Rock, Paper, Shotgun

It now seems certain that video previews for Rage will never end (not least because Carmack was again quoted talking about Rage 2 this week…). Even after the game has been released we will, for as long as live, see talking heads from Id pop up to tell us about the value of the story, or the open world, or – in this particular case – the enemies that you are inevitable going batter in bloodied carcasses with a double barrelled shotgun.

Ah, but it’s cleverer than that. This isn’t Doom, you know: the ranks of the enemy contains a sinister cabal called The Authority, and they mean business. Shooty business. They’re not interested in talking to the monsters, no sir. And they’ve got more than sharp sticks. But what are they doing? What do they want? Well, that’s the point of the game’s story, I think. There’s also another glimpse of that gigantic mutant and some details of the animation system in here. Excitingly, we sent our one of our sinister cabal to take a look at Rage recently, so we’ll be able to tell you a bit more about the whole thing at the start of August.
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Ubisoft has told VG247 that the delayed From Dust won’t require their wretched “always online” DRM. What DRM it will require is as yet unknown, but we’ve contacted Ubisoft to find out. It’s pretty likely that it will require a connection for a first-time authentication, but whether it’s going to demand the internet be there to launch each time is what we want to know. And why does From Dust escape it, and Driver: San Francisco not? Not even God knows. You can read Alec’s impressions of the 360 version of From Dust here.

Part two of THQ’s three-part E3 demo of Metro Last Light is with us. If you missed part one, that’s over there. And if you so please, you can read my reaction to the entire presentation from the olden days of June, right there. Below you can see the latest video.

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I was just pondering my screenshots folder, which has recently passed 40gb in heft, and was thinking about clearing it out. But perhaps I should spend a day rescuing the very best shots? I wonder if any of them are really worth keeping. For me, you see, it has become habit to hammer away at the screenshot key as I play any game, so that I have a visual record of my exploits for the purposes of writing about games. But I am not a photographer. I have to work for truly great screenshots, and I would say that usually my game-snaps at, at best, illustrative.

Some of you, though, are far more artful, documentary, or poignant, as is evidenced by some spectacular Flickr galleries, such as Roburky’s record of our years of Eve. But what about you, readers? Care to share any galleries?

UPDATE: a few people have linked to RPS-chum Duncan Harris, who I should have thought to link in here. Some great shots on there.

There is no niche the PC will not fill. And while clearly something is going to have to go a long way to beat Street Cleaning Simulator (which still sounds like a Your Sinclair running joke to me), it’s good to see the field of oil drilling is not left out with Oil Rush. Except, wait a second. This looks… it looks rather good. And I’m fairly sure drilling stations aren’t usually this well armed.

I was being all, like, “Ha ha, an oil drilling game,” and now I’m like, “Oh.”

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Following our hands-on with Space Marine yesterday, I now spy a cinematic trailer, which I’ve posted below. It is unlikely to surprise you, since it shows the usual spread of orks and chaos minions getting slaughtered by space marines wielding chainswords and English accents. I do like the look of the Warboss and the Chaos chief executive, though.

The game is out September 6th.
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THQ has blamed poor sales of Red Faction Armageddon – which we thought was okay, if something of a step back from Guerilla – for their recent losses. Volition have already moved onto other projects, of course, including Guillermo del Toro’s “Insane” games, which begin in 2013, but it’s not clear whether they’ll ever have a chance to go back. Shacknews quotes Brian Farrell, THQ CEO, saying: “We do not intend to carry forward with that franchise in any meaningful way.”

Crikey.

What a funny world we live in. A world where $5 DLCs for a PC game must be purchased from their Xbox.com site. It’s a bit of a shame that something like that should be buried there, but the Codemasters.com URL now redirects to Facebook, so I suppose that’s not any more of an appropriate location to sell DLCs for a rather good racing game from, is it?

So what’s the download in question? Why it’s the X Games Asia pack for Dirt 3, a game which I thought was great. Something tells me I won’t be playing this particular set of tracks, however. You can check out if it tantalises your track-buds via the trailer, below.
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