Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Any day with more King’s Bounty in it is a good day. There’s no sign yet of a proper sequel to what was one of the best PC games of 2008, but we have had an expansion pack in sequel’s clothing, in the form of 2009′s sprawling but slightly underwhelming expandalone Armored Princess. Now that is getting its own expansion, Crossworlds. There’s only one possible name for it. It’s an expandapandalone.

And, peering at its content, there is a good chance Crossworlds could inflate AP into the game it should have been…

Read the rest of this entry »

As a fan of narrative-led games, there’s one subject that I’ve never taken for granted: voice direction. Which led me to wonder why so many games companies apparently do. Why do so many games have perfectly decent actors struggling with scripts, lines delivered with completely incorrect intonations, and conversations between characters which couldn’t sound more disjointed? Something as simple as this can change the tone of a game, reducing a big-budget epic to sounding like a junior school play.

A few months back for PC Gamer I investigated voice direction by speaking to those who get it right. I spoke to LucasArts’ David Collins, responsible for directing Monkey Island, FunCom’s Ragnar Tørnquist about creating April Ryan and casting The Secret World, and 2K voice director Jack Scalici who is responsible for the enormous voice cast of Mafia II. I also spoke to two of the most respected voice actors. Dominic Armato is the voice of Guybrush Threepwood, and Sarah Hamilton plays April Ryan in the Longest Journey games. Below they discuss the craft, and express their passions and frustrations about voice acting and directing. This article originally appeared in PC Gamer issue 206.

Read the rest of this entry »

Combing my hard drive for dusty manuscripts to rehome on RPS, I stumbled happily across this revisit to Star Wars: Republic Commando, originally written for PC Gamer. Admittedly I’ve already given RepCom a little retro cuddle on RPS, but as Lucasart’s Star Wars shooter is now available on Steam it’s well worth restating its surprising marvellousness…

I’m still waiting for Imperial Commando. It was never promised, never so much as rumoured, but it always seemed the logical next step for Lucasarts’ surprisingly vigorous Star Wars squad-shooter to take. A sequel to this avowedly heroic FPS in which you play a Storm Trooper hunting down Rebel enclaves, brutally razing Jawa settlements or setting fire to Aunt Beru? That’s dream gaming – and a precedent laid down by, years previous, their following up saintly X-Wing with devilish TIE Fighter. Republic Commando seemed to be the way back to great things for this so-long unreliable developer – if you will, a new hope.
Read the rest of this entry »

Hooray and huzzah, a demo has been released for not-quite-ready-yet tower defence-with-RTS-bits, Revenge Of The Titans. It’s super-cute, and eminently playable. Clicking to collect resources in a Plants Vs Zombies way, and manually reloading your towers, means that you have a constant thrum of activities to attend to as the titans approach. The full game isn’t available for a few weeks, but the pre-order is up at a cheapy £10.75. If this demo doesn’t persuade the parting of some cash then I will be extremely surprised.

Go play! IMPORTANT UPDATE: Faster mirror here. Thanks, Rob!

Sundays are for stomping around the Bristol Comics Expo. Which means that Fridays are for preparing in advance a post of the week’s fine (mostly) games-centric reading without including a link to some manner of piece of pop-music, then setting it to auto-post. It’s a miracle of science I do for you.

• It’s been a very Mass Effect 2 week for me. Tying neatly into the Zeitgeist is Tim Edward’s splendid interview over at PC Gamer, where he has an after-game chat with its Project Director Casey Hudson. Topics include its episodic-structure, how people respond to pressure and how they actually go about plotting this monolith. Fun stuff. Go read.
• On a similarly Bioware note, here’s Media Molecule’s Audio-hero Kenny Young, writing at length about the use of voice in Dragon Age. Not just about the voice-acting, but how voice is use. Candid and entertaining.

Read the rest of this entry »

(Repeated logo, but I think we ran out. What was the plan with these anyway? – Jim)
It’s bloody hot. Far too hot to pay full price for games. This weekend, I prescribe some discounted digital entertainment, and a cool beverage of your choice in the sun whilst they download. Remember to go to SavyGamer.co.uk for more cheap game niceness. Here’s this week’s Bargain Bucket.
Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a demo out for Black Rock Studios’ fancy-lookin’ scenery-explodin’ racer, Split/Second. It’s 1gb in heft, and there are currently mirrors here and here. Not had a chance to play yet, so I might update with some impressions later. In the meantime if you find some better download links for the demo please post them in comments.

DoubleSix and Paramount Digital have announced a Top Gun game. DoubleSix say: “We’ve all been hard at work on this for a good while and at its core the game is an arcade flight shooter in the same vein as Ace Combat and HAWX (though much faster and more visceral). Naturally, we’ll be talking about the game in the oncoming weeks and maybe even showing our suitably l33t skillz to boot.” Apparently the original screenwriter, Jack Epps Jr, has been involved to expand the universe, but I’ve got the feeling he’s going to struggle to top the particular ambiance of his original work…

Lionhead have confirmed on their website that Fable 3 is indeed destined for PC. Which is interesting, given previous form (there’s no Fable 2 on our beloved box). Lionhead say: ” The Windows version will retail for $49.99/£39.99/€54.99, and will also be available for download exclusively on Games on Demand on Games for Windows – LIVE.” More details about the special edition through the link. I’ve rounded up some of the more watchable videos for the game and posted ‘em below.
Read the rest of this entry »

Irrational’s blog takes great joys in pulling out various bits and bobs from the cupboards and doing a show-and-tell. Latest is the original early-00s Bioshock Pitch. They’re serializing it across several entries but you can follow the first eight pages here. And it’s nifty stuff, in noting what remained (a lot, conceptually) and what changed (almost everything, in terms of specific execution). This stuff is always fascinating. And while we’re on the topic, you’ve read Planescape’s Vision Statement, yes? More developers should totally release this stuff. It’s absolute treasure.

Bioware producer Casey Hudson, speaking to Videogamer, has revealed that the current line of DLC being produced for Mass Effect 2 will eventually bridge the gap between that game and its sequel.

“So, for the time being there’s going to be a continued stream of DLC for people. We’ll start to have packs that’ll tell the story between Mass Effect 2 and 3. But beyond that we kind of have to see how people are responding to what we have and go from there.”

Interesting angle, I think. But it does kind of mean that the best time to play Mass Effect 2 is… when the sequel comes out? The next major piece of DLC is due in June. It’s called Overlord, and sees the Space-Chums Funtime Gang battle an evil AI in five levels set across a single planet.