Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Both Kieron and Jim have taken their turns at complaining about the name of Techland’s forthcoming ATV and dirt-biking racer, “nail’d“. Now it’s mine: Just what exactly is that apostrophe doing? It’s as many keystrokes to type, and it was all one word in the first place. Dear Techland and Deep Silver, your game is called “Nailed”. It has a capital N because it’s a proper noun, and it doesn’t have one letter madly replaced with a stick of wayward grammar. Thanks, love, John. Meanwhile, the game looks fun. New trailer below.

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Perpetuum is to hit open beta, and that will happen on the 18th of October. Perpetuum is an extremely interesting project, for a variety of reasons. Developed by Hungary-based indie outfit Avatar Creations, it’s the first MMO I’ve seen that tries to take what Eve Online did and do something useful with it. Avatar Creations are keen to distance themselves from Eve of course, and recent iterations of the game client have, frankly, often been about making this robot-based, freeform MMO less like CCP’s game of spaceships. But no matter how different the UI ends up looking, the underlying principles are the same. And perhaps they are wrong to try and deny that connection too strongly. CCP’s game, no matter how aged and entrenched it might now seem, remains a poster-child for the army of gamers who understand the MMO doesn’t have to equate the genetic lineage of Everquest and WoW.

Let’s continue this beneath the click, shall we?
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Anyone remember Keiran Gillon? I’m told he used to be a writer for this site, before he upped and left to start some career writing for Whizzer & Chips or something. Well, after an age of silence his name has resurfaced, being interviewed on the Irrational Interviews podcast.

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Nidhogg! A game of swords and worms. Nidhogg! A combative, shared-keyboard game for two knights. Nidhogg! A game of death, death and forever more death. Nidhogg! A game Rock, Paper, Shotgun liked so much that we awarded it our first-ever real-life trophy.
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It’s always disappointing when those who have made their careers making PC games announce their next project is to be console only. Dirty turncoats like Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert, who’d be nothing – NOTHING – without the PC have betrayed us in a very real way, for which there can be no forgiveness. Only hate. Unless they then release their game on PC. Schafer’s still dead to us, but welcome back Mr Gilbert! DeathSpank‘s coming to PC and Mac on the 26th October.

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I wanted to type ‘Typing Of The Dead Returns, But Only If You’re An Unemployed Japanese Person’, but unfortunately it didn’t fit. This is, I fear, one of those stories that isn’t terribly useful to readers of an English-language PC gaming blog, but I can never rebuff the strange and hilarious attempts the Typing Of The Dead series makes upon my consciousness. This time, it’s Typing Of The Dead: Jobhunting Edition.
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A basketball management game. It’s been released! Okay. But yeah, this is so far beyond the horizon of relevance or comprehension for me that I almost didn’t post it. It’s like trying to comment on very hard equations. I see the symbols, but I can’t ever know the meaning. And yet: a basketball management game? I blinked at it for a bit, not really sure what I was looking at. Is that what I am looking at? It was worth a shot! There’s a full list of features here, and hey, there’s even a demo here, if you want to get stuck in. I downloaded it, but I didn’t know what was happening. I felt a bit unhappy. I clicked aimlessly through screens of numbers and words for a while, and then I put the kettle on. I’m making a cup of tea. Also, I’m going to invent a new sport. Geoff Frightening, I call it. I’m going to own all the sponsorship in that sector, I tell you.

Which sport have you been failing to manage, readers?

Hybrid MMO/single-player space adventure Miner Wars is offering early access at 70% off, making it about $13. I’ve yet to see anything of the game myself, but the concept of a fully destructible environment shared with multiplayer players is certainly intriguing. If it can offer an Elite-like space trading experience with Red Faction-style space-action destruction then developers Keen Software House might onto something. Hell, it might be a game experience all its own, unlike anything that has gone before – the idea of blasting your way through the inside of giant asteroids is certainly unusual. Whether these guys are too keen, however, will depend on the state of the early build. I feel like developers take a big risk going into these things early. It’s a good way to get the community bringing in money and feedback, but it also means you might earn an unfair rep on your earlier build.

Anyone had a look? (The obligatory trailer is just a click below the surface.)

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Gamers go crazy-mental-biscuits for those little assassination FMV videos from Shogun: Total War. I know it, you know it, and The Creative Assembly know it, hence the mass of attention those same video shorts (not to mention the agent units themselves) are receiving in Shogun 2. And guess what? They’ve just released one of those shorts for your viewing pleasure. Want to see it? Ooh, g’wan then. It’s after the jump.
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Ooh, it’s turning out to be a good week for respected PC indie devs announcing enigmatic new projects. Yesterday we had Arcada Mia, and today we hear about two new games from Arcen Games (of Tidalis and AI War fame): A Valley Without Wind and Alden Ridge.

A Valley Without Wind will essentially be a meaty tower defense game, and Alden Ridge sounds like Dead Rising meets Monaco. You want more details? I’ve got more details.
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Remember Fez, that badass-looking indie platformer where you rotated the level to get around? Remember how it was scheduled for 2009, and then Microsoft bought it and it disappeared without so much as a scream into the oily depths of the Xbox Live Arcade release schedule? It’s now arriving in “2011″ as an XBLA exclusive. Sad times.

But the PC will not be crushed! Presenting Babel, a freeware game created for the Gamedev.net Retro Renaissance Challenge where devs add a modern mechanic into an old-school 2D platformer. Babel’s creator, Endurion, happily describes it as “Fez ripped off”. You can get Babel here, and watch a video after the jump. Thanks to Michael “Mike” Rose of the IndieGames Blog for the tipoff.
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