Rock, Paper, Shotgun

You’ll probably have already picked up on the ongoing fallout from Tuesday’s Activision-Infinity Ward oh-so-modern warfare, but as the talking point du jour we should probably cover it. The story so far: Infinity Ward heads Vince Zampella and Jason West didn’t turn up to work after a meeting with the developer’s owner Activision – but some hired muscle did. Shortly afterwards, Activision filed suit against the pair for “breaches of contract and insubordination”, a charge that is yet to be explained. Since then, Zampella and West have filed right back at ‘em, with accusations of withheld royalties and “Orwellian moves” to construct a case for their dismissal. Activision have duly refuted the claims, but it’s increasingly looking like this stems from a tussle for control of the Call of Duty and Modern Warfare franchises. Oh, why can’t more happy things happen in the videogame industry?
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That gag never gets old. Alternatively, it’s always been unbearably ancient, which is just how I like ‘em. Wait, that sounds wrong.

Anyway: 1.3Gb of Just Cause 2 demo is now available on Steam. Haven’t tried it yet, as it’s only just arrived, but go forth and ascertain whether Walker’s incessant frothing about the trailers has been justified or not. Also, grapple stuff to other stuff. “It’s easily one of the biggest freeroaming demos of all time,” says a man in a suit. He knows the score. Oh yes, and remember you can’t play this if you run Windows XP, as apparently having the gall to play videogames on a perfectly capable operating system from 2001 is akin to being a single-celled organism.

I half worry that my 1999 self would be disappointed. We’re living in the last of the great sci-fi-sounding years, and he’d have been hoping I’d be playing some kind of ludicrously intricate immersive-sim derivative. But if he asked, I’d be forced to confess that I’m playing Starcraft and Freespace. He’d have been disappointed. But fuck him. He always was a snot. I’m back with two of the best games of the late 90s. And what interests me is that in two games that were relatively contemporary with one another can walk such radically opposing paths and still end up in the same place…
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Edit: we are informed by an anonymous tipster that the DRM is indeed removed. Apparently the 1.1 patch released by Ubi today was cracked within minutes.

The rumours are circulating that Ubisoft’s new draconian always-online DRM has been cracked only one day after the release of Silent Hunter V. At this point we cannot verify if this is true, but the reports are that it is already possible to play the game without connecting to Ubisoft’s servers, storing save games locally. While Ubisoft never claimed that their DRM was impenetrable, it was possible to infer they had long-term hopes for the system.
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Good day, fine sir. Are you looking for a sampler of a game of historical conceit? Then your search is ended, for here is a demo of Ageod’s mapsplendent Rise Of Prussia (full game to be released next week), which is 750mb, and can be downloaded from here, or indeed here. I’d attempt to convey further information, but I’ve just been given some doughnuts. Away!

After all the hype, you’re probably a little sad you can’t play Heavy Rain on the PC. But now, thanks to Alex Austin of Cryptic Sea, you can. No, really. He’s done another game. “It’s a text-based adventure tightly-based on a Youtube video I watched of Heavy Rain,” he says helpfully. You can get it from here. And in a rare moment of fairness, here’s Phill Cameron saying why he dug the hell out of Heavy Rain which is an exciting game for the PS… wait! We’ve been duped! It’s a Trap! EJECT! EJECT!

Valve appear to have decided to own March, in what’s an increasingly frightening/thrilling internet invasion. Yeah, that’s two Valve stories in a row – but we can’t not post about such things. Just a few minutes ago, Portal updated itself again – the patch notes reading simply “added valuable asset retrieval.” What could it mean? Is it the final piece in the (potentially) Portal 2 puzzle? Given Valve’s predilection for making TF2 update drip-feed news last a week, I suspect we’re not quite at the end yet. What this is, though, is a clear sign to load up Portal and hunt for mystery changes right away…. Already, I’m told, facepunch.com and Steam forumites have uncovered two new dinosaur.fizzle files and the ominously-named body_drag_01.wav. I’m hearing hints there may be a new map in there too.. Ooh! Ripe for mystery-harvesting, surely?

Update: it’s a (slightly, but tantalisingly) new ending. Video beneath the cut. German robots? Parties? Oh yes. Portal is getting a sequel – which leaves the resounding question of whether it will, as is widely speculated, be linked to HL2: Episode 3 or not…
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Oh, Valve: they’re playing us like a harp this week, and frankly we don’t mind a jot when it’s this much fun. While everyone’s busy nattering about the Portal 2 (OR IS IT?) ARG, they slip a little something extra into the RPS inbox. That’ll be the charmingly retro-sociopathic words and pictures above, then. Which you’ll want to click on right away, in order to admire it in its full bigness. The instant response from all of us, aside from excited and grateful cooing noises, was “guh? But what does it mean?” We’re not very clever sometimes.

Then we worked out exactly what it means: Steam is, as has been recently rumoured (and supported by the recent move from hoary old IE to sprightly young, cross-platform webkit as a foundation for Steam), finally coming to the Apple Macintosh personal computer system. At least… so it implies. OR DOES IT?
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It pleases me greatly when a game’s developer describes his own game character as, “a small jelly stone/insect-like thingy”. It saves me having to work so hard at being ambiguous. This jelly thing can attach weapons to his body in a Gamemaker action platformer, created by one-man team GreenCream. Sam, who alerted me to the video, points out how it’s reminiscent of RunMan‘s bright silliness. Run, jump, double-jump, and fire painty blobs everywhere. It’s created as a student project, and currently in alpha stages, the idea is to eventually sell it for a bargain price once complete.

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Alec! Kieron! An oddly alien-robot Quinns! We gathered on the Internet last week. Mr Hockel had a prod at it to improve its quality over the weekend. AND NOW WE PRESENT THE RESULTS! You can download it directly from here, subscribe to it by RSS with this, or get it on iTunes from here. Contents include! DRM, Bioshock 2 and other stuff! And a full list of everything follows. Hurrah!
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Minimalist, beautiful, vicious. We loved Star Guard when Alec first played it, and it remains lovable now. It’s picked up a nomination for Excellence in Design, and – of all the shortlisted game – is the standard bearer of arcade-brutality mixed with modern-accessibility. We sit down to talk with Loren Schmidt about all things Star Guard…
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