Rock, Paper, Shotgun

So you know how you wanted Dungeon Keeper 3?
Read the rest of this entry »

In a world exclusive interview, we have been lucky enough to sit down with the phenomenal, sometimes tragic figure of Pro Adventure Gaming, John Walker. Starting his professional point and clicking aged 4, Walker has gone on to gain fame and infamy in the pro-gaming/e-sports world. A star, like so many, tainted with controversy, his epic rise to the top has been worldwide news. We took the opportunity to speak to Walker in his own home, getting an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the man behind the legend.

Read the rest of this entry »

Veteran news-commandos over at Eurogamer have spotted a tweet by John Carmack saying that id will be announcing a new game at QuakeCon tonight. In all likelihood this’ll happen during his keynote speech, which starts at 8:30pm UK time or 2:30pm Dallas / CDT time.

What could it be! Well, we kind of know what it’ll be. It’ll be Doom 4. We know id started work on Doom 4 back in 2008, and in 2009 they said that they’d be talking about it at QuakeCon 2010. Still, exciting! We only have some 10 hours of precious ignorance left! Let’s make some wild assumptions. I think Doom 4 will be a shooter, featuring some kind of gun, with emergent weaponry based on repurposing the body parts of various demons. Like, dual-wielded kidneys, or perhaps a whip made of intestines. What do you think, readers?

Sorry I started yesterday with a taxing piece of freeware. Here, let me make up for it with another morsel snatched from the groaning tables of the Indie Games blog- Solipskier is a moreish browser game that sees you earning points by navigating a skier between posts, through tunnels and over jumps. Except you don’t control the skier! Aha! No. You control the landscape, painting it into appropriate slopes with the mouse. The physics can be a little rickety, but the game makes up for it with the moments where you accidentally flick your skier into orbit or throw up a wall for him to collide with. If you want something to shoot for, I managed a score of around 10,000,000. Feel free to embarrass me, you grubby lot.

Oh for heavens sake, yes we know they’re not strictly tanks but… anyway, want a chance to win a copy of ArmA 2 expandalone, Operation Arrowhead? Want to play a big old co-op ArmA 2 game with fellow RPS readers and writers? If “yes”, then click the digital King’s Shilling below to find out more.

Join us!
Read the rest of this entry »

Word via the Ubi forums is that Ubisoft’s sadface-inducing DRM will not appear in forthcoming Strategy, R.U.S.E.

When R.U.S.E. is released in September, it will benefit from Valve’s Steamworks API to offer the best community experience to players. Consequently, a Steam account and Internet connection will be required to activate the game, as per Steam policy. For this reason, R.U.S.E. will not use the Ubisoft protection. Single player can be played offline.

Speculation about the end of UbiDRM ahoy! (Also thanks to everyone who sent in this link.)

It’s been RPS’ best-ever day for pictures of football games on the front-page! Nonetheless, you may have observed subtle clues over the years that this website’s staff are just a little bit shy of football nous. Subtle, subtle clues. This does not mean we sneer at those who do have said nous, or indeed at games based upon it. No! We revere them as much as we do all other games. Just slightly confusedly so.

Take Football Manager, for instance, the two thousand and eleventh installment of which was confirmed today.
Read the rest of this entry »

You won’t find many people hailing Starcraft 2′s narrative. The characters are lumpen, the dialogue weak and the general plot simultaneously archetypal to the point of cliché while only really working if you assume players are invested in characters like Kerrigan. Which even for a game as successful as Starcraft, is a big assumption to make. There’s people playing it now who weren’t even alive back then.

However there’s one area where I think it’s quite clever and even genuinely ground-breaking, at least as far as mainstream games go. I talk about it below. There’s no direct spoilers, but there’s structural spoilers which may be even worse. I’m about to basically explain how a card-trick works…
Read the rest of this entry »

Not exactly a headline rigged for comedy, but yeah, notable news. I’ve been following the lack of real information on PC digital downloads for a while, so it’s interesting to see an industry body trying to properly address the issue. ELSPA have announced that they will produce “a closed beta chart with Chart-Track, the intention being that once all parties are happy with the process of data collection and the output, a chart will be available through Chart-Track UK.” This chart will track UK digital sales from (at least) Ubisoft, THQ, Sega, NCsoft, Mastertronic, Kalypso Media, Midas Interactive and Square Enix. Initially it will just be for PC sales. And here’s the interesting bit: “All stakeholders have committed that sales data from third party resellers will be included, allaying fears that data from Steam would be missing from this chart.”

There are still some big names missing from that list, of course, but it looks like a good a start.

Games psychotherapist, Stephen Bishop, has told the Daily Rag that games players are showing an increasingly worrying addiction to football. Players of Modern Warfare 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Peggle are apparently spending up to one and a half hours playing the sport without food, rest, or any form of videogaming.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s favourite rent-a-quote anti-gamer Steve Pope has reappeared in the news, this time to announce that professional football players are dangerously addicted to videogames. The “sports psychotherapist”, so far unwilling to provide any evidence for his previous claims, informs the Daily Star (famously accurate on gaming related matters) that players from Manchester United, Chelsea, Spurs and Arsenal are all in trouble.

Read the rest of this entry »