Rock, Paper, Shotgun

So I guess I’ve written that this is a Dungeon Keeper clone in a whole bunch of places over the last few months.

Whoops.
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Yeah, I already used that headline for my Parliamentary Games Day article but this time the pun is different! It is so different. A Mother In Festerwood (via the indefatigable Indie Games blog) is a browser game from the creator of Covetous about rearing a tiny two-pixel baby to survive in the terrible forests around your isolated cottage. The further you let your precious child wander from the cottage the faster he’ll gain experience, but let him wander too far and he’ll disappear off into the forest, leaving you to chew your nails and pray for his safe return. It totally plays up to my fascination of games which cast you as someone who merely supports the hero. I don’t want to spoil anything else, so go play!

Over its 30 levels of BIFF! and POW! and KICK! and making things go SPLODE!, DC Universe Online gave me more awesome moments than any other MMORPG I’ve ever played. It also reinforced everything I hate about the genre. Let me explain, with words.

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More than three years on and Crysis remains one of the most technically demanding games you can buy for your PC, a dubious honour it shares with such fine programs as Arma 2 and Photoshop. Now it is the future and Crysis has a sequel and the minimum specs for that sequel have been disgorged by VG247. How bad are they? Are they awful? Well, they’re actually not too bad at all. I just really like that headline.
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Zombies. I like ‘em. Well, I’ve never actually met one, so I can’t be one hundred per cent sure I’d like them in person, so to speak. But I like how often the act as a catalyst for interesting fiction. This means that news from zombie mods tends to get me a bit excited, especially if it isn’t the same old dull FPS again and again. Read on to find out what in the great goodness I’m talking about.
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Back in 2008 it came to our attention that a German team, Daedalic, were planning a slew of new adventure titles. Of those, the environmentally themed A New Beginning has recently received it’s German demo, The Whispered World has been released and was flawed but charming, and finally there was Edna & Harvey: The Breakout. It’s out very soon, and my review has appeared on Eurogamer. For a taste, read on.

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3000AD have revealed their next game, an MMOFPS called Line Of Defense. Encompassing both space combat and war across planetary landscapes, Line Of Defense a twitch shooter in “a massive open persistent game world”. It is apparently due for release later this year.

There’s an FAQ on the game here, but we’ve also got an interview with project bossman Derek Smart coming up later today, so stay tuned for more details from that.

Steve Ince, of Broken Sword fame, has been working as a freelance writer/developer for a few years now, perhaps most notably working on fixing The Witcher’s dodgy English. He demonstrated his way with words with the recent flawed almost-gem The Whispered World. Certainly amongst the game’s weaknesses was not the script, which Ince had redrafted for an English-speaking audience. It meant that the game shone in an area where so many translated European adventures fall short. And he’s also still making his own games, one of which he has just released for free to celebrate Ince’s having spent eighteen years in the games industry. It’s the rather excellently named Mr Smoozles Goes Nutso.

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Puzzle/RPG hybrid Wind and Water is, I’m told, a most excellent game. I’m currently too knee deep in the also excellent Atom Zombie Smasher (thoughts soon) to wade into it, but as a few people have requested that the RPS sentinel gaze turn its way, I will at least note its recent free PC release here, so that you may enjoy it forthwith.

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A news post on the Company Of Heroes Online website contains this message from Relic: “After an exciting period of operating and testing, we will be closing Open Beta on March 31, 2011 to evaluate the next steps for the Company of Heroes series.” Sounds pretty final. Any cash spent in the game can be used up to that point, and anyone who registered with the game before February 1st can get Company Of Heroes: Gold Edition for $4.99. The message signs off: “We are excited to reveal the next evolution of the series in the near future.”

I shall try to find out a bit more information, but this is starting to look like one free-to-play experiment that didn’t quite work out.

As sure as night follow days, as sure as all of us will one day die, as sure as cats are better than dogs, I will post about new GROW games whenever one emerges. Enigmatic creator On is perhaps guilty of sticking to formula with these web-based puzzle titles, but latest effort Cannon manages to shake things up a little.

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