Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’ve posted a gallery of screenshots from the recently-announced Brothers In Arms Furious 4, below. I suspect you might want to take a look after the surprising CG announcement trailer from earlier in the week. The gallery shows chainsaws, blood, jetpacks, lightning powers, mohawks, and blood.

All this images can be clicked for full size.
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So here’s an interesting thing. GamersGate are soon going to be launching an ad-support free gaming service. Details are sketchy at the moment, but there’s a big old timer counting down on their site, and a registration form for the beta on the same page. The blurb says: “GamersGate, the premier digital distribution service for games, today announced the launch of FreeGames, a free-to-play ad supported platform for PC and Mac games. FreeGames allows users to play and enjoy both PC and Mac titles free of charge after watching a short advertisement at the launch of the game. Gamers will be able to have up to five games available for free on their account at any time with the capability to add additional games.”

Hmm! I’ll drop them a line and find out exactly what they’re up to.

Arma 2 is going free-to-play. Really. It’s a bold move from Bohemia and a fascinating one. It’s basically a cut down version of the game, allowing you to play the multiplayer aspect – complete with multiplayer servers and the powerful editor – for free. The original games will remain, and you will need those if you want mod support, the full suite of graphics options, or the story campaigns. This is, then, like a big fancy demo. Of a genuinely great PC game.

Trailer below, some additional info here, and we’ll have more on this next week.
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How would you like to play Left 4 Dead, only instead of killing zombies you’re killing a building robbing a building? Do you think that’s something you’d enjoy?

That’s what download-only multiplayer FPS PayDay: The Heist is going to offer. This game’s name surfaced about a week back, but now we have a debut trailer and footage of some people playing the game at E3. It’s all after the jump.
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Bioware have released the six minute intro cinematic that’ll be featured in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Critics (alright, me) are describing the video as “long”, and “a bit like it was written using a flow chart of scenes from previous Star Wars cinematics”.

Ah, look at me being negative in the face of lightsabers and smugglers and a pseudo-R2D2 in a budget Millenium Falcon piloted by a pretend Han Solo. But some of you lot have got to feel the same way, right? In giving gamers environments, characters and attiudes that we recognise, these games make the universe seem thinner and more boring than it really is.
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We seem to be doing this backwards. On Monday we kicked off E3 week with an action-packed in-engine trailer for Mass Effect 3 featuring such bravado-soaked one-liners as “We need a plan to stop them!” “WE FIGHT OR WE DIE. THAT’S THE PLAN.” Captain Shepherd that’s a terrible plan and you are a bad captain.

Anyway, today we’ve got a live action trailer showing various humans acting all shocked at the imminent invasion of Earth. You know, the same invasion that’ll form the backdrop of Mass Effect 3. You can watch it after the jump.
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“Mars is waiting! Bring your friends!”

We don’t get a great deal of scrolling shmups or top-notch pixel art here on the PC, so I’m very excited about indie title Jamestown: The Lost Colony, which came out just yesterday (Steam, Direct2Drive, GamersGate). It’s set in a 17th century colony on Mars. Your enemies are an alliance of Martians and Spanish Conquistadors. It has up to four player co-op (on the same PC). Do you know, I could only be more excited if it had a soundtrack by a classically trained composer from Santiago, Chile. Oh wait! It does! Tell you what, I’m gonna have a bit of a play and post some impressions after the jump.
Half an hour later…

This could well be the single weirdest E3 announcement. 1980s action-movie “star” Sybil Danning is making a “cloud-based” action shooter. It’s called Ruger, and will be loosely based on the 1989 movie L.A. Bounty. The baffling press release states: “While it is still early in the development cycle, Ruger will be a highly stylized, almost comic book styled shooter. The story, written by Sybil is being held close to the vest but watching LA Bounty is sure to shed at least some light to what it’s all about. There is definitely room in the faux-retro market for more names than Tarrantino and Rodriguez, and Sybil Danning certainly has the pedigree to be credible. Incredibly the game and a Ruger film are being developed simultaneously.”

They’re right, that is incredible.

Carrier Command is being remade by Bohemia Interactive. I know! I’ve even been playing it, and I’ll be putting up a hands-on preview, as well as interview with BIS boss Marek Spanel, on Monday. In the meantime you can take a look at the trailer they’ve released for the E3 reveal of the game. It’s an all-new engine, not the Arma 2 engine, as we’d previously thought, and it’s really not much like BIS’ other games. Intriguing indeed! More on that next week.
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