Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The Batman: Arkham Asylum demo is up, and weighs in at a portly 2gb. The third-person action game seems to be earning reactions ranging from the satisfied to the hysterical, but at least you can judge for yourself in this instance. You can get it here or here. The PC version of the superheroic skull-thumping game is out September 15 in North America and September 18 in Europe, and will include PhysX support and GeForce 3D Vision stereoscopic 3D, which seems like a 3D too many. Three hefty game footage trailers sit below, making for more Batman action than you can shake a batarang at, should you happen to have one.
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The Modern Warfare 2 Ultro-Nerd Edition famously comes with a pair of functioning night-vision goggles, and now it seems the Uber-Geek Edition of Codemaster’s not-actually-Operation-Flashpoint-2-is-it Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising will come similarly laden with head-mounted silliness. Specifically, a full-size army helmet that’s roughly 48 million times larger than the game CD itself. What next – Mafia 2 Special Edition, complete with freshly-severed real horse’s head?
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Semi-surprise sequel Command & Conquer 4 (its subtitle is still TBC; there’s currently a contest for fans to submit one. I’ve submitted ‘Those little red guys and little blue guys still really don’t like each other’) is starting to drop hints about its mooted formula shake-up all over the shop. Or, at least, people are cheekily scanning and summarising magazine preview features, the distillation of which is already on the game’s Wikipedia page. I’ll be sharing some thoughts on some early code I saw in a few days, but meantime here’s some detail on where the story’s going, in the former of an FMV trailer chattered over by C&C4′s ‘lore-master’ Samuel Bass.
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Over on Eurogamer today are a collection of my words and phrases, strung into a number of sentences intended to give a flavour of what Alpha Protocol, Obisidian’s upcoming secret agent RPG, is like. I begin approximately like so:

In a few minutes of videogame footage, in the face of lots of game-hungry industry folks, it’s vital to show several things, those things being: guns, guns being fired at someone, someone falling over when fired at with guns. Given that RPGs are as much about dialogue and narrative as they are about action, this approach is rather like promoting an album by stitching together all the choruses. Sure, it’s noisy and excited, but it’s also confusing and peculiar. For the same reason, E3 didn’t do Alpha Protocol many favours…

…and then get into what form the roleplaying and storytelling elements of the game take. Read it, do.

I’ve been having a bit of a play of one of 2009′s big IGF games, Osmos. The peculiar cell-based ambient puzzler is due for release very soon, so I thought it might be an idea to post a few impressions, and let you guys have a look at the trailer, which is exclusive to RPS. (For now, at least.) Go take a look.

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A IM client blinks , somewhere on the internet:
Dan: Wasting some time with Demolition City today.
Jim: Weird coincidence, I watched a program about demolition just last night.
Dan: Did it involve a Murder Death Kill?
Jim: No. Hey, when you’re finished with that, why not watch this video of bridge demolition set to opera.
Dan: Damn, this game’s mute button doesn’t work. Did you see this appear on the net the other day? Quite fun.
Jim: I wonder what you will think when you see I am typing this conversation up on RPS.

Having been messing around with UT3 again in the wake of the ongoing Make Something Unreal competition, I’ve picked up a load of levels and mods, some of which I’ll probably post about here in the next few days. The one that I want to get out of the way first is the excellent third-person demon/zombie shooter, The Haunted. (It’s an Unreal Tournament 3 mod, obviously.) Now I’m betting there are few people here who will sign for a moratorium on zombie games in 2010, but until then this is a genuinely excellent piece of work. There’s a single player game, and multiplayer in which “humans” take on demons controlled by other players. The core concept for solo play is “just try and stay alive”. And that really does become tricky as the ammo runs out and the baddies pile in. It’s beautifully conceived and executed, and supernaturally bleak weather rolls in as the game unfolds, making it even more threatening. Get it here, or watch the video below for more flavour.

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Don’t be deceived by the screenshot. Creeper World is the most apocalyptic game I’ve played in ages. Hell, even Defcon’s millions pales before the 300 Billion which gets offed in the opening moments of this Tower-Defence-esque indie RTS. The plot explains all: basically, evil goo appears in the far future, killing everyone on humanity’s enormous empire. Less than 50,000 are left, who must now make their way across the universe while (er) shooting goo. It’s Battlestar Galactica meets The Blob. And, despite me having spent all yesterday downloading SFIV, this morning it’s kept me away from the joy of Chun-li’s chunky-thighs. The five level demo here, but some more thoughts and a video follow…
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A new extended trailer of game footage has emerged for Jakub Dvorský and Amanita Design‘s gorgeous-looking Machinarium. The full-length adventure from the creator of astonishing-o-games Samorost 1 and 2, and the lovely edumacational Questionaut, is looking pretty fantastic. We’ve had a play of an early build, and will have a preview of it for you next week. A quick advanced preview of the preview: it’s rather good. You can pre-order it at a discounted $17 from here, should you feel the urge.

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Actually, it’s just the hey-where’s-that-beta of Starcraft II that has been delayed until 2010, but all this slippage is starting to make the field a bit sparse. Are all the games going to suddenly wake up next to each other in early 2010, thrash around in a panic, and delay things for another year-segment? Will Tiny Tim have anything to play come Christmas morn? The news of SC2′s vanishment into the future came (in)directly from Acti-Blizz biz-duke, Bobby Kotick he said: “As we prepare for next year, we have moved the expected release dates for two games, Activision Publishing’s Singularity and Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft II, into 2010.”

He probably knows what he’s doing, as the company brought in over a billion dollars last quarter, according to VG247′s report. There will be more through there later, if anyone cares about Acti-Blizz money stuff. Not me, I’m off to smoke some feathers and get high on loose jazz.

Update: Ooh, apparently this is tied to a Battle.net delay.

Direct 2 Drive have announced they’re running and indie games bundle until Sunday. The bundle contains Democracy 2, Cogs, Zeno Clash, The Path, and Defence Grid. All great games. Which rather reveals the problem with the pack: you probably own a couple of these games already.

Nevertheless, for those aberrant consumers among us, the deal is good. £11.50 for Britons, and $17.75 for North Americans. I dunno about Euro types. Anyone got a link?