Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Despite our best efforts, the Gillenbeast is not dead. He simply swaddled himself in a cocoon and then later emerged, covered in red wine, in his next phase. We believe this might be a “mature” phase Gillen, as he he’s been debating issues raised by Medal Of Honor and Hey Baby with independent current affairs folks GRITtv, as well as making a large nest our of pulped comic books. I’ve embedded his segment of the GRITtv show below. Relevant arguments are posed.

Next stop: Newsnight!
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It’s not been a particularly newsy week this week in the world of mods. Ordinarily that’d be frustrating, but in fact, the usual stream of pictures of guns has been replaced by a rather gargantuan tub of both updates and new releases. So I’m not complaining at all. Read on for the week’s most interesting mod-related happenings.
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Haiku Hero, first
Appears to be a nice game
Racing for poems

Against the clock you
Create a haiku within
The rules as given

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Yes! A new Valve game. And while we currently have no idea what that game might be, we also kinda do. We know that Valve hired Defense of the Ancients Allstars developer IceFrog, which almost certainly means they’re developing something in a top down, small-unit-tactics multiplayer vein. Oh, and Valve also filed the trademark for DotA, and there was a tweet from a voice actor saying he had fun at Valve “recording for DotA”, but that’s since been removed.

In any case, according to both IceFrog himself and GameInformer, GameInformer will be posting all the details of this mystery project later today. Presumably much later today, when the Americans have woken, bemused and horny, from their enormous beds. Stay tuned.

WORLD EXCLUSIVE! It’s true. 11bit Studios us send word of their new game, which they are saying is “an arcade approach to the real-time strategy genre.” It’s you versus alien robot baddies in urban environments. 11bit explain: “Prepare to be thrown into urban environments overrun by an alien scourge, and take command of an intense tactical combat experience. As the on-field commander, using advanced heavy armor military vehicles to create the perfect squad, plan your tactical route and fight to destroy the enemy machines.” Sounds like we can expect this to be a fairly fast-paced top-down RTS, which some fancy anomalous visuals. The core game is apparently a story-driven campaign with “dynamically changing objectives”. They’ve supplied a few more images, which you can see below. Examine them for clues!
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UPDATE: Bah, US/Canada only. Rubbish!
Later today, at least, which I suspect means this evening UK time. This fancy-looking Source-engined MMO caught my eye a while back with its hack ‘n’ slashy combat. It’s free-to-play, too, so not cost to dipping in and seeing what the grind/community/micro-paymentisms are like. We’ll be taking a look, anyway. If you want to understand why then take a look at the game footage I’ve posted below. The in-game stuff kicks off after 1 minute, after the meaningless blather about darkness and stuff getting forsakened. Man, do you hate it when you people go around forsaking? Tsk. Nevermind, look at those dudes getting spectacularly killed! That’s the stuff.

Also: Spider!
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It’s time to own Men Of War. I’ve banged on and on about this for years. I am certain that there are thousands of you who would get a massive kick out of this game who haven’t touched it yet. Hell, Kieron and Quinns haven’t played it yet, largely on the basis that it’s a World War II game. That shouldn’t stop anyone. Men Of War is a brilliant, dynamic, inventive, compelling, challenging, intelligent RTS with a thousand features hidden under its hat (which can be shot off, and then picked up and put back on your head). The voice acting is terrible, the tank battles are scintillating. It’s now £3.24 on Steam. The slightly less entertaining sequel is bundled with it for £7.49.

Really, just get it, play it. This is worth it for the second level of the original game alone.

The one beneath the cut, I mean. At least, I don’t think he is, but I’m prepared to be more open-minded. He is talking about Space Marines, however – specifically what it’s like to shoot dudes in Warhammer 40,000 Online, an MMO still keeping the vast majority of its cards against its heavily-armoured, subcutaneously reinforced chest. This producer interview from GamesCom has only just been released for some reason; while it’s lacking new footage it does provide more detail on how the thing plays.
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You! You there! You snivelling little workshy reprobate. You sicken me. I can’t even look at you. So I’m going to type at you with my eyes closed instead. I bet you’d really like to play EVE Onlne without havng to do too much of that tiresome levellung up business first, wouldn’t ou? I bet you’d love to shorutcut by paying money so someone else does that hard work for you, or it just happens aoutmostically.

Hey, that was pretty good. I really can type blind! And probably more accurately than with my eyes open, if I’m honest. So, yes: EVE: Commissioned Officer Edition is a retail re-release of the undying spaceship MMO, which grants you mega-levelling perks for the first 30 days of play. Good idea, bad idea?
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Trine, the comforting bedtime story of a game, is back with its side-scrolling, co-operative physics manipulations. They’re calling it Trine 2. I know! But that’s okay, because it looks just as lovely as the original, and that original was never quite long enough. This second piece in-game footage shows off some of the co-op game that you can play with, y’know, friends. If they’re interested. They’re probably not interested. Bastards.
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Gosh, with all the Medal Of excitement I’d clean missed that the other manshooter, Call Of Duty: Black Ops, (you know, the one you are 76.5% more likely to spend your money on) has been flexing its pixels and playing at references to The Deer Hunter with a single-player trailer. Stuff explodes! Men fall down! Oh, this is what they want. Right, guys? Guys?

It’s out November 9th, and we’ll probably write about it or something.
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