Rock, Paper, Shotgun

There. Old. I said it. This video is over a year old. You may have already seen it before. Imagine that! Someone being brazen enough to believe that something on the internet isn’t immediately rendered worthless the day after it came into being. You might as well take me out back and shoot me in the head: I’m useless to you now. I’ve broken The Rule.

This is Game Gun. A piece of technology almost as incredible as its promotional videos.
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Good: “You’re going to see us putting out almost every, single console title we can on PC to expand our audience and expand the customer base, ultimately,” says THQ mega-honcho Danny Bilson. Smart guy.

Bad: “Microsoft is really talking to me a lot about getting back on Games for Windows Live [instead of/as well as Steamworks]… I really, really, really like Microsoft as a partner. They’re fantastic partners. I want to respect them.”

Nnng. We were so close. Okay. Okay. But do it because they’ve told and shown you convincing proof about how they’re going to improve the service, not just because they’re Bigger Boys With Lots Of Money.

(Source.)

Christ. Not last week I posted about Arcen Games’ colossal update of their maximalist space strategy game AI War, which included hundreds of new ships and porting the entire game to a new engine. Guess what? They’ve just announced a new pay-for expansion, Light of the Spire, will be released next month. Arcen say they’ve got some “some seriously cool ideas for this one, too”.

What’s happening with Arcen’s finances? Weren’t they in trouble? Well, in a recent blog post they’ve once again displayed a remarkable degree of transparency.
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We revealed the new Arma 2 expansion a couple of weeks back: Private Military Company is BIS’ take on the murky world of the mercenary companies working in modern warzones. The latest trailer is one dressed up in the style of media coverage of the activities of these soldiers of fortune, which implicates someone or other in some kind of badness. Hmm!

Don’t forget we have some community-based Arma 2 action this weekend, with Operation Arrowhead games going on. Check out this post for details.
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So many wonderful indie games, so little unwonderful time. How is RPS to cover them all? Well, making their devs do the hard work for us is a start. A few days ago, we put out a call on the Twit-witter-wotter: tell us, indie developer man/woman-person, in around 100 words, why we should turn our sentinel gaze upon you. So some did. Here’re the funnest entries received, or at least those that came closest to fulfilling the mandate of “incredigood words.”

We make no claim as to the quality of the titles in question: that’s for you to find out. Our interest in this instance is in pretty, strange, psychotic or otherwise worthy collections of syllables. Will they cause you to play these games? Let’s see…

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I can explain Shogun’s backstory, too, right. See, as in most conflicts throughout history, there are these warlords and they have a disagreement about their kind of hats that should be worn in Japan. To settle the dispute they decide to gather all their mates, dress them in the hats of choice, give them sharp, pointy sticks, and then see who wins in a big fight. Turns out the guy with the biggest hat won and ruled for 100 years, but you get to contest the actual history in the game. Something like that. I am basing my history of feudal Japan on a cursory reading of the Headgear Of Japan Wikipedia entry. For more details you can check out the official trailer, which I have embedded below.
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We spent quite some time expecting DeathSpank to come to PC, posting trailers, talking about it, and so on. Then it didn’t. Was it coming out on PC, or not? We didn’t know. We asked around. Did anyone know? We asked the developers. Hothead weren’t saying. We looked under a rock. There was nothing there. Finally, we stood around in Castle Shotgun, shrugging and looking puzzled. What was going on? It looked like we were never going to get DeathSpank. But then last month – lo! – it was finally confirmed for PC. A comedy loot-collect goblin basher from Mr Ron Gilbert seemed like a logical member of the PC club, and it has now put its name on the dotted line. But what does that mean for our game collections or our wallets? I descended into the binary bowel of my digitally downloaded Steam version of the game to find out.
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Last week I noted a lack of Halloween updates. In retrospect, I understand that this was probably due to it not having been Halloween yet. Friday saw a surge of them, so here’s a round-up of those, along with other interesting happenings in the world of mods over the past seven days. Onwards!
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EDIT: The first trailer’s out! Watch below.

Do you care about Poker Night At The Inventory, Telltale’s upcoming cheapo comedy poker game featuring Strong Bad, Tycho from Penny Arcade, Max from Sam & Max and TF2′s Heavy? Not so much? What about… now:

Valve has revealed the five equippable TF2 items you’ll be able to unlock playing Poker Night At The Inventory, plus the Poker Visor you get if you pre-order, making this the first time a non-Valve game has unlocked content for TF2 which affects the game proper. You can peruse these goods after the jump.
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The genetic-warrior action RPG currently being made by Maxis has moved into the phase where it needs poking, repeatedly, to see if it breaks. If you are interested in such a task then you can sign up for the beta just here. The last glimpse we got of the game actually made it look fairly interesting.

Being-stood-up-on-a-date simulator Dinner Date is now available for pre-order, which chops the asking price from $12.45 to $9.95. If you buy two copies of the game you get a further discount, and there’s the option to have the second copy digitally gift-wrapped and sent to a friend, or partner. If you woke up this morning with a creeping sense of loneliness and self-loathing, that’d be because the full game’s released in two weeks.

If you missed my excitable first look at Dinner Date, you can read it and watch the trailer here. Excited by my excitement, Dutch developer of Dinner Date Jeroen D. Stout got in touch, and we ended up having a bit of a chat about the game, his influences, Hamlet (!) and which videogame character he’d like to have dinner with.
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