By John Walker on August 4th, 2009.
We were contacted by Clara Fernández-Vara to let us know about a short adventure game she has developed at MIT as part of her dissertation on the subject. Now that’s a dissertation I’d like to write. The game, made along with a team of students, is an exploration of memories and nostalgia, and can be downloaded for free from here. It’s called Rosemary, and is worth a look.
By John Walker on August 4th, 2009.
The game is called Fairytale Fights. It’s presented in cutesy 3D, brightly coloured graphics. You’ve already made your mind up about it, right? Watch the video.
By Alec Meer on August 4th, 2009.
Oh my, I really do hope so. I confess don’t have much time for flight sims these days, but the greatest love I’ve ever felt for this most venerable of PC genres is divided equally between Stunt Island (a game I’ve been deliberating how to best write about for several years now) and Crimson Skies. The latter is a wonderful thing, a out-and-out joyous blend of stupidity, stunts and style in an atmosphere-rich airpunk world of sky-pirates and 1920s derring-do. It was Hollywood dog fights incarnate, and it looked, felt and sounded pretty much as perfect as shallow wee me could possibly wish for from a flight sim. Splendid multiplayer too, plus it was the best partner I ever did find for my beloved Sidewinder 2 Force Feedback joystick. And it might be coming back.
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By Alec Meer on August 3rd, 2009.
Anna Anthropy aka Auntie Pixelante aka dessgeega does, I suspect, enjoy confounding expectations. You don’t get many developers who follow up S&M-themed platformers with a Thrust tribute (of a very loose sort) starring a hyper-cute, angel-winged pig, after all. While Mighty Jill Off was a wry, subversive examination of why videogame protagonists put themselves through a torturous amount of struggle to reach their objectives, When Pigs Fly is simply about learning to fly. Though the grating, tragic squeals of the pig upon both flight and death do make for something of a sadistic endurance test…
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By Jim Rossignol on August 3rd, 2009.
No, really. There is more than one tower defence game worth talking about. I’ve post the trailers for both of them below. Good times.
The first is the rather lovely cartoon, open-plan 2D tower defence game Revenge Of The Titans, by Puppygames. Alec got pretty hot for their last title, the excellent Droid Assault, which you should all download and play as soon as you’ve read the entirety of the this essential and fascinating piece of tower defence news. The second (pictured above) is the 3D tower defence spectacular of Sol Survivor, which features multiplayer co-op, and multiple “commanders” with orbital attacks and their own repertoire of tower erection abilities. Yeah, I said that out loud. Both games will be out, eventually. Probably. Go take a look at their moving portraits.
By Kieron Gillen on August 3rd, 2009.
We can hardly believe it ourselves. Electronic Arts are going to be releasing expansion packs for the Sims 3. No, really. The first is a pack where the expansions include expansion content. LIKE! visiting destinations like France, Egypt and China (CHINA! – RPS In-Gag No-One Else Gets Ed). In other words, it’s about traveling to famous real world locations. Which, at a stretch, makes this the Sims answer to Deus Ex. While a free 1000 points for the store sounds nice, the fact that there’s exclusive online content available at launch does sound like this is an expansion pack for which you need to buy other online content. Which, if true, is – er – impressive, even for EA. You’ll find the full press release beneath the cut, plus two more screenshots. Click through on ‘em for the full-size versions. Sims 3: World Adventures will be available in November.
And… actually, while we’re talking, what expansion content would you like to see for the Sims 3?
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By John Walker on August 3rd, 2009.
I’m teased for a number of things. Whether it’s Kieron’s most backhanded, “The Funny One”, or Kieron’s calling me a bad healer, or Kieron… Wait, I’m teased by Kieron for a number of things. But perhaps the most common is to suggest that a game is likely to make me cry.
It’s my own fault. I’ve written quite openly about it in the past. I brought it upon myself. But thinking back, I can only think of two occasions when a game has brought me to tears. I may be forgetting something, but as is so often the case with the things for which one is mocked, it’s a pretty rare occurrence. I would much prefer it happened a lot more often.
By Jim Rossignol on August 3rd, 2009.
The past few days I’ve been absorbed by Timegate’s closed multiplayer beta for sci-fi shooter Section 8. I understand that there’s actually some single-player element to the game, which will explain some of the sci-fi story which underscores the action, but what I’ve seen so far is a multiplayer game of fair complexity. It’s a Unreal 3-powered amalgam of jetpacks, drop-pods, and guns that go dakka. I want to say up front that I’m having great deal of fun with this. It’s the kind of game I go into for five minutes to take a screenshot, and emerge from two hours later. Read onwards for why.
By Kieron Gillen on August 3rd, 2009.
A new week starts. Let’s go for a little Seize-The-Dayism via Simon Parkin via Raven’s Manveer Heir via the Internet. He describes it as “a game about Permanence and perma-death”. I describe it as “quite funny”. It’s called You Only Live Once and you can play it here.
By Jim Rossignol on August 3rd, 2009.
Bombastic strategy-FPS hybrid Raven Squad is set for release on the 11th of August, and to celebrate that fact Evolved Games have released a cheese-tastic movie-style trailer, which sets the scene for this unusual take on the jungle man-shoot with some troubling dialogue. There might be a top-down strategy tactics and co-op cleverness in here, but for now they’re focusing on the explosions, of which there are many. The game proper looks moderately entertaining, thanks to the way the action swings between strategy and twitch run-n-gun, so perhaps we’ll take a closer look when it hits. In the meantime, go examine the action with your eyes.
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By Kieron Gillen on August 2nd, 2009.
Sundays are inexplicable jet-lag, luxuriating in the glow of a 7-1 Blood Bowl victory and compiling a list of the finest (mostly) games-related writing from across the week in a handy list format, while trying to not include a link to some manner of pop music or another.
