Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Direct to drive retailer Direct2Drive are turning five. Which is splendid, because it rhymes. But it’s also splendid because they’re doing cheap games for the five weeks around here. But it’s also splendid, because they want to run a compo with us (i.e. Rock Paper Shotgun) to give away all the games in the offers to a lucky read. Do you want to be that reader? Well, just drop us a mail before Sunday night saying what you think is the definitive RPS game – the most RPSiest game of all time – and why that’s so. The most convincing explanation will be our winner. The usual terms and conditions apply. Go!

Hot news from PC-land today, gentletypes. Seems the ever-controversy-free Valve Software have a new project up their sleeves, and one that probably isn’t related to Deads or Teams or Halves. Probably. Turns out they’ve just hired the mysterious IceFrog, the chap who has been developing Defense of the Ancients Allstars for the last couple of years, the huge and influential (see: Demigod) Warcraft 3 mod. I’ve just had confirmation from Valve that his claim he’s off to lead one of their team on a secret new project is true. Goodness gracious me, whatever could it be?
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Dragon Age designers talk architecture, history, archaeology in the latest Dragon Age trailer. There’s a lot of discussion of level design, world design, and the way that the game was prototyped in the Neverwinter Nights engine. That makes for an interesting “compare and contrast” for tech and design between the two games. This is the kind of trailer we were expecting, I think? That said, it’s an odd choice of trailer title with “Making A Living World,” because it’s definitely not making a living world in the sense we understand it as gamers. I’ve also posted a bunch of the new (and old) images EA released earlier today, and you can click for big versions.
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For the last month, The RPS Cup has been fought. Against seven brave (or at least psychotically deranged) teams, I’ve lead my plucky underempiredogs – The Skaven Blighters. It produced seven match reports which try to illustrate exactly what it is to play Blood Bowl. That being, a mixture of triumph and failure – both of the coaches, and of the developers. You’ll find them all below…
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The Path’s creators, Tale of Tales return with a new game/vignette/thing. There’s no demo yet, but you can buy it directly from them for a mere seven dollars. It is – to quote the press release – “FATALE is an interactive vignette in realtime 3D inspired by the story of Salome, the biblical princess and protagonist in Oscar Wilde’s stage play, first performed in England 78 years ago today”. There’s an audio-only trailer below, which features the heady mix of Jarboe and Wilde dialogue, which will give you a taste of its vibe. More, I suspect, when we’ve got a copy and examined with our eyes.
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Sometimes, RPS posts don’t come so easy. Maybe it’s been a slow news day, maybe some promised code (you know who you are) or developer comment hasn’t arrived, maybe it was suddenly nearly midnight and you didn’t quite know how it had gotten so late but you knew you still had to get another post up. On those days, I scour a frightening mountain of RSS feeds for inspiration. Every time, I skim right past a few feeds I don’t remember subscribing to, but offer only Room Escape games. Every day there are more of them. It’s an aspect of PC gaming we never cover, but, on the quiet, I think it might just be huge.
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It’s on.
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Come on everybody! Climb aboard! This is the Angrytank Express, headed direct to Stop Screwing Over The PC You Massive Bastards city. Like pretty much every fuggin’ thing that has a multi-platform release, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on PC has, it now transpires, been delayed. Only by a fortnight, but still – for God’s sakes. Toot toot! The Angrytank Is Go!
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Having spent many months a couple of years back researching gaming addiction, speaking to all the experts in the field (both self-appointed and those in academia), and finally producing this article, if there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to make my eyes roll and my head shake it’s those who lazily throw around the term. So often we hear news outlets credulously repeating the unscientific and unevidenced claims of gaming addiction, without scrutiny or analysis. It’s infuriating, and I especially find this to be the case because if there is the potential for harmful use of gaming, whether that’s addiction or excessive use, then this constant trivialising of the subject is going to only make it less likely that it will be identified or treated. However, even more researched and nuanced articles can make the same mistakes. Someone who wants to keep people on their toes is one of the leading researchers into the topic, Neils Clark, who has just written an epic blog post on the subject.

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Hype machine spooling up! Last night’s Modern Warfare 2 trailer is pretty good, and you can watch it below. I’ve also posted some shaky cam footage of the first mission from some kind of game conference demo. The spoiler warning is this sentence.
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Sergey Galyonkin sends word that he’s posted pictures from the heavily-attended Stalkerfest 2009 over on Flickr. You can check out the mass of cosplayers (reportedly around 500) and also see GSC’s developer band getting up on stage top strut their stuff. For those of you down with the local language, there’s also a blog account of the event here.