Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The awards start at 6:30 tonight, so it’s time to draw a close to our project of the last few weeks. We’ve interviewed all those who have been nominated for the short list (Except Shatter who I only realised was coming to the PC too late to arrange an interview and Heroes of Newerth, who just couldn’t be bothered answering in time and the student competition folk.) So – in a few hours time, when you want to know about who these winners are… this is where to look. Unless the winners are Shatter or Heroes of Newerth, then you’re right out of luck. Links to all interviews follow, plus – bonus – my speculation on who’ll be picking up the gongs tonight…
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Hello, lovelies – a word in your shell-like, if you wouldn’t mind awfully. Our dear spam filter silently removes thousands of comments unfit for your delicate eyes each week. As our readership grows (hooray!), so does the spam count (boo!) Alas, Spam-o-Tron is not a perfect immortal machine – some stuff still gets through, even despite the captcha check we introduced recently.

We’re working on a larger-scale defence against these unwanted pill’n'handbag’n'essay’n'WoW-gold bot-marketeers, but in the short-term we’ve had to turn up the severity of our spam filter. Though the vast majority of posters make it through without a hitch, this has meant that more legitimate comments than we’d like are getting snared in its digi-nets. Unfortunately, it is now getting to the point where manually retrieving all of them is becoming impossible. So, here are a few comment-preserving tidbits to keep in mind if you’ve lately found yourself suffering spam-o-tron’s sporadic wrath.
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I’ve only had passing interest in the upcoming Transformers shooty-mcthumpy game War For Cybertron until now, but something about the previews that hit various sites earlier this week, and especially the below video – the first significant chunk of in-game footage to date – has awakened NERD-HUNGER in me. The environments look big and detailed, the robots are an excellent hybrid of 80s blocks’n'colours and intricate machinery and the combat looks varied… oh, who am I kidding? The reason I’m excited is because I recognise all the damned characters. Optimus! Ironhide! Ratchet! Megatron! Soundwave! Trypticon! Omega Supreme! I could go on. I did, in fact, but it started to look a bit scary, so I deleted half the names I’d written. You must not peek inside my brain of shame. Especially the bit that thought “the DLC for this game is going to be awesome.” Read the rest of this entry »

We mentioned Primal Carnage last month, the mod-gone-commercial multiplayer FPS that pits humans versus dinosaurs. Which is awesome even just to type. At the time we had a couple of videos of dinosaur movement, and some impressive screenshots. We all got appropriately excited about it. And now, crikey. You really should watch the video below. Twice.

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We’ve been playing the epic browser-based strategy Neptune’s Pride, and marveling at its dark psychological potential. A mix of the galaxy’s finest generals, hand-picked from the slightly awkward ranks of the RPS and PC Gamer (whose coverage is here), would decide the fate of our pocket universe.

Read on for the second part of the battle, where there is no love to be made: only war.
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It seems that the Secret Of Monkey Island Special Edition must have been enough of a success for LucasArts to pursue the idea further. It’s been announced that the sequel is receiving the same treatment, now called Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: Le Chuck’s Revenge. And it’s arriving in the Summer.

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It’s been a while since we’ve heard from the slightly slipped Disney racer, Split/Second. But it’s reappeared at GDC ahead of what’s now a May release. It’s a trailer that asks that all-important question one should always raise at the car dealership: can it outrun a building?

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In preparation for the impending Chaos Rising expandaspansionlone due later this week, there’s just been a hunka hunka burning patch for the original Dawn of War II. While the price of Chaos Rising might seem a little unfair, given it’s primarily an expansion hiding in self-contained form, Relic are going to extreme lengths to not split the player base. The update that’s just hit allows DoW2-plain players to battle against Chaos Rising players (and Dow2+Chaos Rising players), essentially patching the entire Chaos Faction into the original game. You can’t play as ‘em if you don’t own Chaos Rising, but you can play against them. Better still, the shiny new units for the four existing DoW2 races are now yours to play with, for free – including Genestealers. Genestealers! Dance-dance-happy-dance. Also thrown in are a clutch of new maps – the net result being that, whichever configuration of DoW2 you own, you’re not locked out of playing with anyone else. It’s an incredibly generous update, and I’ve a sneaking feeling it’ll shift a lot of copies of the expansion as a result. Full patch notes are hiding below – but you’ll get the whole lot if you update your copy of DoW2 on Steam now.
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Demo! Demo! Demo! Demo of a strategy game! Being a gentleman who tends towards robots and explosions in his real-time strategy games and turn-based in his historical strategy games, I remain a little unclear as to whether Napoleon: Total War is a brand new game, or a cleverly-marketed standalone expansion. Or both. All I know is that Quinns quite liked it. There’s a demo out now via Steam, which means you can ascertain for yourself whether it’s a new age or a repeat of Empire. The AI’s much better, I hear. And it’s important to always mention the AI in any discussion of recent Total War games, apparently. Oh- the demo contains a tutorial and the France vs Prussia Battle of Ligny scenario. Fight!

The PCGA (remember them?) have released a report to their members claiming that PC gaming software sales went up in 2009. The report apparently collated data on PC games software sales from all part of the world, in both retail and digital sales markets. “PC gaming software revenue was a $13.1 billion industry in 2009,” says the PCGA’s release, “up 3% from 2008.” While traditional mainstream PC games sales are still in decline, it seems that revenues across the globe have been boosted by online distribution. “In our surveys of PC gamers in North America and Europe we found that over 70% indicate they have bought a full game online. Furthermore, over 50% indicate that they have bought a virtual item,” said DFC Analyst David Cole. “This is very positive because, when done successfully, companies in Asia have found the digital distribution model to be significantly more profitable than the traditional retail boxed goods business.”

The OnLive “Games On Demand” service will launch in the US on June 17th for Mac and PC, and it will cost $15/month. Remind yourself why this is a big deal by revisiting last year’s announcement.

Launch titles for the streamed-games service include Assassin’s Creed II, Metro 2033 and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. Which kind of makes sense, because you really will have to be “always on” connected if you want to play the games. There’s a demo of it going on at GDC right now, and tweeters in the audience are saying it looks “amazing”. Apparently it needs 1.5mbps. What’s the latency like? We just won’t know, I suspect, until it goes live.