Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Our more handsome and interesting readers will recall that we spent some time arsing about it the Mortal Online beta a while back, and ended up chatting about it at length. It was a fun time. If you like incredibly hardcore sandbox MMOs, which we seem to, for some reason. Anyway, the open beta has come an end and it’s all live over there. You can watch all the trailers your series of tubes could hope to gather on the main site. Expect some reviews soon. Although I don’t know if we’ll do one, because we’ve all got our digits caught in Chinese finger traps. I’m typing this with my knees.

[This was originally published in a slightly different form over at the Escapist under the title "Sensible Soccer: How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Love The Ball". I'm republishing it under a different title, because that one won't fit into the terribly restrictive page-width of narrow-set RPS. And I'm republishing it because... well, apparently there's some kind of Foot-to-ball battle-cup starting today. Or something. It's about the Amiga giant that was Sensible Soccer, the whole scene and how I can to actually grasp football...]

Football is the world’s greatest sport. It just took Sensible Soccer to make me really realise it.
Read the rest of this entry »

Just as memories of much-delayed space MMO Jumpgate Evolution were deleted by our brains to make room for voluminous Portal 2 hype, a trailer turns up. As is my habit, I’ve posted the thing below. It’s a look at the warlike Octavius faction. And… it’s a SHOUTY MAN TRAILER! Hooray! It’s been a while since we had one of those. For some reason it doesn’t seem to feature any in-game footage, but pictures weapons and stuff being made. I presume this is the first element in a barrage of new space-publicity for the game, which spluttered off into the remote asteroid belt of developmental uncertainty after we got to play it last year. (I notice the last news we had on this was that it was due for June 2009, which is a target I suspect they will now miss.) There’s a beta signup on the site.
Read the rest of this entry »

Valve! They’ve done it again! You’re going to like this comic about the launch of Fortified Team Two for Mac. You’re going to like it a lot. Unless you’re one of those people.

Which people? I ain’t telling. This place has their curvy stink all over them.

(Is that the first time we’ve seen Saxton Hale interacting with our brave teamsters, incidentally?Tell me, nerds. TELL ME.)

Also! Also! There’s a new offline training mode, featuring bots! And anyone playing TF2 on Mac before Monday gets free in-game iPod headphones! And there’s a new video, including a glimpse of the Engineer with a scoped shotgun! I’ve put a picture of the latter, which is possibly teasing the long-awaited engie update, below. Froth away, frothers.
Read the rest of this entry »

That may be too many ‘pre’s, or it may be too few. I’m just pre-supposing, really. Either way, Crytek are on a recruitment drive for their community / modding site, offering the juicy carrot of possible Crysis 2 beta access.

Only a chance of it, mind.
Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a little show about to start. It’s called The Three Es. And it means you might suddenly see a whole lot of trailers appear on this site over the next week or so. It’s okay, you’ll like them. Except the bad ones, which you’ll like to dislike. Let’s start probably somewhere in the middle, with Death To Spies 3. It’s – who ever would have thought it? – the third in the WW2-set kinda-Hitman series, and a level walkthrough is below, plus a few scribblings from me. Well, I say World War II. In fact, it’s gone Cold War…

Read the rest of this entry »

As previous reported, the City of Heroes is having an expansion about GOING ROGUE involving alternate dimensions and similar. NCSoft offered us this designer diary to publish from John “Protean” Hegner at Paragon Studios. Now, normally it’s the sort of thing we stray upon from, but I actually quite liked the expose of the thinking behind creating the MMO world. I suspect anyone interested in seeing a designer’s thought process will get something from it. And people who like City of Heroes? Well, you’re reading already, aren’t you? Yes, you are.
Read the rest of this entry »

Evidently. However, it seems that some embargo has been passed, as Eurogamer has just gone live with three (count ‘em) articles about Deus Ex. The first is a general preview sort of thing, the second is an exhaustive series of questions about fan pleasing elements which will or won’t be in the game and the third is a hefty interview with lead designer Jean-François Dugas. This is probably the biggest amount of Deus Ex: Human Revolution info I’ve seen online yet, and almost certainly worth reading. But for those who really are very lazy, my top-level scan-notes follow…
Read the rest of this entry »

You know, at least three quarters of RPS is really looking forward to The Witcher 2. Why? Because it’ll be even witcher. Ha! Sorry. Even my cats groaned at that. (But I’m not going to stop asking if Mafia 2 is even mafia that the original.) Anyway, The Witcher 2 will be an enormous lump of steaming hot fantasy RPG, crafted by a studio that has the money and the expertise to make it look good and play intricately. It’s worth being excited about because, while it’s not alone in the RPG club, it does seem to be leaning quietly on the bar with an air of eyebrow-raising confidence. It’s been some places, learned some things, got some stories to tell… and CD Projekt know it. Tomasz Gop is one of the CD Projektian gentleman of at the controls of the development machine: a senior producer, no less. He decided it might be okay to tell us a little bit about his game. I spoke to him via the magic of Skype. You may read on for certain bewitchment.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s taken a while, but this finally worked its way to me. You may remember that he did a trial run, yes? Well occasional-RPS contributor Mathew Kumar has released issue zero of his exp. fanzine. It’s a short collection of game articles approaching stuff from angles so tangential that they could be used as a dimension-skipping threat to the Earth in an epic comic-crossover. PC relevant stuff includes meditations on how on earth Batman’s base in Arkham Asylum got constructed, Torchlight cut-out-and-keep paper dolls and the Modern Warfare No Russian cocktail (Which you serve as a White-Russian, denying that it’s not). Also, an article about X360 oddity Deadly Premonitions which I simply don’t understand at all. You can buy online, here for seven – count ‘em! – dollars.

She’s a girl! She’s got a gun! She’s the second one of her! She’s GunGirl 2! Yet more multi-year-development freeware splendidness here. Playing the eponymous GunGirl – or GunDude! – you go on a sizeable action platformer which marries a lot of the classic elements with a whole lot of zombie-based evisceration. Only had half an hour with it, but notable features include the RPG-esque system, a “levelling up” power system which rewards you for not bumping into enemies and a whole lot of polish. Only thing I’m not sure about how the amount of blood flying around can disguise zombies rising from the ground, leading to surprise deaths. Still, this is strong stuff. You can get it here, or watch the trailer below
Read the rest of this entry »