Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Cyanide Studios, the French developers behind Blood Bowl and Pro Cycling Manager (I imagine them sat at their desks, stained with blood and sweat in equal measure) have just fired a salvo of intriguing new details on A Game of Thrones: Genesis, their real-time strategy game set in the world of George R. R. Martin’s wily, waspish fantasy novels. Looks like an ordinary RTS, right? Well, it turns out we can look forward to everything from bribery and ransoming to marraiges and assassinations, there’ll be a focus on backstabbery and even a need to hide your bastard sons. More after the jump.
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Poor old Ubisoft has taken a few money-knocks, admit its latest financial results, which involved a $74.1m / £45.5m loss for the last fiscal year. This has, sadly, led to the cancellation of several unnamed games. Everyone’s praying it’s not Beyond Good & Evil 2, of course, but it’ll probably be a while until we find out what definitely faced the axe. However, a piece of good news for RPS-types is that the reorganisation (which is a word that sounds like it’s positive but actually means lay-offs, closures and cancellations) resulting from these bad times has lead to Ubi looking more confidently at the PC as a gaming platform…
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So we already know the broader picture of Prey 2 – a sandbox ‘alien noir’ world, with you as a bounty hunter taking on contracts – and how it’s a far cry from the first game, but what about the details? Let’s ask Prey 2 developer Human Head’s project lead Chris Rinehart and chief creative officer Jim Sumwalt for a closer look at just how the missions, the morality and the money-making works – as well as why they decided to leave the first game’s play style behind, why the themes are similar even if the lead character is not, whether it’s all urban or if things get wilder, and why the hell he’s called ‘Killian Samuels…’
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SkeinGlobe have announced a beta for their class-based online multiplayer third-person action game, Brawl Busters. You can sign up for a beta key by dropping your email into the main site. The game is a cartoony combat game with “crazy” characters and powers. Character classes include “the Slugger, the Firefighter, the Rocker, the Boxer and finally, the Blitzer.” It looks like all of these can be heavily customised for their appearance, and can get their weapons and abilities upgraded over time.

There’s a video below in which you can witness choice clips of pre-rendered action sequences, which are intended to illustrate the kind of game that Brawl Busters is going to be. They do that.
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The city of Lion’s Arch is one of the hubs players will be able to go poking around in Guild Wars 2, and despite everything it’s been through it’s looking swell. Once the Capital of Kryta in the original Guild Wars, it was then destroyed by a dragon, the land was flooded and the place was taken over by pirates until finally the flood waters receded. Arenanet’s concept art team have, however, come to the place’s rescue, and now all the ships in the area have been repurposed into buildings. You’ll find the town’s trailer after the jump, and plenty more details over on the Arenanet blog.
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So, a few more details on that Alien game now there’s a moment to breathe. I was visiting Creative Assembly when they made the announcement, which ended up getting revealed earlier by UK government culture secretary Ed Vaizey before us hacks could get there.
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People often discuss the importance of “immersion”. It’s a pretty silly word. But while we at RPS like to tease those who claim their game will have “more immersion” than others, the core concept makes sense. It’s wonderful to get lost in the moment, carried away by the fiction. To physically dodge as the fireball comes toward you. To groan in pain as you land on a spike. To care when an NPC friend is in danger. And it’s obviously a widespread frustration when that “immersion”, that suspended disbelief, that embracing of unreality – whatever you want to call it – is broken. So I have a question. Why are we so quick to accept death?

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Surprising news from the wilds of Horsham, West Sussex, England. The chaps at the Creative Assembly – best known for the splendid Total War games and some other stuff they’d probably rather forget – have just had their next game announced by, er, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, Ed Vaizey. In a bit of a major switch-around for these strategy gurus, they’re taking a swing at the Alien franchise. Yep, that’s Alien singular rather than plural. Great (Ridley) Scott!

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Wow! It’s a good day for passable games getting additional modes. Civilization V, which Alec and I both saw eye to eye about, will be getting updated with a hot seat mode within the next couple of months (hotseat being a multiplayer mode where several players take turns taking… uh, turns on the same PC). Which might seem like a long time to wait for a feature that appeared in Sid Meier’s Civnet way back in 1995, but presumably the technology behind it is now so old and irrelevant that nobody understands it anymore, like the tech behind the Apollo space program or the recipe for Greek Fire. Is that likely? I think so.

The players of Section 8: Prejudice have smashed the requisite ten million online kills, unlocking themselves Assault Mode, a new game type in which one team tries to capture points spread across the map and the other has to stop them. Timegate’s party line on it is as follows- “a fast-paced mode that encourages close cooperation with your team and unwavering focus on the goal of capturing or defending the base!” Holy shit! That sounds way more exciting than what I said. No video just yet, but you can watch a video of Prejudice’s Swarm mode after the jump, which is its four player co-op against-waves-of-enemies mode.
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The Hollywood Reporter has written a big old bunch of information about Hitman: Absolution, because games are like totally mainstream. Also, it seems IO are taking a very Hollywood approach to the production, with its cast already being announced. Including Klundy!

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