Rock, Paper, Shotgun

We call this one “Stairway to Heaven.”

If you missed days 1 and 2, you’ll find the collected Mine The Gap here. And if you’ve noticed that these screenshots look different, it’s because I’ve installed the Painterly Pack, which gives MineCraft ever-so-slightly grittier visuals. I’ll experiment with a different texture pack tomorrow, too.
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The Doctor Doom of the games industry, Activision’s Bobby Kotick, has made more assertions about how you’re going to be spending your groats in the years to come. This time, it’s on-demand videogame movies, distributed solely online, direct to your eye-holes. Interested?
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Much of this footage has been seen before, but I’m going to post it anyway, as I enjoyed the ludicrous bombast of this clip-mash from the ongoing Tokyo Game Show. Japanese dialogue rather than a clutch of Michael Ironsidealikes seems to add to the gravitas, and the Inception-esque music is so achingly dramatic that I eventually broke down in laughter. Not in a negative way, just in an OH THE INTENSITY way.
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After the eyebrow-raising price the original game came out at, I was expecting to be asked to pay full whack for the Blood Bowl Legendary Edition. Mr Dixon tells me that Cyanide have announced that anyone who owns a previous edition of Blood Bowl will get 30% off the new version. You just enter your code into the shop, which will be up in October. Better, they say the game’s price will be about $40 – which, if true and applied universally, is a better deal than the original. Those who picked up the game for four quid in last weekend’s Steam sale will be pleased, I suspect. Unless they hate it.

It turns out that the disembodied eye of Gamespot picked up this one with an off-screen wobblecam, and you can check it out below. It does look fairly entertaining, even if the Vietnam setting doesn’t quite grab me. It’s one of those game themes that I just don’t connect with. I feel a bit like the Vietnam war needs to be dealt with in a different way. An Apocalypse Now RPG or something. Anyway, go watch.
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SOE has today launched its Star Wars MMO Clone Wars Adventures, which becomes the second Star Wars virtual world, and thus neatly pips The Old Republic to the post. Aimed at the younger Star Wars audience that’s thrilled to the Clones Wars series, toys and official stationery – or so I understand it – it’s a free to play* mini-game-based place that appears to be roughly analogous to Free Realms. It being Star Wars, expect crowds despite the rugrat-orientation. Details below. To be honest, there’s a lot of promise from this – yeah, it’ll be free from the grown-up roleplaying that such as we might demand, but creating a bunch of (hopefully) engaging interactive contact from a virtual world that’s achieved some resonance with kids is no bad thing. Well, perhaps apart from that “massive amounts of cash to George Lucas” stuff.

Sign up here! Includes character customisation and stuff!

* Microstranscation**-based
** Transaction
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As much as it’s tempted to use the photo from today’s earlier PES demo, so cementing RPS’ reputation as confused men in a land of foot-to-ball, I’m going to resist. EA have released a demo of their game. It features foot-to-ball. An exhibition match with 3 minute halves in Real Madrid’s home stadium, Estadio Santiago Bernabeu. Apparently. Here’s a trailer.
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Yes yes, oh yes. THQ’s announced that the unlovely Games For Windows Live will be dropped from the next installment of Dawn of War II (that’ll be Retribution, which includes Orks in singleplayer and a mystery new race) and from Space Marine. Which is great news; not purely because GFWL sucks like a sucky thing born on the first of suck ninety-suckity-suck, but also because DOWII requiring both a GFWL login and a Steam login was a right old pain in the wobbly bits.

Retribution and Space Marine alike will be using Steamworks instead, which I think most of us would agree will be an infinitely preferable way of doing multiplayer, chatting and achievements. Sadly the two existing Dawn of War II titles remained saddled with Microsoft’s code-beast, but at least the future’s bright.

In a move industry spokespeople are calling “literally quite nice”, IGN Entertainment, the company whose portfolio of sites includes GameSpy, GameStats and- yes! IGN, is going to offer six months of free office space beside its editorial staff in IGN San Francisco to independent game developers. IGN will get no subsequent stake in either the developers themselves nor the games they make, though presumably the IGN staffers will be peering over the cubicle dividers like Hollywood spies, not to mention getting exclusive reveals, interviews and so on. Any developer with seven employees or less can apply.

Here at Rock Paper Shotgun, we don’t like to be outdone. Upon hearing this news we had a shadowy meeting in the highest tower of the Fortress of RPSolitude, and have decided to make the following offer: Independent PC developers! We want to help. If you are interested in receiving a biscuit, compliments of RPS, no strings attached, email your name and postal address to the address at the top of this post with the subject line “I am poor, and would love a biscuit!”

There is only one packet of biscuits. The biscuits will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. This is a real offer. That is all.

EDIT: The biscuit recipients have been selected. Maybe IGN can help the rest of you.

This week I’m playing indie mega-hit MineCraft. Want to know whether you should be playing MineCraft too? Have a read of my adventures and see whether they (figuratively) set your heart alight. Day 1 can be found here. As for Day 2, it features swordplay, spelunking and strange explosions, plus I accidentally trap myself in a trap of Bond villain proportions.
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I’m sure that everyone will agree, what we were hoping the man behind the blistering Boss Rush would do next would be a game about making haikus. Our hopes are answered. Haiku Hero basically challenges you to make haikus (Three-line poems in a 5, 7, 5 sylables structure – English Teacher Ed) against a time limit. To make it trickier, as you turn up the difficulty level, it sets limits – like having it rhyme, include set words or only have words with a certain number of syllables. Here’s Chris Cornell’s designers notes. “Since it has already lead to one of my playtesters filling my inbox with Cthulhu-themed haikus for a week, I consider it a win,” he informs me, “I’ve decided that this subgenre should be officially called “Haiku-hlus”. Inform the authorities!” Consider the authorities informed. Go get poetositing, gaming sorts!