Rock, Paper, Shotgun

(Well, not unless you spend $140 on a new controller). This is all a bit odd, and slightly infuriating too. Remember Razer’s Hydra motion controller for PC, and how it was going to have a special version of Portal 2 created for it? Well, that’s happened. The wavy-wandy gamepaddy, PS Move-y er…thing is now being sold via Steam in the US, for the utterly absurd price of $140. $140! You could buy multiple Moves for that. However, it also includes access to 10-level Portal 2 DLC designed specifically for its six-way air-gesturing.

This first expansion pack sounds pretty ambitious, involving as it does Portal rotation and, most excitingly, object rescaling: “Resize custom weighted cubes to harness their size and mass properties to crush turrets, bridge gaps, and solve puzzles in a new and exciting way.”

Whaaat?
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Well, obviously pretty much everyone’s fighting you – it is a first-person shooter, after all. But there’s also inter-factional conflict in 2012′s Skyoshock, as one Mr K. Levine reveals below. What on earth could make the denizens of a rebel, militaristic, ultranationalist city in the sky turn against each other? Oh, riiiiiight. Also: time travel.
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In case you weren’t aware, Age of Empires Online is shaping up to be a deeply different kettle of papyrus from the original Age of Empires games. That should be made clear by the following dev diary, explaining how MMORPG-style loot and equipment work in the game, as well as where you’ll be getting it from and how you can trade it with your lovely friends. Ooh, it’s lovely and friendly, this online world of ours, when it’s not busy being mercenary and horrible.
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With Bellevue’s finest opting not to make an appearance at E3 earlier this month, we’ve all been left in the dark THE TERRIBLE FRIGHTENING DARKNESS about what’s next on the plate for Valve, and when we might see it. DoTA 2? Portal 2 expansions? Something, at long, long bloody last, to do with Half-Life?

Well, in August we might find out.
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Earlier in the year we were being told to look forward to a Planetside Next reveal in “March”, but that month happened, and there was no new MMOFPS from Sony. They’ve had other things to worry about, I suppose. That might explain the recent tweet by John Smedley which said: “For all you Planetside Next fans stay tuned for a big announcement at our upcoming Fan Faire in Vegas!” Hmm! That’s just a couple of weeks away, on July 7-9. I – and all of you who forwarded me the link – suspect that this could be the big reveal we’ve been waiting for.

Nervously excited about this one. Fingers crossed for something brilliant, eh?

DICE General Manager Karl Magnus Troedsson has gone a little further with DICE’s response to the uproar over the Physical Warfare Pack being a pre-order bonus. And it seems like a bit of a change from their initial response. Here’s the meat of it: “I would like to start by clarifying that the Physical Warfare Pack is a time-based exclusive. If you do not pre-order Battlefield 3 at a retailer carrying the Physical Warfare Pack, don’t worry. We will unlock the contents of the Physical Warfare Pack for free to all Battlefield 3 players later this year.” They also say that “if you pre-order Battlefield 3, you will be able to play Back to Karkand at no extra charge as soon as it is released, but it is not day one DLC and it is not on the base game disc.” Folks who do not pre-order will, of course, have to buy and download the DLC separately.

Thanks to Mr Evans for pointing this out to us.

The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is up, and a bright shiny future of PC motion tracking begins! I’m looking forward to “Slumped In A Chair, Twitching A Bit,” novelty pointing games, and other exciting motion-tracking experiences you can have at your PC. Hopefully there will also be a version of that Milo thing where you can make friends with a childish Space Marine.

Relatedly, I’ve posted a video of Kinect running in Unity below, because I really like the visuals. (That’s what I used to illustrate this post.)
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Multiplay have given us a Battlefield: Bad Company 2 server to use while we warm up for Battlefield 3. It’s live now. Join me! You’ll probably need to search for it in the server browser, so the full name is Multiplay :: Rock, Paper, Shotgun UK Server. I believe the search is case sensitive.

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