Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Day of the Tentacle is one of those exceptional games. A game that occupies a place in my memory as a defining game, and one that remains every bit as brilliant when played seventeen years later. In order to celebrate this, and discuss just why it’s so brilliant, I replayed it and wrote about it for Eurogamer, which you can read here. It contains this:

“I think if you surveyed people for their favourite LucasArts adventure, the chances are Grim Fandango would come top. For me it’s always been Day of the Tentacle. Not because it’s a deeper story, richer idea, more brilliant world, because it’s definitely none of those things compared to Grim. But because it’s a pure comedy. And that’s one of the rarest gems in the world of gaming.”

So The Witcher 2 has been announced and stuff, which means CD Projekt can actually start talking about it. Their first development diary (posted below) has five minutes of the Polish devs describing the conception and ambitions for the game, and it’s cut with some FMV and in-game footage. The environmental art, at least, is looking absolutely gorgeous. The story, the devs explain, will feature “deeper moral dilemmas”, making the consequences of your actions truly far-reaching in the game world. That seems standard fare for RPG hype these days, but in the case of this game I do believe it.
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Why isn’t there a weedkiller called Scourge? Or a rat poison? Consider these baffling questions while downloading the 272mb hunk of grognard goodness that is the Scourge of War – Gettysburg demo. The game that picks up where the fine Take Commands left-off, appears to do a lot of things right. Anyone arriving dust-caked and sweaty from Napoleon Total War is likely to be disappointed by the sprite-based spectacle and feeble rifle reports, but bowled over by the wily multi-tiered Battle AI and the extraordinary courier system. Read the rest of this entry »

Sundays are for trying to motivate your parent’s ancient PC into working properly, so you can compile a list of the fine (mostly) games related reading from across the week, while trying to resist linking to some piece of pop music, all in time so you can catch your train. Yes. Yes.

• Here’s Tom Bissell’s article from last week’s Observer which Alec and Walker contributed to a sister discussion piece. Mixed feelings about this. The article itself is an excellent piece about one man fucking up his life because he digs games and coke a bit too much. Read online, it works fine. In the magazine, illustrated pretty much solely with pictures of teenagers and young adults sinisterly uplit with their game-faces on, it codes as “Your child is going to end up fucked up on Coke”. Which is trashy tabloid bullshit, to put it mildly.

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It seems that Mac users can now register their Steam account to apply for the beta when it goes live. You’ll need to put your machine specs in there to sign up. Jolly good news for everyone who wants to use their Mac for actual proper games stuff.

It’s that time of year again when the fresh spring towers erupt from the ground and begin to gun down passing alien body-snatchers. We’ve seen tower defence games overhauled again and again, but the greenest and most flexible of these rejigs is probably Sol Survivor, which I’ve been playing on and off all week. Read on for some thoughts on a game which makes titanic efforts to raise this least-appreciated of genres.
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Creative Assembly seem pretty determined to court back all the guys who got a bit antsy with them about the state Empire was released in. Napoleon scrubbed up well, which seems to have upped the good will quotient, and now as an extra thank-you-please-thank-you, they’ve chucked out a free DLC pack for it.
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The Whispered World, a promising German adventure game, has now been given a release date for the Europe and the US. 23 April on Steam, and available on the same day at retail in both locations. The game has been released in Germany, with a demo, and shows off some really lovely 2D artwork. There’s now an English language trailer, which you can see below.

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I ended up not actually playing any more of Majesty 2 after its pre-release code, but Alec didn’t find its city-management totally revolting. Or at least it didn’t increase the amount of dark woe in his black heart more than was there before he started playing, leading him to descend into his special dank pit, to carve gargoyles of all those who raise his ire. Which translates to “Quite Good” or “7/10, probably” in most people’s scales. Anyway, its expansion is out now. Its top-level features are a new campaign, a randomise feature to add to a mission’s replayability and more mod support. Full details and purchase options on its site and the launch trailer can be found below. Any big Majesty 2 fans in the house? By which I mean, website comments thread.
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The studio behind the Close Combat series, Atomic Games, have announced that they’re doing a multiplayer combat game with destructible tech along the lines of RF:Guerrilla/BFBC2. The game is called Breach, and it’s going to hit this summer for a budgetly pricing of $15.

Virtual warriors can punch holes through floors to get the drop on enemies below, breach both interior and exterior walls, crush enemy fighters by collapsing ceilings and balconies, and even shoot away individual bricks to create “shooter’s holes.”

“Shooter holes”. Yeah. I’m basically posting this because I like that comedy screenshot of a man falling through a ceiling.

Ubisoft seem to be compensating players for the outage to their sadface-inducing “always on” DRM service, which rendered some folk unable to play Assassin’s Creed 2 and Silent Hunter V for periods of time since release. Apparently Silent Hunter V players have been offered Shaun White Snowboarding or Prince of Persia as a digital download in an email which was sent out over the last couple of days. Evidence of Assassin’s Creed 2 compensation here, via BluesNews.

I’m guessing the free games don’t have always-on DRM included.