Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Chime has come from the land of not-PC to the land of PC, via Steam with proper geek-power Still-Alive to round off its fine line up of bald techno-men (and Philip Glass). So, with controller abandoned and mouse held mightily in my paw, I have a look at this music-adorned charity-infused puzzler and tell you Wot I think…
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While there’s no news on APB, the BBC broke news yesterday that the administrators of Realtime Worlds have found a buyer for MyWorld. Staff had been kept on MyWorld in hope of them doing exactly that, so you have to chalk this up in the pro column for them. Who’s the buyer? It’s a secret. “One hundred per cent confidentiality has been imposed by the company.” said the administrators about this mysterious American company, “MyWorld has been sold and unfortunately we cannot disclose any further details of the sale.” Who is it? Well, the obvious guess would be someone working in the social-networking sphere though sources speaking exclusively inside our heads tell us it’s the Bavarian Illuminanti. We must ignore the voices, else we kill again.

World Of Tanks seems to be making quite a following for itself. Half my old Eve corporation seem to be wrapped up in it, while RPS’ own tanketeers are to be found organising and discussing their exploits over in this thread on the forum. It’s quite literally a game of tanks. Small tanks with speed and agility, big tanks with guns like God’s own howitzer. They fight crime each other (although thinking about it, I quite fancy a game where petty criminals are hunted down by a division of Panzers. Oh God That Mugger Is Doomed, I would call it.) Most significant of all to your brainthinks should be that World Of Tanks free, and has some depth for you to explore in the endless possible loadouts and configurations that are possible across the ludicrous number of tanks on offer. You should probably give the ongoing beta a nose.

The most recent trailer, featuring the heaviest hitting tanks, appears below.
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I wake to Shacknews-Killer-Bee Alice O’Connor saying “Everyone who said they’d buy VVVVVV when it hit Steam, I’m holding you to that.” So, yes, VVVVVV is now nestling in the info-hive of Seattle’s Valve Corporation and can be released into your desktop micro-brain for three-fifty at the moment. That’s a small price to pay for a pint in London. More relevantly, it’s also a small price to pay for one of this year’s definitive indie-games. If you want more information, I direct you at our venerable VVVVVV Wot I Think and interview with creator Terry Cavanagh. And, of course, there’s the demo if you want to do the old try before you buy thing.

The wait for Splash Damage’s hybrid single/multiplayer shooter Brink feels oh-so-long now. From mutterings to concept art to proof of concept to concept to ooh-that-looks-ace to last month’s hands-on sessions (which RPS hasn’t actually yet had, mostly due to haphazard GamesCom scheduling on our part), the near-future team-barney has very much been made flesh. It’s been a long time coming, but all of sudden we’re theoretically now just a couple of seasons away from release. Spring 2011? Oh, that’d be grand. Here’s why the big-faced factional warfare game matters to its creators….
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Despite the PC’s unassailable status as undying gaming platform with an uncountable number of titles in its history, the exciting/chilling march of operating system progress has seen successive versions of Windows cruelly dispense with support for the golden, vital past. Most recently, the otherwise fairly splendid Windows 7 threw out Direct Draw support, leaving a slew of Windows 95-era games left in the emulation cold. A man has fixed this, and thus you should worship him.
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Frictional’s first full-length game, and a successor to their Penumbra series, comes out tomorrow. Amnesia is a combination of classic haunted castle horror with their unique first-person adventuring. Is it good? Is it scary? (Let me give you a clue: flipping yes, and oh good grief yes.) Read on to find out just exactly Wot it is that I Think.

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Friend of RPS Siri mentioned Ka-bloom to me, which reminded me I previously wanted to check it out. And it is a nifty, beautifully presented puzzle-game with the standard flashgame Role-playing game elements. In short, create chains of crystals and feed them to your flower-thingy. All those are technical terms. Made by Strongman games who, if memory serves, were the pair who cornered me at World of Love and ranted so much Terry VVVVVV Cavanagh went away and hid. And then bemused Jim on the way out by swearing at him repeatedly for being Jim Rossignol. Ah, if only journos could hold grudges. Go play here or watch the trailer below…
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UPDATE: Codes sent out! Thanks for entering.

Codes for you! But only ten. We’re going to have to devise some manner of competition to distribute them in a useful way. Head below the click for details on that. But what is Chime? Well it’s a musical puzzle game where the levels are set to soundtracks by Orbital’s Phil Hartnoll, Moby, Philip Glass, Markus Schulz and in the PC version, Jonathan Coulton. It’s pretty compulsive, and it’s also been produced by the initiative OneBigGame, so a chunk of the price of the game goes to charity. Hurrah for mildly addictive gaming philanthropy. I’ll write some more about it later in the week, probably. Anyway, head below for that competition.
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Okay, so wrap your head around this. IGN have done a short feature where they talk to Bioware Executive Producer Casey Hudson about the studio’s stat harvesting in Mass Effect 2. For their part, Bioware have revealed some of those stats, and some of them are genuinely mad. More people chose the Soldier class for Shepherd than all the other classes combined. Players skipped an average of 15% of the game’s dialogue. Two PC owners finished their copies of the game 28 times.

Click through for the full list of stats, including some interesting differences between 360 and PC gamers.
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After the mild success of our previous adventures in Arma II: Operation Arrowhead, we’ve decided to do one more event on the borrowed RPS server before it is placed on a flaming barge and pushed out to sea. The event will take place this Saturday, 11th August September, from 8pm BST. I will post a new password in this thread half an hour before we start. First come first served and such.