Rock, Paper, Shotgun

City of Heroes will be NCsoft’s first major foray into the strange, wild land that is free to play MMOs. There is, though, the little matter of what the superhero game’s current subscriber base will make of this. Well, they can find out right now, more or less. The free to play reboot, City of Heroes Freedom, won’t launch fully until later this year, but any and all current active subscribers can jump right in as of yesterday. There are prizes and live events and shopping and all that funfair-sounding stuff to be seen and had. Useful bulletpoints await below. Oh, and apparently if you reactivate your old account now-ish, you’ll also get to try out the headstart.
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Laura Shigihara got in touch with us to let us know about another project she’s been working on. Coming to fame via singing the Plants Vs. Zombies theme, Shigihara recently worked on To The Moon, and now she alerts us to Celestial Mechanica. Created by Roger “rComplex” Hicks and Paul “Super Crate Box” Veer, Shigihara provides the vocals to the (impressive) music. And the game? A pixel-platformer with Metroidvania progression. There’s a trailer below.

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Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad is now a game you can play. If you buy it. Which you now can. This is the standard of journalism you get from me after 1am. Far better to ignore me and watch the launch trailer below.

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In one minute I’ll be announcing the announcement that the new demo of FIFA 12 will be being announced in a few minutes. That’s a new demo for FIFA 12 that I will tell you has been released just as soon as I’ve announced that I’m announcing its imminent announcement. There’s a FIFA 12 demo out! Wait, damn, that was too soon.

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Arcen Games have been busy tinkering away with their experimental procedural explore-and-survive ‘em up A Valley Without Wind, and they’ve got news for us. Last month they teased us with footage, flaunting its newly reinvented sidescrolling makeover. This month Chris Park of Arcen games has taken to his blog, to unveil a whole host of new details about the game’s design, and features that they are including. Shall we take a look? Read the rest of this entry »

‘Tis the season for it, apparently. Next from the roster of beloved PC games from the 90s to get a suitably modern first-person shooter remake is classic point and click adventure The Secret Of Monkey Island – now reimagined as an action title. “Time has moved on,” said LucasGames chief modernisation officer Ian Koticiello. “We’re big fans of the original Monkey Island(TM), we’re definitely paying as much homage to it as we can – bringing across the essence of the world, the core essence of what it is to be an inept wannabe pirate with a glock safe action pistol.”

M.O.N.K.E.Y., due in Q3 2012, “takes that viewpoint from the original game and zooms into Jack Threepwood’s head.” Featuring visceral pirate- and zombie-shooting action, a recharging Grog system and a extensive multiplayer mode which faithfully homages the original game by enabling gamers to take direct control over six beloved Monkey Island(TM) series characters in brutal deathmatch arenas, M.O.N.K.E.Y. brings this dark and gritty saga of high seas combat and undead horror to a whole new audience. You can see the first footage below.
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It’s been over a year since we last heard anything about the fabulous broom-toting, wall-hugging platformer – Dustforce – but the developer, Hitbox team, have just put out a pair of screenshots, and the game’s intro video, to remind us that they still exist. And what a pair of screenshots and intro video they are… Read the rest of this entry »

When Good Old Games released their first batch of EA games, it seemed pretty odd that the Wing Commander included was Privateer. Fortunately they’ve now righted that wrong by previously sticking up Wing Commanders 1 and 2 for $6 for the pair, and today they’ve added the most famous of the series, Wing Commander III: Heart Of The Tiger. Or as it’s more commonly known, The One With Mark Hamill In It.

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For some people, there’s nothing better than watching nine Arma 3 videos in a row. Those people are going to be extremely disappointed, for today I am only able to bring them eight Arma 3 videos in a row. I have let you down. Perhaps even betrayed your trust. I am so sorry. One day, I hope, we might come to love each other again. Those of you with less exacting tastes will hopefully be able to draw some small measure of pleasure from the following 10-ish minutes of footage culled from presentations made at GamesCom last month. Includes a whole lot of undersea action, including what I’m prepared to guess is the most realistic flipper physics consumer videogames have ever before offered. Also, includes discussion of how much time they spent convincingly recreating soldiers’ underpants. PRE-ORDERED.

Nicely laid-back and chatty videos, given Arma’s steely-eyed nature, these – worth a watch whether or not you’re into soldier sims. (Er, you probably shouldn’t load the below post on a Netbook or anything else that has itself a cry when presented with Flash videos.)
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Here’s a micro-platformer for you to have a bit of fun with. Platforming isn’t all rescuing princesses from castles and saving the world: Sometimes it’s just about cold hard business. Saving the Company is a devious tale of corporate rebellion in the face of plummeting stock prices, and it sees you attempting to enact a company rescue & recovery strategy, through puzzle solving platforming. Sort of. Read the rest of this entry »