Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Knights Of The Round Table get their magic on in the new trailers for role-playing strategy, King Arthur. Hungarian developers Neocore look to be surpassing themselves with this game, which seems to be a kind of magical Total War, with a touch of King’s Bounty RPGing via dynamic role-playing and diplomatic manipulation of allied knights. It’s going to blend fantasy adventuring with resource management at the campaign level, and produce real-time battle in which swords and sorcery mix. There’s even a morality system which defines what powers knights have access to, in a “turning to the dark-side” way. I’m going to be regularly flagging this up for everyone’s attention, because if it achieves the ambitions it sets out in these videos, then it could be one of the most interesting games of the coming year.
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Thanks to everyone who sent in the link to this interview, in which Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning revealed: “all four of the major Oddworld games will be re-releasing this winter in a package called “The Oddbox.” This will be the Abe games, Munch, and Stranger as one package for Steam’s digital distribution network, as well as a few other digital distribution outlets.” That means we’ll get to see Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee and Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath on PC. No work on pricing yet, nor an exact release date, but it’s schedule for this winter.

Oh my goodness, Zombie Driver looks a bit fun. Freshly announced (about a week ago, spotted by EG today), it’s the first game from Polish indie devs EXOR Studios, and involves running over zombies with a car. And shooting at them. And blowing them up. They’re promising seventeen missions, six cars, and all manner of weapons and upgrades and upgrades for weapons. And zombie dogs. The first trailer is below.

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Here’s the finest piece of machinima I’ve seen in a while, created by Lag Spike Films. Called Top FPS, it’s a spoof of American reality television, pitting eight FPS characters against each other in a series of tests of skill. With HL2′s Barney playing the part of Jeff Probst, they’re given trials from shows such as Survivor, Top Chef, Scrapheap Challenge and American Idol. It’s pretty damned funny. Watch it below.

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In lieu of a review, I’m keeping a diary of my (mis)adventures in and thoughts on divisive new RPG Risen. The first part’s here.

The situation: I’m being followed by a physically impossible woman who’s moaning about being hungry, and I have a pocket full of vulture and rat meat. There’s probably a way to connect these two things. First, however, fighting.
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We’ve been meaning to post about this since we received a terribly excitable e-mail from a chap called Ryx. I’ve only gone as far as watching the videos, but was enchanted. Jim had a crack, but hasn’t actually found time to post about it. We can’t keep this loveliness to ourselves any longer. It’s called Neverdaunt:8bit and it’s a sort of construction-MMO that’s currently in Beta. Basically, it appears to be an Indie Second Life for people who prefer 8-bit aesthetics and actual games over submissive gorean foxgirls. That is, better. Video follows…
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Courtesy of BeyondUnreal, splendid use of Unreal Tournament 2004, many explosives barrels and the 1812 Overture follows. Also, how the creator did it…
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This most attracted my attention, because it’s a PSP/PC development split, which is something that I don’t see very often. Fortix is basically a medieval update of the attritional-take-over-of-area game which is much harder to explain than actually play. You can get the demo here or skip below to see if you’re tempt to rush out to buy a PSPGo. Or spend five dollars on the full version.
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Valve have launched an appeal for users of Steam to vote for Gordon Freeman as the “All Time Greatest Game Hero” on Gamespot’s site. Which brings the whole thing to our attention. It’s surely only right to see a PC character winning the battle against huge competition like Mario and Link. Currently Mr Freeman is holding a tenuous lead against Zelda’s pointy-hatted friend, 55% to 45%. Of course, don’t think it’s only the bespectacled mute that merits your vote – it’s just that he’s the only PC boy left. Duke Nukem was trounced by Link, and astonishingly The Nameless One was taken out in the first round by Ninja Gaiden’s Ryu Hayabusa. Seriously, we need to get in there to sort this mess out. The current voting audience saw fit to select Resident Evil’s Leon S. Kennedy over JC Denton. Good grief.

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Codemasters’ soldier sim sequel, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, hit the shelves this week in the US, and is out tomorrow in Europe. But is this open-world shooter as tight and tough as we’d hoped, or is it all bravado? Here’s wot I think.
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Valve have sent word of a fourth game mode to be included in Left 4 Dead 2, called Scavenger Mode. It’s like this: “Scavenge mode challenges players to compete in round-based games of up to 8 players (Survivors vs. Infected). The Survivors must battle both the Infected and the clock as they collect gas cans to refuel a generator located in each map. Every can the Survivors pour into the generator scores their team a point and adds time to the clock.” Needless to say, the infected have to stop them. Just as interesting, perhaps, is the confirmation of previously discussed Ai Director 2.0, who will have “the ability to procedurally change weather effects, world objects, and pathways in addition to tailoring the enemy population, effects, and sounds to match the players’ performance.”

Video below.
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