Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Sundays are for drumming your fingers and wondering what on earth is making RPS unreadable to 90% of the people on the planet, but fine for all of us. Maybe it’ll fix itself if I sacrifice a picnic basket to Horace the Endless Bear? I’ll give it a show, after I compile a list of the (fine) mostly games related writing which I found across the web this week, while trying not to include some piece of pop-frippery.

• Jamie Madigan at Gamasutra writing about Hedonistic Adaptation in games – and specifically, in game reviews. In short: if you take small breaks when doing something, you’ll find it more enjoyable, because your pleasure sensors basically recover. So if you have to review a game without breaks, you’ll find it less enjoyable. Which is… well, interesting, but it’s worth noting that the games which tend to get reviewed in the one-two-day crunches at the developers are normally the ones that get the 9-10/10s.
• We mentioned Jim’s book “This Gaming Life” is now available to read for free online. Well now, I’m mentioning it again. Go read.

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Gamespot have nabbed three game footage videos from The Witcher 2. I’ve embedded them all below. It’s looking pretty impressive, despite some mild dialogue wonkiness and some apparently lightness of combat (it’s a year off, mind, so lots to be done) and it’s making us even more excited. We did a big old interview with CD Projekt a couple of weeks ago, too, and that contains many more reasons to be interested in this particular project.
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Lewie, when marching into the purely-conceptual RPS office to deliver his beautiful Bargain Bucket also brings news that Introversion have made their source code for Darwinia and Multiwinia available. For thirty quid at the Introversion store you gain access to the full source code to nose at and mod to your heart’s delight, the ability to add your own branches to share, access to the dev-forum. Also, there’s going to be a meta-server for Multiwinia. I have no idea what that means. I hope it means there’s a superpowered server. That’d be amazing. Anyway – good news, I think. Those interested can buy here.

If you’ve got a 50-ton M60A1 Patton tank parked on your drive, Ukrainian developers Graviteam 
would like to talk to you. The team responsible for the best WW2 tank sim since Panzer Elite and finest WW2 tactical wargame since Combat Mission: Afrika Korps have just put out a request on the SimHQ forums for detailed interior pictures. It seems the lads and lasses from Kharkov are in the process of building us a post-Panzer, pre-Abrams armour sim. Read the rest of this entry »

Catching up with the last few day’s Internet and I wonder how on earth I missed the wonderful dancing TF2 characters videos by Professional Animator James Benson which PC Gamer posted on Thursday. Because I’m drunk, 24-7, that’s why. God knows what Walker’s excuse is (Answer: He Is A Bad Healer). Anyway, better late than never, as Delightful Fiancée put it after the last pregnancy scare. I want you to all stand up while watching these, so you’re ready to give a standing ovation. And…
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In the wake of the massive Steam sale that was, things may be bit quieter this week, but I’ve still managed to find several interesting discounts on worthwhile games. Strike that, reverse it. For a constantly updated guide to all that is cheap in the world of gaming, hit up SavyGamer.co.uk. Read on to delve head first into this week’s Bargain Bucket.
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The splendid chaps over at Multiplay – who do UK-based servers for all kinds of games – have been kind enough to provide us with an official RPS server for the purposes of The Engineer Update. The IP is 85.236.100.107:27315. And if I am right this will auto-launch from Steam: steam://connect/85.236.100.107:27315

Go shoot people.

Hmm. Not exactly an objective headline that, is it? Well, it’s not like I was ever pretending I thought the mandatory use of real names on Blizzard’s forums was anything other than a ridiculously stupid idea. After assorted debate and malice (which included people searching for and sharing personal details of various Activision/Blizzard staff – including Bobby Kotick), Blizzard have backed down. Well done and thanks for listening, chaps. It’s good to know the distant god still listens to its tiny people’s prayers.
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The World Of Tanks closed beta is in motion, and Wargaming.net have put out a new trailer to celebrate (below). It’s not a trailer I understand, however. Perhaps it’s mocking the Blur adverts or something? I am tiny brain. Anyway, the more important consideration is: tanks a lot? Or tanks but no tanks? Ah, the pun barrel is hollow and oh so empty.
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It’s a way off yet, being set for Q2 2011, but the 4X space sequel from Kerberos has popped out a scene-setting cinematic trailer with some rather colourful galaxy-straddling battleships, and you can check that out below. The feature lists and stuff over on the Paradox page (they’re publishing this one) are heavy on the spaceship porn: “Leviathan class of giant ships, new Battlerider-class ships that carry Destroyer sized ships, new levels of ship details including ship sub-systems, allowing for new fleet strategy and tactics!” But essentially it seems that this is going to be faithtful to the original rather solid grand space strategy and remade a new and shiny engine. We’re looking forward to getting a closer a look at this… possibly a GamesCom?
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Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith are game designers who are currently co-directing an unannounced project at Arkane Studios, working across offices in Lyon and Austin. They’ve been making games professionally since 1993, with a keen interest in first-person games with detailed environments and RPG features. Colantonio is the founder, CEO and Creative Director at Arkane. Under his direction, Arkane created Arx Fatalis and the PC version of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Over the years, he has worked with Electronic Arts, Valve, Ubisoft and 2K. In 2005, Colantonio expanded Arkane, opening a new office in Austin. At Ion Storm, Smith was lead designer of the award winning game Deus Ex, which received a BAFTA ward in 2000, and project director of Deus Ex: Invisible War. He was lead designer of FireTeam at Multitude and studio creative director at Midway Games (Austin). In the early 90′s, Smith worked at legendary RPG studio Origin Systems. Both Colantonio and Smith have spoken at numerous game conferences, and are passionate about immersive, highly interactive games with simulation elements.
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