Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Dawn Of War II: Chaos Rising isn’t simply going to include a new faction, it’ll include new units for all races: Weirdboyz, genestealers, Wraithguard, and others. All these units are going to be free to existing Dawn Of War II players in the March multiplayer patch, too. See all that lot in action in the new trailer, below.
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s one of the better traveled routes for IGF games. First, a flash-game that shows the core mechanic. Then, a full game expanded from that core. So following finalists like World of Goo and Crayon Physics Deluxe, we have Closure. We adored its initial web release and are eagerly anticipating the full version, which has been shortlisted for Technical Innovation, Sound and the Nuovo Innovation Award. We stumbled in the dark until we found creator Tyler Glaiel and got a little closure…
Read the rest of this entry »

News of MMO-malarkies breaks. A subsidiary of Bluehole Studio, En Masse Entertainment has been formed. Their aim is basically to select MMOs and make them most suitable for bringing to the western audiences. Hyper-localization! Its staff are alumnis of Blizzard Entertainment, Microsoft Corp., Electronic Arts Inc., ArenaNet and NCsoft, so they’ve certainly worked for some companies. RPS’ similar list would be “Its staff are alumni of that bar on campus, Walker’s Dad’s dentistry, some hop-farming and a big financial mag (which sacked him)”, so they certainly have us beat. Their first game will be – perhaps unsurprisingly – Bluehole’s TERA. We took the chance to talk to En Masse’ producer Brian Knox about what they’ll be up to, TERA and all things MMO…
Read the rest of this entry »

Remember we talked about how there was an MMO that was basically Eve with robots? It’s called Perpetuum Online, and I only went and wrote about it for Eurogamer.

The biggest difference, of course, is that Perpetuum is not set in space, and has terrain. There are not spaceships, but robots. Some are a little stompy, others skittering, all armed as you see fit. The robots deploy from various techno fortresses that are scattered across the landscape.

And stuff like that.

Has anyone ever played a hunting game? I don’t mean in the world, ever. Clearly they have or there wouldn’t be twenty-seven of them released a month. But reading this – have you ever played a hunting game? And if so… is it any fun? Watching the trailer for Bass Pro Shops The Hunt (below), I felt guilty just sitting there staring at someone else playing a simulation of killing pretty animals. And please don’t get me wrong – I’ll tear the dead flesh off the bones of a baby panda along with any other human aware of his omnivorous biology. But there’s something missing when it’s a game about shooting. Aren’t the enemies supposed to shoot back?

Read the rest of this entry »

Random morning silliness – the Bioshocks have always been good for easter egg hunting, but this one adds a little LARPING to the ongoing tale of Rapture’s fall. Own the special edition of the game? If so, you may have elected to display the three rather pleasant and tasteful art-deco posters it contains. Woe betide you if anyone ever enters your house with a blacklight…
Read the rest of this entry »

Crikey, there’s a new Steam then. Valve explains that “in the last 12 months Steam has grown 200%. There are now 25 million users, 1000+ games, 12 billion player minutes per month, and 75 billion Steam client minutes per month.” Which means they need a newer, fresher Steam.

The opt-in beta is apparently now open. Except that it currently won’t let me onto it. Which is annoying. It seems that it takes a few minutes to wake up after a client update. I have to learn patience. To get complete details of the changes, head here. And if you’ve got Steam running then clicking here should open up the options to get you into the beta. Lots more information below.

Read the rest of this entry »

I stop playing Freespace 2. I read Man With Puffin’s mail. I click on the link. I play Passage In 10 Seconds, which is – er – Passage in 10 seconds. I go to bed. Night, RPS.
Read the rest of this entry »

It seems worth noting what Mr Richard Garriott has been up to since his trip to outsidespace. Back in January Alec noted that the deposed Lord British would still very much like to work within the Ultima license. Since then he’s announced his involvement with Portalarium – an online gaming doodah that intends to create social media type stuff. (Hard-hitting analysis.) Which is to say, he’s planning on making more games, this time for social networking sites like Facebook, mobile phones, browser-based affairs, and they say for the PC. So far Portalarium has launched the bizarrely named Sweet @$! Poker for Facebook. But yesterday, speaking to Kotaku, Garriott revealed his ambitions to create an “Ultima-esque” game for the service.

Read the rest of this entry »

The current trend towards big middleware developers giving their engines away for free is only going to yield great things. With the intimidating financial up-frontery removed, people with wonderful ideas, a ton of untapped talent and no money will be able to create and publish games made in the likes of Unreal 3 and Unity; no doubt we’ll be posting about many such projects here over the months and years to come.

Here’s an interesting curveball, though: what if someone who isn’t a game developer is let loose on tools this powerful? Sjoerd “Hourences” De Jong, better known as the guy behind the splendid Unreal 3 mod (and soon to become commercial and standalone) The Ball, has been leading a Unreal Development Kit course at Stockholm’s fascinating FutureGames Academy. The course lasted six weeks, all-in: three of tuition, and three spent creating games. The clincher? None of the students had any game design experience. Moreover, no programmers were allowed – only designers and artists. They couldn’t possibly make a game on their own, could they? They bloody well could. Several, in fact.
Read the rest of this entry »

As a sad coda to the happy-party we all had about the Just Cause 2 trailers a few hours back, word’s out that the unhinged free-roamer won’t work on Windows XP. It’s a DirectX10-only game, so even if you have a relatively recently 3D card you’ll need Vista or Windows 7 if you want to fire grappling hooks at planes. Probably, anyway – there’ve been several DirectX-10-on-XP projects, and though I confess I’ve not followed them closely, I’d be surprised if no-one comes up with a way to make this work. Anyone know where that stuff’s at now? Incidentally, before anyone takes the “get with the times, granddad” line and suggests most people have Vista or 7 now, take another look at January’s Steam PC survey. At 42.15%, Windows XP is still by far the most common operating system. That’s a crazy amount of potential customers to leave in the cold. I’d have more sympathy if it was specifically a PC game, but the 360/PS3 versions that will surely be the lead foot for JC2 won’t be DX10, so it seems odd that this should be. If it’s super-pretty and genuinely DX10ed to the hilt it’s good news, potentially, for those of us who are fully upgraded, but it’s an odd decision nonetheless.

Full system specs below – do you have the right hardware hats but the wrong OS trousers?
Read the rest of this entry »