Rock, Paper, Shotgun

We interrupt our regularly scheduled “staring aghast at irresponsible news media” to draw your attention to the RPS Twitter account. When we set it up a couple of years ago, we didn’t do a whole lot with it and thus didn’t promote it much. We reckon we’ve got the hang of it now though, so please follow @rockpapershot to get as-it-happens tip-offs to our bestest/silliest posts, occasional ranting and the odd bargain or freebie we’ve sighted. For instance, the news that the sublime King’s Bounty is currently a mere $2.50 for the next 24 hours. Goooooooooo! By the way, any other Twitter account claiming to be RPS isn’t.

You can also follow us individually, however: Alec, Jim, John and Quinns. We’re fantastically entertaining, especially when talking about the weather, cats and how tired we feel.

While digging into the remarkable story on FoxNews.com, in which it was claimed that games like Bulletstorm cause rape, I got in touch with each of the contributors quoted in the article. Neither of the two doctors have yet got back in touch, but Billy Pidgeon of M2 Research responded with a detailed explanation of what he’d really said to the news outlet. And would you believe it – it has little in common with how their selective quoting made him appear. Quite how little is striking.

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The past couple of weeks I’ve been playing a preview version of the delightful turn-based strategy, Skulls Of The Shogun. It’s a game about skull-eating Samurai in the after-life, and it’s a tactical pleasure. I decided it might be a good idea to talk to Haunted Temple’s Borut Pfeifer about the game, and you can read the chat we had, below.
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Yes! We no longer have to use that one shot anymore. OXM has gifted the internet with five new shots of the next Elder Scrolls game, and also some art which I have not included here because art, as everybody knows, is for the elderly. So if you “like” “art” you can view it over at OXM and if you like actual real screenshots that will put a song in your heart and make your tea taste all the sweeter you can see them all below.
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Browser puzzler Duplicator has a simple concept. You’re a sort of man, or maybe just a thing, with no eyes and no face and you’re looking for your cat, and your house is all black and white (except the bits which aren’t) and you can duplicate parts of your environment, or even yourself. See? Simple. There’s a pleasingly sinister atmosphere to the whole thing, it doesn’t take long to finish and by the end the puzzles get quite devious. Go play, or watch a trailer after the jump. Indie? A game? Quite good? It could only have come from the miraculous Indie Games Blog.
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Yesterday Fox News asked the headline question, “Is Bulletstorm the Worst Video Game in the World?” Which is spectacular. It’s a quite remarkable piece of writing, worthy of our own Daily Mail. And why is it the WORST GAME IN THE WORRRRLD? Because they’ve named some of the Skill Shots with sexual innuendos. Which, they absolutely astonishingly claim, causes rape.

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And now a browser game from the Indie Games Blog that could basically describe my current relationship. Save Toshi is a game about guiding a girl to a dancefloor even though she can’t walk, because if she doesn’t dance she will die. Where Save Toshi differs from my life is that in the game you’ll be achieving this using thrown balls, and half the time you’ll accidentally crush her or drop her into some water. God, you know, that sounds like my life again.
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Battlestar Galactica (the original) is famous for owing a debt or two, or three, or four, or five, or six, or seven to Star Wars – cheekily dashing to cinemas before Lucas’ could sequelise his space opera. The tables have turned this time around though, with Battlestar Galactica (new version) Online getting, well, online before Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic does.

Today, in fact. You can join the human vs Cylon war for free, and quicker than you can say “by your command.”
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So, after having too many options for creating a character in Dragon Age: Origins, we are now down to just three options for the Hawke character chap in Dragon Age 2, II, Two. He can be a mage! (DUDES GET MAGICKED TO DEATH!) He can be a rogue! (DUDES GET STABBED TO DEATH!) He can be a warrior! (DUDES GET UH MORE STABBED I GUESS!) You decide.

Watch it, below.
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Six months ago I took over the world. My decrees for gaming are the result, and all developers and publishers are obliged to follow them. You can read previous entreaties here. Since they only began half a year ago we haven’t seen the results yet, but any day now. Here is a third instalment of that which must be obeyed.

DO: let me choose my game settings from outside the game. I want to play games in a window, at the resolution of my desktop. The reason I want to do this is because anything else would be mad like a crazy person. So defaulting to showing it to me at 640×400 in EGA at fullscreen is perhaps not the way I want to kick things off with your game. First impressions count. When those first impressions are of seeing the name of your game overlapping the edges of the screen, looking as though it’s made out of LEGO, while IM windows are flashing demanding to know information from me immediately that I can no longer click on, it makes me think you’re a bit of a dick. And you know how you then insist that I restart the game to apply those settings? DO YOU SEE?

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A week back Jim was kind enough to tell us Wot He Thought of Dead Space 2. Compelled by a lack of anything else to do this weekend, John played it too. And when two minds of the RPS hive share content, they must examine. Thus, we Verdict. Below is Jim and John’s discussion of the space stomping sequel, in which Jim defends while John complains.

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