Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Chariot-racing in the era of Imperial Rome has never really been a hot topic for game design, but that’s all changes now with Race To Rome, a chariot racing game from Shockwave. You can literally select some horses, club other drivers, and potentially win the day… Okay, okay, it’s actually pretty primitive, but I’m can say that it’s okay for a browser game. And I can’t help thinking of chariot racing with affection after a youth spent reading Asterix comics. I never did watch that Asterix At The Olympic Games live-action film, however. And I probably won’t. I’m rambling. Sorry. Look over there!
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Perhaps you need to hear some good news. Here’s some now. You might remember we told you about the Humble Indie Bundle. (We really did. Could people maybe stop emailing us about it now? Please?) You can get World of Goo, Aquaria, Lugaru, Gish and Penumbra Overture, DRM free, for whatever price you choose. It’s $80 worth, at the price of your choosing. And now it comes with Samorost 2 as well! You can choose what proportion of what you pay reaches the two charities the project is supporting, Child’s Play and The Electronic Frontiers Foundation. And that’s not the good news. The good news is they’ve so far, in one week, been voluntarily paid $1,066,880, with 31% of that reaching the charities. Even more, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD, and Penumbra Overture have now pledged to become Free Software – i.e. their source code available for anyone to use in any way they wish, published under GNU licenses.

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The quiet giant that is Counter-Strike: Source doesn’t get talked about outside of its playerbase all that much these days -we’ve got our newfangled Team Fortresses and Modern Warfares instead – but it is nonetheless massive, has always been massive, and always will be massive. This is only going to make it more massive, I suspect. Valve have unexpectedly chucked out a pretty major update for it, cannily carrying a ‘beta’ tag. It is fatted with several of the digi-trinkets we tend to expect from modern shooters, which may put to bed calls for a full Counter-Strike 2.0 for a while. Or equally it might be exacerbate them, in a strange inverse of the Left 4 Dead 2 response. The internet’s famous Fear Of Change will doubtless play its part in the response to this too. Regardless, this is the exciting tale of the exciting tape: Achievements! Avatars! Death cam! Lifetime stats! Domination/revenge system! Some sort of graphical jiggery-pokery!
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I just euthanised Sam Fisher.

It was the right thing to do. I couldn’t let him go on like that, constantly trailing off mid sentence, sometimes for minutes at a time, before carrying on exactly where he left off. Or he’d pull himself into safety behind a piece of cover, only to get seemingly distracted, vacant stares as all around him was chaos. When he finally returned to reality, he would just as likely be somewhere entirely different to when he started.

I don’t blame him though. It’s not his fault he’s like this. It’s Ubisoft, with all their talk of good intentions and protecting their creative license, that have really killed him, not me. It wasn’t me who decided that it was time to fight the pirates at all costs, even if it meant that the only true victim would be the paying customer. It wasn’t me who waged this war over copyright infringement. I’m just collateral damage.
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Would you like to see Zombie Cow’s Privates? We sure would. We’d not only like to see them, but we’d like to play with them once we have. But no! We’re not talking about their penises! We’re talking about their new winky-themed game, Privates! (NB. We’re talking about their penises.)

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It’s always time for war in ArmA 2, and that’s never truer than on the arrival of expansion pack, Operation Arrowhead. Set three years after the original conflict, another flashpoint in the region causes Americans to administer tactical face-biff to local forces. It’s a big old single-player campaign that we really should do a hands-on preview of some time soon. MAYBE WE WILL. Anyway, videos…
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Among the people I met at Gamecamp was splendidly-fringed J. Nash obsessive Kerry Turner who was simultaneously pleased and a little bemused by the glowing commentaryand angry debate around the results of her weekend play with Flixel. The game in question is Enough, a teeeny little art game about inevitability which reverses the usual survival-is-triumph motif of videogames to John Walker-esque effect. Very quick to play, and worth doing so. But Up to Jump, Kerry? What would Amiga Power say?

(They’d be fine, as there’s another option. BUT STILL)

Enjoy the smooth sounds of the wasteland, with a freebie 24-track pack of music from the Fallout 1 and 2 soundtracks. Original composer Mark Morgan has poked and prodded the score into a shiny form suitable for the discerning 21st century ear. The whole Vault Archives set is available here, along with four streaming tracks for preview purposes. It remains incredibly evocative sinister-ambient musicology.

(Via NMA)

Ultima Online isn’t the grandaddy you think it is. In fact, it was predated by one Meridian59. Often considered the first MMO (at least in terms of how we now define the genre), and thus progenitor of all the Warcraft template that so many of the last half-decade of MMOs is built around, Meridian 59 is an essential artifact for gaming historians. It’s also (apparently) really very interesting even by today’s standards. Combine that with the fact it recently went free to play after 14 years and you have a really bloody good reason to indulge in a spot of gaming archeology.
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This is the second Gamecamp. Organised by awesome people, hosted by PayPal/Gumtree/eBay with food from Pizza Express and booze from Unity, it works on the unconference model. In short: a conference without a plan. People turn up. Anyone who wants to try and run a session, can do so. Just lob up its name on the board. People turn up. People leave. People may get annoyed/inspired by what others have done, and do a response session later in the day. And then, 8 hours later, everyone goes to the pub.
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Two years on from the moderately successful launch of Age Of Conan (I’m not really endorsing it here, I fell asleep after the first bit in the port, and ended up feeling deflated) it seems the Funcom have completed a major expansion for the game, Rise Of The Godslayer. It’s £18 and can be bought by subscribers via digital download from tomorrow. There’s also going to be a new retail push with the game going out bundled with the expansion. The new stuff includes Asian-themed Khitai, which has a new player race, and no level cap increases. Eh, what? Yep, all the new stuff comes in the form of new skills and professions for characters to pursue, giving existing characters more to do, and making them more rounded denizens of made-up-barbarianland. Hooray!