Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Techland’s offroad racing game, the unfortunately named Nail’d, has a demo out. You can get it here. Funny that the last time I wrote about this I was lamenting the disappearance of Techland’s Dead Island concept, and now that’s the zombie game trailer that everyone is talking about. I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose, that Techland have some aces up their sleeve, because the Polish devs have quite a catalogue of games behind them now, including the last two Call Of Juarez games. And does anyone remember Chrome? One of those lost shooters that was almost worth playing, but not quite. Ah, memories…

I’ve been looking forward to Homefront ever since I saw it at E3 in 2009. Along with Just Cause 2, the demo we saw showed a game with a mad sense of catastrophic glee, set in a refreshingly familiar world of suburban cul-de-sacs and department store carparks. Accompanied by a remotely controlled armoured vehicle, Goliath, it looked like it could be the buddy game of the century – just you and your indestructible rolling weapon machine. The narrative intrigued too, by seeming so ludicrous: by 2027 North Korea has invaded and occupied North America, with you playing as part of a group of rebels attempting to overthrow the new leaders. Now having played the first three levels of the game, it’s safe to say that all my expectations have been subverted.

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The greatest thing about the PC: nobody can stop anybody from making things for it.

The worst thing about the PC: nobody can stop anybody from making things for it. For instance, a device that lets you smell World of Warcraft.
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It’s DEMOTIME! Can your connection handle getting 2GBs of Dragon Age II AND 6GBs of Shogun? I dare you.

The Shogun demo is available via Steam, from the game’s store page. The rest of the game is out on the 15th March.

That’s all the information you need, isn’t it? Get all 1.9GB here.

Bulletstorm isn’t actually out until this Friday, but EA recently demanded we send one of our number along to play, complete, and review the finished game. I returned to RPS having finished the single-player game and invested some six hours into the multiplayer, making me perfectly equipped to tell you Wot I Think.
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Petroglyph, they of End Of Nations and Guardians Of Graxia, have just this second announced their next game: Rise Of Immortals. The former Westwood-encrusted team say it will be a “multiplayer online battle arena”, and at that oh-so familiar price of free to play. It too is set in their Graxia universe, but 300 years since Guardians ended. The announcement explains that the game will offer the strategy gaming of other MOBA titles, but with persistent character progression, and “enhanced socialization features”. And it’s already ready for closed beta sign-ups. Lots more details, along with all the screenshots and the first video, below.

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Runescape-creators Jagex have announced a new game project, 8 Realms, which is due for release on the 5th of May. This time it’s a “social” strategy game. I’d like an anti-social strategy game, personally, but I guess that’s all hardcore RTS games since year zero… ANYWAY, here’s Jagex’s finely-crafted encapsulation quote: “8 Realms has been developed from the ground up to appeal to players with a passion for strategy gaming but who have been left underwhelmed by the social games available today,” said Mark Gerhard, CEO at Jagex. “With 8 Realms we saw a massive opportunity to push the technological boundaries of HTML games. Jagex has traditionally been an innovator in browser gaming and we saw this as our chance to bring a fresh perspective to the social space and the empire-building genre.”

Intriguement! For a chance to get on the beta you can “Like” the project on Facebook. Mm.

Edge Online highlight the story of blind engineering student, Terry Garrett, who managed to complete the PC version Abe’s Exoddus using just audio-cues and the quick-save function. There’s a video of Terry talking about his achievement, and playing the game, embedded below. He explains how he uses the various audio cues, such as stepping, running into a wall, falling, and so on, to navigate the levels and ultimately complete the game. It’s an astonishing feat of aural exploration and imagination.

(And if ever there was a testament to the value of a PC gamer’s quicksave function, this is it.)
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If you read one article about gaming this week (er – that isn’t on RPS. Actually, even so…), it should be Simon Parkin’s excellent investigation into Axel Gembe, the chap who notoriously stole Half-Life 2′s source code long before the game was released. Not just a document of the before and after, it also explores the young German hacker’s thinking and intentions – which may not be entirely what you suspect. It’s a strangely sad and sympathetic tale which paints those notorious headlines of 2004 in a whole new light. Especially, the suggestion that being arrested by German police before US law enforcement could get to him actually did him a huge favour – in terms of learning his lesson as well as retaining his freedom despite his crime.
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Still nothing unlocked on the Dragon Age 2 demo page, but the demo is apparently out later today. We’ll keep this post updated, so please put links in comments once it’s live so we can get some mirrors and stuff. That said, I don’t know whether the mirrors will count towards Bioware’s one million downloads challenge, in which they’ve offered to unlock some in-game items if that figure is reached. Perhaps that’s just downloads from the official page? Hmm.

Anyway, keep eyes peeled for incoming, people!