Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Open-world warrior favourite Mount & Blade is getting an expansion: Warband. This major overhaul is swollen with a gamut of new features, including additional graphical cleverness, better horses, and a 32-player multiplayer mode. Other extras include improved sieges, and a bunch of changes to combat. You can sign up and help with the beta testing here. If you haven’t played Mount & Blade yet then you will likely be castigated by your peers. To avoid humiliation you can download the trial version of the full game here. Do so.

Trailer below.
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Third-person Jedi action of Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition will be turning up on the PC in the Autumn, according to Lucasarts. The PC game is an expanded version of the original Force Unleashed game, with three extra single-player missions. Bizarrely, the new missions set up a parallel timeline within the Star Wars universe, in which the events of the original films play out differently, according the events of the game. The second new mission in this rebooted version of the game “re-imagines the Star Wars Saga as if the Secret Apprentice had taken Darth Vader’s place at the Emperor’s side, becoming the most powerful Sith Lord in the universe. The story picks up as the Emperor sends his new apprentice to Tatooine to dispatch Obi-Wan Kenobi – who has been hiding on the planet ever since the events of Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith.”

The final new mission apparently sees you facing Luke Skywalker in the assault on Hoth, via a quick visit to Tatoonie, natch.

Welcome all, to the blog post that will add to the pile of games you bought for cheap, and still haven’t got time to play. Yes, it’s the weekly whiff of all things bargainous, as tracked down by the sale-snout of the splendid LewieP, chief bloodhound of the Savygamer kennels. Go visit his site, it’s packed with more ways to spend save money.

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Well, isn’t everyone tremendously excited about Splinter Cell: Conviction? There was a bit of fatigue setting in when the game was first announced… six hundred years ago, despite Chaos Theory still being well loved. Ubisoft had two factories making it at once, trying to produce one a year, and it didn’t bode well. Then it went quiet and they seemed to have the idea of spending ages on it, to make it really good. Well, it’s looking that way. There’s a new trailer fresh from Comic Con, in which you can enjoy the head-smashing, wall-crashing brutality of a Very Angry Man who wants his missing daughter back.

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Looks like Gamespot managed to get first dibs on the new Borderlands trailer – I’ve posted it below. Lots of splattery monster killing, some bits and pieces of game footage, and plenty of random post-apocalyptic carnage. There also appears to be a comedy robot. Borderlands is, as someone pointed out in the previous release-date post, being sold as a role-playing shooter: an RPS.

Does that bode well? Go take a look.
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I’m stuck at this point. The problem is this: for years and years we had to suffer every mention of an adventure game being accompanied by a phrase somehow relating to adventure games being dead. I mean, I wrote them myself when I was young and stupid. They would go, “The adventure game may be dead, but here’s one last gasp,” or more optimistically, “The adventure game’s not dead, but in a coma,” or whatever. The idiocy of these comments was the frequency. Here’s what happened: adventure games, in their abundance, weren’t very good any more. Apart from the good ones. The point of all this is to say how much I want to respond to the news, that following LucasArts’ releasing classic adventure games on Steam, Activision-Blizzard are putting some classic Sierra adventure games on the download service, by writing, “Adventure games may be dead, but their ghosts are coming back to haunt us.” But I cannot, because I’d be One Of Them. So I won’t.

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A wad of Dragon Age: Origins trailers – that’s what you’re in the mood for. You weren’t sure, but now I’ve said it you realise that’s exactly it. How will they taste? Look below. There’s three of them, titled The Dwarf Commoner, The Human Noble and The Tower Of Ishal. I’d like to now say: oh thank goodness.

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A darkly grown-up Alice In Wonderland game? There’s an original idea for a videogame, right? Okay, so we’ve been here before, but this time around it’s the interactive accompaniment to Tim Burton’s Johnny Depp vehicle, Alice In Wonderland, which sees an older Alice return to the scene of her original surrealist romp. The Disney Interactive Studios announcement explains that: “With an upgradeable combat system, players collect “impossible ideas” to replay levels and unlock Underland’s secrets. Players must carefully select the supporting characters and their abilities to defeat the numerous enemies set forth by the Red Queen and her army of cards, destroy the Jabberwocky and restore Underland back into Wonderland.” We do like impossible ideas round here: strafe jumping, portable holes…

Alice will apparently arrive along with the film in “early 2010″, and it’s being developed by Etranges Libellules, or “Strange Dragonflies”, who have developed a number of uninspired third-person games over the last decade, including the last (and not too awful) Asterix game on PC.

Obsidian have released a new very detailed video guiding you through various aspects of Alpha Protocol‘s Safe Houses. Showing off how the Safe Houses work, with all their various character, weapon, etc modifications, it explains how important these locations are. There’s your email, which lets you catch up on relationships, find extra work, and keep up with colleagues. There’s access to the black market Clearing House, where you can pick up new equipment. You can also customise and upgrade weapons and armour, and all sorts. It’s all below.

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A new patch for Spore has made a few interesting tweaks possible. Perhaps the most immediately interesting is the ability to build asymmetric creatures. No longer to features have to be applied in pairs, which enormously opens up the possibilities for creature design. And once you’ve designed your creature, as spotted by Offworld, there’s now the ability to export it to your favourite Collada 3D modelling program to experiment with at your leisure.

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This week’s Comic Con sees Valve revealing new sections of Left 4 Dead 2 to the public. We’ve already seen the daytime levels set in New Orleans for The Parish campaign. Now comes Swamp Fever, with its misty, boggy setting, putting at ease those who were afraid the game wouldn’t be dark enough. This will reveal the new Boss Infected, The Spitter. We’re told, “The female Spitter has an area attack that can split up Survivors or flush them out of their hiding spots.” They’ll also show the new uncommon Infected, the Mudman (seen below), along with the cricket bat, AK47, and grenade launcher. So if you’re there, go play it! New images of the game are below.

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