Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Yesterday, as you may have noted, Dr Rossignol began our lecture series on the most important PC games of all time. Much like The Christmas Lectures, The Reith Lectures, and the TED Lectures, this definitive series has been a part of our institution as long as the Earth has borne stones. In this second part Professor John Walker explains the varying importanceness of a second collection of the most important games to have graced the PC in the last 150 years. Read on for one fifth of the elements necessary for enlightenment. And doffs of hats to Intel’s AppUp developer program for sponsoring this most critical of series.

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Crysis 2‘s story trailer is quite the thing, with elements of pretty much every big-name sci-fi film you can think of crammed into a cascading series of exciting flash cut edits. There’s a bit of game footage in here, but it’s mostly all the fancy bookend stuff that is trying to sell us the fiction of a Manhattan in ruins. And it sure is fancy.
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If the hat Fitz, wear it. What if… thirsts for platform games on the NES had reached such heights that, in desperate attempts to slake them, publishers turned to adapting classics work of fiction into jumping’n'thumping?

Here’s a little slice of that alternate reality: The Great Gatsby NES, which you can play in your browser right here. Battle butlers, boxcar hobos and Charleston dancers in West Egg, as you hunt down the mysterious Jay Gatsby.
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Crytek bossman Cervat Yerli has spoken of his disappointment over the recent leak of Crysis 2. Writing on the MyCrysis message boards he said: “While we are deeply disappointed by these events, we are all completely overwhelmed by the support we have received from you, our community.” He continued: “We can assure you that PC gaming is very important to us and will always be important to Crytek in the future. We are all still focused on delivering a great gaming experience to our true and honest fans. I hope you will enjoy Crysis 2 on PC, as we think it is our best PC game yet!”

And we’re looking forward to judging that when the game is released on March 22nd (US) and March 25th (EU).

I think this shall likely be the last mention of the Fox News/Bulletstorm debacle. But it’s a pretty special one. If you followed the story you’ll know that the inestimable journalists at Fox News saw fit to run a story in which they carried claims that playing Bulletstorm would cause people to rape. Through investigating the story further we discovered that some had been misrepresented, others were completely ignored presumably because they contradicted with the desired angle, and a few people were given space to voice unevidenced and extraordinary claims. The main voice of this collection, Dr Carole Lieberman, has released a statement in which she states that she too was misrepresented by Fox News, and then goes on to restate exactly the same spurious claims. And as of yesterday got in touch with those who had emailed her for comment, this time linking to her evidence. Here we go then.

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EDIT: OK! Looks like the Smithsonian’s site is struggling a bit. If you get an empty black space, just leave it. The voting application will load eventually.

Some things in life are certain. The sun will rise. We will age. Games will continue trudging their way towards being a globally respected medium like some decades-drunk bachelor trying to find his way home.

RPS reader Delirium Wartner sends word that the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC is going to be hosting an exhibition entitled The Art of Video Games which “will explore the 40-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium”, and they want YOU (read: whoever) to vote on which games should make the cut. If you’ve got 15 minutes to spare, the voting process is easy and makes for a fun trip down memory lane. Most of the time, anyway.
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American McGee’s Alice 2, aka Alice: Madness Returns has a new teaser out, which I spotted during my morning patrol of VG24/7. You can watch it below. Hurry! You’re late! You’re late, for a very important date! No time to say hello, good-bye! You’re late, you’re late, you’re late!
You’re late and when you wave, you lose the time you save!

We sort-of posted about Pyordactyl’s indie opus The A.Typical RPG during that whole Indie Supper-Singing Thing (which we should probably do again some time), but now it’s actually an existent thing, with a demo and everything. Reminder to all indie games – make a demo. It really, really, really, really, really, really helps.

Anyway, A.Typical is an RPG set in the real world, covering student longing, loathing and lodgings. Boss fights against college jocks, dialogue trees about revealing your true feelings for The Girl, levelling up your social abilities – that sort of thing. Scott Pilgrim by way of Kudos by way of D&D, if you will.

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Fellow writers of RPS: you have betrayed me. And on this, the day of love? You wound me, sirs, you wound me. The title track from Civilization – aka The Greatest Gaming Moment of 2005 – won a Grammy at the weekend. It is the first piece of music originally recorded for a videogame to ever scoop a Grammy win. We should have celebrated this. We should have posted three, four, five times about it. Yet no, you did not post it during my absence today. HAVE YOU NO LOVE IN YOUR HEARTS, SIRS?*

It is the song of union, the song of peace, the song of harmony. Come, let us reforge this bond between us! Let us sing it together.
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While there may be a couple of big-name rivals on the block for City Of Heroes, it’s not lying in a puddle, defeated by its foes. It’s continuing to battle on, expanding itself like some sort of… some sort of SUPER HERO! I’m not very good with simile today. The next additions to the streets of Paragon City come with ears. Which is to say, there’s an Animal Pack, which will add a bunch of new costume bits and bobs for characters, along with other fauna features mentioned below.

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Ferocious! That’s right: it’s some single-player footage of F.E.A.R. 3‘s psychic badman in action. Paxton Fettel will be the second playable character in the third Fear game, and he’s going to be distinctly unpleasant to his enemies, as you can see here. The footage (below) also shows off the results of various telekinetic evisceration procedures. It’s a bit messy.
This way! WooooOOOOooo>>