Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Promising-looking space-MMO Black Prophecy would be breathing a sigh of relief – if unreleased games could breathe – as the cashflow problems brought developer Reakktor Media into insolvency have been sorted out, for now. The announcement explains: “The insolvency plan, suggested by insolvency administrator Rainer M. Baehr, was accepted by all creditors. Due to the support of a solvent investor, the financial reorganization of the company could be carried out successfully and all jobs have been saved.” It seems the game will still be released next year, which is good news as the high-spec engine and trading larks look intriguing. For more information on the game itself it’s worth checking out their recent developer diaries.

Apparently this new piece of footage from Battlefield Bad Company 2‘s multiplayer is a map that will feature in the beta. It’s confirmed as a pre-order beta at the moment, so I’ve no idea if we’ll be able to get our hands on this for general play with an open beta for PC in December. It’s looking remarkably solid, with the environmental destruction stuff right at the forefront of the game. It makes me wonder whether certain maps will have logical destruction patterns in them once you’ve been playing for a while, like you always destroy a specific wall or fence in the first 30 seconds of the game because it opens a route, or removes sniper cover. You’ll find yourself performing the same makeshift demolition tasks over and over again, like some kind of builder’s nightmare.
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This was an interesting one, in terms of emerging political gamer consciousness – which is a phrase I never thought I’d find myself writing. Prompted by rent-a-outrage MP Keith Vaz – in the words of Mr Wharton who prodded me towards this – “being Keith Vaz” about Modern Warfare 2, relatively-technophile Labour MP Tom Watson founded a facebook group to be unashamedly pro-gamer. As the description says: “Are you sick of UK newspapers and (my fellow) politicians beating up on gaming? So am I. The truth is, UK gamers need their own pressure group. I want to help you start one up.” It’s just passed six-thousand members. You have to hope an organised central body like this could do a lot of good in terms of combating scaremongering. I’ve just joined. Perhaps you should too.

We have the first first footage of Two Worlds 2 in-game cinematics, which I’ve posted below. It’s… well. It made me laugh, anyway. The trailer accompanies the teaser website, and check out horn-helmet’s shield. Man!
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Briefly mentioned in The Sunday Papers was a story about how dreaming can improve your gaming. It’s a thought I wanted to expand upon further, pulling together a few stories that relate, and pondering some thoughts on the relationship between gaming and sleeping. I do this with no expertise, and a personal hatred of sleep itself.

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Yep, even though the beta was going to happen “in a few weeks” back in September, it’s actually not happening in 2009. Eurogamer have the full story, and they remind us that the first chapter of the game, called “Wings of Liberty”, is due to be released in the second quarter of next year, so some time between April and June. It seems vaguely ludicrous to look back at what I wrote about it when I was one of the first people to play it – back at the end of 2007! Wow, I was still young then. But hey, that’s fine: I’ve basically got more games than I can play right now anyway, and everything else is delayed until after Christmas. I mean, this week alone I still need to write about Tropico 3 and the PC Dirt 2 code we got in – and those Darkspawn aren’t going to kill themselves…

Danger! Danger! This contains a few minor, character-specific spoilers – but nothing to do with DA’s main plot.

My first few hours with Bioware’s latest had more worried I wasn’t going to be entertained. Sure, I was having fun, but my party, the people I was travelling with, were pretty dry. Facetious holy warrior Alistair had a nice line in comic deflections, but arch sorceress Morrigan seemed a textbook line in sneery, sultry know-it-alls (though I’m sure there are many stings to be found in her self-confident tale) and, while the dog was sort of cute, it wasn’t exactly chatty. As for wide-eyed, pseudo-French bard Leilana – well, my cat could read those lines better than her. Sigh. Could I really make it through a couple of dozen hours with these ciphers, these stereotypes, these appalling cod-Euro accents? (Though, seriously, I like Alistair a lot). Then I met Shale, the golem – almost immediately the game’s bright, dazzling star.
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Perhaps you’re one of those people who isn’t playing Borderlands, or Dragon Age, or frothing at the mouse in anticipation of Modern Warfare 2. Perhaps you want to see something of a popular sequel to a reasonably entertaining science fiction role-playing game. If you are such a person, then you are in luck. Three such videos have turned up, and can be inspected below. They’re swollen with game footage, and developer jabber. I have to admit I entirely ran out of Steam on the original Mass Effect and never got to the end, but perhaps the improvements here, fun-looking characters, and general turn for grimness, will prove entertaining. Having hammered through a chunk of Risen and a portion of Dragon Age, I’m certainly in the mood for some RPG that doesn’t involve potions, wolves, or daggers. (And assuming that Mass Effect 2 is suffering from the same marketing-failure as Dragon Age, I have some high hopes for it.)
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J. Nash is back on the electric internet. This is to be celebrated. He’s a games journalist writer on games and other things – not least the splendid Sexton Blake for the British Radiobroadcasting Air-talk-machine-o-company. He’s also one of the obvious big influences on everything worthwhile that’s ever come from the British gaming press (Subtract Brooker, Nash and Campbell from the genepool, and you’re left with… well, Edge. Imagine if Edge was the only influence on games writing. Brrr). There’s not a mass of stuff there yet, but games relevant stuff includes his 11,000 words on Driver-3 collated from E-mails, as if Tim Rogers instead of being a posturing hipster-sort had only read Edwardian pulp thrillers. Oh – and only talked about the game. He also did the back pages for PC Gamer for ages, and they’re starting to be presented here. Hurrah!

Just noticed this over on Bluesnews, and it is one of the first fruits of the recent announcement of UDK, Unreal’s free-to-use engine package: the standalone version of rather clever spatial/time puzzle mod, Prometheus. Get it here, it’s just 321mb, no Unreal games necessary. And no, we won’t be announcing every UDK thing that comes along, it’s just that this something actually worth spending some time with. Give it a whirl, there’s some brains in them there bits.

The Dragon Age toolset has been released, which is surely they only sensible way to defeat the DLC demon that walks in our shadow. Purge it with the capacity to “build new, original campaigns, quests, or cut-scenes,” or even “create your own stories with the powerful cinematics editor that offers full control of the camera, voice and lip syncing tools, and a full character creator.” Hmm. It’s 472mb in digi-girth, and even has its own trailer, posted below. Get the toolset here or here, and probably other downloady places too. The important issue, however is whether anyone going to make us an RPS campaign? Eh? Anyone?
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