Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’m currently recovering from what East Coast Rail laughably calls a train journey from Newcastle to London, but is in fact three hours of sweatbox hell on a locomotive where they’ve taken the time to install wifi but felt air conditioning was an obscene luxury. I was in Newcastle for the GameHorizon conference, which is very much a business thing, but was also attended by the likes of Mark Rein, Charles Cecil and, the man I’m about to quote at length, Peter Molyneux. Here’s what he thinks of his own back catalogue.
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Emil Pagliarulo started his career this side of the fence, writing for the venerable Adrenaline Vault. Since kicking his way into development, he worked in the twilight years of Looking Glass – where he was designer on the eternal Life Of The Party – before moving to work on Bethesda, where he was Designer on Oblivion (Think “Dark Brotherhood”) before becoming Lead Designer on Fallout 3. He’s optimistic about the future, will surprise you by how big an influence Deus Ex was on Fallout 3 and has enormous sympathy for Eidos Montreal…
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Mysteriously, I’ve been idly replaying the original Crysis over the past few weeks, and there a bits a pieces in there that make me genuinely excited for the sequel. The whole port-attack level is lovely, and the first fight vs tanks in the little village is one of those perfect open-ended FPS arena moments. Of course there are other habits that I hope – but don’t expect – CryTek to drop, such as that first-person cutscene stuff, or the suit not being quite powerful enough to be a full on power fantasy indulgence. But anyway, I’d been meaning to post this newer trailer, because it’s got a lot more actual combat in it and, despite the horrible quick-cut editing style of it, there’s some interesting scenes, such as a skyscraper coming down, and a fight with some kind of boss robot. You might say boss robots aren’t all that new or interesting, I say there should be an FPS equivalent of Warning Forever.
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We’ve previously discussed the graphic-adventure-for-web I wrote with Littleloud for Channel 4. Anyway, since then, they’ve lobbed up four interrogation-scene character trailers to introduce the main cast. And you’ll find them below. Out towards the end of next month, and available free to play online to everyone.

And I’m not saying any more to avoid spoilers. Yes.
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Hello! This week I moved house. I forgot I was moving house when I wrote last week’s column, which means I promised you all a far more comprehensive roundup of interesting mod-related spoutings, without thinking about the fact that my internet access would be intermittent at best for a few days. Still, I’ve done my best. Read on to see if I’m up to par (and to get your weekly dose of mod news, I suppose).
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For some reason we didn’t go massively overboard on the coverage for that one. Nevertheless I’m fairly certain that there will be some RPS readers with fond memories of this one. At least one of my good friends is still playing it today, which always strikes me as a little nutty, but there we are.

Happy Birthday (yesterday), Diablo II.

Drip, drip, drip. There’s going to be seven parts of this in total, so you might want to wait until next March, or whenever they’re finished, to watch the whole lot in one go. S’pretty though. Don’t think we need to worry that Portal 2 will be a) brief or b) just another collection of levels. They’re really going for it, as my second great-great-grandma three times removed used to say about the local goat-herders.
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Nearly Good shooter Metro 2033 is to recieve a sequel, Metro 2034. If you missed the first 2032 Metro games, I suspect it’s a bit too late to catch-up now. Where have you been?
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The Ten Year anniversary of Deus Ex has lead to a week of looking back at RPS. But that bothered me a little. Deus Ex was about the future, after all. The question we should be asking is… what now? Hence this series of interviews with some of the brightest minds to have toiled in the field that Ion Storm Austin once called “Immersive Sims”. First up is Randy Smith, a designer on the first two Thief games, the Project Lead on the Third, worked alongside Spielberg on an ill-fated EA project and has since released one of the IGF-winning Iphone games the form of Spider: Secret of Bryce Manor. As such, his perspective on the state of the genre is an interesting and – I suspect for some purists – a challenging one…
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Who’s the most popular gaming format, eh? Who is? Who is? Is it you? Is it? Awwwww, yes, you ARE the most popular gaming format! You big, loveable thing you…

Oh, I’m sorry, you’ve caught me having a chat with my PC. Because my beautiful little boy is the most popular kid in school. According to an MCV report, as I’ve been saying for the last four hundred million years, the PC is by far the most popular means of playing games in the UK.

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You there! Have you been playing in APB‘s extensive beta and Key To The City Event? Then why not talk about it in our comments section for the consumer-purchasing benefit of your fellow readers? We’d like it very much if your comments offered some critical insight, some laughter, some tears, some thumbs up or down, and perhaps some reports of personal experiences in the game. Are you going to keep playing? Perhaps you’re running a clan that could help RPS newbies? Are you a creative type who just can’t get enough of that startling set of editing tools? Not played it? Why not ask some questions?

But above all, tell us what you think.