By Kieron Gillen on August 31st, 2009.
When talking about Champions, a friend linked me to a well constructed, if obviously fanboy-outrage slanted, piece about the current respec (or – for those who go outside, respecification) policy for Champions. It’s worth reading, if only because it feeds into quite a few trends about game design. In short, it argues the inability to redesign your character from scratch will kill Champions stone dead. Which got me thinking on the subject…
Read the rest of this entry »
By Jim Rossignol on August 31st, 2009.
Earlier today we talked to Positech’s Cliff “Cliffski” Harris about his new game, Gratuitous Space Battles. There was also some discussion of a Saddam Hussein sim, the pitfalls of outsourced indie art, and the problems of small-playerbase multiplayer.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Kieron Gillen on August 31st, 2009.
Cryptic’s Champions had its fast start over the weekend. Being the biggest MMO launch for a while, we thought it’d be a good idea to form a casual guild, so RPS readers can get together and act like vigilantes, performing harsh street justice against the dregs of society. And in the game, etc, etc. Keep an eye open for ViolentTrevor, the.poisoned.sponge, stevetheblack or The_B in the in-game search and we’ll hook you up. And I’ll add more Guild Officers as I get permission to stick ‘em up here. While I’ll be writing some more Champions stuff soon enough, for more organisation and chat, I direct you at the RPS Forum Champions Thread.
By John Walker on August 31st, 2009.
IndieGames spots an intriguing puzzle game called Little Space Duo. It’s a cutesy puzzle platformer, in which a mistakenly imprisoned Earth child helps a small floaty robot to fix the alien ship that errantly kidnapped her. However, the child-friendly look of the design does not belie the tricksiness within. It’s fairly traditional in its idea: two characters, each with defined abilities, having to work together and independently to escape each level. However, within these walls it’s smart and interesting, and surprisingly tough.
By Jim Rossignol on August 31st, 2009.
This summer has seen the end of the lengthiest and most fulfilling gaming experience of my life: five years helping to run the Eve Online corporation, StateCorp. A five year plan? More like five years with no plan, but with endless drama. The corporation is currently in the process of moth-balling and disbanding, and so we took the opportunity to look back at what made those sixty months of Eve so fascinating, why we became so involved, and why it had to come to end. This retrospective comes to your courtesy of everyone who has been a member of StateCorp over the years.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Kieron Gillen on August 31st, 2009.
I picked this up on QT3. It’s someone trying to do a Han Solo adventure game in the style of SCUMM adventure games. It is, of course, totally doomed. But still – the tiny bit of teaser footage is amazingly evocative, and a great way to start the week. Unless you saw it over the weekend, in which case it’s very tiresome. Get off the internet at the weekend and make out with people, that’s what I say.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Kieron Gillen on August 30th, 2009.
Sundays are for doing a lot of work, avoiding that lot of work with games of Champions and compiling a list of the fascinating (primarily) games related reading from across the week while resisting linking to a genuinely stunning performance.
By Tim Stone on August 30th, 2009.
Talk about implausible. The villain of Serious Games Interactive’s latest interview-em-up is a rebel leader who, according to the game’s absurd back-story, has spent the last twenty years mutilating, murdering, abducting and raping thousands of his own countrymen with the help of an army of brainwashed children. Pffft. As if the International Community would let a thing like that happen. Read the rest of this entry »
By Alec Meer on August 29th, 2009.
…in that you can now download the open beta client for this famously winged, Cryengine 1-powered MMORPG, but the servers for said beta don’t open until 6th September. Getting a key to turn that client into anything useful may be a bit of a fight, alas. Unless you’ve already got one from the closed beta or have preorded the game, your best bet is bloody Fileplanet, who are planning on their usual insidious trick of only providing them to paid subscribers. Which does rather mean this is not, in fact, an open beta, but instead a closed one with a pricetag. Growl. We’ll have a word with NCSoft next week and see if we can perhaps sort out a few keys to give away to RPS readers – no promises, but we’ll try.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Alec Meer on August 29th, 2009.
Friday nights are for playing Champions Online for far too long with Messrs Gillen and Cameron while waiting in vain for grumbly John Walker to join us, instead of getting my posts for RPS done and packing for a camping trip in the wilds of Sussex. Sigh. At least I am cheered by news of an impending update for Dawn of War II, which adds a promising-sounding new mode to the game. It even gets its own chest-pounding WAR IS NOBLE AND MANLY CGI video…
Read the rest of this entry »
By Kieron Gillen on August 28th, 2009.
When I blogged about AI War’s demo, an idea struck me. It’s eight players co-op mass-scale space-RTS against apparently only of the most vicious AIs yet seen in gaming. Could we get enough people together to have an eight player game? No, we couldn’t. Seven? No. Six? No. Five? No. Four? No. Two? No. One? No. But three? We totally managed a three-player game. So Quintin, Alec and myself gathered one afternoon to start a battle for the future of humanity against an unrelenting evil AI. Nothing would ever be the same again, except for all the things that were totally unchanged.
Read the rest of this entry »
