Rock, Paper, Shotgun

We barely need to say anything here (but we will), as where we’re going we don’t need words. We only need righteous fury. PC Gamer have experienced the controversial new Ubisoft DRM first-hand, in the PC build of Assassin’s Creed 2. We already thought the paranoid new copy protection was pretty bad, requiring as it did an online check everytime you played and giving you a hard time if you tried to launch it offline.

What we didn’t think – what we didn’t believe they’d be mad enough to do – was that it’d kick you out of the game if your net connection dropped for any reason.
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Aha! I knew I had downloaded something interesting and then forgotten about it. That something, I now realise, was Diplomacy, the latest expansion for Sins Of A Solar Empire. It came out last week, and I had a nagging feeling there was something I was meant to be playing… just couldn’t put my finger on it. Anyway, it looks a lot like this expansion finishes off the SOASE experience, with a range of political options for this real-time space strategy – envoys, pacts, missions in multiplayer. Rather than wait for another week for me to get around to playing a full game, I thought I’d open it up to you lot. Who’s playing it? Any thoughts on worthiness of the new features?

Futuremark Games Studio just dropped us a line to mention that their astro-shooter, Shattered Horizon, is having one of those free weekend things on Steam. They say: “Shattered Horizon will be free to play and 50% off to purchase for the duration of the weekend.” That’s this weekend, 19th-21st. This will include the new Moonrise levels that they released this week. And I’ll be on there to check out the fresh space rubble.

Of all the IGF finalists so far, AAA(Snip!-Ed) is the one which RPS has written most about. We loved it when we reviewed it. We loved it when Dejobaan answered your comment thread questions in a little video. We loved it when we interviewed them. We loved it in our end of year round-up. And we love it now, when they’ve recieved a nomination for excellence in design, taking it as an excuse for yet more coverage. Interview go! Interview go!
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Sundays are for… oh, no, wait, that’s Kieron’s job. And it’s Wednesday. Wednesdays are for compiling a round-up of the most interesting happenings on the mod scene from the past week-or-so. And that’s my job. So I should probably do something along those lines. Onwards!
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EA is closing down its online support for late 2008′s Mercenaries 2: World In Flames. As of March 16th this year, you’ll no longer be able to play a multiplayer or co-op round of a game that’s been out for just seventeen months. This is part of another wave of EA gaming shutdowns that includes games barely a year old, as detailed on the rather optimistically named “Service Updates” section of EA’s site.

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Originally a Wiiware game, I notice this drawing/platformer is now on the PC. You can get the demo from here and then consider buying it, for cash money. With me getting seethingly angry with a Jean advert yesterday, I can’t help but think that someone should do a drawing-style game with an adbusting motif. Take that one, developers. Make it so. Until then, a trailer staring Max and the magic marker, follows…
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World Of Tanks is a free-to-play MMO with tanks. Wargaming.net explains: “The game offers fast random battles featuring various modes, historic mini-campaigns, tourneys and epic Clan Wars on a global map, where mighty clans fight for hundreds of provinces employing grand strategy, diplomacy and economic power. Besides individual tank-ace skills, WORLD OF TANKS requires team work and a fine balance between light and heavy armor.” Great news, because there’s no kind of game that cannot be improved by the addition of tanks. Also, because it’s going to subvert normal MMO jargon when someone says “we need a tank for this group.” There’s a trailer below, and it’s quite the thing. Ha.

The game is due for release in the Autumn.
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John’s already thoroughly Wot-I-Thunked Bioware’s rather splendid star-biffing RPG, which remains very much the RPS DEFIN-O-TAKE on the game, but I have these words about it lying around from something that’s not ever going to be published. So I might as well quietly leave them on this table here and walk away whistling, really. It’s also an indulgent excuse to do something with a meagre few of the 412 screenshots I’ve accrued whilst playing ME2. Pretty graphics are pretty! If you read this piece thinking “this doesn’t sound very much like RPS”, that’s because it isn’t. Basically. WE HAVE MANY VOICES. Some of which don’t involve repeatedly referring to ourselves in the first or third person and making jokes about bears. It does at least contain the word ‘nookie’ and a William Shatner reference, however.
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This is rather awesome. A webgame called Record Tripping. The game is controlled with your mousewheel, which acts as a means of record scratching. Beginning with a record player, then expanding the idea into increasingly obscured scenarios, you control the playing of a passage from Alice In Wonderland. Scroll up to scratch forward, back to to go backward. Then holding down the left mouse button will slow the record down. There’s a background track for each of the five chapters, and three difficulty levels for each chapter.

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Worried about our slow news day (is it?) Dan Dixon alerted us to a TF2 themed video of quite remarkable quality. And so we now present it to you, below. It’s by Andrew Kepple, and Flash animates a tale of love between the Spy and the Pyro. Along the way there’s about 400 references to various games and cartoons, along with some fantastic animation that’s clearly inspired by John Kricfalusi.

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