Rock, Paper, Shotgun

While the rest of the world seems to have been turning on the axis of Starcraft, I’ve been playing Men Of War: Assault Squad with RPS chums Phil and Dartt. It’s mostly excellent. The game is in beta at the minute, with a busy contingent of testers playing both the co-op and versus modes of this new skirmish-based Men Of War game. That beta test is set to expand very soon, which is an exciting time. (Which reminds me, we will have some beta accounts to give away soon, so watch for that.) I’ve already written a bit about the game here, but I don’t think I really explained how the game feels to play, and why it has take up so much of my attention. Read on and I will try to articulate some of my excitement.
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Amongst the PAX footage collated by VG247 is another gameplay clip from the apparently-out-on-Dec 7th Tron Evolution. It’s looking… well, a little like what I’d imagine the early 10s equivalent of late 80s Ocean would have done if given a Tron licence. Sections of action which hark to the key elements of the film’s iconic resonance (Pardon? – Ed) with a bit of platforming thrown in the side. Footage follows…
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Could these be the worst screenshots ever? Well, no. PCG still talk about the time Kieron handed in a review that included a shot of some sand, with the caption “The game has a lot of sand”, and I once sent a review with a shot of the game’s loading screen. Also, Kotaku poster Stephen Totilo has an excuse other than laziness- he took these shots during a PAX presentation of Aliens: Colonial Marines where he was sat far to the right. The point of all this is (probably) that Aliens Colonial Marines is still coming out, despite Gearbox “halting” its development two years ago. At the time, Gearbox prez Randy Pitchford said that wasn’t the same as cancelling a game. Did you believe him? I can’t remember if I did.

Speaking of Aliens, did you hear that Ridley Scott’s filming a two-part prequel to Alien in 3D? Kieron mentioned it in the channel earlier. Interesting times, for aliens.

Ever since I visited the ill-fated Iron Lore in 2005, I’ve wanted to find the words to talk about a peculiar response I had to their level editor. It’s taken me this long to gain the vocabulary needed to even take a stab at it, primarily gained/cribbed from the essays and thoughts of film theorist André Bazin. (Whom I confess I first discovered through Linklater’s excellent Waking Life, rather than from the half a degree of film studies I slept through in ’98.) And so, smuggled onto the internet in a large wooden retrospective article on Titan Quest, my thoughts on the teleological nature of level editors. I don’t know how successful I’ve been, since I’m massively out of my depth without a useful background in either philosophy or semiotics. The EG commenters appear to have opted for pretending the article was only one page long, which is understandable. I’m nervous of what happens if someone who knows what they’re talking about responds. There’s a quote from it below, since I’ve waffled so much up here.

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Nothing escapes the omniscient eye of the internet, and so it wasn’t long before the hands-on Duke play at PAX was uploaded by winged technologists to our glowing rectangles. You can bear witness to some of the activities of the man in shades, below. It seems to be some kind of action game, focused on the use of firearms. The perspective, sensibly, is set from the view of the protagonist. There doesn’t seem to be any way to talk to the monsters, aside from perhaps making some caustic quips that are basically rhetorical.

So yes. Duke footage.
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Remember Bronzemurder? It was a Dwarf Fortress after-action report told in illustrations by New Zealand artist Tim Denee. You don’t? God, is that smell you? Isn’t it a little early to be drinking? Nevermind. The point is he got commissioned by an Australian mag PC PowerPlay to do another one, Oilfurnace, and it’s now available on his blog. Again, in true Dwarf Fortress style it’s a tale of bravery and ingenunity that nevertheless ends horribly. Go read. And, if you like it, go buy a print. You might as well browse Mr. Denee’s Ten Feats of Ernest Hemingway while you’re over there, too.

It’s the start of the week. Time to warm up your gaming muscles with – perhaps appropriately – a game set in a gym. A GYM OF DEATH. Papa Voodoo pointed us at Treadmillasaurus Rex, where you play the titular dino on a treadmill, dodging spikes rolling towards you. Every few seconds the wheel of awesome spins choosing a complication, from relevant things like speeding up the treadmill or tightening the laser-beams around you to less relevant things like hat-extension and confetti boosts to much craved but elusive things like “win the game”. It’s ultimately a short life for this thunder lizard, but one where his cardio-vascular fitness is never in question. Go play!

Sundays are for recovering from a wedding. Which means that Saturday afternoons are for getting shaved, dressed and compiling a list of the fine (mostly) games related reading from across the week, while trying to avoid linking to some noisy pop I’ve been spinning. Go!

• The Escapist picks up the thorny issue of inclusion in their latest issue. The most obviously eye-catching piece was Chuck Wendig’s The Pasty White Person Is King, which – amongst other things – considers how inadequate most games character creators are in terms of creating ethnic diversity. As in, basically, you end up with a white person in body paint.
• Alexander Moore was lead Designer on Aliens Vs Predator and is now at Bizarre Creations. He’s started writing a series of posts on how games are made, aimed to be digested by pretty much everyone. You can follow them here.

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Game Informer are actually having a worryingly impressive run of covers. Following the stark Batman: Arkham City ones last month, this time they’ve got three fantastic period-styled Bioshock Infinite ones - two above, and one highlighting the be-hatted “Handyman”. Go over to Joystiq to have a nose at both the final versions and various work-in-progresses.

I’ve got a busy weekend ahead of me, so I’ll keep it brief. I still love you though, so as always this is the cream of the digital crops, the highlights of what the digital merchants across the internet have got to tease your credit card numbers out of you. It’s the Bargain Bucket, and it’s cheap games o’clock. SavyGamer.co.uk has you covered for cheap games across all formats throughout the week.
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Last night at PAX, Valve released a new collection of co-op screenshots from Portal 2. I got to thinking that you might like to look at them. In response to this thought, I’ve put them up on popular PC gaming website Rock, Paper, Shotgun. They’re below. As usual, click on them for largess. And largeness.

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