Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I love golems, best of all the magically animated constructs. They’re my friends. It’s fortunate for me, then, that Bioware have announced the next bit of DLC for Dragon Age as being Golems of Amgarrak, in which you can head out of Orzammar to hunt for the dark secrets of the big stone dudes, and recover a lost dwarven expedition. It features new creatures and new characters, apparently, and will turn up on August 10th for the sum of $5. I was going to post a trailer, via MMORPG, below, but it doesn’t work for some reason. See it here.

With SOE having made some in-roads to freeland with Free Realms, it seems they’re also going to try it with Everquest 2. It’s not quite the DDO or LOTRO model, however, since Everquest II Extended is going to be an entirely separate (although mechanistically and thematically similar) game from the Everquest 2 that you probably abandoned to go back to World Of Warcraft. There are a bunch of details over here – it’s probably going into beta on 17th of August – but you won’t be surprised to learn that the game will be supported by sucking out vital elements of your soul and using them to feed the dead god Anubis, who lives on in a nth-dimension beneath the surface of the Earth an optional subscription and in-game micropaymentish marketplace.

Oh, this is wonderful. And a month old. Nevermind! Japanese indie freeware dev Ikkiki, whose games are largely distinguished by little men without any trousers on, has released a sequel to espionage-acrobat platformer Teppoman (which Google Translates as The Slightest Man). You can grab it here- it’s the second game down on the list, the one with the release date of ’10/06/21′. You can find the controls here, and you can also read me jabbering excitedly about it after the jump.
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Want a demo? Oh, okay, you’ve been good. Have the demo for the fourth episode – Beyond the Alley of the Dolls – of the vastly superior third season of Telltale’s Sam & Max. An army of canine clones is attacking. Briefly do something about it, before being tempted to complete it, and the other five episodes.

Remember those Michael Jackson-looking zombies from Plants Vs. Zombies? Not anymore, you don’t. The MTV Multiplayer blog has an announcement from PopCap which confirms that the Dancing Zombie is undergoing a redesign following complaints from the Michael Jackson estate, who wanna be startin’ something.
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When the teaser trailer for Red Faction: Armageddon appeared last month it looked a bit odd. Set underground, it looked rather troublingly like a corridor shooter. And after the magnificent Red Faction: Guerilla, it would be such a shame to see the series take that turn. However, the five minutes of game footage revealed at Comic Con show something else entirely. I was still worried for the first minute or so – claustrophobic setting, and stupid crawly-creatures to laboriously kill. And then the man utters the magic words: “Magnet Gun”.

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Sure, while they’re all playing Starcraft II the rest of us have to find something to do. How about grumbling at a band? Did you even know Linkin Park were still going? It was only this afternoon that I was ranting at my poor, disinterested girlfriend that it’s a travesty that Linkin Park were ever so popular, while no one’s heard of Idiot Pilot. Silly singy/shouty pop plop. Well, apparently I’m completely out of the loop, as EA’s response to Modern Warfare, the relaunching of Medal Of Hono(u)r, is to feature Linkin Park’s new single, The Catalyst.

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Acutely aware that StarCraft II is coming up rather a lot lately and we should thus be careful to not neglect other games, I figured I’d have a quick search for what other PC titles are out at retail this week. (Or, which other PC titles are mad enough to come out this week – commercial suicide, I suspect). Not a lot, as expected. Commander: Conquest Of The Americas we’ve already told you about, a budget version of GRAW 2 ain’t ultra-news, and ItzaBitza is only suitable for children or people who still need to learn how to read.

Then there’s I’m Not Alone.
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Yes, Blizzard – or Silicon & Synapse, as they were then known – have revisited their old puzzle-platformer The Lost Vikings. In a manner of speaking. In a way that’s both very cruel and a big ol’ willy-wave.

They’ve only gone and put a vertical shoot ‘em up in StarCraft II. Just because. It stars a Viking aircraft. It’s lost. You get the picture: the fickle finger of fanservice.

It’s more than that, though. It’s war.
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So you know about Ludum Dare, the triannual make-an-indie-game-in-48-hours-using-one-word-as-inspiration competition? Well, did you know the Ludum Dare community also has something called Mini Ludum Dare? It’s the same idea, only it takes place many times a year and lets people play with rapid games development without the pressure and ceremony and whatnot. Which isn’t to say it doesn’t cough up some sharp stuff. I’m signing off for the night, but I give you Covetous, created for the theme of Greed. Sweet dreams.

A jog over to IndieGames.com has led me to a couple of finds tonight, the first of which is a flash version of the freeware fan remake of ancient NES game Streemerz, which sees players zipping around levels using nothing more than an enormously awkward diagonal ‘Streamer’, or grappling hook. It’s neat, the dialogue is incredible and the remake adds checkpoints and a grab-bag of different modes. Go and enjoy!