Rock, Paper, Shotgun

As those who listened the last Quinns/Me podcast will know, before Chrimble I attended a poetry “thing” where people read from Sidekick Books’ new pocket-anthology of videogame-inspired poetry. The reading was a fine thing, and the object itself is plain lovely, with people using a variety of experiences with games to illuminate and/or make gags. And it’s available now! To quote from the site’s blurb: “I feel certain that this experiment will prove the much-maligned medium of computer games can provide ample impetus for fresh and inspired approaches to form, imagery and voice, as well as informing the ready wit and intelligence of a generation of poets”. I recommend it highly, and not just because Delightful Girlfriend has contributed a couple of pieces. A couple about console-toy games! This relationship is over. It’s a fiver plus postage, and available from their site. Meanwhile, beneath the cut, a poetry-related – er – treat from the archives.
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s always infuriating that’s it’s impossible to play retro arcade games on the PC. Completely impossible. Fortunately, Microsoft are going to help out, with their upcoming Games Room. Half retro gaming collection and half social hub, it’s a service for – brace for impact – Games For Windows Live and its less hateful Xbox equivalent. You pour your cash into Microsoft’s virtual currency, which you can then in turn spend on access to the likes of Centipede, Tempest and Gravitar. All is saved! The full games list is below, as is a trailer. The potentially interesting element is that they’re setting all this in a virtual arcade, with your Microsoft Avatar (so does that mean they’re coming to PC too?) fetching up at to the game cabinet of your choice. You can pay per play, or for unlimited access to favoured games. Could be fun if the social hub feels alive, varied and delightful, but there’s a danger of it being a cynical cash grab.
Read the rest of this entry »

Are you ready to have the way you play PC games revolutionised? No? Well tough, because a man said it’s going to happen. News from Consumer Electronics Show suggests that there’s a push to convince us we need a six-axis/Wii remote/wavy throwy gun-style controller for the PC, and no less than Valve are providing the shouting. The attack is coming from three companies, peripheral manufacturer Razer, Sixense, a motion tracking tech company, and them there Valve lot, who appear to be suggesting it’s how we should be playing Left 4 Dead 2.

Read the rest of this entry »

This broke over Christmas, but a morning prod by Schizoslayer reminds me I wanted to post it. It’s Depth, a forthcoming old-school shooter. But with a twist. A 3D twist. So, you can put on a pair of the glasses and i) look like a member of devo ii) have that fancy 3D malarkies. The game should be out before March – and you can follow its development over at the workblog – but I thought the footage is interesting enough to post by itself. Is this the sort of thing we’d like to see more of?
Read the rest of this entry »

Goo did it. Radiohead did it. Even educated independent PC videogames do it. This time, it’s Petri Purho’s Crayon Physics deluxe – yours for however much you care to pay for it. 10p or 10 pentasquilliongillion Venusian sex-dollars, whatever you feel it deserves/are comfortable with. It’s a strategy that worked out pretty well for 2D Boy when they did the same thing with World of Goo last year, despite the vast majority of folk offering insultingly but inevitably low tithes. Be interesting to see if it plays out as profitably for Sir Purho; while his game certainly isn’t the out and out triumph that Goo was, it’s a fun and inventive science’n'creation puzzler that’s certainly worth a punt in this mega-deal. Which lasts only until January 15th, so hurry.

In other Super Indie Game Deal news, if you preorder both Natural Selection 2 and Overgrowth at once, you get ‘em both for pretty much the price of one. More on that in tomorrow’s Bargain Bucket, and videos of all three games I’ve whiffled about here are below the cut.
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s always fun to take a nose at where PC gaming in general is at these days, and Valve’s regular Hardware survey can give a pretty good picture of that. From the latest results, it’s pretty much as you’d expect: the vast majority of gamers are running Core i7 (and not even the Extreme Editions) systems with just 12Gb of RAM and only three SLIed GeForce GTX 295s. Which is a dispiritingly low-end spec for the average system, suggesting the recession is hitting gamers much harder than has been anticipated. PC gaming is indeed doomed
Read the rest of this entry »

The second piece of Borderlands DLC is now available. Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot introduces a new “riot” mode, in which you face “endless hordes of menacing antagonists, thirsting for carnage in tournaments where the rules of warfare are constantly changing.” It seems that the add-on provides a series of tournament matches in the new “Underdome” arena, which is presided over by the titular Moxxi, a sarcastic lady. The battles will drop lots of high spec weapons, but not allow you to grind XP.

You can get the DLC for $10 at the Gearbox Store, or on Steam, but I can’t say I’m that interested in this one. Trailer below.
Read the rest of this entry »

After several years in development hell, it looks as if the Ukrainian shooter Metro 2033 will finally surface in “early 2010″. THQ have put out another trailer, showing a little more about the world, and the challenges that the lead character, Artum, will face. It’s worth mentioning that despite the post-apocalyptic theme and Ukrainian heritage this is not “another Stalker”, as it’s a traditional scripted shooter. Nevertheless it’s looking good, as you’ll see below.
Read the rest of this entry »

This isn’t a Gillen Special Graphic Annotation. I swear to you those words are in the game’s opening scenes. There’s a demo out for an adventure called Green Moon. I have a challenge for you: Tell me what’s going on?

Read the rest of this entry »

Rumblings in the Call of Duty world. Or the World Of Call Of Duty, as seems inevitable at this point when so many teams appear to be invested in the franchise. You may have heard back in November that Activision had apparently added a third development team onto CoD making duty, alongside Treyarch and the main bods, Infinity Ward. It now seems, according to rumours reported by VG247, that those main bods may not be the people responsible for Modern Warfare 3. Which becomes an interesting story when you realise it frees the team up to potentially work on a new project.

Read the rest of this entry »

You can tell I’ve got stacks of work to be doing, because I’m busy procrastinating and leafing through various links to games that are sitting forlornly on the RPS inbox. One of these is a series of very brief (just a couple of minutes each) Flash mini-games, which have been put together with Flixel, a free Flash gaming toolkit. They’re “the adventures of a little ghost” in four episodes, called The Black Forest. You can play them 1, 2, 3, 4. They quite minimal and experimental. Number 3 is probably the most interesting.