Rock, Paper, Shotgun

A date for you: September 29. That date is when the much-awaited open beta for Battlefield 3 will commence. It will run until October 10.

Another date for you: September 27. That date is when people who pre-ordered BF3 PC via EA’s trouble-makin’ Origin platform or who made the mistake of coughing up for the Limited Edition of last year’s Medal of Honor reboot will get to access the beta.

More details and FAQs and things here, and there are system requirements and some singleplayer footage we may not have already shown you below, if you like. Oh, and some no doubt divisive news regarding the PC beta specifically: “ORIGIN WILL BE USED TO DISTRIBUTE THE BETA INSTALLATION AND RUN THE GAME AND THEREFORE NECESSARY TO PLAY.” Their capitals, not mine.
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Having closed down Homefront developers, Kaos Studios, earlier this year, THQ have had to look elsewhere to create a sequel for the massively disappointing shooter. They seem to be going straight to the top. It has just been announced that the publishers are partnering with Crysis creators, Crytek, for the project. The company, currently rumoured to be working on Timesplitters 4, and certainly developing a 360 exclusive, Ryse, for Microsoft, is certainly diverging away from its previous EA-only development. And with multiple studios and presumably Crysis 3 a good way off, it makes sense for them to be picking up work like this.

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Four new screenshots of Cities XL 2012 have been released, and if I can be brutally honest with you – I can, can’t I? – that didn’t excite me very much. The Cities XL games are clearly very good at what they do, but I feel like I was exhausted of city management long ago. And then I looked at the pictures. Blimey, this isn’t Sim City 2000 any more, is it? They’re worth a look.

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“Codemasters: Birmingham” really doesn’t have the same ring to it as “Eidos: Montreal” or “2K Czech” does it? But despite its inauspicious origins, their F1 2011 is looking pretty snazzy. Also, from my non-F1-caring-about perspective, massively daunting. It reminds me of when F1GP2 came out in 1734, and my tiny brain couldn’t understand why you’d play a game where touching gravel once in three hours was a game over. But that’s because I’m an idiot of the highest order. Check out the launch trailer for the game below.

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After peasant-pleasing and/or poking comes castle crashing. Firefly promised to show more of the militant aspect of Stronghold 3 and here’s a video which does just that. See castle walls crumble and tiny men topple from them, reduced to nothing more than ragdolls. Hear a polite British man explain that the medieval era is an ideal showcase for physics. I was hoping they’d be using a Buridanian impetus model but they’ve gone for Havok. I’m more interested in the castle building than the castle destruction, some of which is briefly shown at the end. Have a gander.

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Indie dev Arthur ‘Mr. Pondukian’ Lee was so wrapped up in mashing together Portal and Snapshot for this physics- and time-warping tech demo that he forgot to even give it a name! Silly boy. That’s breaking one of the golden rules of self-promotion. In every other respect, Lee is very clearly not silly: this is a flat-out astonishing proof of concept. What if… instead of simply opening a doorway to another area, entering a portal you created also rewound time to the point where you created its exit, which was itself done by taking a screenshot of your desired destination point/time? Ack, my clumsy words plum don’t sum this up at all satisfactorily. I’m going to have to ask you to watch this video. It’s worth it, trust me.
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Remember Gunpoint, the stealth/hacking/rewiring game from friend/co-arch-nemesis of RPS Tom Francis? In between murdering trees and optimising for search engines, Tom’s drafted in some artists to dramatically overhaul the game’s look, which results in the rather eye-catching, Flashback-y aesthetic you’ll see above (and indeed below). There’s much more imagery and information on how it works and what’s going on in the new shot over at the shiny (i.e. dark) new website, but I’ve embedded the old video below in case you missed it first time. Don’t squeal about the graphics in it. They’ve changed now, remember? Tcch, you kids and your attention spans. TOO MUCH MTV.
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Oh hello. I am back after a lovely holiday. It was the first full week for at least four years that that I did not play some kind of electronic game. What that means, however, is that I now have a pile of stuff to get through: Monaco multiplayer preview code, Red Orchestra 2, Minecraft 1.8, and some preview code for A Valley Without Wind. Exciting stuff, but not exactly easy on my free time. (I want to continue my game of Dead Island, too. I’m a couple of hours in.)

Anyway, this thread is actually about you lot. I assume everyone has finished playing and replaying DXHR, so what’s next on the reader pile? What have you been playing?