By John Walker on September 8th, 2009.
I rather like this low-key trailer that accompanies today’s release of Darkest Of Days. The completely bonkers shooter can now be bought from the likes of Steam, sending you through time to fix the broken bits of history. Its premise is so splendidly insane, recreating realistic weaponry to match the battle, and then letting you loose with a modern (or even futuristic) weapon to mow down the stick-carrying historical idiots.
By Alec Meer on September 8th, 2009.
Remember how angry you were last week when we told you there was a Cities XL demo out, but it turned out an American chap like you couldn’t play it, or found it agonisingly laggy because it was European only? Ooh, you were mad. Remember how you did terrible things to a passing hobo in the name of misplaced vengeance? He may never recover, but your high spirits will because – rejoice! – the US demo is now live too. It’s exactly the same content as the Euro one, but with different servers. 1Gb of quasi-MMO, 3 of the 25 cities available, and playable until the end of September, and available here.
By Jim Rossignol on September 8th, 2009.
A couple of weeks ago I had a chat with Nicholas Francis, one of the founders of Unity 3D, the game development suite. I’d already been looking at Unity because we’d seen a bunch of games using it. The guys over at Blurst use it to make their crazy output, and things like the lovely PuzzleBloom have been turning up on the web more and more. I even downloaded the 30-day trial and messed about editing terrain and adding weird noises to seagulls for a while, at which time Paul Barnett from Mythic dropped me a line to say he was using it to prototype new game projects. I can’t say I spend a great deal of time playing around with development suites, but the accessibility of this one certainly intrigued me. I was glad to be able to put some questions to Francis, and ask a bit more about what his company was up to. They were, it seems, making a nuclear-powered toaster…
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By Kieron Gillen on September 8th, 2009.
Sorry – the keys have all been given away now.
Hurrah! It’s another Beta-key giveaway. League of Legends has provided – oooh – many codes for the forthcoming Defence-of-the-Ancients-alike game, which is forthcoming in Europe via GOA. You want one? Well, just click the following link and send a mail. First come first served. And please don’t alter the headline, as it’ll make us harder to sort all the mails out. If you do, we can’t guarantee you’ll get a code. And If you want to be ultra-helpful, write your e-mail in the bodycopy to make it easy for us to cut and paste. You sweeties, you. Your gran would be proud.
(You may be wondering why there’s an odd number – because subscribers get first dibs on Beta codes. Don’t blame us. We don’t make the rules. Actually, we do.)
Anyway – Beta footage beneath the cut…
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By RPS on September 8th, 2009.
Jim and Kieron got to talking about the beta of Gratuitous Space Battles. Their ruminations follow.
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By Kieron Gillen on September 8th, 2009.
For my sins, I’m pretty confident about the season’s first fixture.
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By Jim Rossignol on September 8th, 2009.
The response to my Section 8 review on Eurogamer seems to have been tempered somewhat by the release of a demo on the 360. It’s worth stressing that I haven’t seen 360 code and can make no judgment there, but impressions have not been favourable. I tried playing it on the 360 pad and, well, yes. Mouse and keyboard will be the default choice. It seems like the release of a demo on the console might actually have seriously damaged the chance of the game on there. As a relatively complex multiplayer FPS it does seem to me like it carries some serious PC heritage, however, and you won’t win any prizes for guessing what version I would recommend. One other thing that I didn’t mention in the review was how impressed I was with the way the game scaled. I played a bunch of five-on-five games pre-release and the smaller maps still delivered tight games with so few people, which is pretty impressive.
However, ugh. It also seems that the PC version of Section 8 is having some technical difficulties in its US launch. The culprit: Games For Windows Live failing to intiate. Another fine game marred by Live? Why oh why… Developers: use something else, please.
By Kieron Gillen on September 8th, 2009.
This was announced of PAX. Keberos, the makers of Sword of the Stars, are apparently working on an action-rpg game for Paradox which will be out in autumn. In other words, pretty damn imminently. The aim of the game is to defend your selected fort – a police-station, prison or hospital, with different advantages – by running around the town, twatting zombies and searching for stuff to build up your defences. Scanning its feature list, what’s most promising is the 3D town formed from some kind of mix-and-match tile system, which implies the potential for variability. It’s apparently a smaller spin off the tech they’re using to build Northstar, their space-RPG-trading thing. Anyway – press release follows and there’s grabs over at WorthPlaying. More news as it emerges, grave-sodden.
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By John Walker on September 7th, 2009.
In a night of great game names I’m pretty willing to bet you haven’t played a game that looks like this. For a week. Paul Moose In Space, the work of a man going by ‘thecatamites’ created this AGS adventure as an entry to GameJolt‘s Axiom contest. And “created” really is the right word. This is hand drawn characters, and even hand-built sets, animated in the game to produce a lunatic point and click adventure.
By John Walker on September 7th, 2009.
I adore how little graphics eventually matter. Of course at first good graphics can be such an enormous pleasure, so breathtaking, and can add a great deal to the experience of playing a game. But in the end, mechanics always wins out. Quick example: the recent Prince of Persia game. Utterly beautiful, but I couldn’t care less after an hour of that tortuous tedium. Opposite example: The Walls Are Not Cheese. You control a square who fires squares at other squares. There’s about eight colours in the whole game, and it’s compelling fun.
By Kieron Gillen on September 7th, 2009.
Sometimes, the future creeps up when we’re not looking. Part of me wonders whether this will be part of it. Channel 4, after some impressive successes with webgames like the Bafta Award Winning Bow Street Runner and the Tim Stone admiration winning 1066 have decided to spend a load more on making games, reports Develop. Key quote…
The move is part of a £4.5m fund – half of which is finding its way to UK independent companies such as Tuna Technologies, Beatnik Games, Zombie Cow Studios, Six to Start, Preloaded and Littleloud to fund projects up to £800,000 in size.
Go read the rest of the interview with Alice Taylor to see the full story. Some thoughts and noting of conflict of interest follow…
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