Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Vindictus is… not live yet. Which is a shame, because the beta seems to have caused quite a stir. It’s got me interested enough to download it (except you can’t at the moment, sigh) and take a look, anyway. It’s a Source-powered, free-to-play multiplayer fantasy combat game (with RPG toppings) from Nexon. Basically, dudes get all kicked and some unfriendly bears get stabbed. Other types get smacked over the head with a big stick. You can see all this in the trailer below, which, after some waffle about blood and stuff, get to some serious weapon-waving business. Go eyeball, and perhaps we’ll get around to beating up some stuff when it comes online.
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Or maybe that’s tomorrow? I mean, it’ll be in the next 24-hours that you can get the game and start playing, so that has a todayish quality to it. But then there’s going to be midnight opening stuff for the launch tonight so technically it’s tomorrow. Anyway, whatever happens we’ll soon be installing Starcraft II, toying with our Terrans and playing with out Protoss… and whatever it is you do with Zerg. Blizzard have, of course, knocked out a posh trailer for the single player campaign, which I’ve posted below. I mean, all those flash cinematics are great and everything, but the route to a PC gamer’s heart lies in sending hundreds of tiny men to their deaths, and SC2 will be chock full of that.
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I’m not sure for how much longer this will last, so get in quick. Telltale’s best series, Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People, is currently available in full (all five episodes) for £4 on Steam. That’s… all five for less than the price of one episode on release. It’s 82% off the full price. Each game takes a couple of hours, so by my maths that’s ten hours for four quid. Or 40p an hour. What else can you do for 40p an hour? Park in Malmesbury, that’s what. But I’m going to contend that SBCG4AP is even more fun than that.

These games benefited from the adventuring genius brain of Mike Stemmle (Sam & Max: Hit The Road), with the fabulous series highlight episode 3 created by him, and his influence throughout. The writing was handled by The Brothers Chaps who write the (seemingly now dead) Homestar Runner from which Strong Bad emerged, and is fantastically funny. £4! Get it!

Sundays are for waking up for the sixth day in a row of less than 5 hours of sleep a night, ironing a suit, discussing whether orgasms are an emotion or not then compiling a list of the fine (mostly) games related reading I’ve picked up before I came here then running off to San Diego Comic Con for another hard day on the floor. Let’s just hope I don’t link to a Daisy-age rap song I’ve been trying to explain to McKelvie all week.

• Sinister Design writes a short piece about judging the creator by the art – specifically related to people making presumptions about his religious beliefs based on his game. It’s an interesting area, in many ways. Do you dismiss work if you know this kind of stuff about a creator?

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Remember the game about a bear driving a car? It happened. It actually happened. A bear drove a car.

A BEAR DROVE A CAR.

(Found via @realnoyb via @terrycavanagh via Twitter.)

I would like these electronic ‘home console’ videogames to be converted for the IBM-compatible personal computer system, please. They will be treated with kindness, respect and mild euphoria.
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Did you play Two Worlds? I tried for a bit. It was rubbish, wasn’t it? Well, interestingly enough, according to Destructoid Polish developers Reality Pump think so too. And they’re saying so in some videos that not only promote the sequel, Two Worlds II, but that mock the first one. Which is a bold choice. If they’re really from Southpeak, and not Destructoid punking them.

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Here’s a strange thing. Did you know you can play Snake in a YouTube video? And no, I promise this isn’t a practical joke, despite the instructional video below feeling like it’s going to become one. It really is the case that if you click Up and Left on your cursor pad at the same time, you can play Snake over the top of the video you’re watching. There’s a video explaining this below, over which you can play Snake while you’re watching (but only if you’re watching it on YouTube’s site).

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Heavens above. Rockstar has them some lawyers. You may remember that last week the Daily Star ran an absolutely ridiculous story in which they claimed that Rockstar were to release Grand Theft Auto: Rothbury, based on the events of Raoul Moat, the murder he committed, and his run from the police. You can see the full article, subsequently pulled from the Daily Star site, after Alec had the foresight to screengrab it. Yoinking the story from their site wasn’t really enough – it had spread like wildfire across the web, and it seems Rockstar aren’t the sorts to mess with like that. They’ve got money. They’ve got lawyers. I have never seen an apology like the one on the Star’s site today.

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Some people aren’t at all happy about those NPD charts listing the most successful digital distribution services. Those people being, specifically, the bosses of two of the biggest services, which rather oddly didn’t make the top five – it instead being dominated by Valve, EA, Blizzard and Direct2Drive. Impulse and Gamersgate think something is rotten in the state of down-chart….
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Whoops, bit of a typo in the title there. I’d better fix that later.

Yes, here’s first footage – well, sort of – of EA’s Spore tech-based Diablolike. So far, I’m a bit worried about this one. I suspect there’s a lot more to see – how it plays, specifically – but I can’t help but feel someone needs to pull their fingers out as to why we should be excited. The silly name and this rather bland teaser don’t get my joy-o-glands jumping. I’ve definitely always got time for a Diablo kinda thing that isn’t Diablo, but it seems a shame that this one isn’t a bit more playful. On the other hand – totally customised characters. Most RPGs strenuously (and irksomely) avoid that these days.
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