By Jim Rossignol on September 4th, 2010.
It’s late at night, and it seems the logical time for news of a free to play Tribes-alike shooter to appear in our inbox. It’s Firefall. It’s being shown at PAX. It’s got a beta sign up over on the official site. It’s being designed by veterans of Tribes and World Of Warcraft. It’s looking pretty good. There’s ten minutes of game footage embedded below. More on this soon, I am certain.
Oh, and watch the whole video. This one escalates.
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By Alec Meer on September 3rd, 2010.
I can’t think of a more charming way to hawk HAWX 2, much as I’d be enormously surprised if the upcoming combat flight simette sequel had anything like the sense of humour of this 8-bit official demake. Or maybe 16-bit. I don’t know. The number doesn’t matter: it’s HAWX re-imagined as a vibrantly silly vertical shmup, replete with power-ups, midi music and implausibly huge boss-planes. As far away from the grey sterneness of the original HAWX as an aeroplane-based game ever could be.
Ratatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatat, etc.
By Alec Meer on September 3rd, 2010.
UPDATE: CONFIRMED! And due for release next year. Wowsers.
Initial picture proof (Thanks to these chaps.) And here’s more. And more. And more. Honestly: it’s real.
Video stream on the ongoing PAX announcement below, including attendees actually playing it with their actual hands. Pigs flew after all.
ORIGINAL:The hot word on the hot street is that 2K are unveiling something hot at that time, live from the showfloor of the Penny-Arcade Expo. Hotter still, it’s hotly-tipped to be Gearbox’s rumoured finishing-up of Duke Nukem Forever. Is it? Maybe/probably/everyone on the internet’s saying it is, so don’t blame us if it isn’t. Look, Randy’s even wearing a relevant t-shirt today, though maybe he’s just a massive prankster.
Find out for yourself by pointing those beautiful eyes of yours at the live-streaming videobox below at 6pm BST, 1pm EST, 10am PST and 7pm CET (It is DNF. Maybe. Probably. Everyone on the internet’s saying it is anyway, so don’t blame us if it isn’t).
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By John Walker on September 3rd, 2010.
Dungeon Siege III reveals its first in-game footage today, and you can see it below. The game being developed by Square Enix and Obsidian asks you to “rebuild the once great Legion and stop Ehb from falling into darkness.” And ohmygosh, it looks a bit brilliant. I really want a party-based hack-n-slash just now. Especially with the narrative sensibilities of Obsidian behind it. Crikey, those attacks look awesome.
By Quintin Smith on September 3rd, 2010.
I’ve figured out why I’m playing StarCraft 2 online. It’s for the rush.
Not the Abrupt-Wave-Of-Units kind of rush. What I mean is that a match of StarCraft 2 will have my heart performing drum solos, and it’ll pluck my taut nerves like violin strings. The game’s been designed for this. What’s forgotten in the talk of how StarCraft pros perform 300 actions per minute is that lesser players simply have to move as fast as they can, and think as fast as they can, in an environment where so much can go wrong at any moment. I’m playing StarCraft 2 because it’s been years since a game has managed to get me quite this excited, and so consistently.
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By John Walker on September 3rd, 2010.
Stardock’s Brad Wardell has given an extraordinary mea culpa in response to the furore surrounding the release of Elemental. Posting on the official Stardock forums, he explains that he doesn’t think people have yet to “fully realize the completeness of Stardock’s fail on Elemental’s launch.” He goes on to say that, “Elemental’s launch is the result of catastrophic poor judgment on my part.” The problem, he says, is not one of having released unfinished or buggy code, but of the development team having lost sight of the game, of “blindness”. It’s a fascinatingly honest comment, and one that must surely affect so many teams after years working on a game. Wardell has gone on to write more on the subject, while still on his holidays, here. In it he explains that there will be no new Stardock game next year – just more Elemental content. He promises more on this matter when he gets back to a proper internet connection.
You can read the original comment below. Don’t forget Kieron’s thoughts on the game, over here.
By Kieron Gillen on September 3rd, 2010.
SvDvorak was first with the news that in the lead up to its release on the 8th, the Amnesia: The Dark Descent demo is out there. Don’t look at it directly! Stay in the shadows! Be careful not to go insane! You can get the game on PC, beardy-PC or haircut-PC from any of these places. You should definitely give this a shot. I’ve only played a couple of hours of Amnesia and it’s already the scariest game of 2010. And new demo, complete with developer voice-over, shows off exactly what the physics allows…
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By RPS on September 3rd, 2010.
So, having run a competition to equip some of our cleverest readers with copies of Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead, we set out to play one of the game’s co-operative missions on a splendid 64-man server provided for us by JestServers. Thanks, Jest!
We picked one of the community-made missions for the game, of which there are many different kinds. This sprawling, multi-objective desert operation would test us to the very limit, write new legends, forge new heroes, and make some people feel a bit silly.
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By Quintin Smith on September 3rd, 2010.
Oh, this is taking me back. Indie browser game Doooors (courtesy of the Indie Games blog) is exactly the kind of taxing puzzle-platformer I used to scratch my tiny head over on the Amiga when I was a kid. If I wasn’t in Los Angeles on business, I’d be inclined to run out for some Wotsits and Opal Fruits. What did American kids snack on back in the 90s? Buttertufts and murder-soda, that’s my guess. Anyway Doooors sees you navigating your way to various crystals using collections of doors which link to one another but can be thrown around like objects. This makes it, mechanically at least, an almost perfect child of Portal and Braid. All the levels are unlocked from the start, too. Give it a go!
By Kieron Gillen on September 3rd, 2010.
[This was originally printed in a slightly different form at the Escapist in 2007. Post-Bioshock 1 and 2, it struck me as a good time to return to what was on Jordan Thomas' mind back then - especially the sections which foreshadow Fort Frolic. And with the darkness obsessed Amnesia due within a week, turning our mind on what lurks in the gaming's dark also struck me as worthwhile]
Light is, as far as fundamental issues in game design goes, an opaque topic for most gamers. In modern 3D engines, it’s something you simply can’t have a level without – or, at least, one which doesn’t involve a lot of bumping into walls. It’s something that effects mood and functionality, so acting as a supporting pillar for both the artistic and mechanistic elements of game design. But when implementing it, what is a designer really thinking about? To shed a little light on the matter, I talked to Jordan Thomas, best known as co-designer of the Cradle in Thief: Deadly Shadows and has been recently been working on a little game called Bioshock.
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By Jim Rossignol on September 3rd, 2010.
That’s the Company Of Heroes Online open beta online, you understand. As promised a while back, Relic’s free-to-play take on their popular strategy is now open to all. It has been announced in full here by Relic’s Greg Wilson, Producer of COHO. The RPS hivemind will be plugging itself into this next week, so we might have some thoughts to broadcast on it soon. But if you fancy some tactical cleverness then you can sign up on the front page link here, this very instant.
