Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Wow – it actually happened. Eurogamer confirms that Ubisoft have delayed the PC version of Driver: San Francisco. This is after explicitly stating they would not.

To put this in perspective: When Ubisoft announced that Driver: SF would carry their detested and grossly poorly-conceived DRM, a community manager at the @drivergame account helpfully tweeted,

“Bear in mind though that the PC version of DRVSF is released simultaneously to consoles.”

Since then it’s been confirmed that the PC version won’t support wheel peripherals, and just Monday Ubisoft confirmed to us that there will be no PC demo. I was tempted to add in that post, “Now we just have to wait for the inevitable eleventh hour delay”, but that would have been poor form. Turns out it would also have been correct.

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Carbine’s art director Matt Mocarski has posted an early image from the game (above, click for full), as well as a statement of intent for his visual style, which he describes as “hand-crafted” and “magical”: “We knew we were a future fantasy game – players will see both fantasy and sci-fi elements in our world and our gameplay. We also knew we’d need to be able to tell a huge variety of stories, everything from intense drama to mind-blowing action to humorous tales. There were a few influences that we really focused on. Animated films such as Atlantis, The Secret of Nimh, and Princess Mononoke really nailed the overall look of the style. We know that our game was for adults so we studied shows like Naruto and Full Metal Alchemist to see how they balanced a unique visual style with stories that had both humor and drama. Lastly we looked at comics such as Hellboy, Battle Chasers, and Tank Girl to influence our balance of technology and fantasy.”

The game is set to be revealed by NCSoft later this month, and we’re mildly excited. Here’s why.

Chris Hecker has posted over on the SpyParty blog to explain his early-access beta pricing for the game of spy-spotting. “$15 gets you access to the beta SpyParty and all the updates during the beta, access to the private beta website, which includes forums for announcements, finding games, and discussing strategies, and eventually a bug/feature tracking system,” says Hecker. He’s also allow the truly excited to pay more on top of that if they really want to support the project.

Hecker also confirms that he’ll probably miss the “mid-June” launch date for this beta, but he’s busy working ahead on it anyway, and there should be more news soon.

Just to be clear – in case you’ve just returned from five years living in the jungle – OnLive is a cloud-gaming service. That’s a clever thing whereby you stream the game’s visual data from a remote server over the internet, rather than rendering it on your own PC. We’re all a bit sceptical about how well it will work, but we could soon be in a position to test it for ourselves. It’s going to launch in the UK next month, and sign up will be free. It’ll allow you to play any game for 30 minutes (goodbye lack of demos, at least) and spectate “from the arena”, whatever that means. It’ll apparently launch with 100 games, with more to follow. Those games can be rented or bought outright, depending on your wallet and taste.

It’s going to be interesting.

Id’s lead design chap, Tim Willits, has been talking to Eurogamer about the “always on” thing. He said this: “Diablo 3 will make everyone else accept the fact you have to be connected. If you have a juggernaut, you can make change. I’m all for that. If we could force people to always be connected when you play the game, and then have that be acceptable, awesome. In the end, it’s better for everybody.” Everybody except those people who aren’t online for whatever reason.

“Imagine picking up a game and it’s automatically updated. Or there’s something new you didn’t know about, and you didn’t have to click away. It’s all automatically there. But it does take juggernauts like [Diablo 3] to make change. I’m a big proponent of always connected. I’m always connected. Our fans are always connected.”

Except when they’re not, eh? I think he’s right about Diablo III being unstoppable, but it’s not going to make it any less annoying or intrusive. Also, I totally love it when an app or game I click on tells me to hang on for a moment, because it has to update before I can use it. That’s super, really. Great stuff.

Glad tidings, cephalopod fans. Thanks to 608 generous people, Octodad 2 has met its funding targets – exceeded ‘em, in fact – which means it’s definitely, definitely go. The gods of gaming absurdity have been kind this day.

To celebrate, devs Young Horses have popped up a new update for the original saga of the undersea patriarch, which adds two new levels to his wobbly adventure. Which, given OD1′s not the longest game, should make for a pretty meaty expansion – plus the new levels apparently lend greater closure to our betentacled friend’s tale. They’re supposed to be pretty tricky, mind. The game’s performance has also been improved in this new version 1.5 – which you can grab from here.

The unblinking info-gaze of Eurogamer’s news sentinel has detected NeoGAF discoveries that indicate Alpha Centauri has been trademarked in Europe and the US. One trademark for computer games and one for online gaming. This can only mean one thing: a new FPS is on the way! Ha. My little joke there. Sorry.

Read Lewie’s retrospective for a reminder of why Alpha Centauri is such an important strategy title. We pray that this one is an appropriate remake.

The final part of the Metro Last Light E3 demo is up (gosh, they made this one last, didn’t they?). You can see part one here, and part two here. This third part contains the action bit, an on-rails minecart shoot-out that I think demonstrates the engine at its absolute finest. Incredible lighting and cloth physics give this an air of realism that’s a little nerve-racking. You can see it below.

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Ignite send word that their peculiarly-named online multiplayer racing game, Simraceway, will be endorsed by and in some way shaped by the experience of Indy 500 champion Dan Whedon. The idea here is to create an realistic, solid, rewarding racer, rather than something all shiny, as Ignite’s Jonathan Haswell explains: “The core aim of the Simraceway online racing environment is simply to do online, live, multiplayer racing, really, really well. This racing environment will be much less about high detailed visual models and cinematic replays, like most current racing games, and much more about close, hard, door handle to door handle racing with live people who have been well matched by skill level, or against professional drivers like Dan.”

Below you can see a video that Ignite sent over to explain who Dan Whedon is. It shows some Indy 500 action, and also features a stealth bomber. For some reason. And also a screenshot of a track. There are also beta sign-ups over on the Simraceway site.
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