Rock, Paper, Shotgun

More details have emerged about American McGee’s sequel to Alice, Alice: Madness Returns. It’s only stills, concept art, and rendered trailer at the moment, as Kieron broke down last week, but it’s looking pretty interesting, with some smart design, and here an interview with creator McGee by Gametrailers. It’s below.

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While the actual video for the – er- somewhat memorable press conference hasn’t actually found its way online yet, GoG have released a series of videos explaining what’s going on with the site, including one where they dress as monks and beg for forgiveness. In case you want to share the experience. Yes.
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So, last week we finally gave MineCraft the love and attention it deserved. Since then I’ve received a bunch of emails telling me I should do Dwarf Fortress next. As in, it’s another deeply unique PC indie game that we haven’t done much coverage on, and it suits a diary perfectly.

You know what? You guys have me wrapped around your little finger. Presenting the Song of Onionbog, Part 1.
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This is a sad one. We reported that the minds behind the Civ ultramod Fall From Heaven were working on a standalone commercial game in the same universe. Well, no longer. Kael reports that the game – “Fall From Heaven Tactics” – is being put on ice due to the funding falling through. I’ve republished the short Q&A below…
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Gas Powered Games are still working on improving Supreme Commander 2‘s AI, and there will be another overhaul with the next patch. You can see this explained in the video I’ve embedded below. The custom AI menu is particularly nerd-happy-making, with options to tweak exactly how it will behave/cheat. It almost makes me want to go back to the game. I don’t know about you lot, but it puts a warmness in my heart when devs spend time and resources working on this stuff after release. It’s a shame it can’t happen for all games. Go take a look at the full AI reveal below, it’s full of clever stuff.
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I’m still not quite sure what to think about TERA. The promise of skill-based combat in an MMO always flickers my interest, and the world seems pretty enough, with some extraordinary characters and gigantic monsters, but it’s hard to be sure about how it will really play, how long that grind will be, whether the world has some real depth behind that prettiness. The edited PAX demonstration video (which is viewable here, as it has embedding disabled for some reason) certainly shows off some impressive scenes in what seems to be UI-free game footage and a bit of FMV. The techno-magical boss monster is really quite the thing. But still, take a look and see what you think.

That rather confusing title being a reference to the second part of The Sacrifice, the continuity-plugging comic which describes the events that lead up to recent L4D2 DLC The Passing. We posted about the first part here, and now we’re posting about this one here. It’s a 40-page tale of the original Left 4 Deaders, soldiers, and vampires. Sorta. Once again, Michael Avon Oeming takes to the pencils for this big old chunk of survivor chatter. This one includes backstory, and tragedy.

Read it! Read it with your reading organs! Then be mildly frustrated that part three doesn’t land until the 28th.

Feign, Ian Snyder’s moody, disorientating maze game, is a marvel of minimalism and inversion. Dialling everything down to a bare minimum and intermittently switching between dark and light textures, it transforms what would otherwise be a broadly simple affair into an atmospheric exercise in pleasant bewilderment.
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Oops, I almost forgot to post about this: Quake Live are doing a push on their paid-for premium service, which is apparently free for a month if you sign up before the 26th. But what good is that unless you have enough people to shoot? That is the question I have been asking myself. Shall we meet up for a game then, RPS people who like a bit of Quake? (You can still play for free on the default maps, even without signing up for this trial thing.) Say next Sunday night? I’ll probably be on the CTF servers UK evening time, for that is where I lurk with railgun and rocket launcher.

In other questions: any of you lot still Quake regulars? I’ve been popping in about once a month for a blast. I could do with some Rocket Arena, though.

Gamasutra reports that despite strong sales of Street Fighter IV on the PC and the game being built on DirectX technology, Capcom has no intention of gracing our beloved platform with Super Street Fighter IV. The reason? Piracy. Producer Yoshinori Ono has stated that the company “cannot allow a situation” where the game is available for free on any platform, and that a PC port will only be a possibility if Capcom discover a decent copy protection solution.

Ready for the weird bit? Ono went on to say that a Steam-only release was out of the question because it would be “unfair to PC players who are unable to buy games via the digital distribution platform.” What, as opposed to it being unfair for every single one of us? DAMMIT, CAPCOM.
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So what is going on at Good Old Games? The press conference is in full flow, and the company has announced… it was a hoax. Quite possibly one of the most ill-advised hoaxes imaginable. The site will continue on, completely rewritten and no longer in beta, with a few new features and some new games. There’s all the details below. More details will be added, so refresh until I say not to. It’s finished. The site relaunches tomorrow at 1pm, UK time.

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