Rock, Paper, Shotgun

NoOOoo. I’m going to sit here and play this one through to completion too, aren’t I? Hey, there’s even a level editor this time, putting me at risk of user-made levels. Demolition City 2 also throws in some kind of money system, new dynamite types, a map to chart your progression through various historical demolition zones, and features also has the same peculiarly hypnotic music. Sadly it lacks the EXPLOSION! graphic of the original game, and can therefore been seen as an over-ambitious sequel that forgot its roots. Or something.

As mentioned in the Sunday Papers yesterday, there has been some controversy sparked after remarks made by Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford to Maximum PC regarding Steam, where he stated that the digital distribution service from Valve was “exploiting a lot of small guys.” This was later countered by an article on Gamasutra where Tripwire’s John Gibson retorted, “Ask the Tripwire Interactive employees if they feel exploited, as they move into their new offices paid for by the money the company has made on Steam.”

Interested to see if there were other positions we spoke to 2D BOY and Zombie Cow, who have sold their games on Steam, to find out about their experiences.

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While my heart wants to play Borderlands, my poorly head makes me play Atomic Super Boss. It’s actually a webgame port of the freeware Bullet Hell, but with a high score table. You with a boss, who moves through different attack patterns, randomly. You shoot him. The closer you are, the more points you get. Maximise score before he inevitably kills you. Videogame!

A free truck racing game! Wow!
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Zero Point Software have released a clever new preview asset of their game, using the Unity plugin. It’s a kind of “3D screenshot” that they’re calling The Vault. You can go in and have a look around, and see some of the titular marines in 3D, frozen in time fighting some manner of shark monsters. It’s pretty neat, and the dates on the vault walls suggest that more of these 3D vignettes will be revealed in the coming months. The sci-fi co-op shooter has been in development for quite some time now, so we’re hoping this indicates the start of a more concerted reveal of just what’s going on with the title the studio are calling a “AAA Indie” project.

Folks who can’t be bothered installing Unity (and given the amount of cool stuff it’s throwing up now, you probably should be bothered) can get a taste of the vault via a new teaser trailer which I’ve posted below.
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Only watching just this now, and finding it a lot of fun. Micro Men is a broadly comic semi-fictionalized drama about the early 80s computer war between Sir Clive Sinclair and Ex-employee Chris Curry (i.e. Acorn Electron, BBC). Alexander Armstrong’s portrait of Sir Clive is agreeably arrogantly monstrous. It’s still on iPlayer if you want to go watch. It’s a bit of a shame that it’s both technically awkward and probably illegal to watch iPlayer outside the UK, because the whole early 80s British computer boom is such a part of RPS’ gaming history – and influencing a lot of the wider gaming world in what it allowed – that I think it’d be interesting to the colonials. Trailer follows…
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We’ve mentioned Roburky’s Alice And Kev before, in the Sunday Papers. In fact, since it went fully meme-active, you probably saw it… ooh, almost anywhere. However, it’s actually drawn to a close with a final entry, which is a moment I think worth bringing to your attention. If you haven’t been following, it’s the often touching story of Roburky trying to play a homeless parent and child in the Sims. Kev is the worst dad in the world. Alice is the sweet hearted innocent who is defecated upon at every turn. And if there’s a finer piece of extended games writing this year… well, we’ll have been very lucky. Go.

Over at Eurogamer today I’ve a retro piece about the completely brilliant Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. Or Jedi Knight to its friends. It includes words such as:

“And by crikey, it’s good. It’s very, very good. It’s so good that you can only look down at the ground, shake your head in confusion, and slowly pen a letter to LucasArts asking them what the hell they were thinking when they abandoned FPS development and handed the reins over to Raven. With this, Dark Forces, and indeed the enormous Mysteries of the Sith expansion, LucasArts demonstrated a rare and brilliant skill with a genre that’s so often so mediocre.”

Read the rest here.

Sundays are about crawling out of a sleeping bag to find a friend’s two children determinedly trying to attach themselves to your legs and forcing you to march around the front room pretending to be a RoboGodzilla powered by tea, going for a walk and acting as a human umbrella, and compiling a list of fine (mainly games) reading from across the week, while trying not to include something I’ve been playing all week and/or howling in the car on the way home. Go!
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A typical Sunday morning in the Stone household: get up, shake fist at sky, consume breakfast of tea, toast and marmalade, go out and destroy a church. Thanks to the
Spreng- Und Abriss- Sim demo, I can now undertake that last activity without leaving the house! Read the rest of this entry »

It appears that the Atlantic is causing some serious fiscal interference with the internet this week. The waves are disrupting EA’s discount rays, and they can only cut prices in the UK. Maybe global warming is to blame. Still, there are some great deals to be had for both those that say tom-ah-toe and those that say tom-ay-toe. If you want more video game cheap niceties, go to SavyGamer.co.uk.

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