Rock, Paper, Shotgun

This is splendid, and slightly mysterious. Beneath the click is a kind of promo video for DM-Spectrum, an Unreal Tournament 3 deathmatch level by Matt Bradley. He’s created a kind of disco battlefield, which, according to his Vimeo page, he hasn’t yet distributed. It seems that players have to navigate via the disco light flags to find their enemy, but it’s not obvious how that works. I’ve dropped Mr Bradley a line and will report back with more when I know more, or get hold of the map itself. In the meantime, have a look at the intriguing video below.

This was first on Offworld, which should be the other videogame blog you read.
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Games are my bread and butter, but there are few other things I obsess over. Such as buildings. One of my favourite blogs on that particular subject is BLDGBLOG, written by Geoff Manaugh. It’s an extraordinarily omnivorous survey of architecture, buildings, landscapes, and the ideas that hook into these subjects from an alphabet of supplementary sources, all knitted together by Manaugh’s speculative imagination. Last week I was pleased to be able to contribute to that blog with a post on evil lairs in videogames. This week Manaugh has posted a conversation with me about my 2008 book, This Gaming Life, and related subjects.

Manaugh’s book – a heavy illustrated compilation and extrapolation of his astute blogging project – is out soon. If you have even the slightest glimmer of interest in the world around you, you’ll buy it.

You may be missing last week’s Alec/Gillen RPS Electronic Wireless Show. It’s just about possible. London transport screwed us, basically, meaning we were unable to get to Quinns house to do it before we had to cook for a crowd of young people. Alec does a mean chicken. However, if you really want to hear me yabber, last night I guest-appeared on the Joypod Podcast to talk about whatever came to mind. Subjects included the Sims 3, not being bored of games journalism, some comic stuff, why developers have reservations about forums and a lot of the usual stuff. And they continue onwards while I retire to make some tacos. Yes. You can get it from here.

Okay, most folk have known about this for a little while already, but today’s the day official word and oh-gawd-so-pretty pictures spill into the public domain. It’s Aliens! It’s Predators! It’s by Rebellion, creators of the still-splendid original AvP game! Admittedly, Rebellion have been churning out rubbish for the last couple of years, but I’m quite sure that, with this, they intend to reclaim their crown as one of the most accomplished FPS developers in all the world. Y’know what this is? This is redemption. Information, pictures and frothing follows.
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Yes. There are days when all is right with the internet. The fact that it coughed up the exploding neon bit-tune psychedelia of Squid Yes! Not So Octopus!: Squid Harder, via Indiegames, onto my monitor when I should be writing a review, can only be portentous of one such day. The sun is shining, the squid are firing continuous laser-blasts into their enemy, and my tea is warm. It is a good day to be alive, and a good day to blog about ludicrously-named, rather brilliant arena shooters. Video below, but frankly you should just go and play it.

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One thing which ensures we’ll post your game is if you have an awesome name. In fact, even if for a second we think you have an awesome name. So when Brian Ramage mailed us, I got all excited thinking he was called BRIAN RAMPAGE. But he’s not. Momentary sad-face, turning smiling when you realise he’s here to tell about a soon-to-be-released-game-on-Steam. It’s a multiplayer-hover-craft sports game called Metal Drift, and it’s the first fruit of indie Black Jacket Studios, who certainly have the multiplayer lineage being Tribes 2 vets. I had a quick go at the preview-code now, and it seems to walk that line between Battlezone and Speedball 2. Which is a good line to walk. More when we’ve played more, I suspect, but until then there’s info on their site, and beneath the cut you’ll find some footage of the game in action.
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This could well be my WebThing Of The Week: Ships, a ship simulator based on the Google Earth browser plugin. That normally wouldn’t seem too exciting – not least because it’s a crude proof-of-concept rather than any kind of workable game – but it’s got an airship in it! And I can totally fly around the world in real-time in an airship. At last, my dreams are partially realised.

That there wasn’t a demo of a game that proved so hard to describe in a single sentence is one of several perplexing decisions around the launch of Gas-Powered Games/Stardock’s action-strategy thingy Demigod. Stardock’s Brad Wardell has shoved up another of his irregular state of play updates, and alongside another apology for those awful multiplayer problems in the game’s first week, he reveals plans for a demo and two new Demigods. Waroo!
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Confused about what’s going on with Snipers and Spies and updates? Yeah, me too. Tuesday was originally thought to be the launch day for the Sniper update. Two unlocks were revealed, along with a new game mode, and then the switcheroo happened. Now it’s a Spy update, two unlocks were revealed at once, then yesterday the Meet The Spy video made an encore appearance, along with the achievement titles. Today… a Spy unlock. And it’s the pistol upgrade everyone was hoping for.

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ACE Team have just announced the excellent news that they’re already working on a sequel to Zeno Clash, the first-person beat-em-up we poured praise upon last month. Zeno Clash 2, as it’s currently known, will take place after the events of the first game, continuing the adventures of Ghat, this time in a larger world, with mysterious “RPG elements”.

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Tripwire Interactive, the good chaps behind the Red Orchestra series, offered up their brand new, standalone multiplayer shooter Killing Floor last week. Well, I say brand new, but it’s an embiggening of an old UT2004 mod. A storm of hype exploded around this co-op survival horror shooter in the run up to release, so now’s the time to judge if it deserved such loving treatment. Indie zombie face-splatting? Sounds about ideal. Or does it? Impressions below…
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