By Tim Stone on March 8th, 2011.
One of the side-effects of re-viewing vid-eogames for a living, is you end-up deeply confused about hyphens. Another is that you end up with a hard-drive full of screengrabs. While spring-cleaning my bmp store the other day, the following, slightly uncomfortable thought, pounced on me like a hungry piano. Are the images I deliver to my employers/enslavers/empowerers anywhere-near as honest as the words?
By Quintin Smith on March 8th, 2011.
I’ve always considered arcade-medical-terror as something of an underpopulated genre, so I’m thrilled to see that indie developer Locomalito of L’Abbaye des Morts and Hydorah fame is, in fact, hard at work on an arcade-medical-terror game that he calls Viriax. It’s a sort of anti-shmup where you play a virus navigating a human body with randomly generated levels and… oh, just watch the trailer below.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Jim Rossignol on March 8th, 2011.
So APB Reloaded is now going into its second week of beta, and the APB Reloaded blog has a full breakdown of what took place during the first week. If only all beta-tests were so transparently documented! The team have also released a trailer for the game, which is currently undergoing lots of tweaking for both balance and performance. The trailer shows a car-chase, and it looks like the APB we knew and were indifferent toward. Nevertheless I am still fascinated to see whether this free-to-play company is going to get the game right after its multi-million dollar catastrophe. The closed beta sign ups are done, but there’s a newsletter here if you want to keep an eye out for further developments.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Lewie Procter on March 8th, 2011.
Holy dooley! I bring exciting news from EB Games Australia. They’ve announced that, in Australia and New Zealand at least, Deus Ex: Human Revolution will be getting released on the 25th of August (EDIT: the UK will be getting it on the 26th). That probably means it’ll be out in the rest of the planet on a similar timescale, so put a big circle round the month of August in your calendar. Just five months off, so I bet Eidos Montreal are flat out like a lizard drinking getting the game finished.
They’ve also got a trio of shiny new screenshots for us to squizz at. The first one is up there, and the second two are down there: Read the rest of this entry »
By Alec Meer on March 7th, 2011.
This strikes me as the kind of thing we should be doing weekly, as context is strength. While Chart-Track’s weekly list of the best-selling games in the UK doesn’t yet encompass digital sales – this is yer olde worlde boxed copies only – it does at least give a sense of what is selling to those brave souls who still venture outdoors, and perhaps more importantly we can look at the blatant holes. For instance, last week we had online-only indie game Fate of The World celebrating on Twitter that “we’re are in the top seller pages of each of our categories on Steam”, but obviously that’s not going to create even a ripple on the retail chart. Still, here is said retail chart. It’s an interesting beast. You’d better hold my hand, though. Where we’re going, we need maths.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Quintin Smith on March 7th, 2011.
They exist! And you’ll find them after the jump. Crysis 2 is out on the 22nd of March in America and the 25th in Europe, which means all of these trailers will come to an end soon and it’ll be time to start “playing” the “game”, which if memory serves is a bit like a trailer crossed with a choose-your-own-adventure book.
Read the rest of this entry »
By RPS on March 7th, 2011.
Last week Alec gifted us with his opinionations on Dawn of War II: Retribution, the latest standalone expansion for Relic’s Dawn of War II. When the game was released on Friday Kieron and Quinns, as ever, found themselves in the mood for some bombastic hyper-war. And lo, this very lunchtime the three men gathered and holstered their guns for the official RPS Verdict.
Read the rest of this entry »
By John Walker on March 7th, 2011.
With exclusive access to Minecraft creators Mojang, I spent a day with Markus ‘Notch’ Persson and his team in their Stockholm offices, from the first meeting of the morning to the Friday afternoon’s booze and gaming relaxation. With kebab in between. Notch talks to us about how he came to be in the position he’s now in, his intentions for Minecraft and Scrolls, and the philosophy behind his game development. I also speak to his colleagues Jakob Porser and Carl Manneh, find out how the team deals with player feedback, their passion for transparency, and Notch’s plans for games after he’s completed Minecraft.
By Jim Rossignol on March 7th, 2011.
Swedish network technology company Pikkotekk got in touch to tell us about their new project: putting 1000 players in the same shooter, with everyone on the battlefield able to shoot everyone else. “About one year ago, we were talking with CCP and we came up with this idea that if we made a MMO FPS in Unity, the technical achievement would be of such magnitude that it would even impress random women in bars,” says Pikkotekk’s Christian Lönnholm. He might not be quite right about this achievement being quite that level of magnitude, but the concept is certainly impressing me. More below.
Read the rest of this entry »
By John Walker on March 7th, 2011.
In a story appearing later today on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Minecraft‘s creator, Markus ‘Notch’ Persson reveals that rather than developing Minecraft 2, he has three ideas for development once Minecraft is complete. With the blocky phenomenon intended to be finished by the end of 2011, and Scrolls being developed by others at Mojang, Persson’s mind is already pondering the possibilities for what might come next. And with an unfailing need to say every secret he has out loud, he tells us how he wants to make a “nerdy” space trading simulator, a real-world town simulation game, and a fantasy version of Football Manager. No, really. Find out more in a truncated extract from our exclusive Day In The Life Of Mojang feature, below.
By Quintin Smith on March 7th, 2011.
Back in the year 2000 (which was ELEVEN YEARS AGO, fact fans), I enjoyed American McGee’s Alice comprehensively, like you might a bacon sandwich. Foremost in my mind are the environments- the game was a tour through a tattered and bucking dreamscape, with unholy vistas around every other corner. Finally we have some in-game footage of this summer’s sequel, Alice: Madness Returns, and it gives me great pleasure to say that it’s looking swell. Follow me down the rabbit hole, ladies and gents.
Read the rest of this entry »
