Rock, Paper, Shotgun

We were pretty gosh-darned excited when we learned that excellent trade and building series Anno was going to continue its exploits in the near future, but the glimpses of futuristic island cities were only half of it: the full game of Anno 2070 will contain underwater colonies, too. This game is all about painting a portrait of a (frankly fairly likely) near-future of scarce resources and adaptable strategies towards surviving in a changed world. You’ll be asked to choose between “industrial power” and “renewable energy” routes, and deal with the trade-offs that each of them are forced to make.

No precise release date for this as yet, as Ubisoft are still quoting “Winter”. I’m hoping to find out a bit more soon, as it’s the Ubisoft game I’m most interested in right now.
Read the rest of this entry »

I remember when Frictional released Amnesia, there appeared to be a lot of talk about whether a game so relentlessly horrible would have a broad appeal. Refreshingly frank about both potential and actual sales figures, the team said 100,000 copies would be a dream figure. What, then, would they make of four times that number? It can only be assumed that dreams have piled upon other dreams, Inception-style, for 400,000 units have been shifted. So, yes, they have their dreams and almost half a million people now have fresh nightmares. I, for one, am now so afraid that doors will not open in the correct direction for a hasty retreat that I must check every single one when entering a new building. Just in case.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ah yes, that nagging feeling at the base of my skull was there for a reason: there was a demo of Might & Magic Heroes VI released this weekend. A portly 4.24gb download (some 22,000 Peggles, if my maths be remembered correctly) contains three campaign maps from the full game, and therefore a decent chunk of game time.

Why not have a read of Alec’s preview of the full game here, and then carefully make a list of how his opinion differs from yours? That would be a strange thing to do. The game is out on October 13th.

Indie developer Jake Spencer got in touch with us regarding his DigiPen project, Be Good. A claymation adventure game that explores a person’s life in a series of vignettes. Which isn’t a sentence you type too often, making this something interesting.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the Great Battle Of The DOTAs, Eurogamer reports that Blizzard’s own version, made as a mod for Starcraft 2, won’t be with us until 2012 now. Because they scrapped the version now assumed to release near Heart of the Swarm, and started over. The version shown at last year’s BlizzCon is no more. The reboot will apparently aim to make the game more accessible to newcomers, which it’s hard to believe isn’t a reaction to Valve’s DOTA 2. There are lots more details in the EG story. So, two DOTAs due to arrive next year, from two of the most powerful developers in the world. Now, if only I liked DOTA games.

Due to post-Germany exhaustion and racing to get Deus Ex Human Revolution finished before the embargo lifts later today, I’ve not had a chance to take lovely-lookin’ indie platformer/roleplayer Owlboy for a test flight myself yet, but it only seems right to advise you that a demonstration version of this much-anticipated pixel-art slice of steampunkery is now available. 80MB of avian lad await you here. Set to it, chums.

Throughout the late 90s and most of the following decade there was the tedious refrain, “Adventure games are dead.” Which of course meant every single time an adventure game came out there had to be the opposing, “Adventure games are not dead.” Or more usually, “Reports of adventure gaming’s death are much ex…” and every variant thereof. I’m as guilty as it of anyone. Unfortunately, the same mantra has become incredibly commonplace of late to needlessly defend PC gaming. PC gaming hasn’t shown any significant decline in popularity – rather console gaming have become an enormous, mainstream phenomenon. So the efforts to defend PC gaming end up mostly serving to consolidate the myth that there was ever a problem in the first place. So with that said, Razer – the PC peripheral maker – have launched some sort of teaser campaign to prove that PC gaming is not dead.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sundays are for contemplation of stupidity. Can it be defeated? Possibly, but we rely on the clever people remaining steadfast for year after year as the waves of stupid crash in like a tsunami. One day, perhaps, the clever shall be able to rest. But not today. Today they must write, and write they do. Here is some of what they offer us.

• Troy has finished up his Nations As Characters series. It’s one of the most interesting long pieces (if you like the history and the strategy) to have emerged this year: “Historical strategy games owe a debt to science fiction games, because there is an assumption that two races that evolved on different planets will have different talents or cultures. Master of Orion, Starcraft, and maybe some fantasy games, too, showed how differentiating factions made gameplay more interesting and varied. Playing the Civ 1 French wasn’t that much different from the Civ 1 Egyptians. Klackons and Psilons, though…”

Read the rest of this entry »

The chaps at Gematsu have posted four new Space Marine trailers, via THQ, and I’ve reposted them below. They all basically have the same message – “I AM WAR” – but in delivering it they show a lot of varied game footage. It really is looking rather handsome.
Read the rest of this entry »

Everything’s gone a bit indie this week, with all the best deals being from those little developers we love the most. Way to go, guys. Not one of the games will set you back more than a fiver each, so there’s something for every wallet. Have a look and see if the bargain bucket is holding anything for you this weekend. You can always find more gaming cheapness over at SavyGamer. Read the rest of this entry »