Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Or should that be Mojangian? Probably, as this is information from exciting Jakob Porser, rather than boring old Notch. And will it still be called Scrolls after the Bethesda lawyer-machine is done with it? I don’t. I just don’t know. What I do know is that details have emerged about how the game will work (via VG247). Speaking at PAX the Scrolls designer explained that the game would allow players to sign into a persistent character from a number of formats, including a browser. Although exact pricing hasn’t been settled, the game will apparently feature a subscription that delivers new scrolls to you each month, while unwanted scrolls can be auctioned away, microtransaction-style in the game’s auction house.

Confused about what it all means? Have a read of our preview. (New Scrolls teaser video below!)
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Huh, I could have sworn we already mentioned UFO 2 as one of the upcoming “spirit of X-Com” games, but I can only find stories about Xenonauts. Anyway! Blue notes that the much-delayed game has now been dated for March 2012. Chaos Concept, the team behind UFO: Extraterrestrials, have stated that they intend to be the team that creates games “where the original XCOM:UFO Defense left off”. So this could be one to keep an eye on. There’s a whole bunch of details about plans for the game over here.

We’ve seen quite a bit of footage of Hawken in action so far, but Adhesive send word that their first true teaser trailer for the beautiful mech-combat game has arrived, and you can see it below. It sets up the action with a bit of story, and then there’s some lovely footage of the robots leaping about and blasting the hell out of each other. More on this game soon, I hope, and definitely another trailer at the end of the week, according to Adhesive.
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Minecraft 1.8 aka “The Adventure Update”, aka “When Jim Plays Minecraft Again”, has been shown on the show floor at PAX, and you can see a bit of that in action below, along with graphical tweaks, dungeons, Endermen, and so forth. You get to see the new inventory and some other stuff such as “creator mode”, but the really interesting thing about 1.8 is the existence of “NPC villages”, where groups of baddies will spawn and live. Check out Notch narrating a video of the update below, via IGN.

Also check out this 20-minute documentary, Minecraft: The Story of Mojang, on Penny Arcade TV.
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Sundays are for hoping that everything is going to turn out okay. I mean, it probably will, but sometimes signs aren’t all that promising. Ah well, perhaps there’s some optimism to be found in the endless pages of that internet thing. It certainly has a lot to say for itself.

• Ben Kuchera tries to defend DXHR’s boss battles. He’s wrong, of course, but it’s fun to watch him try: “The world of Human Revolution is violent, and you play the head of security for a very large and controversial corporation. You find yourself going against powerful enemies who would very much like you dead, and while you may be able to slide around most scenes of violence, the way the first boss battle is set up makes it hard to justify a stealthy approach. Imagine the scene in The Phantom Menace when Obi Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn finally face Darth Maul directly. There will be no conversation. There will be no sneaking into a heating duct. They can not go around the Sith Lord, they must go through him. No matter how often a Jedi practices his meditation, there may come a time when the lightsaber has to be his method of communication with an enemy.”

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Right, I do believe Lewie and his henchmen are all away this weekend, so we’re all going to have to come up with our own deals! I know, what a mess. But we can probably muddle through. Right so how does this work… Well, GamersGate Summer Sale is on, and Precursors is only £5.99. Open-world sci-fi thing. I wrote about it here. That’s probably my deal of the week or suchlike. Oh, Dungeon Keeper 2 popped up on GoG – that is a minor classic for cheap. Borderlands GOTY edition is 75% off on Steam, but I can’t recommend it unless you have a chum to play co-op with. UPDATE: Good call from the comments on cheap copies of The Witcher 2.

Anyone got any other suggestions? Gosh, I bet you are all playing DXHR this weekend, anyway.

Uh, hmm. So I completely forgot to post this on RPS yesterday despite spending time reading and commenting about it on other sites. Well, we don’t really cover hardware at the moment. I mean we probably should, but we don’t do it routinely. That’s my excuse. Anyway, Razer’s big announcement was a gaming laptop, the cleverly named “Razer Blade“, which they somehow believe is the world’s first gaming laptop (as evidenced in their reveal video, below). The specs are ok, I suppose – 2.8GHz i7, 8GB RAM, GeForce GT555M – but the real appeal of it is the weight and size: 125mm 22.5mm thick, and 3.2kg. Which means it is pretty portable. It also has an outrageously snazzy touchpad/screen thing and LCD hotkeys. Lovely. Sadly it costs $2,800. Eep.
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We never did hear back from EA about the Origin EULA thing, but Giant Bomb have noticed that the EULA has been substantially redrafted to sound less sinister. The new EULA is a bit more of protestation of innocence than the original legalese: “EA knows that you care how information about you is collected, used and shared, and we appreciate your trust that we will do so carefully and sensibly. Information about our customers is an important part of our business, and EA would never sell your personally identifiable information to anyone, nor would it ever use spyware or install spyware on users’ machines.” It does seem like the rest of EULA means you are still basically agreeing to the same thing, however.

Valve just released a batch of screenshots for CS:GO, so here they are. Click for full size. Some of them seem to have already been released in some capacity, but others are new to me, at least. I do like a good balaclava.
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