Rock, Paper, Shotgun

When the human race finally leaves the Earth to live as gaseous nano-clouds amid the stars, our supermarket trolleys will reveal their hidden sentience and rebuild themselves as a race of gladiatorial destructo-borgs. This, you understand, is not the back story to Metal Drift. It should be. I certainly experience metal drift with most of the trolleys I end up wrestling round Asda as we collect ready-to-decay food for our weekly engorgement. One day, when I am in charge of the back story of all futuristic combat games, things will be okay. In the meantime you’ll have to make do with the meagre efforts of the developers, who explain their Metal Drift thus: “a vehicular sport combat game set in a distant future.” That doesn’t explain my motivation, but okay, we do expect vehicular war in the future. In fact, we can expect it right now, because the demo is on Steam.

It’s the MCM Expo at the Excel center this weekend. It’s a generalist geek-media show where 20,000 people or so descend to gape at actors on American shows and give each other free hugs while dressed as characters from Dragon Ball Z or – in one memorable occasional last year – nazi teddy bears. There’s also some games content. It’s mainly console stuff generally, but there’s hands on access on to. The actual page doesn’t seem particularly up to date, but scanning press releases, the big draws for RPS readers would be Borderlands and Assassin’s Creed 2. Tickets can be got on the door for ten quid (5 for 11-14s, free beneath). And relevantly, I’m there in my dual-class capacity as a comic writer in the comic village, so do come and say Hi if you’re around. If you do it quickly, I won’t even have a chance to try and sell my nonsense to you.

Modders-gone-kinda-pro Tripwire Interactive have just released a chunk of free DLC for their popular co-op zombie shooter, Killling Floor. Do you like stuff? Well, it’s got a bunch of stuff in it. More importantly, it’s a pleasing sign of ongoing and generous support for a game that seemed pretty barebones to mine eye upon release. Also, there’s currently a free weekend going on for it, so it’s your chance to take a gander without spending any of your Earthman pennies. Details below. And a question!
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Purely because we haven’t mentioned it and probably should – er, as above. Should you buy it? Hmmm. It’s pretty good – a far more pleasant desktop environment than Vista, and noticeably nippier in certain areas. But, long story short, it ain’t gonna make a blind bit of difference to your everyday videogaming, unless you’re into running framerate counters at all times and watching ferociously for an occasional 1-3 frames per second difference. If you’re buying a new PC though, make sure it comes with 7 rather than Vista. Oh, and do install the 64 bit version – very few compatibility problems (really old games are the most likely thorns in the ointment) and it means you can use more than 3Gb of RAM.

Of course, knowing our audience, anyone who’s genuinely interested in Win7 has probably been running A Version for months anyway….

It’s been out for a while, but I’ve only just gotten around to trying out the free Last Stand update for Dawn Of War 2. Chatting to one of the game’s producers a while back, he posited it as almost a third game – alongside the already dramatically different single and multiplayer aspects of it. The plan for it is to create a way for more casual/hithero singleplayer-focused chaps to play online, to enjoy the social aspects of multiplayer gaming, without being put off by the fear of a near-instant spanking by someone who knows the game intimately. Does it work?
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A Left 4 Dead 2 cinematic trailer has leaked upon the internets, spotted by Evil Avatar and Shacknews. And you’ll maybe not fall out of your chair in shock to learn: it’s a bit good. It’s below.

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Last week we ran a video of an indie space combat game called Naumachia: Space Warfare. We got in touch with Italian developers AureaSection and Lorenzo Pasini agreed to answer some questions about the upcoming game. Some of you might already be familiar with the team’s work: they made Half-Life mod, The Specialists.
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Should we be covering more social network-based gaming? Oh, probably – it’s something of a gateway drug for folk who are traditionally non-gamers, which makes it fascinating. It’s also a big Woo! PC! battlecry, a grand statement of how even the most bottom-end machine is a gaming device with something to offer most anyone. No console will ever be that, because they’re always bought as a result of someone wanting a games console. In the PC’s case, people are accidentally becoming gamers as a result of something that’s already in their homes. It’s a big deal. Firaxis/2K have also spotted this.
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I’ve been primarily playing mods this week. This is the one has been eating most of my time. I mean that quite literally. I’ve been playing this most of my time. It’s eaten mornings and afternoons and evenings I really can’t afford to spend beating the hell out of Rhun. See! Rhun! Who the hell is Rhun? It’s a Middle Earth Medieval II mod, and I’m happily fighting just some blokes with nary a whiff of Nazgul, Orcs or Hobbits.
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We’ve been following this Ukrainian shooter since the first footage appeared a couple of years ago. Metro 2033 appears to be what THQ did after the split with GSC, and it has the same dark-future apocalypse vibes as Stalker. This time it’s set in a Moscow ravaged by monsters, with the survivors of the apocalypse hiding in the Russian capital’s epic metro system. It’s got a strong “Russian Fallout” whiff to it, which echoes what a 1c boss said to me last year about their love of the game. THQ’s blurb reads: “You are Artyom, born in the last days before the fire, but raised Underground. Having never ventured beyond your Metro Station-City limits, one fateful event sparks a desperate mission to the heart of the Metro system, to warn the remnants of mankind of a terrible impending threat. Your journey takes you from the forgotten catacombs beneath the subway to the desolate wastelands above, where your actions will determine the fate of mankind.” Anyway, go take a look, this is very promising.
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It seems there’s going to be another Art Of Murder game. After the original was so dodgy I was a little surprised to see a sequel earlier this year. I never did go on to play the full game after the demo. Some other people must have though, as there’s now to be a third in this series, Art of Murder: Cards of Destiny.

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