Rock, Paper, Shotgun

You there! Did you design your own face? No? Well that’s a shame. Perhaps you might want to look at fixing that, at least in the land of videogames. And that’s precisely what you can do in the game that lies beyond today’s portal, in our seasonally festive advent-o-calendar, in the land at the end of the fingertips of the one true leader of the Autobots…
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The sheer amount of promotional materials pouring out of the Cryptic/Atari for Star Trek Online seems to suggest that MMO means to come out fighting. It’s got some serious competition to go up against, even if we discount all the other bajillion games coming out in the early part of next year, there’s going to be the looming threat of The Old Republic, which threatens to suck up sci-fi fans like a space-hoover when it arrives. Nevertheless I’m quietly confident that STO is going to do well for itself. There’s just something about the setting that I think will click. If Cryptic can get the exploration and ship-management stuff right it really could be worth, er, beaming up. New trailer below.
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Bohemia have announced some new, free DLC for Arma II. It’s a new campaign in which you play as the pilot of an attack helicopter, after the events of Arma II.

The “Eagle Wing“ mini-campaign expands upon one of the seven unique endings of the original ARMA 2 over two extensive new levels; It’s the year 2012, the war in Chernarus has overgrown into a conflict between the USA and the Russian Federation. The player finds themselves caught in the middle of an escalating conflict. As a pilot of the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, the player’s task seems easy – to get behind enemy lines and attack. However the situation is about to change rapidly…

The campaign will come as a new patch, v1.05, due at the end of this month. The patch will introduce some diplomacy options for the strategic “warfare” mode, making a ludicrously ambitious game even more so.
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Ah, the free weekend – a delectable demonstration that traditional box-bound videogaming is a relic of yesterday. It’s stupidly simple to download a few gigabytes of game within just a couple of hours, then dispose of it without concern. It’s done fine things for the likes of Team Fortress 2, Killing Floor and Unreal Tournament 3, so any bugger with an ounce of sense is trying the same thing. Currently, the unrespected Dreamkiller is at it until the end of the weekend – pick it up from Steam. Could a cheery overload of multiplay fun save it from its bad word of mouth? Plus, next weekend, Crysis Wars – the online component of Crysis: Warhead – goes free to play for 10 days. No Steam required there, but you do need to sign up to official fansite MyCrisis.

This is definitely the sort of game that will appeal to the 28-30+ age-bracket. It’s the demo of the expansion pack to Europa Universalis III – a game I have so much trouble spelling that I’m afraid to actually play the thing. Anyway, it’s a time limited version of what teh full expansion offers, with you playing as eight major European powers between 1492 and 1550. Chart territories! And similar! You can see more details over at Paradox’s site – where you can also buy the thing. Hurrah for commerce! Hurray for trailers! Here’s one now…
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The “Reply” is twitchy. Or, at least, it’s easy to mess up. When replying, always put the name of the person you’re responding to. I’ll show an example of what I mean in the comments thread. Because reply strings are dozens long anyway, it helps the debate even if the reply option works. Also, it makes the forum much more readable, as right now it’s often just a random bunch of comments with no idea of who’s responding to who.

And now the latest TF2 update has begun. This time it’s Demoman and Soldier, with the usual routine in place – we’ll see three weapons for each of them, new maps, new oddities, achievements, and probably some bloody hats, revealed over the coming week. We’ll be determined to wait a few days and put all the updates in one post, and Valve will do something ludicrous each day that forces us to report it anyway, and we’ll curse them and their cleverness. Their first trick: there’s a secret seventh weapon, and only one of the two classes is going to get it. If more Demomen kill Soldiers over the coming week, then Demoman gets the weapon, and vice versa, monitored via the WAR hub page.

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The development of Rogue Warrior has been tumultuous. Beginning with Zombie Studios, publishers Bethesda weren’t satisfied with what they were making and took it away from them, scrapped it, and gave it to AvP developers Rebellion to have a go. It’s out, and let’s not pretend no one’s noticed, it’s getting one of the biggest kickings ever. But hey, how about me? Wot will I think?

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I’ve not even had time to starting playing the first bit of expansionising DLC for Borderlands and another one has been announced. Titled “Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot” it will apparently feature “an intense single-player or cooperative experience that expands the mayhem by adding three new Riot Mode arenas where players will endure an onslaught of Pandora’s baddest enemies.” Hmm. Additionally: “Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot also adds a new bank feature, which allows players extra storage capacity for when they encounter one of the more than 16 million weapons that Borderlands has to offer; and the ability to acquire two additional skill points as quest rewards, making their characters even more powerful than before.” So that’s good, but shouldn’t a bank or locker system have been patched it anyway? Wasn’t it one of the most obvious oversights in the basic game?

It’s hitting consoles on the 7th of January, and the PC release date is, naturally enough, undisclosed.

Chilly, Wintertime face-munching and spinal severing awaits us on the the 19th of February 2010, according to trade mag MCV. Which, while pleasingly soon, does mean we’ve got one more game to add to the now frighteningly busy Feb/March period. February: it’s the new Christmas! Oh, and there’ll be three different editions of AvP to choose from – sane people will want Standard, people who like metal DVD cases and extra multiplayer maps will want Survivor, and people who like toy facehuggers and and badges will want the no-doubt crazy-priced Hunter edition. I quite like toyfacehuggers, but badges do nothing for me. Y’know – special editions don’t seem quite so special now every game under the sun does one.

We’re had a few people write to us about this Indie Platformer – not least the developer – so I started my day with a quick run through the demo. And it’s actually pretty neat, reminding me of the smarter breed of 90s Amiga Platformers with an RPG twist. The trailer certainly shows off the sort of escapades you get up to – I didn’t get to it, but there’s something which is pretty reminiscent of the coin-op Ramparts. Also, the Owl reminds me of the one out of Agony (Though without its famous tranquil theme music). There was one example of an odd instant death when going down a hole in water – which raises an eyebrow, because it’s in water – but it keeps its charm. Demo here, full game for just over a tenner and the launch trailer follows…
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