Rock, Paper, Shotgun

This is interesting, at least if you found the second Bioshock game to be moderately entertaining: 2K have announced that there’s going to be a single-player “narrative driven” DLC called Minerva’s Den released for the game at some point in the near future. It puts you in “the role of an all-new character who has teamed up with Brigid Tenenbaum to unravel a dictator’s stranglehold on a key district in the distinctive city under the sea.” As well as being an entirely new district of Rapture, it’s also going to feature new plasmids and a new kind of Big Daddy. This is apparently the final bit of DLC for the game, but there’s no details on date or price as yet, so we’ll post those when we know. Probably. Who can really know where our whims may lead?

We’ve an entire internet’s worth images from Deus Ex: Human Revolution for you – a heady mix of screens and concept art, which we’ve posted below. All the images in this article are clickable for larger versions. Go browse, it’s got some serious cyberpunk prettiness going on. Also, some brown. Finally, check back later today for our intricate and edifying preview of the game, written by the handsome, wily, and dexterous Quintin Smith.
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Old news in the fresh green fields of consoleland, but new news here, because it’s coming out in “early August” (that’s like, right now! Ish.) for our very own format sub-format, Steam. Burn Zombie Burn is a game about talking to the monsters in the language of immolation. Yes, it’s one of those explanatory names that leaves little to the imagination: you are some guy, zombies catch fire, the equation is clear. On a related note, why isn’t there a game called “Gundamentally”? Come on, internet.

Trailer in the bloggy crypts below.
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There’s the first part of a hefty interview with Valve on the (registration only, curse them) Gamesindustry.biz. Basically, they’re saying they’re pleased with it, and the number of players with ipod-earphones on their TF2 characters is actually a good way to get a rule-of-thumb guess on the percentage of Mac-uptake (Free in-game headphones were given with the mac-purchase). However the key is the quotes from Jason Holtman (“Nobody’s fighting it, but everybody’s wondering what they do over the next year or two with their titles. It takes time to play a title and to fund a title, so they’re thinking about it and they’re incorporating this new data and this new way of thinking into these plans they’re making for a year or two.”) and Doug Lombardi (“People are looking at their titles for this holiday and saying ‘a Mac version would screw with my schedule, or I’d have to ship it late. Neither of those is super-desirable. But the titles that I have in Spring of 2011 or in Holiday of 2011, let’s have a discussion and let’s see those numbers and start to figure it out.‘”). So good news for the Mac owners. Of course, the flip of the story is “due to the lag between the new venue’s numbers and it effecting development decisions, expect the rest of 2010 to be slow”. So not all good news then. Ah, the news. It gives and it takes away.

As I moaned last week, while I’m entirely digging the game design otherwise, I’m finding StarCraft II’s writing a bit of a chore. At times it seems like it was generated by a machine, or perhaps a horse with a Dictaphone. It can be tricky to demonstrate why I have this distaste for the game’s oft-insipid dialogue and characterisation, outside of quoting the flat, tired lines over and over. So I’m going to try and do it through a character study instead: a breakdown of why I’m not satisfied with the approach the game has taken to its chattiest denizens.

Let’s talk about Gabriel Tosh: spooky Rastafarian psychic soldier dude. That he’s so appropriately called “Tosh” – well, maybe someone was paying attention after all.

Some spoilers follow, and are flagged as such – they’re primarily focused on Tosh, but you’re still advised to steer clear if you’ve not finished the campaign.
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Last week Southpeak began a rather unique campaign for their forthcoming Two Worlds II. A series of ads mocking Two Worlds. Starring disgruntled henchman Sordahon, the ads poke fun at the weaknesses of the first game. A third part is out, this time seeing Sordahon at the therapist office.

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News of Torchlight II reminds me that I meant to post about the new version of the Din’s Curse demo that was released a week or so back. If you imagine a line whose two poles are labelled “Mainstream!” and “Indie!”, then Diablo III would be off to the left, Torchlight would be near the middle while Din’s Curse would be way over on the right. Well, there’s rogue-likes past it, but it’s still its own determined thing. Din’s Curse does the single-player/co-op thing, dynamically generates both towns and dungeons and uses similar dynamic world tech to Soldak’s previous Depths of Peril. Improvements are mainly in the UI, with a new perspective and shadow options, but if you haven’t it’s worth taking a trip down this unusual take on the genre’s dungeon. And here’s some old footage…
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You know who my favourite indie dev is? Messhof. You know who doesn’t get enough coverage on this site? Messhof. This is NOT GOOD ENOUGH, and it changes NOW. Beneath the jump I’ve enclosed the latest trailer and some rambling on his upcoming two-player duel simulator, Nidhogg. Don’t be fooled by the placid screenshot. Nidhogg looks like it’ll be as heavily spirited and almost as brain-buzzingly odd as all of Messhof’s stuff.
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Frogs! King of the Amphibians (bar all the better ones). Frogatto, a complete hefty freeware 16-bit styled platform adventure game “thing”. And it’s very sixteen bit, including a silly tone and a lead character whose primary forms of interacting with the world are tonguing it, swallowing it and then spitting it back out again – so something all the RPS staffers can empathise with (except for the spitting back out again). You can download it for PC, beardy-PC and hair-cut PC from its site. Alternatively, you can also get it on haircut-PC (but flat) and haircut-PC (but a phone) via a shop you have to pay three-quid-at, which sounds rather silly to me, but I’m but a foolish PC owner, so what would I know, eh? Anyway, footage follows…
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Deep in the bowels of Castle Shotgun, in one of the many lost rooms, forgotten testament to Jim’s Escher-like grasp of architecture, a light flickers into existence. It takes a few minutes to fill the scene, the first flutters of red doing little to illuminate, but slowly, as the seconds pass, it becomes stronger, until finally it stays constant. Machinery whirrs into life behind it, something grand, huge, and majestic, returning to operating efficiency.

The RPS TF2 server is back online. And it’s going to be busy.
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Don’t tell anyone, but the real reason I wrote this story was purely so I could use that headline.

Yes, King Of Immersive Sims Warren Spector is to hold a keynote speech at GDC later this month. I’ll be in the crowd, which’ll be exciting. Maybe not as exciting as when I had a wee next to him at E3 once, though. Obviously Warren has broken our fragile little hearts and gone on to make some Mickey Mouse platformer for the Wii, but the theme of his speech is something we’re all likely to thrill to/howl at.
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