Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Here is a demo. It is of WRC, the official 2010 FIA World Rally Championship game. It’s just shy of 1GB. There are details of what it contains below. There, now those haunting crying eyes aren’t at the top of the site.

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So Double Fine’s Tim Schafer said Activision’s Bobby Kotick was a prick and then Bobby Kotick said Tim Schafer was rubbish and he’d never even met him anyway and then Tim Schafer said Bobby Kotick was stupid and mean, and before that Bobby Kotick said EA were rubbish and mean and then EA’s Jeff Brown said Bobby Kotick was rubbish and mean and now I don’t know what to think about anything and everyone seems mean and angry and I’m so confused about who’s a goodie and who’s a baddie and I wish people would just make nice games instead of calling each other names across the internet.

For God’s sakes! How does this help anything? And we wonder why the games industry doesn’t get taken seriously by the mainstream media.

(Pic source)

But which safehouseman? Or safehousewoman? That’s your problem, bucko. Your problem to solve as you play the latest DLC for Left 4 Dead on October 5. Or! As you play the latest DLC for Left 4 Dead 2 on October 5. Yes, yes, they’re doing that. All is fair in love and released-slightly-too-soon-zombie-sequels.
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Which isn’t much of a story, until Kotaku reveal that the staffmember is in fact Ron “Monkey Island” Gilbert, being hired by Tim “Monkey Island” Schafer. The interview is really worth reading for the gags alone, but basically Gilbert was working in the Double Fine office (As he hates working from Home) and Schafer offered him the gig to make what they were talking about. This fits neatly into Doublefine’s current many-small-games biz plan. RPS will look forward to the announcement of the game, doing several posts until the fact it’s a console exclusive is revealed and then rolling our eyes and wondering why we bother writing about Double Fine when they bit our pretty red heart in two, Daddy, Daddy, You Bastard, etc.

This excerpt from a hefty interview with Good Old Game’s Guillaume Rambourg caught my eye…

“The thing is, I believe we are running after roughly 200 good old games, and then I think the PC catalogue will be pretty much packed. There are only so many good old games. 450, 500 and then I think we’ll be done.”

Which does make sense, as long as the GoG wanted to keep its vaguely curatorial bent. He says their current aim is to add one key publisher per quarter and speculates it’ll take another year or two to get the full array of what they’d like to have. That said, if they’ve already included bloody Blood Rayne 2 in there may make you raise an eyebrow at what GoG considers both good and old.

Another Hurrah/Bah event for our books: F1 2010 is out, and has topped the UK All Formats chart! Well done, Codemasters. Hurrah. Except, oh dear, the game is also hideously bugged on all formats. Bah. The Codemasters technical forums make for quite some reading. Worth noting the really killer ones, too. Additionally, I’ve been playing the game, so you can read on for some more hi-octane considerations.
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My Dwarf Fortress introduction & story continues! Whoever thought Onionbog would only last a matter of hours currently has egg on their face, I reckon.
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Perhaps you’re a bit like me, and when you hear about everyone else getting obsessively stuck into an obscure indie game you assume it’s not your sort of thing, and wait for the fuss to die down. I know I’ve been like that about Dwarf Fortress, never even giving it a go so sure I am that I won’t like it. And I was dangerously close to adding Minecraft to that list. My housemates were playing it, my colleagues were playing it – everyone in the universe was banging on about it. At a certain point it becomes tempting just to be an iconoclastic prick and not play it so you can say you haven’t. The noise is offputting. But during a recent RPScursion to London, Kieron showed me his Minecraft world, and despite needing to stay for another seven or so hours, I really just wanted to get on a train back to Bath and start playing. Because Minecraft, I realised, comes incredibly close to being a game I’ve wanted to exist my entire life. So I, eventually, have a request.

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The unusual-looking post-apocalyptic RTS Apox has just entered beta. Having caught our attention with its fancy maps, flamethrowers, and promises of 32-player matches, we thought it might be a good idea to have a chat with the people making it. So I spoke to Blue Giant Interactive’s Mark Currie about the company, the game, Company Of Heroes, and their excitement about developing this RTS. Read on for splendid details.
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Finally watched the latest footage from Bulletstorm, which – like last time - is producer Tanya Jessen having a good old yabber over the last demo. In this case, from the Tokyo game-show. This time, we’re weapon centric, talking about how they’ve concentrated on making sure the gun that fires enormous cannonballs is the sort of enormous, cannonball-firing gun they want. Go footage!
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I spent this weekend playing mentalcakes zombie apocalypse simulator Dead Rising 2 on my console-toy, since it’s not out on PC until Friday. Guess what? It’s great! I have yet to stop laughing at the use of highly ineffectual weapons (rolled-up newspapers, bottles of orange juice) against zombies to no effect. It’s better than the first game, too.

Are you excited? If not, there’s a new developer walkthrough trailer you can see right after the jump. It’s a kind of whistle-stop 4 minute tour of some of the game’s features, climaxing with a neat trick involving a propane tank, some fireworks, a box of nails and a lizard mask.
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