Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Electronic Arts are making some serious progress into the sphere of free-to-play games, and it’s interesting to watch this established and old school mainstream publisher gear up to explore that fresh frontier. One of EA’s pioneers heading off into that great unknown is Ben Cousins, who is the general manager of EA’s free-to-play branch, Easy Studios. I talked to him about Battlefield Play4Free. Battleforge, and more.

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I’m trying to work out exactly what I think about the video below showing the studios at Timegate, as they work on Section 8: Prejudice. It’s certainly uncomfortable. But then it’s trying to be. It’s not exactly endearing toward women, but then it’s not to men either, and they’re obviously taking the piss. It’s certainly a unique approach to the usually excruciatingly boring behind-the-scenes videos we see of development studios. But I’m not convinced it’s the right one. It’s an insecure woman pretending to care about the game so she can flirt with the developers. Er. Oh, whatever they were trying to do, it doesn’t work.

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Jim’s already presented his robust review of Shogun 2, but why stop there? Why, indeed. Quinns has also been dropping hour after hour into this fathomless construction, like guppies into the mouth of a coy carp, and met up with Jim in the Talking Room of Castle Shotgun for a chat.
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Mike Dailly, one of the key men behind Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto, has just posted the design documents for the original GTA on his Flickr pages. Race’n'Chase, as it was originally intended to be called, began life on the 25th January 1995 in a design doc authored by K. R. Hamilton. The version posted is 1.05, from 22nd March, explaining how the multiplayer racing game would perhaps also feature a cops and robbers mode. And it makes for excellent reading.

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Germanic space-action MMO Black Prophecy is now live, and free to play. I’ve not had a chance to play this yet, but I surely will. My sources tell me that the action is solid enough, but much of the MMO side of the game remains superfluous or wonky, which would be a shame, if true. It certainly looks pretty, at least. Anyone else got any thoughts on it?

North America will apparently get a beta of the game “soon”. Not sure if Americans can currently get at the European game, but I suppose not.

Later today we’ll publish an interview with Ben Cousins, who is the general manager of EA’s free-to-play branch, Easy Studios. In it he has some interesting and provocative things to say about current game models, as well as talking about the imminent launch of Battlefield Play4Free. When discussing the controversies surrounding various free-to-play payment models, he made this observation about the traditional full-priced game market:

“I can’t think of anything more exploitative than gating all of your content behind having to pay someone $60. That’s a really harsh business model if you think about it objectively. What we do is enable everyone to play the game, and figure out if they like it. If they don’t like it they can walk away and they don’t lose anything.”

The future of gaming, said Cousins, is “platform agnostic” and based in “free games with deep multiplayer experiences.”

The exciting North American variant of Official Xbox Magazine has revealed that Duke’s multiplayer will feature a “Capture The Babe” multiplayer mode, in which teams battle over women who are being carted off to be impregnated by the alien invaders. Ah, that sounds hi-liarious, doesn’t it, readers? But there’s to be controversy, thanks to the unbelievable admission that the babe might “freak out”, requiring you to “gently give her a reassuring slap.” OXM insist that this slap on the arse is “more goofy than offensive”.

So… yeah.

While you lot have made absolutely no secret of your contempt for latter-day Call of Duty games, as I understand it they’re pretty big business on PC nonetheless. Despite others’ best, sneery comment-based efforts, people still buy them. So there will be a large and enthuastic audience for the news that DLC map pack First Strike has been given a PC release date, having already been available on 360 for some time. You may well not be that enthusiastic audience, but I’m going to tell you anyway – knowing what the biggest, most aloof publisher is up to in terms of PC gaming is always useful.
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Armour has been polished, swords have been sharpened. Three-year-old Half-Life 2 mod Age of Chivalry has leaped into the shiny arms of the Unreal 3 engine as part of a plan to become a standalone commercial release, and jolly impressive it looks too. With this oil change comes a new name, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, which should give you a pretty good sense of what this game has in mind. The Sims: Medieval this really is not.

Do watch the trailer below for some crazy, crazy knights.
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It’s been a while since we posted any Trine 2 footage, so I think I shall do so now. The co-op indie delight from last two years ago (I wish I had any perception of the passing of time) had us all cooing around collective monitors. And the sequel looks astonishingly lush, with what appears to be some big improvements from the version shown in October last year. It’ll once again see the Thief, Wizard and Knight scroll sideways through physics puzzles, playable by one to three people at a single machine. Well, just look at it – it’s amazing.

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The release date of Might & Magic: Heroes VI (much like Total War: Shogun 2, the publisher has decided on a titular reversal) has been confirmed as June 21st. Why be excited about Heroes VI? Good question. The answer is that the arrival of the King’s Bounty series would appear to have woken up the Heroes developers like a hot fork to the unmentionables. You can see some of this yourself in the videos below, but 50% of the game’s units will be new to the series, it’ll have a greater emphasis on RPG elements, there’ll be four unique classes for your heroes to evolve into, it’ll have bosses and unique levels (the game’s most blatant nod to King’s Bounty), the art’s looking sumptuous and more. Come have a look.
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