Rock, Paper, Shotgun

A source of what could gently be called discontent amongst the Total War community of late has been the lack of modding tools for the most recent games. Empire, Napoleon and Total War have all been bereft of official utilities to alter and add units, maps et al, which was partly a result of the relevant files being compressed and thus tricky to edit. At last, the Creative Assembly have found a way to open things up a little more – releasing the complete, original, unpacked raw database XML (data from tables) and XSD (table structure and field properties) files for both Empire and Napoleon.
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Oh goodness, I think I need a cup of tea, a quick lie down and someone to tell me everything will be okay. I’ve just played a gameplay prototype of Torsion, a “space warp gameplay prototype.” Like Narbacular Drop and TAG: The Power of Paint before it, Torsion is a simple demo made by a brainy computer engineering student and showcases a simple mechanic in a First-Person puzzler that quietly breaks your mind. There’s some footage doing painful things to your sense of spatial reasoning below.
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If you really, really want to besiege dungeons three-at-a-time, then this competition is for you. In celebration of there first being Dungeon Siege, and then two of it, and now three of it, the lovely chaps at Square and Obsidian have provides three sets of all three games for you guys to win. That’s right: Dungeon Siege One, Two, And Three (Count ‘em!) for you to play. They’re Steam codes, too, so if you already have one of the games you could always pass the code along to a chum. That sounds like a decent prize to me, but what to do to win it?

Well, we want dungeon-themed limmericks. Send yours to this address, and the best of them, as judged by us, will win the codes. The competition closes 12 noon UK time on Monday. Also see: rules.

Splash Damage’s solid team-manshoot Brink has been out for a million years by now, of course. Except if you live in land of chaotic weather and fine tea known as the UK and like to buy your PC games via Steam, in which case it’s only just come out. Our inquiries into why it’s been missing from Brit-Steam for so long have only ever been met with no comments, but whatever the problem was (a disagreement with Steam ToCs? Something to do with keeping retailers happy? A mountain goat chewed an important cable? We can but speculate.)

Well, now it’s back. Why? We don’t know. Too late to mean much? We don’t know. All we know is that a) it’s back and b) it’s discounted by 25% for the time being, which means the price is an eminently reasonable £22.49 (which is still dearer than retail). Free DLC’s due soon, so maybe now’s a decent time to take its bytes and force them onto your hard drive if you haven’t already.

What makes Matul Remrit the Dwarf Fortress diary you should be reading? So many things. The fact that it’s a collaboration between a writer, editor, artist and musician. The bleak and deeply weird tone of it that could not be more true to the game (as opposed to Tim Denee’s stuff, which makes the game comparatively accessible). The glimmering quality of it.

I meant to post about it forever ago and evidently forgot, but I’ve just been jolted into action by their posting an update containing a 36,000 pixel tall comic depicting the fortress’ most epic battle yet. All that bizarre, abstract text? That’s taken from the game’s combat logs. Go read. And then use the links to the left of it to jump back to the beginning. This one’s worth your time.

But only if you live in the UK or Europe. NO REST-OF-WORLDERS ALLOWED! Sorry, we will have a competition for everyone later today.

Anyway, do you want a copy of Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword? Do you? You know, the epic sandbox melee game made famous by the amazing diaries of Captain Smith? If so then email us at this address with a good name for a horse. The best horse names – as judged by us – will win copies of the game. Easy, eh? OR IS IT.

Usual rules ‘n stuff apply.

Irrational Games have posted the first two minutes of the Bioshock Infinite E3 presentation. The footage is introduced by the lovely Ken Levine and covers a brief rummage through an old curiosity shop chock full of adventuresome period banter between Booker and Elizabeth and also features some remarkably creepy sound design. Comrade Dan Griliopoulos previously reported on the demo which you can rejigger in your mind-memory right here. Impressive-sounding stuff, and you can watch his words spring to life below! Seems like too much of a coincidence. My new theory? Maybe he’s a god. He’s got the chin.

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