Rock, Paper, Shotgun

A few weeks back I replayed Toonstruck for a retrospective, which led me to reading about it. And I discovered, having not heard before, that there was an unreleased sequel. The first game, already very long, had a lot of content cut, which was then to be reused in the follow-up. A lot of it already made, it was apparently reasonably close to completion. But Toonstruck, despite being a splendid point and click adventure, did not sell well, and any plans for a sequel were abandoned. Well, apparently if we still want it, we just have to ask.

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I’m a little late to this party- about a year and a half late, to be exact- but I’ve just noticed Jim’s favourite indie developer, Jonathan ‘Cactus’ Söderström, has on his site a collection of 17 of his games, all zipped up and accessible through a fancy menu, under the name of Cactus Arcade. I think this is awesome, and if you’ve yet to experience the first-person arthouse headtrips that are Mondo Medical or Mondo Agency then you should download the thing right away. It’s right at the top of the Games section. Ooh- and in case you missed it, here’s the interview Jim did with Cactus last year.

Who wants a bona fide crate of StarCraft merchandise? We got in a bit of a fight over here about who could keep it and once the other four decided it should at least go to one of the Hivemind I decided that it would be best to give it away to you, our honest readers. Or at least our honest readers here in the UK. Sorry, rest-of-the-planet.

Details of the haul (not all of which is pictured here) and competition after the jump. Come, come!
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“I’m not going to take any more of your nonsense! Tell me where the girl is, or so help me I’ll file a strongly worded report about you.” I’d make an amazing interrogator. No criminal could resist my unique combination of good cop/bad cop into one person: average cop. But enough about my secret police work, this is a post about By The Numbers. It’s a one room adventure game, in which you interrogate a kidnapper, looking for the location of his ninth victim.

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The PC Gaming Alliance has released its annual Horizons report to its members, and a press release to the rest of us. Said release indicates that PC gaming hardware sales were pretty healthy in 2009, totaling “over two times larger than the combined Wii, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 console units shipped in the same period.” They also make some predictions about the future, saying that “the worldwide number of consumers gaming with discrete graphics solutions on their PCs (Desktop and Notebooks) to be 212.6 million for 2009 and expects this to grow to about 322 million by 2014.”

I suppose we can draw some conclusions from that, eh? (And, as for software, which folks have been talking about in the comments, this NPD report is all we have at the moment.)

Zombie Cow have finally unzipped their trousers, pulled them down to their ankles, then in a fit of pique ripped their underpants clean away from their waists to reveal their privates. And at the same time their game, Privates, is available to play, for free.

Privates, you see, is a sort of pun. Puns are when a word can be confused for another word. So “privates” can be associated with people in the army. An army is a collection of cross men and women who shout and fire guns at other collections of cross men and women. And of course “privates” can refer to a penis (like a sausage, but leakier) or a vagina (no idea). Imagine a game that conflates the two! It’s time to go shoot some STDs. (Sexily Transmitted Dirtiness.)

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Between draining shifts at RPS headquarters, Jim likes to retreat to his house in “the country’s side”. Being a city boy, I’m not sure what a country’s side is, but I’d imagine living there would be just like indie freeware game Under the Garden (courtesy of the Indie Games blog). In fact, I’d go as far as to say that playing Under The Garden is the closest the modern man can get to being inside Jim Rossignol. Under the Garden is a game of surviving in a bleak wilderness. You keep your fire lit, your belly full, and gradually travel further and further on hikes to recover bits of house to shelter under. Platformers don’t come much more atmospheric than this. Talkage and footage after the jump.
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This caught my eye and made me smile. Eurogamer reports on Blizzard restating its policy on in-game harassment, which is the best euphemism for “cracking down on people having cybersex in public” I’ve heard in a while. “Fancy a little in-game harassment, luv?” “Not tonight – I’ve got a headache”. This follows an upset father complaining after seeing exactly what his son was seeing near Goldshire Inn on the Moon Guard Server. Blizzard explains while they police unsolicited chat and public, they leave private consensual stuff alone – though also note it’s a big world, and they can’t be everywhere. Regular trouble-spots however, are highlighted. “Members of our Customer Services team will ‘patrol’ Goldshire on Moon Guard on a regular basis, and take appropriate action for individuals violating the Harassment Policy,” says the spokesperson. For my money, the appropriate action would be screaming “Stop it! Just Stop it! For God’s sake – what are you thinking? That’s a troll, for fuck’s sake. You make me want to attack my own groin with nails!”

In other news, I made the mistake of Google searching “Erotic World of Warcraft” to try and get an image for this. I wasn’t thinking. I just wasn’t thinking.

No demo yet, but the just released Battlefield Academy does seem at least its own thing, which is always intriguing. Well, if not totally own thing, a continuation of something which was its own thing. Battle Academy was a 2004 webgame for the BBC – which is still available – and Slitherine has made a stand alone expanded commercial re-imagining with the aid of John Buckley, Military Historian at the University of Wolverhampton. Multiple theatres, accessible style, lots of details, multiplayer and modding – full feature list on the site, where you can also buy it. A little footage showing some basic tactics follows…
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News reaches us via a bat-signal link from Eurogamer that the sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum will be out autumn 2011. Hurrah for fans of Tightness. Except, from the scant details released, it may be less Quinns-delightingly Tight, as it’s set in a single sprawling walled city block in the heart of Gotham which is now home of all the city’s criminally insane folk (Which is the sort of ill-advised city planning the residents of that fair city have got used to). That suggest more open-worldy to me. However, tightness will remain in the form of the flesh-clinging costume, as shown on the three teased Game Informer covers. It seems it will feature prominently Catwoman’s prominent features. Press release follows for those who like to pick over the details…
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The rumours are true! Yesterday, clad in black jacket and sunglasses, I rode a train to the Square Enix offices in cyber-Wimbledon to get the latest on Deus Ex 3, no matter the cost. Gaining entrance was challenging- I tried hacking a keypad and going in through the back, with no luck. I’d just started climbing a drainpipe to the roof when a PR came out and asked if I wanted to see Deus Ex 3. I said yes.

Don’t worry if you’re keen to not spoil a single bit of Deus Ex 3 for yourself. The following is entirely spoiler free.
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