Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’m very surprised. Good surprised, not bad surprised. Prey is not a game I feel anything about, to be completely honest. I know it has its fans, but for me it remains part of that mass of id Tech 4-based stodgy shooters which went heavy on bio-mechanical corridor-pounding gloss at the expense of play I found truly engaging, despite early-game experiments with big ideas. Prey 2? More corridors, more textbook murderous aliens, more blamblamblam, no thank you ma’am.

Except it’s not. I was not expecting a game where you spend a significant time without a gun taking up half your screen. I was not expecting an open-world game, inspired more by the likes of Red Dead Redemption and STALKER than by Quake and Call of Duty. I was not expecting a game where your interaction with funny-headed aliens is as much about making moral judgements as it is shooting them. I’m surprised.
Read the rest of this entry »

This story’s about as flimsy as a wet paper bag full of knives, but let’s soldier on. Joystiq note that THQ have registered a domain by the name of “Metro 2033 Last Light”, which could very well be the name of the forthcoming Metro 2033 sequel. …yeah. That’s all I’ve got. Who’s excited? I’m excited.

If Metro 2033 passed you by, it was an atmospheric FPS (a toxic, unbreathable atmoshpere, specifically) set in a post-apocalyptic rendering of Moscow’s subway system, full of shadows and mutants and terror and all that good stuff. Alec got along well with it, and you can watch the launch trailer after the jump. It’s more than a year old now but still every bit as impressive.
Read the rest of this entry »

Apparently there’s some comic called Thor. We’ve never heard of it. And now there’s to be a movie based on the little-read book.* To accompany the film comes a little bit of PC gaming advertising from Littleloud, in which as Thor you must thwack enemies with the power of your might hammer. It feels like an iPhone game, and I’ll bet my bum it is one too. You have a limited number of hammers to chuck at a level of static enemies, and the occasional lightning bolt with which to STRIKE THEM DOWN. I imagine that’s how someone in a comic might say it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ten new screenshots have just appeared for Duke Nukem Forever. (As someone who’s been doing this job for twelve years, I’m still unable to shake the feeling of absurdity that comes with believing that the game is genuinely coming out this year. Just typing those words feels like folly.) You’ll probably want to look at them. Will they be insanely sexist? Maybe they’ll feature animals being tortured? Well, almost disappointingly, no. But one of them has the word “cock”? You can see them all below, and if you’d only bloody well click on them they’d get all big.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m loving the swell of action RPGs in development at the moment. Another we’ve recently discovered is Path Of Exile, from independent developers Grinding Gears Games. It’s to be an online-only, free-to-play game (no, wait, come back! – this one looks very different), which they describe as a “competitive online action RPG”. So while the game’s hubs will have very many players, the randomly generated instances will be played by smaller teams, capped at 4-8 people (they don’t seem to have decided yet.) And most interestingly (to me, at this stage) is the darker, gloomier tone. We’re not in cheery Torchlight any more. I’m also intrigued by the sound of “ethical microtransactions”.

Read the rest of this entry »

The RPS Social Club this Saturday wasn’t all drinking and progessively more excitable and less intelligible video game conversation. Us being geeks, there was also a certain amount of showing one another cool stuff on our smartphones, cool stuff like Darkadia, which came to me courtesy of RPS reader Flimgoblin. In alpha at present, Darkadia is a free service that lets you display all the games you own on a virtual shelf, and I like it quite a lot.
Read the rest of this entry »

By “dark” I don’t mean the protagonist is stumbling around with more inner turmoil than a tumble drier, or that the callous spectre of death threatens to snatch down and kill any character at any time. Not that kind of dark. No, I mean that you just can’t see what on Earth is going on. Hardly ideal footage for people like me, who were disappointed to find out the next Red Faction game would be swapping out Guerrilla’s open world for the caves beneath Mars, and your human opponents for aliens. Take a look for yourself and see what you think.
Read the rest of this entry »

While the GLaDOS@Home distributed potato-collecting event is still ongoing, hints are emerging that there may be even more to come following its conclusion. Portal 2 being released early is the apparent plan, but could there be something more?

The latest Steamcast (an unofficial fan radio show) apparently aired with a brief Morse Code signal playing over the chatter, which the hosts claim to have been unaware of. You can hear it for yourself below and ponder upon its authenticity, but if it’s real this is what it says:” it’s not over the others have been compromised.”

Ah.
Read the rest of this entry »

Sundays are for wondering whether Portal 2 really will be released early. Also, perhaps, for gentle reminiscing. Not too much, mind, or you’ll get upset. Better to think of The Now, and the issues that surround it like Nic Cage’s head in a basket full of bees. Here are some relevant writings:

• Tom Armitage is a clever creature. He’s written a fascinating piece about how action RPGs owe their genetics to Roguelike games, in this piece called “How Rogue Ended Up On The Sofa“. Here’s a bit: “They are not games to be played casually; that dungeon will eat you alive if you don’t treat it with the respect it deserves. But: they are games that can be played as a casual part of life. A short session here, resulting in failure, might also result in better understanding of the effects of a particular potion. A quick burst before saving the game, to pick it up later, might solve another of Nethack’s Sokoban levels. And, out of short, flawed, ten-or-fifteen minutes runs – before being booted to the command prompt again – comes the years-long journey to the surface.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The full demo shown at GDC has now been released as a trailer for internet view-watching. See it below.
Read the rest of this entry »

In the light of recent events the RPS team has been taking a look at various games involved in the Potato Sack. Of these we’d suggest playing Audiosurf. It’s quite the thing.