Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Ever! That’s according to the reliably twittery John Smedley. I am not sure what that actually says about the game, or SOE games generally, but it sounds positive. And… yes, we haven’t really taken a decent look at it yet, but I’ve heard some positive reports. We should get one of these layabouts on the job, eh?

What about you lot? Anyone playing? Any thoughts? Any critical quibbles? Anyone needing to team up with fellow RPS for some hot justice? (And I’ll totally sort the competition out tomorrow, closes tonight.)

Last week I was in New York, eating pizza and inventing all-new comparative metaphors for how cold it was (“colder than Bobby Kotick’s eyes”, “colder than a Game Gear’s battery”, “colder than a handjob from an eel”). Why? Because last week was the yearly Paradox Convention, where journalists are invited to meet a whole bag of developers and look at all of Paradox’s upcoming releases.

In short, we’ve got even more to look forward to in 2011 than we thought. I’ll be going through these at top speed, so put on your protective goggles and we’ll take a look. Do I have to remind you of the boy who once read a succinct article of mine and lost an eye? No? Good.
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Aha! I thought we were going to see a bit more of that Brink-style sliding and vaulting from Crysis 2, and here it is in the multiplayer trailer. Overall: men get shot. But also: they get punched. Additionally: there’s some frictionless arse travel. Yeah, and it looks like a riot, frankly. Looking forward to getting my hands on this. (Never did really get on with the original game’s multiplayer.) Go watch! (Via Blues.)
This way for hot manshoots>>

The German Crash Time series has always been a mysterious one. When Jim took a look at Crash Time II he found it to be rather dull. When I reviewed Crash Time III for PC Gamer, I was confused to find that the game was actively against the idea of crashing, and so very best of all, the two lead characters, Ben Jäger and Semir Gerkan, were both voiced by the same man, not even trying to differentiate between them. Conversations were amazing. Now there’s a demo for Crash Time 4, and blimey, things have improved.

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Co-op wizardly action extravaganza Magicka comes out tomorrow, making this the perfect time for the following public service announcement. You will suck at Magicka. You will be so terrible. You’ll be introduced to its innovative element-mixing system, you’ll nod, smile at the power at your disposal, and then proceed to screw up in a thousand ways you never foresaw. You will kill yourself. You will kill your friends. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll accidentally blow up a monster in the process. Below I’ve outlined five examples of the terrible, terrible errors you will make, in the hope that you won’t make them. But you will.
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Mr Pixel Prospector slung us a link to Dash-Da-Dash DX, and he was right to do so. It’s a fine piece of arcade dashery, which sees you clicking around the play area to lob your diamond collecting spaceship through swarms of bullets and to the prize. There are two modes – a relatively sedate normal mode, and an accelerated mode which will wake you up pretty rudely, if you’re still sleepy on a Monday morning – so I would start with the frenzied mode and not even bother with the normal one. That’s just how we do things here in caffeine world.

So I feel obliged (somehow) to say that this rather minimal RTS, Aurora, is a dead ringer for the fascinating and organic Eufloria (which you should absolutely play, if you haven’t already), but the author acknowledges both that and Galcon, and frankly it’s still rather attractive in its own right. There’s a demo on the site, and there’s a trailer, which I have posted below, purely for the sake of duplicating things. I love just copying information to make more information, don’t you?
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Attention, citizens. After a couple of ooh-missus-I’ve-gone-weak-at-the-knees trailers, the Half-Life 2 fan-film starring Him Out Of Opposing Force has arrived. Twelve minutes of live-action Combine vs Resistance gritty warfare awaits you below. Striiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiderrrrrrrrrrrr!
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Sundays were once the day of rest, but they are now the day of leisure. Not the same thing, by my measure. But then there’s not really any time to rest, is there? Tick, tick, and all that. Let’s get on with it.

• Igor Hardy interviews the chap behind Space Funeral, which attentive readers will recall Quintin getting excited about last year. It’s a charming chat: “I’ve never really felt the urge to make films or comics because for me there’s always a sense of those things having rules or a point or a set of guidelines behind them. I couldn’t make movies because my experience of them is so tied up with ideas of what length they should be, what they should be about, protagonists and antagonists and three-act structures and all that garbage. With games there isn’t really that feeling at all. It’s like uncharted territory in that there is still a lot of scope to just do whatever you want and not really care if it fits some preexisting criteria of what a game should be.” Or at least, that’s how we should feel about games.

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Gamers’ Voice have confirmed that they will be reporting Activision to the trading standards authority over ongoing bugs in the PC and PS3 versions of Call Of Duty: Black Ops. In this article the UK-based gaming advocacy group said that: “a formal complaint will be submitted to the relevant government agencies that protect consumer rights in the UK on the week commencing 23rd Jan 2011. We will keep people updated as to the progress of this complaint.”

It’s an interesting move. On the one hand, it’s ludicrous that the biggest game of 2010 should have had so many bugs, yet on the other, can we really, realistically expect games to be bug free? Where should the line be drawn? I mean, we were livid about certain games being broken in 2010, but less worried over others. Ideally all games would be bug free on release, but isn’t it actually something that needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis, and can trading standards bodies really make those kinds of judgments?

Hello youse.

Today I want to talk about Warhammer 40K roleplaying, of the type being pushed by Fantasy Flight right now. Fantasy Flight has three different RPGs on the market under the Warhammer 40K banner. The oldest of the three is Dark Heresy, a game that lets you play as one of the Imperium of Man’s Inquisitors. The middle kid is Rogue Trader, a game that sets you loose as a crewmember on a Rogue Trader’s ship, flying missions into uncharted space to increase the Emperor’s influence and make some serious money on the side. The newest game is Deathwatch, which has you roleplaying a Space Marine. A genetic monster.
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