Rock, Paper, Shotgun

So then, it seems that Black Bean’s return to the World Rally Championship series (which has been on hiatus for a few years) really is going all out to challenge the DiRT games as the main contenders in serious off-road racing. The new trailer is very energetic, and is making the game look like a lot of fun, even if it does seem to be lagging behind the Codies games in terms of visual splendor. Go take a look.

The game is out in October, and we’ll be studying its achievements when it arrives.
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It’s time for another chance for all the female-fancying members of the audience to be disturbed by fancying a lady with a very similar name to mine. The third of the four Doctor Who adventure games is now available to download. You can get it from here, on the Internet. The USP of this one is that you actually get to control the Tardis. Those who played the first two are beginning to suspect that’ll mean a minigame or a stealth-sequence where you somehow sneak the Tardis past a temporal anomaly, but you never know.

If you’re of a certain age, you’ll probably be aware of the Lone Wolf books. Basically, the best of the wave of D&D-derived choose-your-own-adventure books which emerged in the wake of Jackson/Livingstone’s Fighting Fantasy. In fact, for my money, the best of the genre. Dever and his collaborators gave Project Aon a licence for the books to be downloaded, so have been able to be played online for a while, in a manual text form. A Project-Aon-er has gone one better. Seventh Sense is a dedicated client (PC/Mac/Linux) for playing the Lone Wolf books, and is up to the first book of the Magnakai series. I may have lost you with the word “Magnakai”, so let’s press on. Why would you want to play them anyway? Allow me to hand over to a vintage piece of Gillen criticism to describe their merits…
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I have mixed feelings about Worms. On the one hand they’re one of my favourite invertebrates, down there in the mud. But on the other, well, the game of Worms was one I was forced to play by my chums for almost a year. Every day they would come around and say “hey, is your PC on? Perhaps we could play the turn-based comedy side-scrolling tactics games, Worms?” Actually they didn’t put it like that, they just insisted that I “get worms on,” which sounds much cruder. Those brutes. Anyway, you can take it upon yourself to imagine what playing Worms for an entire year must do to a man by playing the demo for Worms Reloaded, which is available now on Steam. The full game is out too, should you wish to take the experience further.

I posted recently about the reappearance of Postal III – a game that’s seemingly been in development for seven years, and still hasn’t committed to a release date. I also pointed out that we’ve seen relatively little footage for a long time, and that which we have seen hasn’t really shown us much of the controversy that has made the series far more famous than it probably deserves to be. So thank goodness, eh, because a collection of new videos have finally arrived. They’re all collected by Gametrailers, and are below. And you should be warned, the footage contains apple scrumping.

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There’s a charity-based theme to my posts today, it seems. You know Chime? Zoe Mode-developed 360 casual music-based puzzle game developed pro bono for the OneBigGame (meaning some money goes to Save the Children and the Starlight Children’s Foundation)? Features music by Philip Glass, Orbital, Moby and other folks? Always reminded me of Qix with a bit of a beat? Quite good, apparently? Anyway, it’s coming to the PC on Steam, with the addition of the ever-lovable Still Alive. Should be out on September 6th and its pre-order page exists. Sadly, you can’t pre-order at the time of writing, as the price isn’t up, but it’s the thought that counts. 5% of the purchase price will go to OneBigGame which… wait, 5%? Well, better than nothing, I suppose and the game is pretty nifty. Here’s the PC trailer…
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You get given a whole lot of junk at games conferences. By junk I do mean junk – nasty pens, ill-fitting t-shirts, mysterious plastic shapes, lanyards, low-capacity flash drives, ugly posters… Most of it doesn’t live past the hotel bin. The CD Projekt RED guys, however, came up absolute trumps, combining splendid form with genuinely useful function. Rather than providing a biro and a CD-R full of screenshots, they decided to create an entire alternate Witcher game, stick it in a box, and give it to everyone who came to see the demo.

This is The Witcher 2: Papercraft Of Kings, and it’s the best press kit I’ve ever been given.
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I’ve been meaning to post about this for a couple of weeks now. The ever-busy Arcen Games are working on another micro-expansion for their AI War: Fleet Command. It’s currently in Beta, and if you order now for four dollars (or about two quid sixty) you gain access to it. Planned for a September release, AI War: Children of Neinzul will add 36 new ships, 6 new AI types, 3 new minor-alien-factions, two extra map styles and more. Perhaps it’ll even add some Iron for Quinns. All sounds lovely and affordable, even before you realise the twist. All the profits for this expansion pack will be donated to the Childs Play charity. Arcen are making no money from it whatsoever. Crikey. Here’s the trailer for the last expansion, to give you a taste, but it’s a game that’s well worth investigating in its expansive demo. In short: it was one of the strongest indie strategy games of last year.
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Metagun is a game about a man who fires a gun that fires men who fire guns. At you. Which would rather seem to defeat the point, but as you can’t fire bullets, only little men, you need their bullets to destroy stuff and open up pathways for you. Lure the deadly bullets towards whatever you need to be shot, then duck out the way before you end up sporting more holes than Swiss nano-cheese. It’s about progress (and egress) via near-suicide, essentially. Then stuff gets bigger, and deadlier.

Oh yes, and it was created for the indie goldmine that is the latest Ludum Dare gamejam by a chap called Notch, one of the one-man Minecraft team. He’d like to show you his working. You can watch the entire 48 hour creation process of Metagun below, cunningly compressed into just six minutes.

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Paradox Interactive, publisher of Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Magicka, Mount & Blade and many other fine PC-exclusive titles has announced its very own online networking service will be entering beta later this year. Entitled Paradox Connect, it’s designed to give Paradox fans more of an online identity, with achievements, a virtual gamer card and an online collection of their games.

Paradox has stated the move is absolutely not a form of DRM since the whole service will be entirely optional, and that it ties in with a shift in the company towards online games and downloadable content. They also say that if you buy Paradox’s games on Steam, the achievements will be making an appearance as Steam achievements. Bandwagon jumping then, but a leisurely, sensible kind of bandwagon jumping where the bandwagon comes to a complete stop and lowers an access ramp first. Full press release after the jump, and an interview with Paradox CEO Fred Wester coming up next week.
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Comrade Hobbes forwards :the game: to me. “It’s not as clever as it thinks,” says Hobbes, ” but it’s cute enough”. And he’s not wrong. :the game: is a series of videogame jokes, which aren’t as clever as it thinks it is, but are pretty cute. You can play it here.