Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Want to understand the fundamentals of how Brink’s objective-based game unfolds? Then you, sir, must have no fear, and must watch the video that lies beneath this introductory paragraph. I remain fascinated by this game, and can’t wait to see how it plays out. More interesting, perhaps, will be how the wider gaming community takes a slightly more complex multiplayer manshoot in this time of simplicity. Will the CoD-consuming masses be hungry for something with a little more substance? I’ll be interested to find out…
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Oh thank goodness. I’ve just completed the completely excellent Shadow Complex on my 360, and am absolutely craving more 2D side-scrolling platforming fun. Just in time we receive information about Capsized, a new 2D side-scrolling platformer that’s reaching Steam this Friday. Along with a copy to play. And playing it I am. I’ll let you know what I think of it on Friday when it comes out, but in the meantime you can watch the trailer below. Oh, and fill the comments with suggestions of other games that might fill my Shadow Complex-shaped hole.

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Sitting somewhere between Crayon Physics Deluxe and Lemmings, Your Doodles Are Bugged is a crayon-drawing game in which you guide a gang of bugs toward a pot of honey. It’s previously been popular on the XBox Live Arcade, and has just been released on Steam today. I’ve had a very quick go.

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Lord Of The Rings Online is to be entirely taken over by Turbine, Eurogamer reports. Until now the European servers have been in the hands of Codemasters, who seem to cling on to existence via their Codies Online Gaming hosting MMOs. But from the 1st June, the developers will be operating all their servers worldwide. Why tell you? Because if you’re a player you’re going to need to migrate your account across to the new owners. All the servers will remain, so there’s no cause for disruption. But you will need to make the account move, which will of course be free. There’s an FAQ for those who have further questions about the whole business. LOTRO is of course now free to play, which makes the need to re-enter your billing details the sort of thing that makes my brain hurt.

Hydrophobia – a game with perhaps a bigger reputation for the antics of its developers than its own watery ways – is making the leap from 360 exclusive to PC and PSN. And with the state of PSN, that’s an exclusive for PC then. It’s to be called Hydrophobia Prophecy.

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Britain is in the middle of what can only be described as HOLIDAY MADNESS. With Good Friday and Easter Monday as official days off last weekend, and the silly wedding and May Day off next weekend, the notion of actually doing any work is mystifying. But in the middle of our protracted time spent lounging around in hammocks on yachts, there was something of a Twitter-based fuss about another block-centric game: Terraria.

A seemingly secretive development team/person (i.e. I can’t figure out who they are) are creating a 2D side-scrolling game in which you can craft, explore, build and have some interesting influence over the landscape, and potentially in a multiplayer world. I imagine this one’s going to go huge. There’s a video of this below.

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Atari’s remake of classic weird-arcade home console game Yars’ Revenge is now available. The original pecking fly vs forcefield thing game has been reimagined as an Anime-style on-rails shooter. Why that is, no one seems to know. But there it is.

Hmm! Examine this quote: “Portal 2 will probably be Valve’s last game with an isolated single-player experience,” writes Geoff Keighley in his The Final Hours Of Portal 2. “What this all means is something Newell is still trying to figure out.” Ooh! That’s a cheeky one. It’s also far too vague to call the meaning of. It could simply mean that the next Valve shooter has a permanent co-op option, a la Gears Of War, which probably makes sense, given how things have been going in the world of games.

So should my headline have been “Co-Op Campaign For Half-Life 3 Confirmed!”? Haha, sorry. That’s impossibly speculative. OR IS IT? Yes.

A new splashpage at CryMod, which is currently being overhauled, reveals that this summer will see the apperance of both a Crysis 2 editor and a CryEngine SDK. What does this mean? Well, it means people will be able able to make levels for Crysis 2, but also that they’ll be able to make non-commercial stuff for free using the CryEngine tech. Crytek’s Mr Yerli says: “In August 2011 we will be launching a free CryENGINE SDK. If you want to use it for fun, like all our previous MOD SDKs it will be completely free of charge, to anyone who wants to play with it! You just register, download the SDK with a personalized license key and you’re good to go! If you want to use it to make a game to launch commercially, we’d like to help you with that. If you want to take your product down a traditional commercial route, we will offer an innovative low cost licensing model if you want to release your game digitally.”

More details here.

Poor old Indie Stone. In their attempts to self-fund the development of their new game, Project Zomboid, they aren’t having much luck. A couple of months back Paypal froze their account, leading to their adding in a Google Checkout button. Paypal eventually fixed the error and gave them their money, but a lot of people chose to pre-order and donate to the project via Google’s alternative in the meantime. About 80% of their funds, in fact. Which have now been frozen without explanation by Google, and without any obvious way to get at their money. Which puts the team in a very difficult place.

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We all love the Serious Sam games. Who doesn’t enjoy clicking on bad guys in the face to make them die? But it’s hard to take them too seriously when Sam’s always been limited to one weapon per hand. What self respectable action hero doesn’t dream of wielding a small army’s worth of firearms at any given time? Serious Sam: Double D looks like it’s set to rectify this heinous design oversight from the rest of the series. I introduce you to Gunstacking. Read the rest of this entry »