Rock, Paper, Shotgun

And just one last one here, unless Obama suddenly mails us to tell us how Deus Ex inspired his political career or something. It’s the lovely Ed Stern, Writer at Splash Damage who finds himself thinking about what actually writing these articles says about games…
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Bioshock 2 is to get single-player DLC next month, and it’s going to cost 400 Microsoft Points, which I think is about £3.50 in real money? Anyway, the new content is going to feature six new maps of Little-Sister-defending scenarios, a trailer for which I’ve posted below. It’s going to come with its own set of achievement and unlockable gumpf, but perhaps the most interesting element in 2K Games’ announcement is this: “This is just the beginning. More single-player content is on the way that will deliver more of the intense action and story-driven gameplay that fans have been craving.” More from Rapture in the pipeline, then.
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A few people have mailed us over the past few weeks suggesting that we take a look at the Total Faction War mod v1.8 by PhoenixHeart, Darkenneko and Smoq2. I finally got around to doing that this week, and I’ve written up some thoughts below. Long term readers will recall that I previously attempted to mod the errant son of the Stalker dysnasty into a place in my heart last year, with mixed results. This is the first mod I’ve had installed that comes close to fixing what was otherwise the weakest aspect of Clear Sky, even after modding: the factional warfare.
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Well, it’s a good day for cross-cultural understanding. Well, kinda. After several years of this, Ebert has a final chew over the art-question and admits…

I had to be prepared to agree that gamers can have an experience that, for them, is Art. I don’t know what they can learn about another human being that way, no matter how much they learn about Human Nature. I don’t know if they can be inspired to transcend themselves. Perhaps they can. How can I say? I may be wrong. but if I’m not willing to play a video game to find that out, I should say so. I have books to read and movies to see. I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place.

That’s for your permission, Roger! And, yes, you were.

News arrives! VG247 and Shacknews are travelling across the land, spreading news that jaunty tribute blog PC Gamer has revealed a couple of choice quotes from Runic’s President Travis Baldree their new issue. The topic? The forthcoming Torchlight MMO. Key points would be “our vision is to have an MMO that plays as close to single player as we can get it.” – as in, soloable, highly paced, hordes of monsters falling before you. Interestingly, while it’ll be funded my microtransactions, Travis also admits he’ll never buy microtransaction items himself “I’m that kind of player. And the game has to be enjoyable for me, too. We don’t want our monetisation stuff to offer ways to skip the game because the game is boring.” GOOD! I HATE BORING!

Me and Quintin met Cliff Bleszinski a few years ago. He was the only man in the room wearing leather trousers. This means something, I’m just not sure what. In other news: GT have grabbed a walkthrough of Bulletstorm with Mr B talking People Can Fly’s absurdo-shooter through (below). It contains a bunch more footage, with a rechargeable cyberbuddy, and some really lovely vistas. So that’s nice.

I was also amused to see this Bulletstorm news story over on VG247. That’s thinking outside the box, graphics fans. Clever stuff.
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If the press-release that’s been mailed to us is to believed – and we would be mad, crazed fools to ever doubt the veracity of a press-release – there’s a new Free-to-play racing MMO available in the language of English. It’s called Big City Racer, apparently. Following links reveals that there is a website bearing that name where you can download a client and start playing immediately. Can you? I didn’t download it, hence cannot confirm or deny from personal experience, but I have taken you this far. You can go on alone, if you wish. No actually embeddable footage, but here’s a girl in a playboy top is dubbed with an impressive monotone explaining how to play the game, which – as I have previously made clear – may or may not exist. If it exists, it’s micro-payment funded. If it exists. I will not risk endangering my journalistic integrity by making such a claim.

It’s the new game from Preloaded - who you may remember from 1066 and Trafalgar. It’s basically their game for the Science Museum in London for their current Who Am I genetics-related gallery. As such, Thingdom is a virtual-pet game about breeding fluffy things – basically Spore for kids (So, just Spore then – Cynical Ed). Plus! explicit genetic recombination of attributes! To be honest, the second I got the above screenshot guaranteed that I was going to have to post about it, but that you can freeze your genetically inferior thingies by removing their hat on the ice levels also gains kudos. Play here, if you feel like breeding too.

“Thermal Discouragement Beam.” “Pneumatic Diversity Vent.”

I’m going to propose that the sad cries of doomed turrets could be in the Top Ten Cutest Noises, Ever.
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Telltale have launched a new scheme called the Pilot Program. It’s an attempt to get new concepts out there without committing to a full series, the first of which is Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent. (They must be cursing having released the second episode of Bone, meaning they can’t claim that was always part of this programme.) It’s certainly a different direction for the company, focusing on traditional puzzles rather than inventory-based adventuring. It’s a short game, completed in around three hours. I did that, so here’s wot I think.

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