Rock, Paper, Shotgun

There’s some wobbly reporting going on today, with yet another study claiming to demonstrate a link between a young person’s viewing violence, and being more tolerant of violence. Which is discussed as being about videogames. Which is a peculiar way of viewing a study that shows images from films to 22 teenagers, and demonstrates that as the clips progress their brain reacts less intensely, and not surprising since the study’s authors also make the same wild leap. However, it’s still an entry into the argument about whether violent images beget violence.

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Upcoming indie co-op spellfest Magicka has a new video out, concluding the epic tale of How The Gold Master Was Delayed. It awaits you beneath the jump. If you missed it, part 1 can be seen here. There are a couple of new details in this one- we now know Magicka’s release date (January 2011) and its price ($89.99). Go watch!

Man, it’s a good thing Kieron left RPS before this game came out. He’s a rubbish mage. This is because he can’t spell.
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I’m only about four hours into Fallout: New Vegas, and while I’m enjoying myself, I’ve already come to one saddening conclusion. It’s a bit broke.

Below you’ll find a list of all the mysterious happenings and straight-up bugs I’ve encountered so far, a list Jim suggests I call “Getting Glitched In Vegas”. He’s good, that Jim.
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You look like you’re working too hard. Or at least not distracted enough. Open Electric Box 2 by Twinkle Star Games in a tab and see what you can get done after that. It’s a browser-based The Incredible Machine-alike, in which you place a constantly growing pool of icons onto a grid to create a circuit. It starts off very simply, but quickly starts adding in lasers, push bots, canons, heli bots, drill machines… It’s very satisfying to complete each puzzle. Especially when they involve kettles. Cheers to Sam for yet another excellent tip.

Vietmen Of War? It’s a missed opportunity, certainly. But nevermind, because there are helicopters, F4s, flamethrowers, tanks, and TINY HEROES doing their heroism! With those big jungles and smoky skies Men Of War: Vietnam certainly looks the part, and it’s threatening to be one of those games that stops me from being a useful human being, especially since it has 4-player co-op. I’d love to see this game get properly opened up to modding, because the failure of that Stalker mod is a shame, plus it’d be awesome to see some other stuff brought in. The same engine used to make a sci-fi game could really be something. Anyway, to the trailer! Below!
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I’ve been deliberately ignoring Rift: Planes Of Telara, which is the other game by Trion Worlds (they of End Of Nations), because the name is so terrible. But even my cruel, irrational prejudice has some limits, and I realised that a game as pretty as this probably should get at least catch our eye across a crowded internet, even if we had no real intention of going up and asking it out. It’s a splendid-looking MMO, that contains all the usual ingredients that are genuinely listed on the side of the MMO packaging: a huge world, various supporting character classes, PvP, PvE, epic quests, and so and so forth and you can see why we might be a sceptical about this one.

However, take a look at the trailer below. It explains one of Rift’s big features that doesn’t appear in other MMOs, which is the areas of the world being radically transformed in aspect and content by the titular rifts. These alternate dimensions flood in and change the world completely and, well, it’s rather impressive to behold. And it’s a neat solution to instancing, now that I think about it. Yes, Trion’s big thing for Rift is dynamism: the world should constantly change, so they claim. If true, it could be one of the more interesting MMO worlds out there.
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Reasonably entertaining, that was Lionheart. That’s what Quinns inscribed unto the chronicles of PC gaming, at least. But there’s no need simply to nod along to the worldly wisdom of Smith, because you can verify at least some small portion of his judgments with a splendid demo. You can expect to receive this pious sample of strategy game in return for 1.2gb of your bandwidth, which sounds like a fair trade to me.

Go! Download! And be merry.

Fantasy RPG Gothic 4 is out! I played it a bunch, hoping it would be another Risen. Is it? Well…

It says ‘Impressions’ at the top instead of ‘Wot I Think’ because I’m either a coward or a man of honour, depending on your particular take on the old time-to-valid-opinion formula. Of course, I do have superhuman critical prescience. Show me 10 minutes of your game, a screenshot, the box art – hell, even just the first letter of its title, and I’ll be able to instantly recount its probable Metacritic rating within 2 per cent.* I already know what I would score World of Warcraft 2, Half-Life 3 and Respawn Studios’ unannounced first project.** I’m just that damned good.***

But you lot don’t trust me, do you?
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The prologue to episodic indie RPG Winter Voices, Avalanche, was released over the weekend, available for the pocket-sized price of €4.49. Even for an indie game Winter Voices has a standout concept- you’re a girl simply trying to overcome the death of her father. Read on for Wot I Think.

Winter Voices is upsetting. Heartbreaking, even. And writing this review is the hardest part of all. Because my word, is this ever a wonderful idea for a game. And boy, does it ever disappoint.

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Valve send us the news that their digital download service has proven rather popular.

During the past 12 months the platform had year-over-year new user growth of 178%, pushing the total number of active accounts to over 30 million, with over 1,200 games now offered. Peak simultaneous player numbers were also up to over three million, with over six million unique gamers accessing Steam each day.

In addition to new user growth, Steam sales during the trailing 12 months increased by more than 200%, putting it on track for a sixth straight year of realizing over 100% year-over-year growth in unit sales. To meet this demand, the Steam infrastructure has been increased and now has ability to run at 400Gps, enough bandwidth to ship a digitized version of the Oxford English Dictionary 92.6 times per second.

Six million unique users each day being the crucial fact there, fact fans. If you’re one of those companies that says there’s no market for PC games, well, the chances you were just doing something wrong.

Dead Space creators Visceral have been having a pleasant chat with Gamasutra, and along the way they confirmed that they’re working on a new Command & Conquer action game. It won’t be the first, of course, and a previous C&C-based action title was canned by EA in 2008, but it will apparently be, in the words of label general manager Nick Earl, “pretty far out.”

Pretty far out in a way that captures the mad energy of the best C&C games, while at the same time not being a laughable action title? Well, here’s hoping.