Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The Norns – handsome, snow-wreathed, shape-shifting northern types – have been confirmed as a playable race for Guild Wars 2, and ArenaNet are spending the entire week detailing them. Here’s the first such entry, which explains: “Aside from their size and their ability to shape-shift into a powerful half-animal form, norn are defined by their unique worldview. They value glory and deeds of valor above all – they’re just built that way. ”The norn get famous or die trying,” says Lead Writer Bobby Stein.” Go, Norns, I say.

There’s also a picture of a Norn with a rifle, as you can see above.

Starcraft II’s competitive side is really beginning to catch fire, with the North American Star League announcing that their first season will have $100,000 of prize money available. Three seasons have reportedly secured funding, with the last one bringing in $200,000 in prizes. That first season is taking place from April 5th for thirteen weeks. It’ll be viewable five nights a week at 5pm PST, culminating in 16-man finals.

As a side note, I’ve been watching some of the competitive games taking place in SC2, and the top level beginning to seem supernatural. The game is RTS kung-fu. Anyway, it should be interesting to see how this latest bout of e-sports enthusiasm pans out.

Microsoft have confirmed that the rumoured official SDK for the PC version of their all-seeing demon-camera of judgement motion tracking depth camera thing will have a PC SDK soon. Here’s the statement. Here’s the gist of it: “While Microsoft plans to release a commercial version at a later date, this SDK will be a starter kit to make it simpler for the academic research and enthusiast communities to create rich natural user interfaces using Kinect technology. The SDK will give users access to deep Kinect system information such as audio, system application-programming interfaces, and direct control of the Kinect sensor.”

So nothing commercial for now, at least, but we can expect some unexpectedness once this gets into the hands of the inventor-men.

Also on the comeback trail this week is Piranha Byte’s RPG Risen. Piranha were the chaps behind the Gothic series, but having lost the license in a disagreement with former publishers JoWood went off to make a spiritual sequel instead. While JoWood’s Gothic 4 was about as much fun as eating mildly poisonous cardboard shoes, Risen was 50% a genuinely brilliant game (and 50% a slightly tedious one) – here’s my series of diaries on it, in which you can see my early surliness quickly become excitement. Risen 2 sounds like they’re determined to fully go for it, rather than lurk in an awkward middleground between past successes and future ambition. Pirates! Guns!
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This happened all of sudden, and quietly. EA stealth-rebooted its Command & Conquer website, announcing in quick sucession a new community manager, a whole new studio and a brand new, mystery C&C game.

We thought it was all over. (C’mon, we didn’t think it was all over for even a second). It isn’t now. Sounds like they’re really going for it this time. Commandingly, they sound like they want to conquer strategy again.

Edit – Voodoo Extreme report the site has reverted to its pre-OMG NEW GAME status, which suggests a cat was let out of the bag by mistake.
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There’s always a twist. If you followed the Fox News Debacle, you’ll have seen the tale that began with an article on Rupert Murdoch’s esteemed news source that asked whether Bulletstorm was “the worst video game in the world”, and argued that playing it could cause people to rape. We took a closer look at the claims made, found that at least one of those interviewed had been deliberately misrepresented and another ignored, and demonstrated that the author of the article did not complete even basic fact checking before publishing (for instance, being willing to let readers believe that reported rapes are on the increase). Then the “expert” who triggered it all, Dr. Carole Lieberman, got in touch to finally provide her evidence for the “thousands” of articles that proved sexual violence in games causes sexual violence in real life. Nothing she sent had anything to do with the subject, and it became clear that she had either not read the papers she was linking to, or wasn’t able to understand them.

Now the original author of the Fox News article, John Brandon, has filed a new Bulletstorm story on FoxNews.com, in which he once again makes extraordinarily inaccurate statements that he cannot evidence, and decides to insinuate that Rock, Paper, Shotgun has not told you the truth. Oddly enough, we have.

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Released, and it’s… impressive. Not even kidding. I came close to letting out a tiny gasp while watching the video below. Make no mistake, Aerosoft’s Omnibus Driving Simulator might have the most impressive fidelity of any 80s West Berlin bus driver simulator ever made. I could tell you that Omnibus driving simulator depicts both the SD200 and SD202 MAN double-decker buses. I could tell you it models fully functional IBIS (integrated on-board information system). I could tell you it contains day/night cycles, weather and unique seasonal effects. But instead of that I’m going to tell you to watch the video below. No, don’t watch it- breathe it in.
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A new documentary by 2-Player Productions went online today, focusing on the story of Minecraft. Visiting Sweden, meeting with Markus “Notch” Persson, they have created a 20 minute short, which they hope to expand to a feature-length film if they can receive the Kickstarter funding they’re after. The full video is available to watch on GameTrailers today, and everywhere else from tomorrow. And you can watch it below. Make sure to kick in some cash if you’d like to see more over here.

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I’m really liking what Kickstarter is doing for PC gaming. It’s incredible. We’ve got renowned Interactive Fiction authors quitting their day jobs to make IF full time, indie devs making adventure games flooded with Americana and magical realism and jetpack dinosaur multiplayer extravaganzas, and even a fund for continued development of an indie game arcade in NYC. Beautiful stuff. And here’s another one. An indie studio made of up industry veterans wants your money to make Knights: Spiral Island, an online FPS boasting crab warriors, star vikings and potentially even “haunted bicycles” and “psychic space bees”. Interested? Of course you’re interested.
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Richard has a brand new T-Shirt that says ‘One Of The World’s First Players Of The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings’. They don’t give those to just anybody. He’d probably better tell you about what he saw while questing for the right to wear it…

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