Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Yes, it’s that oldest of all the jokes. But I’m afraid a screenshot of Tommy’s actual back is all we’re getting from Human Head today. Given exactly thirty-two in every five hundred and twenty-eight people on the internet were vocally distressed to discover that Prey 2 would be ditching the first game’s Native American protagonist Tommy in favour of a white soldierdude named Killian Samuels, you’d have thought the first unveiling of Tommy’s NPC appearance in Prey 2 would have a little more hullabaloo. But no, just his back. And a bit of his nose, admittedly. Will he be purely a talky character, or will you fight alongside him somehow? I don’t know these things. I’m sorry. Look, I’ve got this picture of his back, and that’s all. Stop looking at me like that. What do you want from me?

So there you go. There’s the picture of a man’s back. That’s my story. We’ll always remember this moment.

Banana el presidente despot republic. I have just summed up every opening line ever written about the Tropico series. Also I’ve probably done something clever regarding SEO witchcraft. We will be number one! But are there bananas in Tropico? Really? You can now find out for yourself, as the Tropico 4 demo has been released. It’s 1.7GB (you know what – that’s 116 Peggles), which you can pick up from here or here, or even here. In there you’ve got four tutorial missions, and one campaign mission, which should give you a fair idea if it’s something you want to buy. Something you’ll be able to do on the 1st September.

King’s Bounty: Legions, the “the fighting bits” Facebook version of the King’s Bounty series, is now in open beta. Which means if you weren’t one of our lucky subscribers who got access to the closed beta, even you can play. Yes, we instinctively sneer because of the word “Facebook”, but the day is coming when a perfectly decent selection of games will be on it, and some of them might not be begging for your change every few seconds. Legions is still begging for change, of course, but it actually seems a pretty decent effort. It does seem a shame to have KB with all the in-betweeny stuff removed, but after my quick go the battles seem just as good.

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These are difficult times, and difficult times can only be helped by a short, sharp burst of Owlboy. While we won’t get to sample this apparently rather beautiful tale of a quasi-avian lad and his platforming adventures until August 20th, when a demo is due to land, this does mark the first decent footage we’ve seen of the game since early last year.

I might be prone to grumbling about the apparently endless tide of retro-esque platformers in indie gaming (and especially commercial indie gaming), but the music and art in this one is pure delight. See below, and feel heroic.
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Our eagle-eyed internet informants have spotted Trackmania 2 footage – actual game-being-played-by-a-dude footage! – and I’ve posted it below. Might be one of those Soon To Be Zapped typed situations, as we don’t seem to have got this from Mr Ubisoft directly. It looks suitably slick, and just about mad enough to be Trackmania.

And yes, I used the same screenshot again, wanna fight about it?
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Here’s what I’d like to see/hear. An adventure game whose music doesn’t begin with a long strained note on a violin. Seriously, every single one does it now. Nothing wrong with it – I’d just like some variation. Joining their numbers is To The Moon – a sort of RPG adventure thing that attracted me by its excellent name, and then – as it happens – that the violiny music is from Laura Shigihara, she of the Plants Vs. Zombies theme.

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Steve Ince, writer for the Broken Sword series, is launching a new pre-school kids’ game on PC. Called Star Sweet and Honey Heart, it’s a super-cute bunny and kitten buddy based on Ince’s own cartoons. In fact, it’s so sickly sweet that I’ve vomited everywhere. Check out the video below so you can vomit too.

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…such read the subject line of the email advising us of the existence of Black Belt Sorvi Hero, and I see no reason at all not to use it again here. BBSH was the winner of the Assembly Summer 2011 computer festival in Finland, and it is indeed a game about woodcarving. It’s not your average game about wood carving, however. If you were fearing this was the lathe-based equivalent of Street Cleaning Simulator, you may be heartened by news that it features a lightsaber and an in-game toolshop run by a down and out version of the Linux Penguin. Also, the option to foolishly use a human hand. That doesn’t work out so well.

On top of that, it is indeed a fairly elaborate, physics-bestowed wood carving simulator, and with a techno soundtrack too. The game’s out now, but if you fear your wood-fu is not up to muster, you should definitely watch the video below. IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU.
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Civ V’s one of those games I’ve somewhat taken my eye off since launch. While lovely to point my ocular organs at and with a natty new take on Civly combat, it seemed to lack the identity and variety of the evergreen Civ IV. Importantly, however, it’s apparently been a continuing slow-burn success, given the steady trickle of new patches and DLC over the last year or so. Latest to the latter’s ranks is the introduction of Korea as a playable faction, and a clutch of new wonders.
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With a couple of weeks still on the clock for the release of Deus Ex 3 (it’s still amazing to me that’s really happening), however will we occupy ourselves? Well, we Britishers could start with considering how to help bridge the terrible gulf between rich and poor. Then we could replay the original Deus Ex, but adorned with new, high resolution textures. The New Vision mod repaints DX’s world with pin-sharp new surfaces, which as well as making it look a little less geriatric also makes its world look a little more futuristic. Its 1.5GB of image files claims to increase texture resolution by some eight times. Sharp.

Don’t expect less cuboid character models, however, but New Vision does play nice with most, if not all, other DX mods, so you may well be able to combo-up for something even better. (Big thanks to everyone who mailed this in).