Rock, Paper, Shotgun

No, it’s not Turbine being particularly vindictive to RPS. While the free-to-play reboot of the MMO is kicking off in the rest of the world it’s been delayed in Europe. Why? Codemaster’s Michael Rowland says to Eurogamer: “Given the complexities and challenges faced in the preparation and implementation of the new store to work within our infrastructure, we feel more time is needed to deliver the high level of service our players have quite rightly come to expect.” which seems to be a bit “our dog ate our homework”. While the full launch is today, the early start is underway (for beta and previous players). You can download the normal client here and the high-res texture one here. The Beta client won’t work, basically. What’s it like? Well, let me direct you at the impressions article we wrote during the Beta. We’ll bring news of the Europe release when Codemasters’ dog regurgitates their servers.

Here’s news of a cute little project – a German amateur team, Vampyre Games, are recreating Maniac Mansion in 3D. Called Meteor Mess 3D, presumably in an attempt to confuse LucasArts’ lawyers, they’re using the self-made Gamestudio Adventure System to rebuild the game in all three dimensions. The project’s been running since 2008, and should be released this year. And there’s already a demo.

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I started the day over at Five Players where Emily extols her love for free-to-play Pokemon-esque MMO Monster Forest. Specifically, Monster Forest’s adverts. They’re really quite the thing. “This is the closest you’ll ever come to a fusion between professional video games advertisement and a long monologue introducing porn,” says Emily, “It’s the kind of video that wasn’t even recorded in a studio. It just manifested itself like that video in The Ring. In seven days H.R. Pufnstuf is going to crawl out of your laptop and force himself upon you in a tight, lingering hug.” Go read what else she has to say. Some of the videos and my editorial notes follow…
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TimeGate have released a trailer for their sequel to Section 8, Prejudice, and you can take a look at that below. Seems like they missed a trick by not calling it Section 9, but who am I to judge the naming exploits of the wider world when I work for a site called Rock, Paper, Shotgun? The trailer shows some lavish new maps, lots more thunderous robo-biff, including the big bots throwing each other about, and dudes getting stabbed. So I think we can expect more of the same only, as the trailer insinuates, it might have evolved a bit.
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Jon Shafer is a gamer who did the impossible. In January 2005 he was a modder and an active member of the Civilization fan community. Today, he’s the Lead Designer on Civilization V, out on the 24th of this month. I met up with Jon today to ask him about boardgames, how he managed to reach this position in just a few years, what alternatives there were to the improvements coming in Civ V, and seriously how did he manage to reach that position so fast. Blackmail? Gotta be blackmail, surely. Jon found out that Sid Meier coded a satantic message into Railroads! or something.

Click through for the interview. The truth will (probably) shock you.
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You know what I love? Turn-based strategy games! I can’t get enough of them. Ohnowait, I’ve confused me with someone else. But I’m extremely assured by people both taller and wiser than me that others like them a lot. And it will be with no small clamour of excitement that they hear the news that the team behind Neptune’s Pride, Iron Helmet, have announced their new game. It’s called Blight Of The Immortals, and you can expect many more informed details from everyone else who works for this site when they see what a job I’ve made of it.

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I awake from a seven hour post-food poisoning slumber feeling beyond awful, but am instantly cheered by the latest in Valve’s unending stream of Portal 2 tickles. This time, it’s a lot more meaningful than a snatch of puzzles, environments or Ricky Gervais’ mate. This time, it’s the co-op in full vidaction – and, quite clearly, cast-iron confirmation of what the next Valve plush toys’n't-shirts we’ll all be squeeing helplessly at will be. Go Laurel, go Hardy.

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Quinns trundles up to North London again to sit around our second-rate microphone and do another cast of pod. We talk about everything from Amnesia to Civ 5 to Starcraft 2 to answering your lot twitter questions. You can download it directly from here or subscribe to it by RSS with this. Abstractly you can subscribe onon iTunes here, but it appears to be broken now. Oh noes! A breakdown of what we cover follows…
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That’s got to be one of the more opaque headlines I’ve written in my life. Look at it! It’s just a collection of words, strung together like clothes on a washing line. Man, this job*.

So the Stuff packs are little chunks of DLC for The Sims 3 that retail at some £7.50 each. The first, High-End Loft, added a catalogue of sleek, expensive designer belongings to the game. The second, Fast Lane, comes out tomorrow (or, two days ago if you live in North America) and adds both cars and belongings for “four different fast-lane lifestyles: racing, intrigue, rockabilly, and classic luxury”. At last! A game that lets me accurately recreate my intriguing rockabilly lifestyle. Launch video after the jump.

*Is awesome!
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BlueGiant Interactive, an indie studio apparently based in Hyderabad, India, send word of their debut game, Apox. It’s a post-apocalyptic RTS with some fun features, such as unit posture, veterancy, and on-the-fly ad hoc stuff like being able to place different units in vehicles. With 32-players. Which sounds like a lot for an RTS. Yeah, it’s looking like it might sit down the more offbeat end of the RTS spectrum, and it’s got a lot of flamethrowers, as you can see in the debut video below. It’s even going to ship with a map editor and 100 (count ‘em!) maps. But that’s not all, because they’re also taking beta applications now. Go here if you’re interested in that. And why wouldn’t you be, if you are not John Walker?
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Ooh, I just noticed GameTrailers grabbed a developer walkthrough for MMO-shooter hybrid Firefall, which I’ve posted below. It shows a bunch of the weapons and abilities in action, explains how the missions and freeform stuff works, and goes into some detail on the game’s hub areas. The footage explains how those provide you with new weapons and equipment, and shows how battles take place around them. It’s worth noting that it’s going to be a cash-item driven free-to-play game, but developers Red 5 have said that the cash items won’t produce unfair benefits for individuals. It’ll be interesting to see how that pans out, and we’ll be talking Red 5 soon, so we can get some more detail on that and the rest of the game.

But going back to what I was saying about the quality of free online games appearing on PC now, well, when you see stuff like this, it’s beginning to feel like a big deal. If Blizzard really are making a shooter for their next MMO, as was rumoured last year, then they must be looking at games like this with great interest.
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