Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Why not? Well, I’m afraid our code only unlocked at midday yesterday, and I’m not going to rush this for anyone. We’d been told to expect to get the game last week, but CD Projekt later insisted that RPS, Eurogamer, and a number of other online outlets wait for their day zero patch, which they completed on Sunday. You will see some print magazine reviews go up today, these are based on early code which CDP described to us as “outdated”. We’ll be reviewing what you’ll actually be playing this week. I have some early thoughts below, and will follow with further impressions and then a full WIT later in the week.
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Woah, this one snuck past me earlier. If there’s anything we like to do at RPS, it’s race our remote-controlled yachts around the castle moat. But we also like to have a good old grumble about how Monolith used to be this team who made brilliantly funny FPS games, and now all they do is make grumpy, grisly faux-horror. Well, hold onto your heads, because it looks like they’re making something silly again! Gotham City Imposters is a Batworld-inspired multiplayer FPS in a Gotham overrun by imposters of Batman and The Joker. Buh?

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Ooh, I’ve got some Dead Island screenshots you can look at. But only after you’ve solved my riddle, completed an ARG, and pre-ordered my next book: Everyone Should Just Bloody Well Do What I Tell Them. Do it today and you’ll receive one extra screenshot FOR FREE!

Or not. In fact, you can see all five of the new pics below.

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If I were Square Enix, and I were planning a promotion for Deus Ex 3, I might just avoid something where I ask gamers to unlock the results. Just for a couple more weeks, maybe. But that’s what’s happening with a campaign to “unlock exclusive content via Facebook”. But apparently rather than employing the techniques of Chippy1337, we’re supposed to do this by “liking” the game, whatever the bloody hell that means. Are they really so desperate for approval? It’s a “slew of assets” that will become available – 90 of them apparently – when an unnamed number of “likes” are achieved. Guh. Let me tell you something…

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Sony had some sort of little problem recently, I hear. Why, someone even claimed that, following a serious security compromise, all of their PlayStation online services had been offline for about six weeks, but they’ve got to have been jerking my chain. There’s no way a major technology firm could allow that to happen, surely. I mean, that would simply be absurd. Absurd.

Things are on the mend now, anyway. Sony Online Entertainment’s MMOs – including Everquest II, Free Realms, DC Universe Online and Star Wars: Galaxies (I wonder if SWTOR will be the final nail in that ever-troubled coffin?) – have ‘only’ been offline since May 3, but have today sputtered back to life alongside PSN.
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When seeing the game name “Naval Warfare“, my instinct is to reach for the bright red phone that directly connects to Tim Stone. Then I clicked play on the trailer, and my hand hesitated on the receiver. This one… this one’s for me, I realised. It’s utterly mentile. I implore you to watch the trailer below, and to stick with the non-stop festival of crazy gibberish that narrates an arcadey water-based shooter, until the very end. That cackle.

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Risen 2: Dark Waters! Will it be shit? We just don’t know. We do know that the first Risen was a pleasantly free-form RPG that had tons of potential and that this one is looking piratical. Now there are some new screenshots, showcasing the game’s new firearms and also the fact that giant enemy crabs can be kicked onto their backs so you can get at their weakspots. That’s innovation, right there. Poor crabs.
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I think this one is going to be big. If you’ve heard of indie developers, Digital Arrow, it’s likely because of their forthcoming Unigine RPG, Dilogus. Less known is another project, InMomentum. InMomentum is a free-running game that plays on first-person jumping. It’s a freeform platformer that lets you feel extraordinary. This is something special.

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Oh, this is just odd. Ahead of The Witcher 2′s release date tomorrow CD Projekt have released a total of four launch trailers across four different sites. Why don’t you watch them all (and rate them from best to worst, or something?) while I consult the video game handbook as to whether this is allowed. They’re all after the jump.
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Mass Effect 3 executive producer Casey Hudson has revealed in a tweet that ME3 will feature same-sex romances for both female and male Commander Shepards. Previous games in the series only offered girl-on-girl sex scenes for the stated reason that “if you’re picturing a PG-13 action movie, that’s how we’re trying to design it.” Which, if it’s true, is a comparatively innocent reason for the noninclusion of male homosexuality. Less innocent reasons might include the fear of tarnishing the game’s macho figurehead, but ANYWAY! Let’s all assume Shepherd was neck-deep in the closet for those first two games and move on. Thanks to Gay Gamer for the news.

So long as we’re talking ME3, PC Gamer have spent the last few days leaking a variety of details from a long interview of their own with Casey Hudson. I’ve assembled a bullet point list of the important info after the jump.
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Perhaps a little off RPS’ beaten track, but thought I’d link you to my interview with SEGA and Creative Assembly top brass for GamesIndustry.biz. For you, sir/madam/entity, its main point of interest is a few more implications as to what to expect from the newly-announced Alien game: “What we’re doing with that property takes us a little bit into a more interesting place, so we’re not knocking out a bog-standard space marine shooter”). Also of happy note, however, is how SEGA US and Europe boss Mike Hayes acknowledges that its two PC-centric studios, The Creative Assembly and Football Manager stalwarts Sports Interactive, now comprise “the jewel in the crown of SEGA.”
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