Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Sandswept have finally revealed some of their long-in-development competitive roadbuilding game, Detour. Yep, it’s a bit of an odd one. It’s basically sat in the SimCity realm of laying down infrastructure, while at the same time being multiplayer and competitive. Using bombs to blow up enemy roads is as much an option as normal building business. It’s a little weird, as you can see from the video walkthrough I’ve posted below.

The game is out later this year, in “Q2″. So that’s Detour.
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We’ve got ten Steam codes for excellent real-time co-op strategy Men Of War: Assault Squad to give away, courtesy of 1c and DigitalMindSoft. Not only that, but we’ll be arranging some co-op games for the winners, at some point, as well as for anyone else who wants to get a bit of Assault Squad going. In the meantime, if you’d like to explain why you should win a copy of Men Of War: Assault Squad – and we will need good reasons from everybody – email us at this address, with the subject, “To Win Some Men”, before the end of Tuesday 12th April.

Please make sure to read this, it’s the competition rules thing.

As we see one of the more independent-leaning digital distribution services going mainstream, with Impulse being bought by GameStop, I’m very pleased to have noticed that there’s a new kid on the scene. Nimbus, created to be a digi-distributor for the archive of Adventure Game Studio games, can do much more believes creator Steve Poulton. He sees no reason why it shouldn’t go on to be the main platform for distributing indie games, although that’s a way off just yet.

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Well, it’s a Mario game. 64, specifically. Nnng. That game is quite good, but every dev seems to say the same thing these days – or is that just me being a misery?

Fortunately, at least if you’re a PC gaming site, Valve boss Newell tells CVG of two other most immortally-beloved games, one of which is Doom (“made me rethink everything I thought about games – control systems, design, rendering”) and the other one of which is simply enormously charming. It’s a punchcard-based Star Trek game for the Burroughs mainframe, played via logic and long-winded printing.
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SEGA’s free browser RPG Spiral Knights drew gentle approval from the Quintin-creature last month, but at that point it was stranded in the twilight limbo-world of beta status. That has changed. Its shackles are gone. Anyone may now play it, and play it now. Hooray for playing things. I’ve just had a quick fiddle with it, and endorse the sentiment that it’s a pretty slick and charming affair, although the super-derformed hyper-cute style isn’t especially to my tastes in this context. Still – swords and guns.

The game works best when played as a co-op baby-MMO – thus I’d advise anyone interested in embarking upon this heads to our forum and sets up a buddy-search. I’ll stick the post to the front if there’s sufficient interest. So go, be sufficiently interested.

The most exciting news in the last 24 hours has nothing to do with PC games. And yet it still feels like it does. HBO have revealed the first fifteen minutes of their adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s Song Of Ice & Fire series, in the form of Game Of Thrones. And it looks utterly flipping excellent. (Warning: the clip stops before showing tiny wolf cubs. Boo.)

What has that to do with Atari and Bedlam’s Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale? Almost nothing, other than the word “Daggerdale” awakens the same dying flame of my interest in the fantasy genre as “Winterfell”. It makes me want to read the books my dad would leave by the toilet when I was a kid. But the game? It’s the up-to-four-player co-op action RPG that Quintin lamented not seeing enough combat for last year. Well, now there’s a trailer entirely dedicated to fighting.

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The first of the promised three new games from Samarost and Machinarium devs Amanita Design has arrived and it’s, uh… Well, it’s not really a game. Not really. Maybe a bit. But not really. It does, however, share the familiarly wacked-out Amanita art and anti-logic, so you’ll find much to make you smile in this ‘interactive music video.’ It’s a Western. It’s not really a Western. Maybe a bit. But not really.
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Better late than never? Bulletstorm has finally released its PC demo, which is perhaps a tad late to make up for the bad blood over its previous cancellation, but presumably still within plenty of time to convince the doubters to take a look. Quintin loved it when he reviewed it, and Kieron, Quintin and I had a good old chat about it here. You can download the demo RIGHT NOW from Steam or apparently on GFWL, but I got fed up of their ghastly website when trying to find it.

This weekend saw that announcement of a new Spider-Man game, the second from Activision’s Beenox. Called Edge Of Time, it… it… I’m still trying to get my head around exactly what it’s all about. There seem to be two Spider-Mans, one all angry looking, trying to save each other by manipulating different time lines. See if you can make better sense of what looks like a fun Spidey beat-em-up in the trailer below.

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So guess which year the next Anno game’s going to be in. The strategy/simulation series began in 1602, jumped ahead to 1701, then went all the way back to 1404. So where next for the city-building RTS? Of course it’s 2070.

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…Make it an SSD. I am not making spurious claims or waving my silly little e-willy around here. It’s the single most immediately noticeable system upgrade I think I’ve ever done, and as such I’m keen it isn’t stranded in a techhead and rich-gonk ghetto. This is an upgrade for any PC gamer, not purely for the well-monied ‘performance enthusiasts’ who get a bit worryingly sweaty when looking at bar charts.
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