Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I can’t believe I’ve not heard of this game before. I spotted it while researching Daedalic’s A New Beginning. It’s a new episodic adventure series, the first title, The Chronicles Of Shakespeare: Romeo & Juilet.

Set in the London of 1590, the young poet William Shakespeare is yet to be Mr Famous. He’s trying to prove himself to a local theatre group – Lord Strange’s Men – by staging a brand new tragedy. That being the tale of two star-crossed lovers. It’s a combination of traditional adventure with puzzles, and… hidden object gaming. Ah well – it was going so well. As much as I may have a soft spot for the genre, a good adventure game they have yet to make. Perhaps this may be the one? So far I’ve only been able to find evidence of the game existing in German (available on Amazon in two days). But I’m still so intrigued by what is essentially Young William Shakespeare. See below for a trailer.

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There’s an adventure in the works by Daedalic, they who brought us the very lovely, and almost good, The Whispered World. It’s called A New Beginning, it’s been in development for over two years, and at last there’s some new screenshots of it.

The “eco-thriller” plays as a classic point and click adventure, with what look to be gorgeous painted backgrounds, fighting to save the world from ecological catastrophe. (It was in looking up details of this game that I saw – for the first time – details of The Chronicles Of Shakespeare. Oh yeah. Next post for that.)

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Not-PC alert! Not-PC alert! But I will make it about the PC: this I swear to you. Apple have, in another one of those creepily well-rehearsed press conferences that makes half of Twitter mistake a profit-driven mega-corporation announcing its latest way to earn a crapton of cash for some sort of love festival, announced that they’re bringing the iPhone App Store onto their Macs. What this means is that hundreds of thousands of people are about to start buying and playing games on their computers again. Just, y’know, not our personal computers.
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Lost Planet 2 came out on PC last week, and I’ve been having a poke about inside its giant alien carcass with a long stick of criticism. It’s a game that earned a fairly mixed reception in console land, but how about that transition to PC? Here’s Wot I Think.

There are certain games that you want to forgive. Beguiling creatures that, despite their flaws, have a pushy charisma that forces you onwards. For all Lost Planet 2′s faults, there was something that kept me going, something valuable and violent, like a box of illegal fireworks. To complete that line of thinking, I should point out that we did end up getting burned.
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So it turns out you all need to put at least half an hour aside this Friday. Why? Because that’s when indie freeware title Super Crate Box is released. Dutch devs Vlambeer sent us a preview build, and it’s inspiringly competent stuff. You know condensed milk? Super Crate Box is like that, only with fun instead of milk.

You can watch a video beneath the jump, but the set-up is as follows: Collect crates to increase your score, avoiding the enemies that never stop dropping from the ceiling. Each crate equips you with a randomly determined, nuanced weapon, and if an enemy makes it to the hole at the bottom of the level they drop back out of the ceiling in a new, nightmare-fast form.
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Not sure if you’ve heard much about Guitar Hero [word redacted] ah, tribute Instant Jam, but basically it’s a streaming browser thing that lets you play rhythm-action adaptations of theoretically any song for free. As long as you have it on your hard drive, buy the track from the game’s store or use one of the built-in songs, anyway.

They’ve just opened it up to embedding on other sites – which means you can play the bally thing in its entirety below. A game! An actual game! Playable on RPS! We should do more of that. Have a play, then go shout obscure songs and impossible high scores at each other in the comments below. Let the great Kate Bush wars of 2008 begin again…
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That was fast! The New Vegas edition of the Fallout 3 “G.E.C.K.” mod tools has been released, and even boasts a new, improved tool for editing dialogue with “built-in support for low-intelligence dialogue options”. Modders? Get modding. Everybody else? Enjoy the incredibly disturbing video of a New Vegas bug I’ve left beneath the jump. I’ll be happy when we’re playing games that are meant to behave like that.

My own experience of New Vegas has become a lot more stable after my outburst yesterday. Seems I had a run of bad luck, compounded by the game not telling me about several different and VERY IMPORTANT controls. Hopefully I’ll have my review up by tomorrow afternoon.

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One thing that so many sizeable mods lack is good art design. You can be a technically accomplished mod-maker, crafting levels to a ludicrous level of detail, but if there’s no aesthetic backbone to that craft then things begin to fall apart quickly. Which is why Butterfly, a Crysis mod, is exciting me so much with its simple but striking visual motifs. Read below the jump for some news on that, as well as a host of other mod-related gubbins from across the week.
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I have to say I rather enjoyed Section 8, despite the game lacking a long term appeal. It was full of fun features, such as falling from the sky and robots smacking each other, and those things made it one of those games that it was great to arse about in for a couple of weeks, without it ever really getting its hooks in. I wasn’t sorry that I played it, but it was rather quickly forgotten, too. Anyway, it seems like Timegate haven’t forgotten about it, because there’s sequel of sorts on the way – Prejudice – and the multiplayer beta sign ups for that are now open. I’m probably going to be taking a look at this, if just to see how the original game has evolved. Also, you’ll be pleased to hear, the game is using “the enhanced Games for Windows-LIVE integration that includes streamlined matchmaking and improved server browsing.” Yaaaaaaaaay.

Total War games and their AI, eh? I hear people are universally content with it, most especially with how solid, reliable and believable it was in Empire: Total War. Not even the slightest grumble. Oh, wait, I’m thinking of that dream I had again, just before the bit with the anteater wearing a sweater.

Grumblers! You have been heard. “This game is not going out the door until the AI is perfect,” the Creative Assembly are saying of the upcoming Shogun 2: Total War. Crumbs. Maybe they mean it this time…
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Unreal Engine mod-done-good The Ball is finally due for its big-boy release, after months of cooing and dribbling about how its mental puzzle-carnage could evolve given time and money. The answer’s below, in video form. In word form: a sort of omni-geek power fantasy. Read the rest of this entry »