Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The RPS Omnibus

By Alec Meer on January 22nd, 2011 at 3:06 pm.

Lawyers, politicians, pilots and unreformed chauvinist meatheads: that was the week that was in the joyful province of PCgamingland. In case you’re a lazy or forgetful reader, here’s the best bits of the last seven days. All aboard!

  • Goblin War Machine, yo. That’s the way to do it. And by ‘it’, I mean ‘crushing everything’.
  • The inevitable Minecraft/Portal crossover.
  • Quintin vs the politicians. Or, Quintin cowers in front of the politicians. As well as embarassment, this piece rather charmingly conveys the curious quandary inherent in why and how gamers defend games to non-gamers.
  • Tim Stone salutes the lost (and perhaps, hopefully, about to be unlost) art of the classic flight sim manual.
  • Carpe Fulgur tell Alec just what went so right with shopping/fighting hit Recettear – and what’s next on the cards for their curious line in translating ace Japanese games for the West.
  • Splendid 10-minute roguelike Desktop Dungeons triumphs against the sinister forces of game-cloning.
  • Skyrim’s new engine, then. Sounds like we should be finally free of the singular horrors of Bethesda’s take on Gamebryo.
  • OMG Cannon Fodder 3 OMG. Only a) John Hare’s not involved and b) we don’t get to play it. HMM.
  • Jim tweaks Iron Helmet’s nipples until they tell us all about currently betaised strategy title Blight Of The Immortals. RPS is playing this amongst ourselves at the moment. It’s not going well. BLOODY ZOMBIES.
  • The World of StarCraft saga was messy and embarrassing for all concerned, I suspect. The law is an ass. Still, didn’t turn out too badly for the modder, all things considered.
  • John bullies a middle-aged ex-MTV presenter.
  • Last week, DotDotDot. This week, the return of the other greatest audio recording in history.
  • Paper Half-Life: awww.
  • A new era for Mod News: “there’s only one mention of a Half-Life 2 mod, and it doesn’t even have guns in it!”
  • John gets behind the wheel of Test Drive Unlimited 2. The second screenshot in this preview unsettles me in ways I can’t quite explain.
  • It’s John again, this time in an interview with the remarkably smart creators of the Dream Machine. Developers: please always be this interesting.
  • The sad, strange tale of the lost proto-Minecraft.
  • Quintin injects the creators of the lovely Space Chem with a truth serum. This means they tell us things.
  • A raft of contradictory comments and unhappy insider goss means no-one’s left entirely sure what’s going on with David Braben’s The Outsider, but it’s certainly not looking 100% alive right now. Sad news.
  • Alec displays breathtaking insight and hitherto untapped reserves of philosophical analysis in his scene-by-scene breakdown of the latest Brink trailer.
  • Duke Nukem Forever is really, actually, properly, truly, genuinely, definitely happening now. There’s a release date and tons of in-game footage and everything. What is this I don’t even
  • Esoteric MMO Love is evolving in important and wonderful ways. Quinns meets up with its creator to find out why now’s the time to give it your love.
  • Finally, we send Dan Grilioioioioioioioioioioioiopoulos to beat up some Orks for us, in a hands-on bout with the new Dawn of War II expandatron.

    And finally, THERE IS NO FINALLY.

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12 Comments »

  1. 22/01/2011 at 15:11 Kirrus says:

    You’ve mixed up the still-alive minecraft track with Quentin’s Talk to clueless politicians about games bit :)

  2. 22/01/2011 at 15:22 McDan says:

    Much appreciation for the omnibus, there should be more omni-things in life. Everything’s better with omni.

  3. 22/01/2011 at 15:27 Quintin Smith says:

    I have realised that if we were a food blog we could have called this the Omni-Nom.

  4. 22/01/2011 at 17:52 Griddle Octopus says:

    I love how you spell my name. And that spinning sound from my grandfather’s grave is him enjoying it too!

  5. 22/01/2011 at 18:44 Dozer says:

    Good grief. I’ve spent all week driving omnibuses. Except for Wednesday and Thursday when they sent me home with a slap on the wrist when I got to work too late because I’d been up far too late the night before playing SpaceChem, dammit.

  6. 22/01/2011 at 19:35 Dave says:

    “here’s the best bits of the last seven days”? Fie upon RPS! Naked War has gone from quasi-free to completely free:

    http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/21/naked-war-doesnt-want-your-money/

    Thanks to Bhazor for linking this review:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-fwr5vAXnw

    I’ve been playing this quite intensively for a wee while, and my reading of what Naked War was, might strike a cord with some of you, because, when I saw it for the first time, it worked in three stages kind of, when I saw it for the first time, I thought, “Right, I get it. I’ve seen things like this before, I understand.” And then I played it once, and I thought, “Right, I get it, right, I’ve played things like this before,” but I definitely didn’t, and neither will you until you’ve played it a wee while.

    … You can pick up, and you’ll enjoy it for a wee while, you’ll be bested more than lately, but you’ll enjoy it. But it’s only once you’ve been bested a few times that you start to realize the mistakes you were making. You’ll realize that you haven’t been managing your moves properly, you haven’t been using the power-ups properly, and most importantly, you haven’t been keeping an eye on the doofers, because that’s how you win, you collect all the doofers.

    … And I realized, “This is fucking strategy game”, and not just a strategy game, a really good one, because once you’re made aware of what you’re doing, and if you’re playing against someone else that knows what they’re doing, that’s when you start to see a wee flicker of genius: the game becomes more than the sum of its parts. It’s been built Naked War, but the players make the game, each individual map, with each individual player, is different. And because of the way the game’s designed, if a player’s good enough, and smart enough, they can be on the brink of defeat and still battle their way back.

    … It’s one of the games that when it’s finished, you play the game over and over in your head.

    I’d describe Naked War as a play-by-email boardgame with gameplay similar to Nintendo’s Advance Wars, but better.

  7. 22/01/2011 at 20:20 Splinesplitter says:

    Get in the bus, sheep!

  8. 22/01/2011 at 21:54 phenom_x8 says:

    nice, there is some news I’ve missed!
    Thanks alec!

  9. 22/01/2011 at 23:03 Gap Gen says:

    In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only finally.

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