Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The headline says it all, really. The single-player game of Battlefield 3, which hasn’t had much attention so far, will be playable with a chum. The demonstration was shown on PS3, meaning it looked nowhere near as good as the trailer that followed, with the two developers pretending to not know what they were doing (and to be playing). They totally rescued a hostage! They drove a tank together! They revived each other! But there you go – co-op. In Battlefield 3. Got it? Good. And new screenshots! Added below.

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Oopsie – Funcom’s PR machine has accidentally spat out the big news The Secret World project lead Ragnar Tørnquist was about to announce at Gamescom. The release date will be April 2012, with the game’s beta registration beginning this month, on the 26th.

Freshly announced at Gamescom from EA comes Warhammer Online: Wrath Of Heroes. It’s an attempt by Mythic to take their MMO tech and reinvent it as a three-way, 6 v 6 v 6 battle game. It will also be free-to-play. The graphics are changed, with a more cel-shaded theme, which you can see in the trailer below.

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It is, as you may have noticed, Gamescom this week. There probably won’t be many truly breath-taking surprise announcements, not least because the unblinking eye of the internet usually spots these things before they officially happen, but one or two things of great might just get revealed… We should not tease, though, because what this post is about is asking you what you’d like to be announced this week. It could be anything, but it must be a surprise. Don’t say Half-Life 3, and don’t be boring. Is it a new IP? A turn-based FPS? An inside-out simulator? A sequel to a turn-based RPG from 1986? What? If anything at all could be announced this week, what would you have it be?

I even have a special prize for the most entertaining suggestion, so get fantasizing! (The title image was Gillen’s suggestion. Not bad. Personally I am hoping that Excalibur will announce of a English port of that classic German simulation title, Sitting Alone In A Room Blogging About Games Simulator.)

Here’s a new, visually splendid, science fiction action MMORPG from Singaporean dev RealU and free-to-play types Gamigo. Based on the “cyberpunk Lord Of The Rings” book series by Tad Williams, Otherland seems to mash up abstract sci-fi visuals with more traditional fantasy MMO guff, as well as some entirely abstract things. Crazy whirling fly-through announcement trailer details all this, below: Read the rest of this entry »

Those cheeky chaps at Wargaming.net first announced that World Of Tanks would be followed up by World Of Warplanes, and today they’re saying it will also see a free-to-play sequel in World of Battleships. Wargaming.net’s disembodied PR voice explained: “The large assortment of available warships will give various tactical opportunities, as all the machines have a unique combination of firepower, speed, armor, and endurance. Various naval maps with changing weather conditions will enrich the gameplay, and the realistic graphics will transport players into the epic battles that changed the course of human history.” This apparently “completes” the World Of trilogy, although there’s no clear indication of when it will arrive.

The big K has gone and recorded seven Imperial minutes of video footage of Hard Reset, the P.C. O.N.L.Y. FPS from newly formed Polish super-dev, Flying Wild Hog. It’s full of explosions, environmental interactions (usually involving explosions), fights with baddies, some explosions, some spectacular looking explosions environments. This is one to watch, says I. Read the rest of this entry »

Eurogamer have a brief and mysterious news story sourced from Mike Capps of Epic Games who was speaking at Gamescom/GDCE today. Epic are apparently working on five new games, none of them Gears Of War related. Could one of them be Samaritan? Probably not, as it sounds like these are small-scale projects. Anyway, here’s the important bit:

“It’s nice to target the PC as a primary platform again,” teased Capps, “not just for ports.”

I really cannot fathom what’s going on with Cargasm. As we’ve said many times, the way it’s being promoted is foul, with awful allusions toward gathering some sort of harem of scantily clad women and so forth. And we’ve also pointed out that its claims of “photo-realistic graphics” for its iOS version are, well, nonsense. But the biggest issue of all is despite some really impressive-looking screenshots, we’ve still yet to see the game actually show any driving. And that continues in the latest video, with yet more of what I’m pretty certain is an awkward, juddery fly-through in the level creator rather than actual in-game footage, which is clearly trying to look like a driver’s view. However, I don’t post it for Cargasm at all, really. Rather for the extremely interesting tech that’s discussed coming from Near Global. It’s well worth a look.

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The 2D space shooter with RPG bits, Space Pirates And Zombies, has now emerged from its beta, blinking into the atomic light of day. You might recall that perfidious Mr Smith wrote about the game rather favourably, but you don’t have to take his words as representative because there’s also a v1.0 demo for you to play. That is all.

The return of Frank West in Dead Rising 2 standalone spin-off Off The Record offers a reinvention of the splendid Dead Rising 2, but from another perspective. And also offers Capcom a chance to put out more of their extremely weird, and rather brilliant, trailers for the game. This one’s a guide to photography! Of sorts. You can see it below.

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