Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The League Of Legends noise machine has been loud this week, with a trailer for the new patch (below) which will nerf some of the more popular heroes, but also a big boasting stats release. Here’s what they said: “As of today, 15 million people have registered to become League of Legends players. Each month, over 4 million people log in to play. And on each day, 1.4 million summoners play League of Legends together.”

Four million! That’s even more people than read RPS each month. My startling powers of logic lead me to reason that this means that some of you lot must also play League Of Legends. You have one comment thread: explain its appeal to me.
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Humans! The promised day has arrived. Some said it wasn’t possible. Some said rude, badly-spelled things in capital letters. Others were simply impatient. No matter: it has happened. Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the third game in the series that has an awful lot to do with why an awful lot of us remain faithful, unswervingly loyal PC gamers to do this day, has gone gold. And I’m not just talking about its colour pallete. It is finished, Eidos Montreal have just revealed. Complete. Ready. Well, ready as it’ll ever be – and that means its release date on August 23 is actually happening.

And that means, hopefully, it’ll be in our hands soon.
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At a certain point you have to wonder if Ubisoft is in the midst of some spectacular version of a Producers-style attempt to treat PC customers as abysmally as possible for some unknown goal. In the last couple of weeks they’ve bumped PC release dates on their last two games (Call Of Juarez and From Dust) just days before release – rather spitting in the eye of pre-order customers. And now they’ve now ensured that those looking forward to playing Driver: San Francisco can distract themselves with the knowledge that it will carry Ubisoft’s loathed DRM that requires you always be online to play both single- and multiplayer.

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Oh, I hope this isn’t a sign of a dark, headline-writing times to come. I don’t want to spend the rest of 2011 writing ‘Game X Gone From Steam’ every other day. The latest departure from the packed ranks of Steam is EA and Bioware’s Dragon Age II – and right on the eve of the launch of its new DLC Legacy.

Something which may be no coincidence.

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EA did one of their financial phonecalls last night. I’m so glad I don’t have to do those, telling lots of people I don’t know that I spent all my money on gadgets and Chinese takeaway. But within their announcements that The Old Republic is out-pre-ordering even Battlefield 3, there was one even juicier tidbit of information. When measured by EA’s non-GAAP accounting methods, PC is making them more money than either console.

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You might recollect a previous trailer for StreumOnStudio’s Source-powered shooter, E.Y.E. You’ll probably remember it because the name is so bad, but you might also remember the pacey movement and fairly hardcore approach the team are taking: RPG elements, hacking, lots of interesting-looking menus… Anyway, two new trailers have surfaced, one showing off the moody cyberpunky environments throughout the game, followed by some gun-action, and the other showing the POV of a robot trundling about aimlessly in a boring cave. One of the videos makes the game look impressive, and the other does not.

StreunOnStudio got in touch to say they’ll be letting me get my hands on the game soon.
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The Gearbox forums have announced the inevitability of the Icons Parody Pack, a multiplayer add-on for Duke Nukem Forever. It’ll contain new maps and game modes, and be available in the autumn at some point. The post explains that the DLC will be free “to all First Access Club members who registered their FAC membership before Duke Nukem Forever launched in their country (subject to availability).” Presumably everyone else will have an option to buy it. More details below.
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So I’ve finally got around to installing the Shadow Of Chernobyl “mega-mod”, Narodnaya Solyanka. It’s a tangled compilation of Russian-language add-ons, put together by a Russian team, which has been roughly translated into English by enthusiastic bi-lingual Stalker-fans. The translation is interesting. Overall, though, Narodnaya Solyanka provides us with a vast amount additional content, including new maps, maps pulled in from the other games, and a daunting radioactive salad of minor Stalker mods. It hugely expands the size of the zone, and reportedly adds another several hundred hours of missing-driven content. It is also a bizarre and off-putting experience, as my initial dabblings have discovered. “It all gets better after the cave,” is the mantra that appears across various Stalker forums. And they’re right. Because the cave is a horrible mess. What lies beyond, however, is intriguing…

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