Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Code guru, hobbyist rocket scientist and co-founder of iD Software John D. Carmack has been tracked down at E3 by PC Gamer, and they were rewarded by a rather excellent twenty minute interview. With him, obviously. Want to know what he had to say about consoles holding back iD’s work on the PC? Of course you do. It’s after the jump.
Read the rest of this entry »

How’s your keyboard? Old? Stinky? Are there so many crumbs under the keys that you can barely type, and when you can it sounds like somebody eating biscuits?

Well, Razer’s just announced a new range of PC peripherals branded around upcoming MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic, and… well, it’s not like I can tell you whether they’re any good. They’ve only just been announced. But they’re certainly the most ludicrous bits of kit I’ve seen in a while, so top marks there. You’ll find the trailer after the jump. Yes, a trailer. For a keyboard.
Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier in the week I managed to have a chat with Bohemia boss Marek Spanel and one of the games he talked about was this: Take On Helicopters. It’s a civilian helicopter sim set at first in Seattle, and then on a more global stage. The game uses the Arma 3 engine, and a fresh take on the dev’s helicopter handling and controls. It will be an in-depth sim, but should be a little more accessible than you might expect, too. It’s about commercial competition, and managing a helicopter firm in tough times. For a game that features limited explosions or man-shootings, it’s looking fairly interesting.

My interview with Marek – which discusses this, Carrier Command, and Arma 3, will appear on Monday. You can check out the Take On Helicopters E3 teaser – which inevitably just features shots of a helicopter – below.
Read the rest of this entry »

This is it. The end. This column you are about to read will be the last ever Mod News. Sniff. It’s been a pleasure, guys.

But no, really, it has. Over the past year, I’ve had a fantastic time as RPS’ mods guy, and it’s been a real honour to write this column every week – even if it is essentially just a roundup of all the latest happenings on a particular gaming scene. I can assure you that the end of Mod News coincides with the Hivemind’s bigger and better plans for mod coverage in the months ahead. You’re being left in very safe hands.

So, folks, would you join me for one more dance? Here’s the last and final week in mod news, including stuff for Half-Life 2, Neverwinter Nights, Oblivion, Morrowind and Stalker.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll tell you what looks good. King Arthur 2 looks good. The sequel to 2009′s fantasy “role-playing wargame” (see our review here), King Arthur 2 sounds like it’ll be that most noble of gaming sequels- taking everything that we liked about the first game, and gently tightening it up and making it that much bigger. None of this trying to appeal to a broader audience or revolutionise things. Just taking that great idea, and making it even stronger. And, in this case, adding a crapload of dragons. I’m talking about dragons blocking out the sun. You’ve got to see this.
Read the rest of this entry »

Trackmania 2′s E3 Canyon trailer (below) is even more insane than the last one. Ludicrous sense of speed, ludicrous cartoon physics, ludicrous spewing of cars over vertiginous chasms, ludicrous ludicrousness. If this is genuinely representative of the kind of game we can expect from Nadeo’s latest, then I will be a happy racer. Go take a look.
Read the rest of this entry »

In the grim darkness of the future, there is only Warhammer 40k MMORPG Dark Millenium Online. No, seriously- I’m not sure that there’s another game we’ve been posting about this E3 week with a release date as far off as 2013. Curiously, this (brief) trailer brands the game as a “Massively Multiplayer Online Action Experience”, and when I had a brief chat with the developers at Gamescom last year I do remember them talking about how they were developing some revolutionary new kind of combat. Hmm. Will this be the first massively multiplayer 3rd person shooter? Only time will tell. So, so much time.
Read the rest of this entry »

Producer Thomas Farrer explained the controversial decision to make EVE tie-in shooter DUST 514 a PS3 exclusive in an interview with RPS earlier today. He explained: “most of DUST is running on our own technology, it’s running on our own super-computer, on Tranquillity. And Sony is a lot more… open, shall we say, to allowing you to do those things. It may seem silly, but on Xbox Live your identity is your Xbox Live identity. In the EVE universe, having people not know who you are is quite important.”

When asked whether a 360 version was an impossibility, he reasoned that “I don’t think it’s about saying we “couldn’t” do it. I think some of the challenges we’d meet would be tricky. But then also as a developer you’ve got to weigh the balance. It’s nice to work on one platform rather than two, because it means you don’t have to make any awkward compromises, technically. Also you get the benefit of a closer relationship with that platform. “

On the prickly issue of there not being a PC client, Farrer explained: “we don’t want to cannibalise our own player-base.” Read the full thing here.

It’s Magicka morning here on RPS! No, wait… the other one. G4 have released a big old slice of Skyrim footage (although some of it is repeated) with dicussions between their presenters and Besthesda’s charming frontman, Todd Howard. He says the game has “micro-detail”, and the presenters talk about all the flowers on the ground. Bunch of hippies. More pertinently, Howard gets excited about the dual-wielding spell stuff again, shows off the map zoom thing, and totally kicks a wolf in the face. He also says “just looking at your perks is a lot of fun”.

And: THOSE AMERICANS ARE EXCITED. ME TOO!
Read the rest of this entry »