Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The Left 4 Dead blog has some info on the “mutations” (ie game mode variants) that are being introduced with The Passing:

Our first Mutation is Realism Versus.

For this Mutation, Survivors have all the Realism changes working against them, no glows on items or survivors, tougher zombies, instant kill witches, etc. The Infected have all those changes working for them. This makes the Jockey one of the most powerful Specials for his ability to steer a Survivor out of view. You will want to make sure you have a working microphone so your teammates can hear your screams for help. This Mutation is only available in Versus.

Trailer posted below. Francis hates stuff, obv. Reckon I might be re-deading some zombies later…
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So think codey types snooping around in the current closed beta of Steam for Macs. They’ve found explicit mention of Linux in the launcher, and claim there’s no reason for that to be in there if this was purely a Mac thing. Certain, hoofing the Source engine over to OpenGL for Macs makes it platform non-partisan, so there’s nothing other than business decisions really limiting Valve from supporting Linux. While there has been previous evidence to suggest Valve have been sniffing around the penguin platform (including a call for a Linux software engineer a few years back), it’s merely wild rumours and speculation until the house of Seattle thumps down a mighty hand and proffers answers. There’s a really good chance this is smoke on the Unix-water, but it would most certainly be lovely to easily play Team Fortress 2 or L4D on any personal computer.

Who here’s using Linux, then? How’s the gaming?

I’m still trying to find a chance to inflict my flailing imagination on some poor sap by acting as storyteller in the two-player freeform adventure game Sleep Is Death, but I know that when I do I’ll be spoiled for choice for art assets. (Do games have art in them? “Yes.”) The recently released version 1.4 is complemented by an incredible amount of player-made content for you to steal, you light-fingered wee blighter. Some of it goes way above and beyond what we ever thought the game was capable of. Pretties!
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Tickets have gone on sale for the Eurogamer Expo. It’s from October 1st to the 3rd and features stuff and things. What kind of stuff and things? Well, they haven’t announced anything yet. Pah! Still, by all accounts last years was good, and RPS are certainly planning on being there and doing – er – stuff and things. A big weekend for stuff and things, I suspect. Tickets are 8 quid each, but you can get them cheaper if you have an impractically large number of friends. Which means that all of RPS are screwed. And lonely. Oh, so lonely.

Well, in a literal sense. PCG posted this yesterday, which is a lovely adventure in Dwarf Fortress, illustrated in a highly accessible style by graphic designer Tim Denee. Lovely on just about every level, including being lovely.

This was impressively bad timing by me. Last night, I posted about Beat Hazard, noting there’s no demo yet. Within hours, its demo was out. Oh noes! So – er – the demo is out. More details in the other post, about the game whose demo is now out. Oh – you can also buy the game on Gamersgate or Direct2Drive. Or the Dev.

In a collision of appropriateness, Mr Sims, Rod Humble, contacted us to let us know his latest art game is partly inspired by cave paintings. Which is also to say, Rod Humble has a new art game, joining The Marriage and Stars Over Half Moon Bay. It’s called Last Thoughts Of The Aurochs. Rod describes it himself as “slight”, made as he continues to work on the as-yet unreleased Perfect Distance. Oh, and presumably works on the Sims too, that being his job and all.

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So claim hacker collective Skidrow, at any rate. It’s all been a bit quiet on this once-frenetic front for a couple of weeks, but the war is very much back on it, seems. (Also, watching Twitter today, I’ve seen several folk with Splinter Cell: Conviction PC review code alleging that they’re being unfairly dragged to a menu screen a little too often. Nothing says “dynamic espionage-based action” like “network connection lost”.)

If Skidrow are telling t’truth, they’ve got rid of the always-online requirement for Assassin’s Creed II entirely – no fake servers, no refusing to get past the first mission. Apparently, anyway – when this happened with Silent Hunter V it turned out to be all mouth and only some very small trousers. If this is all as it appears, perhaps it’ll be enough to finally convince Ubi’s higher-ups that punishing their paying customers with a near-sighted restriction that limits when and where they can play isn’t worth the time and effort after all. Oh, if only.
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Quite a lot of you have been enjoying this, so I thought I’d have a quick crack. While originating on the not-PCs, Beat Hazard appeared on Steam recently. It’s basically a Robotron-esque (i.e. Geometry Wars) single-screen shooter with the Audiosurf-esque twist that each level is generated from a sound-file, with neat elements like how the music actually has a visible effect on your firepower’s intensity. And the graphics are intense – even on normal, you can easily work towards Space-Giraffe-esque overload with the right tracks. I wasn’t quite sure the actual syncing was that notable, until I dropped the Bad Seed’s cover of Black Betty onto it, which nailed it. My other reservation is that at least on my PC, the changing of directories is far slower than I’d be used to on a browser. While there’s no demo, it’s a fiver at the moment so very much in that impulse purchase area. And – er -a trailer follows.
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Free Left 4 Dead 2 DLC The Passing is out tomorrow. It’s got lashings of content, including new infected and new weapons. But here’s the really interesting bit:

The Passing also introduces a series of weekly game mode events dubbed “Mutations.” These week-long runs of new gameplay modes range from “Realism Versus” mode to “Chainsaw Massacre,” which gives all players chainsaws with an unlimited supply of gasoline. There are over 20 Mutations planned, each playable on all L4D2 Campaigns. Mutations are exclusively available to owners of “The Passing” DLC.

It’ll be interesting to see how those things play out. Warming up my cricket bat tonight, in anticipation.

Pixel-Lab – with a little help from Channel 4 – are putting together a brand new conference that seems pretty significant to independent games development in the UK. They’re calling it World of Love. I asked David Hayward from Pixel-Lab to explain the concept and he’s provided us with the evolving story behind the project, which you can read below. In brief: UK Indies deserve their own conference, and this is it. Confirmed speakers include Terry Cavanagh, Simon Oliver, Robert Fearon, and Sean Murray. Tickets are £65, and I think they’ll go pretty quickly.
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