Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Here’s a first look at another new Left 4 Dead 2 campaign, this one set at a spooky abandoned fairground known as Whipsering Oaks. Also confirmed is the welcome presence of a Katana. Chop! You’ll have to wade through the constant noise and artificially-inflated enthusiasm of a Gametrailers TV episode to see it, but at least it also includes Gabe Newell responding to the whole boycott thinger and dropping an enormo-hint about one of Valve’s next games. Also: Chet Faliszek talking about how they’re approaching story this time, and the appeal of merry-go-rounds in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. The video’s below.
Read the rest of this entry »

Call Of Juarez: Bound In Blood was released just over a month ago, but finally a demo has appeared. Declaring itself to be a truncated version of a full level, it gives a taste of the game’s core mechanics: the Concentration mode bullet time, the cover system, and a duel to test your quickdraw hand.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been keeping this new Steam-downloadable third-person shooter on a browser tab for a while, in hope that a demo comes out for it. Except the developers are apparently off on holiday, so that seems to be unlikely. Let’s give it a plug anyway, if only because its feature list includes things like “Fill your buckets with blood by causing suicide bombers to explode prematurely or shoot gory head shots!”. Also, achievements for slaughtering chickens. Ah, chicken. The most persecuted of fowl. It’s just over a fiver right now, and you can get it from here. And see it in action below…
Read the rest of this entry »

The TF2 Classless Update is now live. A rather pleasant surprise bunch of new bits and bobs appeared out of nowhere, and three days in seems ready to be rolled out. So now new hats, the new King Of The Hill game mode, and a bundle of new maps are yours to enjoy. In fact, there’s a ton of new tweaks and content to be found within.

EDIT: All the hats in a splendid pickyture too.

Read the rest of this entry »

You know what? I’m feeling lazy. I’m going to say that id’s Rage is looking like the midway point between Fallout 3 and FUEL. This half-arsed device allows me to indicate that it’s post-apocalyptic, involves shooting creatures in wastegrounds, and racing cars through dust. But it’s also incredibly unhelpful because it leaves behind notions of FO3′s turn-based combat, or FUEL’s mechanical world. It’s Borderlands with driving, okay?! Oh, it doesn’t help, does it? Everyone stop doing it. Instead, take a look at the trailer that’s just emerged from QuakeCon and coo and ooh at how impressive it all looks.

Read the rest of this entry »

A space MMO based on the concept of destructible asteroids? Yes, it’s one of those offbeat ideas that might just work. Developers Keen Software dropped us a line to announce the game, Miner Wars, and explained that it was a “space shooter played in a fully destructible environment and is a combination of single player story game and MMO.” So far so unclear. And then: “As a player, you operate an advanced mining ship in an open world asteroid belt area. You dig kilometers of tunnels, harvest the ore, travel the solar system, fight your enemies and discover mysterious alien secrets.” Which sounds kind of awesome. On closer inspection it seems to be the aberrant alchemical offspring of Descent, Minecraft, Eve Online, Dig Dug, and Red Faction. An open world game with beautiful, destructible space rocks. Yeah, it’ll probably take a couple of videos of the thing in action to really get your head round it. Fortunately, they’re beneath the click. Brilliant, eh?
Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s side-step the foot-to-ball gags for this one. The Championship Manager story fascinates me.
Read the rest of this entry »

The handsome men (man, really) of Zombie Cow have decided that fiftyish Rock, Paper, Shotgun readers should have the chance to purchase a copy of the most splendid Time Gentlemen, Please for half price. It’s not a competition, just a first come, first served sort of deal (our lovely subscribers got first dibs on the first round of discount copies yesterday), so if you’re after one of the best, funniest, and smartest adventure games in many years for the ludicrous price of £1.50 (that’s around $2.50), click here. Once fifty are gone, they’ll revert back to the still incredibly reasonable regular £3 ($5ish) price, and Zombie Cow’s Dan Marshall will have some money to spend on sweets and developing more games for us to play. Or maybe he’ll even extend the deal if demand’s high enough.

So the Section 8 beta has now opened up to everyone, here. We’re aiming to get a big RPS posse online over Saturday, and we’ll set things up in this forum thread. I’ve noticed some surprise from people about how good Section 8 is, so if you’re sceptical, now is your time to take a look and decide. I think it’s pretty damned good, and I’m looking forward to playing some games with RPS folks over the weekend. (Alternative download for file.) And, well, expect problems: it’s a beta. Other instructions on the official forum here.

Edmund “Meat Boy” McMillen’s next project, if you don’t count Super Meat Boy on Wii (oh, and Hitlers Must Die), is going by the cyclical name of Time Fkuc. Created as part of the Power Of Three competition on Newsgrounds, McMillen is co-creating Time Cukf with William Good and Justin Karpel. Not a great deal is know yet, beyond McMillen’s cryptic descriptions, that it’s going to be out on the 1st September, and that which can be gleaned from the teaser trailer below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I sat down Jim Vessella, one of the producers at EA LA working on next year’s Command & Conquer 4. In between having our ears blasted by someone testing the building’s fire alarm, which did admittedly add an appropriate sense of apocalypse to proceedings, we chatted about how and why the RTS genre has changed, the split between single and multiplayer strategy, and how seriously we’re really supposed to take C&C’s campy cutscenes. A couple of key facts to know if you’ve not caught any preview details on C&C4 – the traditional base-building is replaced by a mobile MCV that spits out units and turrets, depending on which of three player classes you choose. No harvesting, no building upgrades – just straight-up war, akin to Dawn of War II and/or World in Conflict. Oh, and you’ll gain persistent experience points as you play, which unlocks new units and abilities.
Read the rest of this entry »