Rock, Paper, Shotgun

UPDATE: Stardock’s own Gamer’s Bill of Rights is no longer to be found on their site, which looked a bit odd. But actually you can still find it on its own site here. So that’s that stuff out the window. Anyway, there’s more… That’d be the Bill of Rights featuring the proud bulletpoint:

“2. Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.”

Fantasy strategy epic Elemental: War of Magic was released by Stardock this week, a day ahead of schedule. We’re still waiting on our code (as are most other online gaming sites, judging by the game’s barren metacritic page), but the metaphorical word on the digital street is that it’s broken to the point of being unplayable, having never convincingly left the beta that was available to pre-order customers. Here’s people being upset right on the RPS forum.

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The past few weeks have seen a familiar contribution to the RPS inbox: various complaints from Eve players about the way CCP is handing their game. We’ve had mails from a number of different pilots, including famed veterans of Eve’s many wars, and also from members of the Council Of Stellar Management, the player-body that CCP set up to act as an ombudsman to their handling of the game world. What are they so upset about? And what can CCP do to address it?

Read on for an explanation, and also some comments from CCP’s Senior Producer for EVE Online, Arnar Hrafn Gylfason.
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Gametrailers have a lovely interview with Valve’s Eric Wolpaw, chatting about Portal 2. They cover all the territory you’ve probably already encountered, accompanied by footage you’ve already seen, but it’s succinct, and fun, discussing both the single player and co-op campaigns. And it’s always entertaining to see someone encountering the “G-Man is Gordon from the future” lie for the first time.

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The 25 minute Red Orchestra: Heroes of Stalingrad GamesCom presentation is now available for your viewing pleasure, and I’ve embedded it in the snug foxhole after the jump. It covers everything except vehicle combat, which I can exclusively reveal that Tripwire may or may not be talking about very soon indeed.

Maybe you don’t know about Red Orchestra. It’s like a normal multiplayer shooter, except set on the Eastern front of WW2 and bleak like an elderly man having a fag break outside a pram factory on the Moon.
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Right! I’m back. Did you miss me? Don’t answer that. Instead, take a look at this alarming amount of catch-uppy mod news. I even mention Black Mesa! Is it old news? Is it new news? Read on to probably be disappointed.
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How do I like to start the day? With a spectacular orgy with a lustful Martian pantheon. However, I’m prepared to settle with a quick flashgame. Today’s is Up Down Ready from the charmingly named Sword Lady & The Viking which just won Best Design In A Game at the recent Freeplay indie festival in Melbourne. Well done them. Basically, it’s a string of mini-games all which you control with the up and down arrows. I’m not too fond with the really boring one which comes first every time. But then again, it features a level based on MC Hammer’s U Can’t Touch This video and has another one where – I believe – it plays a chipcore version of Haddaway’s “What Is Love?” (which always reminds me of the opening gag in Consolevania’s Independent Day special). So it’s hard to be churlish. If your lustful Martian pantheon have left you hanging again, you can play it here. If they haven’t, go orgy!

Clearly the path cleared by Amanita Design, and their wonderful organic point and clickers (Samorost, Machinarium), is one down which others should walk. A team that has followed extremely closely is Springtail Studio, a two-man indie studio who have created Alchemia. To say it’s similar to Samarost would be something of an understatement. And of course in the inevitable direct comparison, it falls short. But it remains a charming, if slightly wayward, little adventure.

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50% of the conversations I had at GamesCom went something along the lines of “have you seen the BioShock Infinite demo? Game of the show!” The other 50% went “God, I can’t believe they’re making another BioShock game. Why can’t they do something new instead?”

There’s point and purpose to the latter, and it has flicked across my mind too. Not forcibly enough, however, to defeat the excitement I felt when I saw the teaser, and redoubled when I saw in-game footage in Cologne last week. Cast your mind back to 2007, when RPS was a tiny digital acorn getting impossibly excited about the prospect of a new high-concept sci-fi game from the creators of System Shock 2. Bioshock was almost all we posted about for a frightening amount of time. Whether the game itself did enough to live up to that early promise, mystery and anticipation seems academic now, to me. I want to get back to that excitement.

Whatever BioShock Infinite turns out to be, it’s an attempt to do that.

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We were sent a copy of Academagia pre-release, and it was rapidly filed in RPS’ “Kieron’s Sort Of Thing” dumper. I had a look at it, bounced off the surface and made a note to return to it, ideally when a demo was out. Since then, we’ve had a steady string of people asking what we made of it, so I manned up, read the tutorials and headed back to Mage College. Because that’s what it is. Academagia is, basically, a complicated Life-Simulator set at a Hogwarts style School. Think Princess Maker with Wizards of Kudos with cantrips. And, frankly, a scarily deep Princess Maker with Wizards.
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German developers Animation Arts are releasing their glossy adventure, Lost Horizons, on the 17th September. With recent news that the game’s gone gold, there’s now a demo that you – but only you – can download. If you’ve got 1.3GB for a demo of an adventure game. I did it, and there’s some thoughts below.

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Kieron and I got a bit worked up over indie robot-battler Plain Sight, and I’ve put a few of our choice quotes (as well as a video of the game) after the jump. What you need to know is that not only has the recent 1.2 patch added both persistent perks and hats (their words: “It worked for TF2, right?”), Plain Sight has just begun a three day Steam sale. It’s now available for $2.

$2. Two dollars. Or £1.60 for us UK types. Excuse me while I bang my forehead against the desk and start gurgling like a broken washing machine. That is no money for a hugely inventive, ice-cool and utterly beautiful multiplayer game (with bot support). You’d be some kind of robo-berk if you didn’t stop whatever you were doing to go and buy it right now.
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