Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Details on Paradox’s second expansion for historical heavyweight Hearts of Iron III (the first being Semper Fi) are starting to emerge, like flares fired high over the endless battlefield that is everyday life. Entitled For The Motherland, the expansion will focus on the Soviet Union and the Eastern front of the war. You can watch a 7 minute interview with game designer Chris King after the jump. Because I am a lovely, I’ve also summarised what he’s promising from the expansion in easily digestible bullet points.
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I wasn’t going to post about this, but here I am posting about it. I wish I understood my mind. Sometimes it’s like I have a hedgehog inside my skull with whom I am not friends. So this weekend The Sims 3 and every single expansion to date appeared on Steam, and not only that, Steam are currently hosting a 50% off sale on the Ultimate edition (containing The Sims 3 plus the World Adventures, Ambitions, Late Night, High-End Loft Stuff and Fast Lane Stuff expansions). Yes! So instead of paying £115 you merely pay £57.50. Hm. I think I’ll be keeping my money, but I’ve deposited some thoughts on this plus the launch trailer for Late Night after the jump.
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Apologies for not presenting this to you on Friday – I’d planned to post it after attending the excellent World of Love conference, but it turns out that if you drink a lot of beer then go home without eating anything you fall asleep on the train and wake up in a darkened station feeling like you’re dying. So there’s that. But on the subject of dying, let’s talk about all the endangered species I mindlessly murdered during Chapter One of Two Worlds II.

A step through a teleporter – TW2′s perhaps over-familiar take on fast-travel – rushes me out of cramped Tutorial Island and into, improbably, Africa.
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Another Section 8 game is falling from the sky, and this time it’s going to cause far more of an impact than before. Prejudice is quite the incoming object: a “5-hour” scripted single-player campaign, a 4-player co-op defence mode, and the return of the 32-player team conquest game, all for $15. Yes. That’s the starting price for this fully-fledged sci-fi combat game from a major studio. Interested? Let me tell you about it.
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There are so many excellent freeware indie games out there. How can we possibly post them all? The answer: We post them one at a time, lad. One at a time.

Tiny Barbarian is a short, tricky platformer inspired by Conan story The Frost Giant’s Daughter. I’ve actually read the comic, but I’m a little shocked to now discover that it was originally published in 1932, back when Hitler was simply a presidential candidate and Rock Paper Shotgun was a mere fraction of the size it is today (a coincidence, I assure you). Anyway, Tiny Barbarian is good. Go play! There are 9 hidden diamonds to collect and developer StarQuail’s posted a guide to the boss in a completely awesome 90s videogame magzine style. Top marks.

While there’s still no official date for the PC release of COD: Black Op’s first DLC, First Strike, images of it have finally appeared. The 360 gets the content tomorrow, while us second class citizens must wait in confused sadness that we bought the wrong Microsoft product to win their approval. But it is coming to PC, and it was the biggest selling games of last year. Some of you bought it. Admit it. So you’re probably interested to see what’s happening with the new content. Which is five new maps, three relatively traditional, one set against a hockey stadium, and another giving you another reason to play as a zombie. I’ve put the better images (i.e. the ones that aren’t of empty scenery) below.

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Massively informs us that free-to-play browser MMOG Battlestar Galactica Online will be throwing open its (hangar bay) doors and entering open beta on February 8th, which is actually the day I was planning to water my spider plant collection but NEVERMIND. Browsing Massively’s own first impressions of BGO is enlightening. In short, I was worried that the game might be lightweight and uninteresting, but on closer inspection it might not be totally uninteresting at all. I’ve posted a few choice quotes (plus the latest trailer, again) after the (FTL) jump.
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Here is what I have learned about World War II: Hitler’s Revenge from the Castle Vox trailer. World War II was fought by about 20 giant men, rolling around on their sides across the colour-coded landmasses of Earth. America was invaded by Germany, and lost. It was a war fought by hitting each other with castles. The good news is, I can learn not just about the Second Mega War, but also the Crusades, the Holy Roman Empire, the Iran-Iraq war, tribal Africa, the space war of Cosmic Clash, and 45 others. Sillysoft’s distinctly not-silly-looking strategy wargame is all about big scale turn-based battles, but rather splendidly comes with a squillion different ways to play its combination of Axis & Allies and Diplomacy.

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EDIT: Stand down! People Can Fly’s Creative Director, Adrian Chmielarz, has tweeted saying that Bulletstorm only requires a constant internet connection for installation and online play. This simply looks like an incredibly poor choice of words on EA’s part, since none of the other “digital” versions on the disclosure page list a persistent internet connection as a requirement. Phew. For posterity, I’ve re-posted my original post after the jump.
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Sundays. Sundays are for designing videogames in a cottage somewhere in The West. But before that gets done, it might be worth spending some time with the wise and unwise writings from the world of gaming commentary. Also: making tea.

• Veteran producer-man Julian Widdows argues for why designers shouldn’t “cross the streams”. What he means by that is that designers shouldn’t start referencing other games when designing their own, if they want to get along in the process of making new stuff: “Let’s assume you’re trying to come up with an original game, a fresh approach to an existing idea, or just the solution to a thorny mechanical issue. All of this requires fresh and original thinking. By mentioning other games you’re immediately falling back on unoriginal, unfresh thinking, and are corrupting people’s minds with a whole range of thoughts that are almost impossible to negate after, very much like the colour orange. This isn’t limited to the mechanics, as our mind is hard-wired to look for connections to ideas presented to it. Let’s use Gears of Wars as an example and our previous statement as the seed “We could have the cover mechanics from Gears of War.””

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Hello youse.

You might remember that a few months ago, I wrote about Tom Vasel and his wee boy Jack. Jack was born prematurely and had a real fight to endure – sadly, this week, Jack lost that fight. As a father myself, I can’t imagine what Tom Vasel’s going through right now. It’s been great to see the board game community rallying round the big man and trying to do something to help.
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