Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I haven’t played this yet – though I’ve just signed up – but this beta interests me in a couple of ways. Firstly, it’s by a new developer founded by ex-Irrationalite (i.e. Freedom Force, Swat, Bioshock, etc) Jay Kyburz with fellow Irrationalites. It seems I like writing “Irrationalites”. Secondly, it may be the closest thing I’ve seen to what I wished for at the end of my Travian piece back in the day – diplomacy-heavy, low-maintenance, smaller-player-numbers strategy game you can slide into your day. Neptune’s Pride is a online-only space-empire game. It’s been in development for 4 months, but is already is functional and in open Beta. There’s a video below which shows the basics, but you’d be better going to look around the site.
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Capcom’s jetpackular action game Dark Void has a PC demo, which is odd because I thought they’d said it definitely wasn’t getting a PC demo. Anyway, it clearly is because it’s on Fileplanet at the moment as a 1gb download. I’ll keep an eye out for other mirrors, obviously… The Unreal 3-powered shooter if out on the 19th in North America and the 22nd in Europe.

Ubisoft have announced that the beta test for new management-strategy sequel Settlers 7 will take place from 19th of January, but it’s limited to North America and the United Kingdom residents. You can sign up over here, but it does require a Fileplanet account. I know! All these conditions… The beta will encompass both multiplayer and single player elements of the game, which is looking rather cute.

1c’s international publishing director Darryl Still has claimed that retail is to blame for the decline in PC software sales. Talking to industry trade publication MCV UK, he predicted that PC software will vanish entirely from retail by 2011.

“There is still demand, but retail is forcing PC games out. Digital is fantastic, and we’re very pleased with it. But it is not us as the developers and publishers driving products to digital – it is because the options for the PC at retail are so limited… Q1 2011 is my estimate as to when PC games will be sold completely via digital. I have seen the predictions that by 2013 more than 50 per cent of our revenues will be earned digitally. But if the PC games market has to wait until 2013 then we are all in trouble.”

Still says that there are challenges ahead for digital distribution, not least because of the number of outlets now available. “We have contracts with 25 of them at the moment, and of that amount six or seven are producing decent revenue numbers.”

Fans of our long-running series of AI War diaries will be pleased to hear that an expansion for AI War has been released. The Zenith Remanant can be bought for ten (Count ‘em!) dollars and opens a mass of new possibilities that will urely impact any second diary’s course. How will we respond to the 122 new ships? Will we manage to capture the seven enormous golem vessels? How will we deal with the 4 minor alien factions? Will our tiny earth brains compare to the 12 new AI Types? And will Quinns deal with his chronic shortage of iron? Only time will tell. Until then, go find out more and watch the trailer below…
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It’s another Simon Parkin Special! Well, strictly speaking it’s not, as someone else told me about it first, but I’d much rather credit the sensual Simon. It’s first person tetris. He says it’ll “make you sick in 20 seconds max”. YOU MAKE ME SICK IN TWENTY SECONDS MAX, Simon. Go play here.

EDIT: And because there’s some confusion, the link is dead for some people and not for others. I presume it’s something due to it being a new site and the DNS hasn’t sorted itself out yet but – y’know – I’m not a techy.

Well apparently it’s Trogday. If you’re a fan of Homestar Runner, you’re probably as sad about the lack of new content on the site as me. Just because one of the Bros. Chaps had a baby doesn’t mean they can miss a Decemberween cartoon, the lazy buggers. If you’re not a fan, you’ve no idea what this is about and you’re thinking of clicking away. But wait! A great way to find out would be to get a free episode of Telltale’s really fantastic Strong Bad adventures. For today only they’re giving away episode 5 (the last in the series, oddly) for free. And it’s well worth getting hold of.

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You may have noticed one or two trailers for Mass Effect 2 recently. One or two a day. And it’s arriving very soon – the 29th of this month in fact. So we grabbed the opportunity to speak to lead gameplay designer Christina Norman to ask a few questions that have sprung up in the last couple of months. Below we find out a bit more detail about why certain combat decisions were made, why players might choose to die on purpose, whether Jennifer Hale will return as the female Shepard, and the possibility of lizards in bikinis.

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Solium Infernum is a political wargame set in hell. Quinns and I and assorted friends started playing late last year. The game is now finished, and none of the friends survived. By which I mean, we all hate each other now.

This is how it happened.
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Hard to believe we’ve reached part 10 of the Shotgunity series, but it’s true. As the end of our first experiment with the free Unity game development suite rapidly approaches, the mad scrabble to generate assets threatens to be all-consuming. But I’m still managing to make time for what other people are doing with Unity. Call it gathering inspiration, or just plain plagiarism, there’s some good stuff out there. After the cut you can see some of it, and also have a doodle…

(Get the most recent build here.)
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Cartoon kart racing game Zero Gear is going to cost $20. But is it worth that many American dollars? There’s a good way of finding out, which is playing the full game, for free, over on the Steam gaming content download delivery system, which many of your will already have installed on your computers. Report back with cartoon kart racing game evaluations, readers. Meanwhile, I will try and get this Divinity 2 article written. That game takes some time to play.