Rock, Paper, Shotgun

A long, long time ago, I can still remember, the RPS Omnibus used to make me smile, And I know, that if I had my chance, I could make those people click through. And maybe they’d be happy, for a while.

But all those Saturdays made me shiver, with every post I’d deliver. Very few comments on the doorstep, I couldn’t take one more step.

But hell, let’s see what happens this time around. For those who don’t read us regularly or suffer from short-term memory loss, here’s the best stuff we’ve posted over the last week…
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Something for everyone in this week’s bucket I think. For two of the selections you don’t even need to pay a thing. Magic, free games! The others are all very cheap too, although sadly for one of them something other than price gets in the way. If one bucket a week isn’t enough to satisfy your hunger for bargains, you can always find cheap games of all kinds on SavyGamer.co.uk. Here’s this weeks selection: Read the rest of this entry »

Oh boy, this is such a relief: the technological revolution we’ve all been waiting for is here. All you need to see and play steroscopic 3D games on any PC is a 120 Mhz monitor and a tiny pair of non-obtrusive gizmos created by French inventor Francois Vogel. No more stupid plastic spectacles, no more colour-dimming polarised lenses. This is going to change gaming forever. This is going to change the world forever.

Sheer genius. You’ll see.
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Earthrise hooked my attention with its talk of an open, sandbox MMO world of sci-fi shootiness, and then we saw the first beta trailer and, well, it wasn’t the best thing ever. There’s a new trailer now (below), and it’s somewhat better. It’s a little story of some friends adventuring and then getting PvP’d up. It’s also clearly staged/filmed on the live server, too, because you can see a little bit of rubber-banding as the avatars lag in the landscape. Still fairly honest about things, then, and certainly a better trailer.
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Zombie Studios has announced that their sequel to download-only sci-fi multiplayer shooter Blacklight: Tango Down will stubbornly continue to not feature either blacklights or passionate Latin dances. Instead, it’ll be another FPS, only slightly more futuristic in a couple of ways. Firstly, it’ll feature robot suits. Secondly, it’ll follow a free-to-play business model. Put those two together and what do you get? Free-to-play robots. Or alternatively, business model suits. Which I guess is less good. Stick with the first one.
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I’m going to the annual Paradox Interactive convention next week, where developers will says things to me like “We’ve finally corrected the hat height of our 16th century Polish Hussars!” And I will nod like a man trying to escape from the tender embrace of a headcrab. But it won’t all be inaccessible historic strategy games! Hark: Neocore has just released a teaser trailer for King Arthur 2, which awaits your inexhaustible attention beneath the jump. Seriously, what are they feeding you?
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I hadn’t heard that Max Von Sydow (him from the Exorcist, The Seventh Seal, er-ah-um Judge Dredd and the voice of Vigo in Ghostbusters 2) was voicing a major character in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Mixed feelings: I had this cynical concern that half the reason there were so many repeated, annoying and repeatedly annoying voices in Oblivion and Fallout 3 was because Bethesda blew all their actor budget on hiring Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson respectively. I really don’t understand that kind of stunt-casting in games – you don’t see the guy, so the same promotional clout just doesn’t exist. Why not spend that money and complication on hiring a dozen great-but-cheap unknowns to better bring your world to multi-voiced life?

The honourable Mr Von Sydow, however, is much more of a character actor than a limelight-hogging celebrity type, and I suspect he’s a damn sight cheaper too.
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Arkane are now owned by Zenimax Media, a large multinational corporation – which means the studio’s soul will be crushed, its imagination will be quashed and it will never, ever perform a single kind act for its fans again. THAT’S WHAT CORPORATIONS DO. Flee! Panic! Cower!

Oh. They’ve, uh, just released the source code for its revered 2002 RPG Arx Fatalis (a game they once hoped to call Ultima Underworld III, but were stymied by Dark Powers). Also, a last-ever patch designed to make the game play hot-diggity-damndy-dandy on Windowses Vista and 7. In other words, they just made a dead game live again, for no reason other than that they wanted to. Guess those corporate types are alright after all!
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Here is a news journalism dilemma: the main fact to be gleaned from this story is that there are 13,000 lines of dialogue in Valve’s impending physics-abuse sequel Portal 2. If I put that vital statistic in the headline of this story, a bunch of people are very likely to come and read the piece. But then they’ll discover there aren’t really any other facts to be had from this story, and may feel let down or openly angry.

If I don’t put that vital statistic in the headline, I probably can’t come up with an equivalently effective alternative. “Portal 2 has lots of dialogue?” “Portal 2: Clearly Quite Chatty?” At least, though, readers would be rewarded with information they couldn’t glean purely from the headline. Whatever’s a boy to do?
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Jim and John blow the dust off the RPS Electrionic Wireless Studio to record a new podcast for your mind. Do they discuss games? Almost! Herein is chatter about flu, television and hand farting. And very occasionally, games.

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Late to the party as usual, I’ve been giving Amnesia a brief spin this week. I’m afraid I can’t tough out the acting much longer (I must refer again to my recent rantette on such matters) but, y’know, good stuff in general.

What I definitely appreciate it for is a tiny little thing, just one single screen. It’s something I’ve always loved about any scary game worth its salt – that pre-play settings/advice screen that firmly suggets the ideal conditions for it to become suitably fearful. “For the best experience…” Yes, yes! I want that. Tell me more.
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