Rock, Paper, Shotgun

John B noticed this little quote-span-into-article over at C&VG where Chet opines that the British are “notorious non-talkers” in online games. Basically, while Americans yabber constantly, the Brits take a more taciturn approach. This will, apparently, cause some major problems when playing L4D2′s realism mode. Talk or die. TALK OR DIE. What do you make of it. Is this true? Or is it that Americans think that because Brits just don’t like speaking to you. And understandably. Give us our tea, you bastards. You don’t even drink the stuff.

The Big K has news that the major digital download services are boycotting troubled enormo-shooter Modern Warfare 2 because of the inclusion of Valve’s Steamworks. Apparently Direct2Drive were first out with the news, saying they had “told publishers that they’d stop selling games bundled in such a manner until Valve “decoupled its retail marketplace” from Steam’s other services.”

GamersGate and Impulse will also be boycotting the title for the same reason. The implications of this aren’t clear. Does it play into Valve’s hands and given them an even larger grip on the market? Or is this the bell tolling for Steam’s retail service as a part of Valve’s gaming community?

The delicately-named Mangled Eye Studios have gone and made an “old school FPS” from id Tech 3, and that means guns, demons, evil monsters, and lashings of neo-gothic architecture. You’ll be able to sample all these delights for yourselves, thanks to a 480mb demo, which is now up on the Mangled Eye site. I expect it’ll be mirrored elsewhere in due course, so do mention in the comments if you spot alternate sources. The full game is available for purchase on Direct2Drive, should you be so inclined. I’ve not had a chance to play this yet, thanks to yet more accursed connection troubles, so let us know what you make of it if you take the time to have a play. Does it match up to obvious rival, Painkiller Resurrection?

Interesting times indeed. Following the news that Unity3D went free for its indie package, Epic announce that you can now use the Unreal Development kit for non-commercial uses. Crikey. Reading the licentiate details, if you actually want to go commercial it’s in exchange for a 25% of revenue after your first $5000. Which is a hefty slice, of course… but considering how much an actual full licence for Unreal is, it’s still has to be tempting. Examples of how this could change stuff? Obvious stuff: mods for Unreal no longer would require you to buy a game. As long as a team makes everything, you can just distribute them… and you have to wonder whether now because they can do it, they’ll try to monetize them. Other random prediction: teams trying to remake classics like Deus Ex. Which will never be completed, but the thought’s there.

Once upon a time this platform game came out that no one cared about. Mark Donald was the editor of PC Gamer at the time, and it was given to me because it came from that guy who used to do adventure games, and I’m the adventure game guy. It was down on the magazine’s flatplan for a page. Psychonauts or something. Not knowing anything about it, and with absolutely no PR foretelling us about it, I installed it with confused expectations. Within a couple of hours I called Donald and said, “This needs more than a page.” By the next day I had bargained it up to four pages. Which was all the space they had left. Psychonauts was something special. And is now available for $10 on Good Old Games.

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Alphaxion noted that old romantic partners of RPS, UK Resistance has broke the news of a new Sonic the Hedgehog PC game. It’s clearly an entirely legitimate product from Sega, and in a Modern-Warfare-2 piece of relevancy, the eponymous spiked-creature is now homeless, living under a bridge and doing drugs. Nice one Sega. Developed by one chap in four days, it’s simultaneously a revisionist masterpiece which makes us reconsider our relationship with the medium and total crap. More details over at UK:R. Send our love.

I’ve been wanting to post about Sacraboar for a while. Because I like its name. Alas, there’s been no video to link to and no demo, so little reason to do so other than “Crikey! Nice name, eh?”. However, with its release imminent (Steam, Impulse, Gamersgate if you want to pre-order), they’ve released a demo so people can have a taste of it. You can get it from here. What is it? Well, it’s a “real-time capture-the-pig strategy game”. The ghost of Psycho Pigs UXB lives. The full thing is actually on our Steam press accounts, but no-one on RPS has had time to have a crack yet – Jim did, but it crashed his PC (Which he thinks is a bad download rather than the game). Impressions will have to wait. But it certainly has a splendid name.

Back from a quasi-week in foreign climes, I return to discover Eurogamer has published some writing they recklessly hired me to write. There’s a preview of Assassin’s Creed 2, detailing what I found when I nosed at the first couple of hours of the game, and perhaps more interestingly, there’s my review of Torchlight. In it, I claim that absolutely everything Walker said it about the game here was embarrassingly wrong and that we should all fire cannonballs at his face. Or did I largely agree with him? I forget. Let’s fire cannonballs at him anyway. There was also supposed to be a preview of Avatar up there, but it has mysteriously not arrived. I’ll have a little cry until it does.

The release of a player-made plugin for ULTIMATE INDIE GAME Dwarf Fortress stirred brief debate amongst the hemispheres of the RPS Hivemind. “Worth remembering: it’s a visualiser”, attack-thoughted node-designation GILLEN. “It does at least run as the game is playing”, hypno-suggested node-designation MEER. “WE/I LOVE DWARVES. WRITE ABOUT DWARVES WRITE ABOUT DWARVES WRITE ABOUT DWARVES”, then throbbed the Mind in spiky unison. For yes, while it is enormously pleasing, Stonesense is not a graphical engine that replaces DF’s (in)famous ASCII appearance. What it is an add-on, displaying an isometric, cartoony image of the state of your stone-centric world alongside said ASCIIosity in something like real-time.
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You know the scene in the Hobbit where they arrive at Beorn’s house? Rather than the whole mass of ‘em going in at once, they just send a couple in first, and then gradually reveal exactly how many dwarves are going to be scoffing his honeycakes. The idea being, that he’d tell them to sling their hook if they all marched in at once. Since the number of how many smelly, bearded bastards are going to be staying in his gaff creeps up on him, he rolls with it. I’m beginning to suspect Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare PC PR tactic is inspired by that. I’m also beginning to hope that the PC Beorn turns into a bear and eats them. Yes, it’s been confirmed that the PC Multiplayer will be capped at 9v9. Perhaps predictable with the removal of dedicated servers, but yet more dwarves in our house. In brighter news, Zombiecow are trying to ease the wait for the faithful with a 50% discount off their Time, Gentlemen Please until it comes out. Go gets.

Oh – fancy seeing the launch trailer? Here you go:
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Remember the mildly disappointing sci-fi RTS Universe At War? It was the one where alien races used the Earth as a place to do fighting at each other. Remember that? Okay, me too! I totally reviewed it. Anyway, the developers of that very game, Petroglyph, have another work on the horizon, only this time it’s a free-to-play (read: micro-payments) MMO with some strong Greek mythology themes. It’s called Mytheon, and I’ve posted the “classes” trailer below. Could it be Titan Quest the MMO? If you stare at it with your eyes crossed so the image goes out of focus, it could be. The launch date seems to be a vague “2010″, and we’ll be annoyed if that’s wrong.
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