Rock, Paper, Shotgun

You know what some people are wrong about? The Tex Murphy games. Some people are way wrong about them, because they incorrectly think that the inclusion of FMV and old fashioned adventure gaming means something is automatically bad. In fairness it’s not a poor rule to live by – it’s pretty much true otherwise. But not for Tex. The Tex Murphy games managed to both mock the corniness of the genre, while carrying a surprising emotional weight. However, what I always forget is that the series began before them. It began with Mean Streets and Martians Memorandum. I admit I’ve never played them, so in light of the news that both games are completely free on Good Old Games until 24th December I turned to adventure games uber-expert Mr Richard Cobbett to ask about them. “They’re rubbish.” So there we go. But they’re also free. And more importantly, you can get the later games, Overseer, Pandora Directive and Under A Killing Moon from GoG too.

So claims Nuclear Dawn (a name that immediately makes me think of Nuclear Winter’s theme from Freedom Force- skip to about 1m10 in), a bold, Source-engine powered RTS/FPS hybrid. It’s a document of a post-nanotechnology war in Earth’s near-future, and claims to be “the first game to offer a full FPS and RTS experience without crippling or diluting either side of the game.” If you succeed in annihilating the boundary in the post, you’ll find the first trailer for it below.
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None of your artificial ones here. Though, that said, these are the fruits of NS2′s budding modders’ experimentation rather than straight-from-the-source stuff – but they’re a useful demonstration of what Unknown Worlds’ still-mysterious new engine may be capable of. They rather evoke Doom 3, but obviously a lot more amped up and mega-detailed. I found the dark, ominous metal corridors oddly beautiful in a way – though once tediously onmipresent, this kind of environment isn’t something we see that much of these days, and do remind me that there’s a reason we’ve always thrilled to the Aliens look.
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Ah, DarkBASIC takes me back. Its various iterations made regular and hard-fought-for appearances on the coverdisc of the magazine I used to work for, and at the time were one of very few ways for amateur types to make a standalone videogame of their own, without having to learn coding or resort to modding. Never got around to trying it myself, but I got the impression it was pretty decent. Take a look at (and play) the kind of stuff that’s been made with it here and here. And now it’s free – ad-supported, but it’s the full Professional edition, entirely bereft of its former $70 pricetag. Presumably it’s a response to the likes of Unity and the Unreal 3 SDK going similarly free – this is one case where a crowded marketplace is only good news. Dance! Dance with joy! Or we’ll kill you!

Oh, and DarkBASIC creators the Gamer, er, Creators have another freebie…
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We reported a while back that NASA had commissioned their own MMO, which is now called Astronaut: Moon Mars and Beyond. Anyway, it turns out that there will be a demo for this called “Moonbase Alpha” next month. This was apparently announced months ago, but the internet has only just noticed. But better late than never, thanks to Massively. There’s even a teaser video, which I’ve posted below. It’s worth taking into consideration that this is intended to be an educational game, rather than a shiny commercial product, when you subject it to your fizz ing neural soup of analysis. And keep an eye on the official site if this project interests you.
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Games cannot die, they can only find themselves transitioned to the plane of abandonware, from which they haunt the internet and the wider world beyond. Some games, however, rise again and become undead, and can even tear through the thing membrane of reality that we call the seasonally festive advent-o-calendar then attack us from the other side. But what game could be capable of such reincarnation? Guided by the ever-wise digits of the one true leader of the Autobots, let us travel through the 17th window to discover…
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The yearly PC Gamer Top 100 has gone live! To actually get any real explanation behind it, you’ll have to buy the new issue, but it’s available here in a just-the-facts-format. It breaks with tradition in a three key ways. Firstly, it was the first in living memory to be comprised not by going down the pub and arguing until everyone hates each other more than usual. Instead, it was done by cold vote-casting democracy. Or, at least, the closest simulacra to cold-vote-casting democracy the ever-mendacious Tom Francis could manage. Secondly, it involved votes from the PC Gamer writers of many nations (i.e. if there’s anything obviously mental, blame the yanks). Thirdly, and most audaciously, the fifthy-seventh greatest game of all time Outcast isn’t at fifty-seven. I’m shocked, shocked I say. Anyway, the readers vote is now open so do go in and RIGHT WRONGS. I admit, it’s the sort of thing which makes me wonder what a RPS readers’ top 100 may look like. Top 100s are odd ones, conceptually speaking. I wrote a little about it over on my workblog a few years ago, which I republish here…
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Splinter Cell: Conviction has been in development for quite a while. It seems hard to focus on this, Ubisoft having entered a phase of churning out their franchises once a year, saturating the market and our consciousness with too many games, multiple teams working on alternate sequels for each series. But then that madness stopped, and now Conviction is over two years late. Which all seems to be pointing toward its being two years better, too. And the co-op – this could be another good reason to be excited about it. Rather than a tacked on mode for the main game, it’s a two-player prequel to Conviction’s main story, lasting around six hours. There’s a trailer about it below.

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Time for the seventh post in our series covering the making of Rock, Paper, ShotgUnity– a game we’re putting together in two months using the now-free Unity development suite. Last week’s bug fixes seem to have been more successful than not, so this week it’s time to get back to adding content. What’s the plan for Build 04? Find out below.
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Well I’ll say this for the Kane & Lynch 2 trailers: they’re damned weird. They also make the game look about as appealing as spending a weekend in a rat infested opium den on the lip of a volcano. But they sure are weird. It raises an interesting point – the grimmest of films can appeal through dingy, murky trailers designed to unnerve the audience. But when you’re playing a game, it’s a simulacrum of you stuck in those conditions. Do I want to spend too much time pretending to be a thoroughly miserable 50-something criminal in a bleak, blue-grey world of poverty and misery? You know what, and I mean this quite sincerely, maybe that would be brilliant. I can’t think of any game that’s perpetually bleak. If it can manage to be more than just another third-person shooter underneath the bad times vibe, this could be properly interesting.

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It’s a zombie shooter. It’s a rhythm action game. It’s released in 2009. It’s zombie rhythm action game 2009! Well, Zombie Slaughter Tour 2009, which through silliness of concept alone demands a post. Now, if linking to something funny but not very good, I play gentle in the actual text. After all, someone will play the demo before considering throwing cash down on the full thing, so will realise a giggle all it’s worth. Alas, Latana don’t have a demo and only an option to buy the full thing. For a dollar, admittedly, but since it’s not even worth that unless you’re terribly drunk. I should stress it’s absolutely bloody awful. Here’s the video to watch though…
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