Rock, Paper, Shotgun

It’s all too easy to mock Uwe Boll. But I’m not afraid of a lack of challenge. The long-time film director, famous for his tax-loophole-advantage-taking reinventions of game licenses, has become one of the more celebrated anti-heroes of the internet. Equally known for his vociferous and sometimes violent responses to criticism as he is for churning out unutterably awful films, he and his movies are a lot of fun to loathe. And then came Tunnel Rats. Apparently renamed 1968 Tunnel Rats for its cinematic release (I confess I have not seen the improvised Vietnam film), it was not based on any game license. However, Boll planned to reverse the process, and hired Replay Studios – they responsible for the terrible Velvet Assassin – to convert it into shooty-pixels. Bravely, like a brave soldier, I bravely played it.

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The Section 8 open beta got into full swing over the weekend, and I spent a lot more time messing around with it. We also had a bit of an RPS community romp on Saturday, although I missed most of it by being late to the party. The overflow played on a secondary server, and still got some good fights in. Some more thoughts on the game follow.
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(Which is a much better subtitle than Dragon Rising, I think.) Following up on my interview with producer Sion Lenton from last week, I thought I’d better catch up on the Operation Flashpoint 2 footage. The first piece is particularly illustrative of the sort of thing Lenton was talking about, as it shows off “hardcore mode”, in which the game removes all HUD elements and player assists to create a rather more realistic and demanding experience. I spent some time reading up on this over the weekend, and I’m wonder if the game will come as more of a surprise to console players than PC players. We are, after all, getting used to the notion of an open world FPS, where the linear or the multiplayer-map are still the most explored. I’m seeing lots of mentions of Modern Warfare 2 and Battlefield with reference to Operation Flashpoint, which, of course, aren’t really relevant to how the game will play out. Also, I suspect – as Kieron mentioned the other day – both this and ArmA are being introduced to a modern audience that never played the original Operation Flashpoint, and has little idea what to expect. Anyway, three videos of the game in motion sit beneath the click.
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Chums of RPS VG247 have (just about) scooped the internet with a huge hands-on previews of Starcraft II, and an interview with Blizzard bossman Rob Pardo. Needless to say, we get to learn quite how Starcraft II causes other games to seem like nothing in comparison, and how the three-game structure that the game has been broken up into will work. Here’s Pardo on those two follow-up expansions: “Right now the plans are to do something along the lines of full single-player campaign and some additional features on the multiplayer side, but obviously using the same engine. That to me is an expansion price point. If we decided to put in three new races, and a bunch of new technology and features, maybe that would be a standalone product. But right now I think we’re looking at being much more like an expansion feature-set.” Anyway, go have a read of the full thing. The internet will be overflowing with more SC2 stuff today, following a big press event.

When Call Of Juarez: Bound In Blood  swaggers, spurs jangling, into the Rambling Rose saloon, the only western FPS that doesn’t gulp or look up from his cards is Outlaws. A couple of years ago I wrote a little ode to this Colt classic for PC Gamer UK.

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Sundays are for downloading Indie Strategy Games, sipping tea and compiling an enormous list of the fun and fascinating reading from across the week, while trying my jolly hardest to not link to some fine 80s indie miserablism which I found myself listening to this morning…

• RPS and assorted friends-of-RPS have been nominated for the GMAs. That is, the Games Media Awards 2009. I’ll hand you over to the justly nominated for specialist online writer, Simon Parkin to talk about it. While still clearly enormously silly, it’s… well, I was going to say “getting more credible”, but it’s still very silly. Just not as silly as before. We’re in the blog category, as opposed to last year, when we were in the website category. VG247 is in both, somehow. And Nowgamer -as much a website as Eurogamer or C&VG is – is in blogs. It’s gloriously mental. At least it’s a good excuse for a piss up, eh?

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Having spent rather a lot of time talking about how unfairly unremembered the Sierra Space Quest series are when people get nostalgic about adventure games, I went back in time to replay my remembered favourite, Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers. The results were an interesting combination of absolute brilliance and maddening failings, with a story more interesting behind the scenes than in front. You can read the results on Eurogamer, which include this:

“The story behind the development of Space Quest IV is certainly more interesting than the story in the game. The tale of Roger Wilco, hapless space janitor, travelling through time to prevent something something, and rescue maybe his son or something, is clumsy at best. In fact, in a throbbingly bad bit of storytelling, you only find out any of the motivating reasons for doing anything you do in the closing cut-scene. However, SQ4 is about gags, lots and lots of gags, everywhere.”

Physics abounds in this month’s Bargain Bucket, as SavyGamer’s Kaiser of Kost-Kutting LewieP rounds up a slew of science-orientated videogaming treats to while away a weekend….
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Good news everyone! All Points Bulletin, the upcoming cops’n'robbers MMO from Dave Jones, he of GTA and Crackdown fame, will not have a subscription fee. That’s right – it’s doing the Guild Wars thing, or at least something like it.
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Or we presume he does. I mean, RPS is far from an expert in the foot-to-ball competitionals, but you’d presume that the winner got something. Maybe it’s a ball? That said, who’d want something that’s been kicked around for the best part of an afternoon? We don’t know. Maybe footballers. Oh, it’s a mysterious world to us, like the outside. Anyway – those of you who were intrigued by the interview we did with Beautiful Game Studios’ Roy Meredith may be intrigued by the news of a whole (count it!) demo of Championship Manager 2010. You can get it from the internet. And if you want an intelligent opinion of what the game’s like, I point you in the direction of Martin “Chopper” Korda over at EG. He speaks the language of the foo-to-balls.

Videos and similar beneath follow…
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Military mega-shooter Arma II has some mod tools out for those people who want to turn it into celestial strip-chess, and you can get hold of them here. Rather more interesting news for the general gaming public, however, is the announcement of an expansion back, Operation Arrowhead. The standalone expansion pack will apparently be shown at GamesCom, and takes place when “a new flashpoint in the Green Sea region heats up and coalition forces led by the US Army are sent to Takistan to quickly restore peace and prevent further civilian casualties.” So plenty more of the same, it seems. We’ll bring you some more details on that when we get hold of them, or you can keep an eye on this thread on the official forums.