Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Talking of Crytek, they’ve just announced a new game. It’s looking to be aimed at Asian markets, a multiplayer shooter with the eminently shoutable name, Warface. And that’s about all we know just now. It’s in the CryEngine 3, as you might imagine, and if my Chinese is up to scratch, it’s emphasising “positive versus” gaming. I’ve no idea what that means, but I imagine it’s some sort of tactical co-op. The Taiwanese site, GNN, that has the info is here. We picked up on this story from VG247. You can see the two new screenshots in full size by clicking below.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s never been any doubt that the PC has always been at the forefront of gaming technology. But it comes in waves. There’s a reason why many companies didn’t touch the consoles until the most recent generation, the PC always too far ahead in terms of graphics and tech for their ambitions to be realised elsewhere. Although for quite a few years now it’s become an equal race. Not realistically – the PC has been artificially held back as a consequence of cross-platform development, its current capabilities barely realised by this generation of developers. As has been the case previously, there comes a point where developers start to see the possibilities away from the plastic boxes, and the PC once more has its day. It’s my opinion that that time is coming, and it feels rather validated by Crytek recently telling EDGE that the PC is a generation ahead of the consoles.

Read the rest of this entry »

Who remembers Pushing Tin, eh? Mel Gibson’s finest role. That long hair, that bit where he threw that big sword at a guy. “You can take our land, but you can never take… our freedom!” Great, great movie.

Well, with the release of Flight Control HD on Steam you can push a bit of tin– wait, that was Braveheart. Nevermind. So, Flight Control HD is a game that tasks you with landing all sorts of planes and helicopters, sketching out little flight paths for them and trying to get them all to their colour-coded landing strips before an inevitable mid-air collision ends your game. I’ve had a play, and it’s pretty good.
Read the rest of this entry »

A new version of UDK has turned up, and Epic have produced a demo movie (below) to show off some of the features that the engine now boasts. Worth watching for the pretties, at least.
Read the rest of this entry »

Clones is a rather lovely Lemmings-inspired puzzler, which has a demo just here. Just as in the old Psygnosis money-printer, the creatures you mean to save are your tools, only this time they are copied by machines as you cross the level. It’s just as cute as you’d expect, and is beautifully presented with 3D globe map that unlocks as you open up different regions and levels within those regions. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that it’s probably not a bad puzzler overall. The first few levels, at least, are well designed and engaging. It’s brimming with random features, and the full game is 150 levels long. Take a look. It even has competitive multiplayer, a video of which I have posted below.
Read the rest of this entry »

This is baffling. Via VG247, Double Fine say that their publishers do not allow/enable them to produce PC versions of their games: “We have much of the technology in place to produce PC versions of all these games, but there is still some more work required to make them shippable and that costs money. So far, our publishers have not elected to fund that work. Not because they hate PC gamers, but because they don’t see enough financial reward.” I get that this is Schafer basically saying “it’s not my fault”, but it still seems like a peculiar decision. Small budget, download-only games… Nope, such a thing is UNHEARD OF in PC land. It must be impossible to make a profit from them. Doubly peculiar that THQ, a publisher that otherwise brings everything out on PC, should be the one falling down in this regard. I’ve asked THQ for a comment. Basically because Costume Quest and Double Fine’s new game, Stacking, look like perfect PC fodder to me.

Hell, what do I know.

The first screenshots of Telltale’s Back To The Future game have appeared, and you can look at them now. Quickly, before bits of them start fading away, and we all have to shag our mothers. Click on them for enlargenment.

Read the rest of this entry »

Helicopters are mighty fast, but are they as fast as the RPS readership? Not on your nelly. As a result of my whinging yesterday about how flight sim games have tailed off I woke up this morning to a desperate missive from RPS reader Yarisse about a game called Apache: Air Assault. It came out on the 16th of this month, you can buy it from shops or from the official site, and you can watch the latest trailer below. It only looks marginally less arcade than H.A.W.X., but there’s some intriguing stuff in there about how they talked to Boeing to make sure the machine handled correctly.
Read the rest of this entry »

Gotham City! It is Batman’s house. The new trailer from Sony Online Entertainment for exciting MMORPG DC Universe Online shows you all around this legendary city, but there is not a Batman to be seen. Shh. Maybe he’s sleeping. When he’s sleeping, does Batman become Sleepman? Think about it.
Read the rest of this entry »

What you need right before going to bed is to watch this creepy-ass trailer for Lylian, made by the excellently named Pixelpickle. It’s properly intriguing. Watching the opening cinematic of an institutionalised girl and her teddy, it’s hard to predict it’s going to be a side-scrolling platformer. But there it goes, with the unfurled long sleeves of her straight jacket used as weapons. Of course. And it looks, like I said, intriguing. Lylian’s poweful imagination – the thing that maybe got her locked up in the first place – means she can reinterpret the miserable interiors of the institution as wild, colourful lands. You can see this in the trailer below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Indirect-RTS (IndirTS, as it must now officially be known) Majesty 2 is gearing up for its 300019th and final expansion pack, Monster Kingdom, and it’s the most enticing yet. By which I mean “most like Dungeon Keeper, a game I’ve been geeking out over for more than a decade.”

Read the rest of this entry »