Rock, Paper, Shotgun

A game to make you laugh at games, a game to make you feel a little bad about yourself, and a game in which you destroy hundreds of spaceships within mere moments. UPGRADE COMPLETE has much in common with meta-brother-in-arms Achievement Unlocked – it turns one of the peripheral systems of gaming into a game itself. In this case, it’s a shmup built around chasing upgrades – spending in-game cash on more powerful weapons’n'that. Also, on new menu buttons, on background music and even on a more jolly GAME OVER screen. The combination of out and out silliness and excessive visual escalation is an awful lot of fun. At the same time, I’m not entirely convinced the gag/swipe works – and perversely, that might just be because the game itself does work rather well…
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To be frank (don’t worry, you can still be Shirley) the first thing that disturbs me about writing about how gaming made me is that so many of you reading this won’t be old enough to remember going into a John Menzies and browsing the racks and racks of games between £1.99 and £2.99, buying one almost certainly on the basis of how interesting the cover was (or sometimes how many games they’d managed to crush on; Codesmasters sticking four, usually terrible, games on some of their tapes got me more than once) and then going home and waiting for the tape to load while reading the insert.
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This one’s only available to residents of the United Kingdom, I’m afraid. To celebrate their new racing game, Fuel, Codemasters are providing a selection of prizes, including a unique art print and copies of the game, for you lot to win. Details below.

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As Alec pointed out this week, very excellently the Experimental Gameplay Project is back. And as Alec went on to point out, the first challenge is to create an “Unexperimental Shooter”. Well, the first few are up. They are strange. This is no surprise.

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More action from Section 8‘s armoured dudes as they come crashing down from space in this new developer diary. Lots of in-game footage, and lots of chatter from the developers about loadouts, customisation, movement, and all that robo-jazz. This one is looking more and more interesting as time goes on. If the game is smooth and balanced when it hits, I suspect we might be in for a small pleasure.
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Alec suggested we do Gaming Made Me – ooh – last Friday? Being RPS, we only got around to working out anything on Monday morning. It takes until Tuesday to realise how special it feels, and we should pursue it. Also, we realise that since there’s only four of us, it totally means we’re lacking a post for Friday. So we quickly drop a mail to a number of RPS contacts in hope that some of them could say something by Friday. And some of them totally did. In fact, some said so much we’re extending the run of articles until at least Monday. But here’s a punchier panel, where developers like Soren Jonson, Paul Barnett, Rod Humble and Erik Wolpaw and journalists like Tom “Tom Bramwell” Bramwell and Quinns talk about their formative games. And, of course, more if any devs care to write in and share, do so.

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This contains major spoilers. It’s also a moderate amount of awesome. The Mass Effect 2 demo from E3 has been done up as a slick development video diary (below) explaining what the Bioware team is aiming to do with the game. It contains quite a bit of footage, and seems to encapsulate all the significant changes to combat, conversation, and storyline. I can’t say much more that that, other than to suggest you hold back if you’re trying to avoid learning too much about the game before you play it.
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Bethesda have announced that their second Elder Scrolls game, Daggerfall, is now freeware. The classic RPG is notable for its enormity – being large and ambitious even by standards of the later games, even if it’s visually clunky today. You can pick it up here, and it’s under 150mb. You’ll also need DOSBox to get it working, as it’s quite literally that old. This announcement – made to celebrate fifteen years of the series – means that the first two Elder Scrolls games are both now free to play. You can pick up Arena at the same location.

It’s Thursday night and the feeling’s right for podcast. A new one. Here. Alec and Kieron gather to discuss important matters in the world of videogames – Blood Bowl, Morrowind, Legends of Valour, Alien (Spectrum), other assorted gaming loves and lots of other random stuff. Full break-down can be found beneath the cut, as well as subscription malarkies. Go!
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This is odd. The revelation that there is to be a Command & Conquer 4 is scarcely any surprise, as EA’s rejuvenated franchise seems to be on a bit of a roll these days (bar the cancellation of FPS Tiberium). That they’re saying it will finish the Tiberium saga is the shocker – surely its silly sci-fi storyline was designed to blather away forever? A red herring, I suspect – yeah, we might finally get answers as to what bechromedomed uber-bad Kane really wants, and what all those magic crystals will ultimately do to poor Earth, but that hardly closes the door on telling more tales in that future-war universe.

For those who don’t play real-time strategy for the lore, C&C4 also promises major shake-ups to the Dune 2-derived formula it’s been based around for the last 15 years…
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The Fuel demo is out, and you can get the 1gb download here. The demo includes a couple of race events from the main game, but I’m unsure how much of the full 5000km terrain it leaves open for you to explore. Presumably it’s a chopped down version (full game is around 4gb), so you won’t be able to pursue your own ill-advised virtual roadtrips? Let me know in comments if I’m wrong about that.