Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I forget what we have and haven’t said about the DRM in Command & Conquer 4, but if you’ve somehow not heard, the long-story-short is that it’s very similar to Ubisoft’s always-online horror-thing. Lose your connection and you get kicked to the menu-based curb. The difference is that there’s a persistent experience rank/unlock system, a la Modern Warfare, so it’s at least trying to use its internetiness for something other than mere restriction. My personal take is that this kind of thinking is the only hope of ever justifing an online requirement, but in this case the unlock system rips half the fun out of the game by keeping the coolest units so distant, so it’s scant justification this time around. Boo. Anyway, there’s been a spot of semi-comedy to this techno-tragedy.
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Hurrah for the UK’s excellent online gaming service Multiplay, for they have given us a Battlefield Bad Company 2 server of our very own. They’re one of the companies hosting servers for the game, should you be interested in such things, and they can be rented here. Read on below for more RPS server stuff.
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So, Plans A & B may have failed. That leaves us Plan C. That’s the one where I stop using broad strokes to paint a picture of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for you, and whip out the single horsehair brush to start filling in all the minor details. This is where the highlights and lowlights are done, chaps.

Unsurprisingly, the new Battlefield game is doing rather well with fans of the series. It’s providing similar thrills we’ve found before, on a slightly smaller scale, but with far more attention to detail. We’ve got destructible environments, prettier landscapes to kill each other over, and an EA Server system that lets each little bit of contribution to your side get logged and added to the overall tally system of unlocks. This is roughly the third iteration of Battlefield (so long as you ignore stuff like Battlefield Vietnam, or Battlefield 2142, or Battlefield 1943. Oh alright, it’s Battlefield Mk 6, although it’s not Battlefield 3, that’s still to come.)

Let me break it down for you. This is the breakdown, broken down into bits of broken words:
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A sales update on the Left 4 Dead blog actually reveals some stuff. The Fallen Survivor?

Coming out this Spring for Left 4 Dead 2 is the brand new DLC “The Passing”, which contains:

A Wicked Witch Bride! A Gargantuan M60! A Slashing Golf Club! And Introducing The Fallen Survivor! Meet 3 Left 4 Dead 1 Survivors! New Game Modes!

Was that a typo? Game Modes? Didn’t we mean Game MODE? Did we mean to include that “S”?!?!?

YES WE DID!

After yesterday’s video, UberJumper on the SA forums noticed it includes on a one-frame message to the devoted (i.e. Those heroically mental enough to advance it frame by frame). Click through the image above to see the whole thing. Paraphrase: we sold 1.5 million! Awesome! Unlike people who say PC RPG is dead. Witcher was awesome, but we’ve learned a load since then. Next one will be better, and built with our own tech rather than Bioware’s Aurora engine to allow non-linear plots and living world. Key quote: “A game created by a team of independent thinkers, immune to corporate priorties, who don’t care what’s trendy at a given moment”.

[This is the extended Director's Cut of my feature on indie MMO Wurm Online for PC Gamer UK last year. Not to be confused with my relatively straightforward coverage of Wurm on RPS, this is a sordid tale of intrigue, humanity, murder and New Games Journalism. It's a good 'un, I think.]

I’m bleeding to death. I’ve got maybe six or seven minutes before I’ll be too exhausted to do anything but lie down and die. I really wish I could say this was the worst of my problems, but it’s not.
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You’ll have to excuse me if this week’s round-up is a little thin. We’ve been arguing over a list feature over at UserCreated this week, meaning my mod playing and musing has mainly been over classic modifications. We’ve got the list down now, though, and over the next four weeks you can read a daily piece on a classic mod for our Unmissable Mods Month feature. Yeah, I’m totally okay with putting an enormous site plug in the lead paragraph. If you’re reading this, either the Hivemind is too, or they just don’t bother reading my work before they lob it online, and are awful human beings destined for an eternity of playing Cryo games. [WE SEE ALL, DENBY - RPS]

Ahem. Right. Stuff that’s been happening in the world of mods, then…
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This is a joke we’ve all been wanting to make for the longest time. Chances are you’ve thought it yourself as you’ve been playing an RPG. It’s extremely gratifying to see it done, and done extremely well. College Humor keeps nailing this stuff. Note I’m not giving the joke away in advance. Take a look below.

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CMaster points me in the direction of a turn-based flight-combat game in the vein of Critical Mass. Steambirds marries that with a splash of Steampunk and has just whiled away a half-hour pleasantly enough. The main reservation is that once your ship’s control device goes off the map, you can’t get it back, so you always go flying off. STAY AWAY FROM EDGE OF MAP. Also, steampunk. ALL YOUR STEAMPUNK SPEAKS OF IS FEAR OF THE FUTURE. ALSO, PAST. Yes, the Steampunk backlash is on, at least until 7:30, when the reappraisal starts, followed by the second revival before bed-time. Go play it here or watch some footage beneath the cut. Though you’re being terrible lazy if you do the latter.
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Totem games just won’t leave those ships alone. Following last year’s Ironclads: High Seas, here’s a demo for their new Ironclads: Schleswig War 1864. I think I can speak for RPS as a whole that we’ve been waiting for a game based on the Schleswig War since our formation in 1873. Who could resist a game where the – er – ships – er – did that… thing? Anyway – what does the new demo offer? Well, it’s about 100Mb bigger than the last, so you can imagine about 100Mb more stuff. Hurrah! The full game can be bought for eighteen euros from their site and some footage follows. Admittedly, footage of the previous Iron Clads: High Seas because there’s no Schleswig footage online yet. Man!
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Welcome to a snot-filled 40th RPS podcast, beginning with a delightful conversation about disease. We discuss the furore over Alan Titchmarsh’s nonsense, the Observer article and interview with John and Alec, and then responding to your tweeted demands.

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