Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Rage’s continuing series of video trailers continues today, with a new trailer showing off some of the weapons in Rage. I’m sure they’ve been showing off the weapons for a while now, it’s not news to me that the game has a shotgun in it anyway. Click onward for the video. Read the rest of this entry »

At E3 this year, THQ showed an impressive, if somewhat unrepresentative, demo of Metro: First Light. Instead of showing the game as it will play, they created an all-action sequence that shows off quite how remarkable the engine is. Rather than offering slow, spooky the atmosphere you’ll really be playing in. The first part of that video, broken up into three chunks for maximum annoyance, is below.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Baconing is the new game that isn’t a Deathspank game, but does have Deathspank in it, coming “this summer” from Hothead. We’ve not seen much on it since it’s announcement in June, but here’s a peek at The Forest of Tomorrow, where it apparently tastes like science, and the Clone-A-torium, where from the looks of things a whole lot of cloning is going on. Click the images to embiggen. Read the rest of this entry »

Keita Takahashi, creator of console favourites Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy, is now working with Canadian development team Tiny Speck on their forthcoming MMO, Glitch. You may have forgotten about Glitch, because things have been a little quite since the startling trailer – which you can and must see here – but it’s in closed beta, and Takahashi has come on board as a freelance advisor of some kind. He’s been blogging about the experience for Famitsu. He writes: “The reason of joining “Glitch”, it looks interesting. To create the game, to live the daily life at foreign country, there are quite interesting for me even if includes many troubles. The another reason is because I could feel similar atmosphere of Glitch and Katamari and NOBY.”

It’ll certainly be interesting to see how this one turns out.

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that it’s Puzzle Moppet Awareness Day. The puzzle game by Garnet Games is adopting a trick widely used in the iOS world (gratuitous plug for Free App Hero, which offers a daily round up all the best free games for iThings) of going free for a day. While the PC has recently been enjoying Steam sales, pay-what-you-want schemes, and so on, few have adopted the model that’s working so effectively on Apple’s handhelds of just being free for a single day so word gets out. That’s what’s happening here.

Read the rest of this entry »

As spotted by the astonishingly attractive folk at Eurogamer, New Zealand gaming site Gameplanet have a video interview with Bethesda about Skyrim, in which it’s revealed that Skyrim won’t have a demo. Because it’s too big, and too complex, they explain. To do it wouldn’t represent the game, they say, and would be too large. Which is certainly an issue for larger, open world games, where it’s not possible to saw off a level or two and package them up separately. Which, I suppose, makes it increasingly likely that services like OnLive and the type will soon become the main way to demo a game. But not yet. You can see the interview below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Digipen – which is a pen into which students are herded and then forced to make digital entertainment for their sinister cowled overlords – produces some excellent games. 8-bittest among these is the superb Dig-N-Rig, in which you control a mining robot who can dig and then hoover up the minerals he has discovered. A familiar motif, but the rig part is more interesting: you have to construct a series of horizontal and vertical conveyors to send your mineral loot back up your factory-HQ on the surface. Mining therefore becomes self-perpetuating, as you have to pay for bits and pieces to expand the rig, and to upgrade your robot with things like better wifi, so he can dig deeper and further from his base.

Dig-N-Rig is, as games about digging and mining tend to be, rather compulsive. But combine the building, the surprising complexity, and the glorious 8-bit 2D execution, and you have something that is going to eat time like some kind of desktop-based black hole. I blame Indiegames for digging this one up, now you can too.

It seems as if the failed city-building MMO has become a fairly regular offline city-building series. Cities XL 2012 will be arriving in October, and expands on the previous offering considerably. Focus explain: “Cities XL 2012 allows players to become real urban planners, balancing economic & energy developments of their cities while managing transportation, housing, social services and recreational activities. Content is key to the new game, as Cities XL 2012 offers a staggering number of unique structures with over 1,000 in total.”

The game also now, apparently, open to modding, with a bunch of mod tools included in the 2012 release. A wise move, I suspect.

Payday: The Heist, as Quintin pointed out, looks like it should be a stealth-based bank robbing game, but is in fact a full-on murder-em-up. It’s Left 4 Dead, except they’re not dead until you show up. Which is an angle on bank robbery you don’t often see. Take a look at some of those angles in the screenshot gallery below.

Read the rest of this entry »