Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Sunday! At last! All these years we’ve been waiting for it to be Sunday and it’s finally here. A whole day off. If only it could last forever. Well, we’d better make the most of it. There’s no telling we might get another one. It might not even be in your lifetime. And that’s factually true! A relaxing way to spend a bit of your morning could be to read some things about videogames, but then that’s not vital or anything. Just a suggestion. I’ll leave these links here for you, just in case.

• Richard Cobbett has been a busy boy of late, and you should probably read this sprawling, hiarious Police Quest edition of Crapshoot: “I’ve never been an American beat cop myself. I don’t even really know how American cops work outside of TV and movies, not just because I’m far too boring to ever have gotten on the wrong side of the law, but because – as you can probably tell from my accent – I’m English. Yes, from England. God Save The Queen, and all that. It means I grew up with a very different kind of police force. Our police don’t usually get to carry guns for instance. We don’t have many donut shops. Instead of Miranda Rights, our officially approved caution is “You’re bloody nicked, mate!”, to which our villains admit “It’s a fair cop…” and resignedly hold out their wrists for the cuffs… “

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This week, Lewie is away at Glastonbury, so once again, the SavyGamer B Team of Will Templeton and Tony Heugh has stepped in to pick up the slack. At first, we were really thankful for Lewie going away this particular week, because it meant that our advice was just going to be, “Open up Steam and play TF2, because even if you did buy anything this week you’ll not play it because of the siren call of all that fresh meat.” It was basically a half-day. Then Jim told us that wasn’t good enough. Apparently you lot “won’t stand for that sort of thing,” and we should “have some goddamn integrity.” Well, fine. If you’re going to be that demanding, here’s a roundup of the best deals for your computerbox that aren’t only available gratis through your primary direct downloadatron. As always, to make sure you’re always up-to-date on the best deals as they happen, visit SavyGamer.co.uk.
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A long time (well, eight years) ago in galaxy well, right about here, SOE launched a Star Wars MMO. It was… odd. To say the least. It was also extremely beloved by a significant few, thanks to being something of a sandbox with complex and ambitious features such as player-made cities and pet Rancors. WoW and its many followers might be a whole lot slicker than Galaxies, but they just can’t hold a candle to its crafting and virtual economy. Sadly, an attempted relaunch as something more action-centric in 2005 made the dwindling Galaxies faithful love it a little less, and subscriber counts have continued to drop since then.

It’s amazing it’s kept going for so long, quite frankly. But now, its Jedi will return no more – Galaxies will close for good on December 15, 2011. Many Bothans died to bring us this information.
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Well, I wasn’t expecting this. Guild Wars 2 apparently has a “huge” amount of underwater content, including unique underwater weapons and abilities and – according to developer Jon Peters talking in this Gamespot video, embedded below – entire underwater cities. The twenty minute shows some huge aquatic creatures, lots of combat, and some extremely atmospheric underwater and coastal areas. It’s fairly impressive, and certainly makes other MMOs’ brief dabbling with submerged areas look pretty, uh, shallow. Go take a look.
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As the less forgetful among you will recall, the guns’n'demons MMO is being resurrected despite a broadly unhappy reception and an early demise, with Korean dev T3 transplanting a free to play heart into it. While a select few have been allowed in previously, the unwashed masses (hullo!) will also get to peer suspiciously at it in just six days’ time, when the open beta lands. It brings with it brand new modes for Hellgate’s below-London adventuring. One of them, you may be unsurprised to hear, involves zombies.

Anyway, this open beta sounds a bit like one of those betas that’s actually a launch. Damn you Google, you ruined the word ‘beta’ forever.
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Op Archers? Owners of Operation Arrowhead, anyway. If you are one of those people – as you should be if you like soldier simming – then you are entitled to a preview version of Take On Helicopters, the forthcoming commercial chopper game from Bohemia Interactive. It looks like this is a sort of add-on for Operation Arrowhead which demonstrates the new flight model and pilot animation using a “light chopper” (pictured). Perfect if you were wondering how you were going to be able to get through another weekend without some simulated hovering.

Speaking with Gamasutra, Crytek bossman Cervat Yerli had this to say about the Crysis games: “Crysis 1′s intention was, if I were to play it three years later, it looks great. And it does, actually, it fulfilled that. But it made it difficult for entry-level players. So with Crysis 2, we took a different direction, and it backfired a little bit.” Yerli explained that the forthcoming high-end 1.9 patch for Crysis 2, which will introduce clevers such as tessellation, realistic shadows with variable penumbra, parallax occlusion mapping, and “Sprite Based Bokeh Depth of Field”, is a “gift” to the PC high-end community. “It lifts up Crysis 2 and gives a sneak peak of how PC gaming will evolve in the future,” says Yerli, “If you support a high-end preference.” I totally support a high-end preference. That sounds like some kind of innuendo, right? Eh? Guys? Mm.

The high-end patch is out next Monday, June 27th.

Alright, I want you lot to listen up. I’ve just noticed that indie RPG Winter Voices now has a demo available that you can either grab on the official site or using Steam. I don’t want you lot to run off and download it, because I’m positive that most of you would enjoy it about as much as having having smoke rings puffed in your face. Just have a listen of what I have to say and see if the game sounds like it’s for you.
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