robust and fairly fluid. The devs had been promising a flowing combat experience, and, judging by the game footage we see here, they might just have pulled it off. We should find out for sure on 23rd of June, when the game is released.
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We’ve known about this for a while, but the official announcement has only just turned up. The third Stalker game is due for release this Autumn, and covers the events immediately following the end of Shadow Of Chernobyl. “Having discovered about the open path to the Zone center, the government decides to hold a large-scale military “Fairway” operation aimed to take the CNPP under control.” Needs to say, things go awry. It falls to the player, as a Ukrainian security agent, to figure out what went wrong. Full details after the jump.
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