Rock, Paper, Shotgun

You know what we haven’t talked about for a while? Frozen Synapse – the high-speed tactical strategy game from Oxfordshire developers Mode 7. It takes the spine of X-COM, adds a little procedural generation and tweaks it into something fresh, fast, instant and accessible. And it’s still not been released, despite having been released last year. Oh, “beta,” you beautiful, confusing word, you. I recently caught up with Mode 7′s joint MD Ian Hardingham to find out what’s happened since I last got shot to death in neon freeze-time, what comes next and how they’re planning to make it as strong a singleplayer offering as it is a multiplayer one. It’s an open and entertaining chat, I think, but also includes the worst joke I have ever made in my entire, pitiful life.
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One day, in the distant future, we will have online meetings, conversations and indeed demos of games that don’t begin with. “Uh… uh… yeah… I think so, yes, just give me… Hi! I think things are working now? Can you hear me at your end? Yes? Good, great, let’s get started.”

A new walkthrough live chat trailer thing has appeared for Dragon Age II, which is out in precisely one British month. It’s a good chance to see the game running as it really runs, rather than in a smooth, rehearsed sequence. It’s narrated by Mike Laidlaw, who is great, and I think is being played on a 360, which is less so. But hey ho, it’s a remarkable 55 minutes of footage, accompanied by the silently heckling crowds of chatroom onlookers. And it’s gone gold today! Which is good news, since PC Gamer’s review is already with subs.

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EDIT: Read EA’s curt response here. “Piracy continues to damage the PC packaged goods market and the PC development community.”

I have no words. Actually, I have some words- according to a thread of the Facepunch forums (which may or may not be deleted any second depending how the Facepunch server holds up), a developer build of Crysis 2 containing the full game, multiplayer and the master key for the online authentication has been leaked, and is currently freely available from all sorts of astonishingly illegal websites. This sounds like it might be a serious tragedy for Crytek. Crysis 2 was scheduled for release on the 22nd of March, so the leaked build could be dangerously close to finished. More on this as we hear it, and thanks to RPS reader James B for letting us know.

Were you following the World Of StarCraft debacle a few weeks back? Dude says he’s making an MMO using the StarCraft map makerer, says he’s calling it World Of StarCraft. Blizzard opens its mighty mouth and roars, scaring everyone with its sharp, pointy teeth. Internet cries “foul!”, everyone panics, dude gets hired by a developer, Blizzard says it was just yawning and that its teeth are mostly for display purposes, and we all sit back down. It’s the story of the internet. Well, the further good news is that the project is continuing with Blizzard’s raised eyebrow of approval under the name, StarCraft Universe.

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Yesterday the good Jim Rossignol brought you his preview impressions of Total War: Shogun 2. Today you can take a step further toward experiencing the game, by watching its three-and-a-half minute opening CGI video mcdoodah. It’s very pretty, and of course in no way representative of the game. But focus on the pretty. You like pretty thing, yes? Stare into my trailer. See it’s pretty pictures. That’s it. Stare deeply in. Deeeeeeeply in.

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It feels a little dirty dedicating a whole post to four new The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim screenshots only two days after we posted five of them, but whatever. Eurogamer has four new shots! I’m excited. You’re excited. There’s new technology that allows snow to settle realistically on rocks and trees. Everyone’s excited!
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Hogwarts-simulator-in-all-but-name Academagia now has a demo out! And dear lord, this game is every bit as in-depth as Kieron described in his awesome impressions article. I was laughing out loud at the endlessness of character creation, not to mention some of the skills. Greengrocery? How important is greengrocery to a young wizard? Just how bad is the dining hall food? Should I put the points in gossip instead? Or a familiar? A rat? A cat? A bat?
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The launch trailer for Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars arrives via BigDownload, and it looks rather lovely. Well, they are calling it the launch trailer, but I thought that was supposed to roughly coincide with, y’know, the launch? The third instalment of the third-person action-puzzler-that’s-probably-really-for-kids is out March 22nd in North America and March 25th in Europe. We’ll be telling you what we think of it around that time. (But it looks fun!)
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Dan Pinchbeck of The Chinese Room has sent word that his spooky and emotive Half-Life 2 mod, Dear Esther, which is currently being rebuilt, again in the Source engine, will get a commercial release later this year. Pinchbeck’s transmission tells us that “The re-make features a completely new environment that pushes the Source engine into uncharted territory; a re-orchestrated soundtrack by composer Jessica Curry, new areas to explore and an expanded story.”

More on this soon, I say. And there are apparently details in this month’s PC Gamer UK.

Zeboyd Games have made a name for themselves over on the digital mega-network of the Xbox three hundred and sixty, having two of the highest rated XBLIGS on the service. Off the back of that success, they are now breaking out onto the mighty PC. I caught up with designer Robert Boyd, who you might also know as the bloke behind the winter uprising, to welcome them into the PC fold. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a while since we had any The Witcher 2 news, no? Allow me to present developer diaries numbers 3 & 4 after the jump, covering the game’s characters and locations. To summarise, we can look forward to three diverse kingdoms featuring medieval guys, “thick-boned dudes from the North”, the “third Reich” of the fantasy world, more racial conflict and guerrilla elves. But I’m really not doing all this justice- you’d better just watch for yourself. Man! I love these guys.
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