By John Walker on January 25th, 2011.
Of the spate of recent Bulletstorm trailers, while they’ve been incredibly funny, they’ve not shown a huge amount of the game itself. This latest, detailing the revenge moves a little more comprehensibly, as well as showing some of the characters’ natterings, lasts a decent length. Be warned, faint-eared readers! It contains some swears that your boss may disapprove of. Oh, and bodies being violently dismembered, but everyone’s cool with that.
By Jim Rossignol on January 25th, 2011.
Via Blues I spot that there is finally a smidgeon of Battlestar Galactica Online footage for us to point at and exchange worried comments as it approaches. Some space combat, some lumpy-lookin’ people. But which one is the cyclon? It’s the one in the metal suit, you fool, run! And so on.
You can sign up for the beta on the main site.
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By Quintin Smith on January 25th, 2011.
Magicka unlocks on Steam in 9 hours. What are you going to do until then? Ooh, you could eat a fruit. Read a book. Take care that patch of black mold in the bathroom that’s started to take on human form. Or you could download and play the Magicka demo, which has just this second been released on Steam. If this news doesn’t excite you, clearly you missed my preview yesterday covering a tiny handful of the ways you might screw up. There’s a new trailer, too! A dramatic one! It’s after the jump!
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By Jim Rossignol on January 24th, 2011.
The heroic Blendo Games (Gravity Bone, Flotilla) have released Atom Zombie Smasher, which is a game about killing zombies. But no wait come back! – don’t judge things by the zombies and the really unattractive screenshots. Instead take a look at the trailer below, and then, warmed by the light humour within, head over to the Blendo site and download the demo. I think you might be okay with this. Really. Play then judge.
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By John Walker on January 24th, 2011.
Tell me, who is it that you are going to telephone? The ghost removers!
Just a small tip to the folks at Atari, for when they make their next trailer for the four-player top-down Ghostbusters co-op: Boasting that the game takes place, “Even in underground sewers!” is not exactly the basket into which you want to place all of your advert’s eggs. A game that takes place in dull grey sewers? Where can I join a days-long queue?! However, that aside, below is some new footage of the game that’s intended to show off the environments.
By Jim Rossignol on January 24th, 2011.
Just because something can be made doesn’t mean you should make it. That said, Wolfenstein 1-D is surprisingly good. Is this the true essence of gaming? (Thanks to everyone who sent this in.)
By Jim Rossignol on January 24th, 2011.
And not for everyone, either, as it’s a closed beta, which you can sign up to here. The beta itself will kick off on February 8th.
The saga of Mythos is quite the thing. It was a promising hack ‘n’ slash MMO back when it was announced in 2007 (I think?) and was anticipated for release in 2008, I think we even got a beta sign ups back then… Anyway, it was being developed by the largely ex-Blizzard studio Flagship who were also working on Hellgate. When Hellgate went down like a lead balloon it took Flagship – and therefore Mythos – with it. It has taken new owners, Korean company HanbitSoft, until quite recently to get the game to market in Asia abd the US, and only now into Europe, where Frogster are handling it. Are we still pleased to see it? Well, I suppose so. Better late than never, eh?
By Alec Meer on January 24th, 2011.
Via io9, a bittersweet cocktail of previously-seen and freshly-revealed concept art casting light on what direction Obsidian’s sadly cancelled Aliens RPG was going in. That direction being “massive, ‘orrible new variants of Old Man Xenomorph.” Take a look at what Aliens: Crucible might have been below.
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By Alec Meer on January 24th, 2011.
Spudvision has your new desktop wallpaper – high-res versions of the original pen’n'paper sketches from The Secret Of Monkey Island’s copy protection code wheel. Read the rest of this entry »
By Quintin Smith on January 24th, 2011.
Paul Mason, Economics editor for BBC’s Newsnight, has only gone and written one of the most interesting pieces of games journalism I’ve read in a while. In a blog post entitled “I re-fight World War Two and lose“, Mason takes a shot at playing hardcore World War 2 strategy game Hearts of Iron III using tactics that some WW2 historians believe could have brought Hitler’s Germany to its knees in a fraction of the time. As you may have deduced by now, it doesn’t go so hot.
Firing up the “Politics” interface I was at first amused to find my president, Albert Lebrun, classified as “barking buffoon”, prime minister Albert Sarraut as a “happy amateur” and my intel boss as a “dismal enigma” – but not amused to find that I could not change any of this before the scheduled election in 1940. My finger itched over the military coup button, and I immediately resorted to installing a far-right French police chief to quell dissent and abolish strikes.
Go read! Thanks to Fred Wester, CEO of Paradox for the tip-off. No, really.
By Jim Rossignol on January 24th, 2011.
What did we settle on as a better name for the DOTA-like games? Heroic tower-defence? Something like that. One of you had a good suggestion, I forget what it was… Presumably there is a genre name I am missing out on. Anyway! League of Legends is that kind of game, and free, which is useful, and it’s being built on all the time with various updates, which now includes a co-op vs AI mode, which will be nice and reassuring for noobs like me. Here’s the news, and here’s a salient bit from Riot: “We’ve been hard at work augmenting our AI, allowing us to produce more and more challenging and complicated computer controlled enemies. In the near future, players will be able to experience the fruits of these labors by joining a matchmaking queue that will pair them against a team of enemy AI bots on Summoner’s Rift.”
The new AIs are apparently a big step up from the existing bots, and can pull off a number of useful tactics such as “ganking mid”. Which sounds despicable. (Confession: I am totally being bullied by my old Eve corpmates to play this game with them, but I am NOT doing it! They can’t bully me. And I have to other very important stuff to install, like a Minecraft mod. Yep.)
