Rock, Paper, Shotgun

A pretty major declaration of interests here: I worked on the Director’s Cut of Broken Sword, now available on Steam and GamersGate, from concept to release, and thus am in no position to tell you whether it’s any good or not. But it’s great. Especially the new diary and hint system – I mean, the quality of writing there is just exceptional. Really stand-out stuff, a league ahead of anything else that’s ever existed. Anyway, that aside, this version originally developed for Nintendo DS and Wii, then iPhone, is now available on PC. It has a whole new opening story, interwoven with the original beginning, this time giving a background to Nico and building on the main plot.

There’s also new artwork from Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons Some of the puzzles have been much improved, including the legendary goat puzzle, and as mentioned there’s now a rather fine hint system that will give you progressively more clear clues should you get stuck, and a diary that updates as you progress, reminding you of what’s been happening, and including whichever jokes I could sneak in. Oh, and since I’m declaring that interest, I’ll also add that I got paid for my work at the time, and get nothing at all from any sales. So there. Details below.

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Telltale have revealed the game they were teasing last week, and it’s not the Back To The Future series that was announced yesterday. It’s called Poker Night at the Inventory, and features a gaming all-star cast.

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GameTrailers, who we do like to thank for their seemingly infinite video bandwidth, have snaffled the scoop on Shogun 2: Total War in-game footage, and I’ve posted it below. The video features The Creative Assembly’s chirpy Kieran Bridgen and AI programmer Ingimar Gudmunsson talking through one of the real-time battle sequences. It shows off the new detailed unit models, the general’s speeches, the massively detailed new battlefields and buildings, the weather effects, and, of course, lots of tiny men who won’t be going home to their virtual wives at the end of the day.

You are going to want to watch this.
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So as we previously mentioned Zoe Mode are bringing out their charity-helping puzzle Chime on Steam, and it’s now available to preorder. But they’ve also tuned it to their new target audience, because the additional level on PC is Still Alive, the track from the end of Portal, written by Jonathan Coulton and performed by Ellen McLain. You can see how that works as a puzzle level in a video which I have posted below. Lovely.
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A new F3AR video’s surfaced from PAX, talking about how the franchise is being shifted from Monolith to developers Day 1, mixed with a bunch of footage of the game with some very excitable editing. Check it out after the jump.

What’s happening with F3AR? Well, they’re asking “how they can evolve this franchise, and capture the essence of what it really is, but growing it into something that’s bigger, that’s more amazing and delivers a better experience for the consumer.” I’ve just run that through the Corporate-O-Tron, and it translates as… “More of the same”? Oh, well.
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September 7th is looking like a bad day for people find themselves bleeding from every orifice whenever Bioware release Downloadable Content. They’re going to be painfully jettisoning twice the fluids they may have expected, because as well as Lair of the Shadow Broker for Mass Effect 2, they’re releasing Witch Hunt for Dragon Age: Origins which basically takes your Warden out for the final part of the story where you find out whether Morrigan ever decided to start wearing sensible clothes. Trailer follows, which includes spoilers…
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3D Realms’ semi-erstwhile boss George Broussard mysteriously tweeted a picture of the above earlier. In other news, he once said Duke Nukem Forever would be complete “when pigs fly.” In other other news, strong rumour continues to mount that Gearbox have picked up of the broken bits of Duke Nukem Forever and may reveal that they’ve put them back together again at PAX. Lummee.

Winged porcine squadron, launch!

Catching up with the gaming news from my latest bout of travelling too much, I discover from VG247 that Bioware have released a trailer for the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC out on September 7th. It’s basically continuing Asari Liara’s adventures involving that most shadowy of brokers, the Shadow Broker. It also promises to allow you to continue a relationship with her, which probably means do her. It costs 800 Bioware points, which translates as some money. And here’s the trailer!
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Perhaps there’s no need to even tell you that a demo of Vera Blanc: Ghost In The Castle is out, as you’ll no doubt have already eagerly downloaded it by now. No? Oh, well then I’ll tell you about this detective game as best I can.

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Remember the above campaign we ran in the golden age of Rock Paper Shotgun? Well, in the most recent letter from the Mythic Producer Carrie Gouskos she revealed the coming of player controlled Skaven. Not as a faction, but in part of a new Skaven-themed Realm-versus-realm zone, where both Destruction and Order players get a chance to play THE MOST SPLENDID OF WARHAMMER RACES. This makes me suspect something akin to Lord of the Rings Monster-play may be in the offing. The rat-related details are found in full below…
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OilRush looks interesting, although its website causes my browser to chug for some reason. It’s a naval strategy game from Unigine, who I believe were previously a tech company trying to sell their own middleware. They’re now developing this game based on a water-world of the future, in which ships and aircraft battle for control of a series of oilrigs. I take it from the mention of “the Tower Wars genre” that there’s an element of tower defence in there too. There’s a nifty trailer out for it, which I’ve posted below, which demonstrates Unigine’s ability to have quite a lot of aircraft blowing each other up at the same time. It’s planned for a release later this year, and is possibly worth keeping an eye on. (And yes. Oops on the timing.)
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