Rock, Paper, Shotgun

See what I mean about the videos? Another one! The Old Republic has got them coming out of its ears. If an MMO has ears. Open posts? Something like that. But actually this is a bit more like it: a demonstration of one of the PvP maps, or “warzones”, in action. It looks like a pretty spectacular venue for competitive space biff, even if they combat looks pretty standard fare for an MMO. The big gun firing on the spaceship floating in the distance is exactly the sort of stuff I demand to see in my sci-fi games.
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We don’t end up forging many list features here at Castle Shotgun, but we figured that we should do one, and make a big deal about it. This list that we are planning, The List, as I am currently calling it, is a big deal. It will be the Hivemind’s ultimate acknowledgment of the greatest PC games of all time. The essential, must-play, genre-defining, superlative-defying, consciousness-calibrating masterpieces that are the foundation of our interest. We’re not even sure how many such games there will be. I mean, sure, you could make a list of 10, 50, or 100 such games, but how many genuinely great games are there really? That is what we will decide.

However, you need to help us not miss anything. What we want from you today are your suggestions, and your arguments for, those games that need to go in that might not otherwise have an advocate. Telling us to put Deus Ex in there is probably going to be a bit redundant, but perhaps we might overlook the value of something else. Or perhaps you want to argue against something? Do you really hate Outcast and want to see it knocked out of the classics lists forever? Have your say, here, now.

SPEAK!

Thanks to some tricksy Russians operating out of the Igromir Game Expo,there’s now in-game footage of Dragon Age 2 doing the rounds. You can watch it below. It’s the same level I played at the GamesCom expo that made me very nervous indeed, and is (I think) the opening of the game. Click on through for a little bit of dialogue, a little bit of cutscenery and a whole lot of combat.
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Who’s excited about Battlefield Play4Free? I’m not, but only because as Ben Cousins, Senior Producer of EA Dice says, “It’s much more aimed at a traditional First Person Shooter fan.” Me? I like contemporary first person shooters. I like to scald myself by taking fat bites from the endless chili pepper of innovation. Battlefield: Even Better Destructible Terrain, that’d be the game for me.

Below you can watch the first in-game footage from Play4Free, as well as hear Cousins talk about what they’re doing with the game, why they went free, and why that might be a pretty good idea.
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Spotted over on BigDownload (and posted below) is a nine minute developer diary from CD Projekt. In it the devs chat about the game engine and related matters (in Polish, although there are also subtitles) and show off a few chunks of the forthcoming fantasy witch ‘em up. Lashings of detail in there about how CD Projekt’s bespoke tech works to make the world more atmospheric and authentic, and it’s pretty much another direct shot of anticipatulin to my hype gland.
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One of the things about PC gaming is that while mouse keyboard controls for FPS games seem to come naturally to us natives (even though we all had to learn them at some point) plenty of people find them hellish. They run around, staring at the floor, not really understanding what is going on. Even once they get used to moving and looking around, they’re a long way from being competitive. It’s just practice of course, but few games bother to really tutor you. This is where FPS Trainer comes in. The site explains: “The objective of the game is for players to rapidly improve their FPS skills based on sound training principles, in order to become more competitive at any online multiplayer FPS, such as Quake Live, Halo and Call of Duty. Skills will be directly transferable from our game to other FPS’s.” No idea how good it is in reality, but I’ll be trying it out on the Lady Rossignol this evening, and see if I can’t get her to eschew her normal diet of Diablo clones for a bit of something shooty.

Just clearing out my phone and found some footage and shots I took at the MCM Expo last weekend. It’s of a Portal cosplayer who caught my eye because she had a remote control Companion cube*, which is pretty fancy. Also, now I look again, looks a lot like a teen version of Ex-Edge Ed now-designer Margaret Robertson. Spooks! Click through for the full photo, and find the snippet of MOVING CUBE is below…
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Sundays are for thought. For rumination, cogitation, cerebration, introspection, meditation, reflection, ideation, speculation, theorization, and – in some unlikely event – understanding. The Sunday Papers are a kind of fuel for all these processes.

• For rich thoughtfood, you might want to turn your attention to mod maestro Robert Yang’s epic series The Philosophy Of Game Design, which he has recently completed over on The Escapist. In the course of this epic he examines what makes a “good” game, and what the relationship between games and thought, via the lens of classic philosophy, might be. He concludes: “This, I think, is the hardest question facing videogame design today, that no one wants to bring up: What damage is being done by videogames, and what is the designer’s responsibility to mitigate that damage? How are today’s videogames shaping thought?” The first part is here, then two, three, and four.

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Hello youse,

I hope you all had a good Halloween board game night last week. We had a fine game of Last Night On Earth and an amazing game of Mall of Horror, the out-of-print masterpiece from Asmodee. I won’t talk about either game right now, because I want to do a video about them at some point. What did you all play? Connect 4, I bet. Right? Yeah, that’s scary enough for you guys, I bet.

I was all ready to tell you about some lovely new games, when something terrible hap-

No, just read on. I can’t tell you just like that – brutal, like a board game Leatherface, delivering the news like a hammer and pulling my steel door shut.
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In 1887, Charles Pearson, a wealthy London lawyer sick to death of the “I had that Mr. Holmes in  the front last week” anecdotes of hansom cabbies, proposed the building of a subterranean railway line from Paddington Station to Farringdon Street. That line eventually grew into the 27-stop transport loop that TML Studios are painstakingly reproducing for their third World Of Subways sim.

If WoS 3: Circle Line follows the pattern of its predecessors, we’ll be driving the trains rather than clogging their carriages as dead-eyed commuters, cunning pickpockets, or sly revellers. Some – like those yearning for a sequel to  Metro Rules of Conduct – may regard that as a colossal design flaw. Me, I’m just happy to see the London Underground’s long and glittering career in games take another fascinating turn.

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It’s the weekend, and as usual all the digital distributors are slashing their prices to tempt you to part ways with your cash. The Bargain Bucket is your guide to what cheap games are cheapest and worth your time. Remember to regularly check SavyGamer.co.uk for all of your cheap gaming needs. Who needs piracy when games are this cheap? Read the rest of this entry »