Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’ll tell you: according to Gamasutra, it’s coming out in February of 2012. The 21st in the North America and the 24th in Europlace. That’s relatively soon! Yes it is. Also, there’s now a website for the game over here. It’s not much of a website, but it does say this: “AT THE FRONT LINE OF THIS WAR ARE THE AGENTS, THE SYNDICATE’S BIO-ENGINEERED AND CHIP-AUGMENTED ENFORCERS. THEY CAN BREACH ANYTHING IN THE WIRED DATAVERSE INCLUDING THEIR ENEMIES, THEIR WEAPONS AND THE ENVIRONMENT THAT SURROUNDS THEM, MAKING THEM THE MOST EFFICIENT AND DEADLY TECHNOLOGICAL WEAPONS IN THE WORLD. TAKE ON THE ROLE OF MILES KILO, EUROCORP’S LATEST PROTOTYPE AGENT, AND EMBARK ON A BRUTAL ACTION ADVENTURE OF CORRUPTION AND REVENGE.”

Miles Kilo. That’s his name. That’s your name. You are him.

Who wants a free game to play? Lots of people. Who wants a free “expressive game” to play? Not quite so many. Did I also mention that it’s French? Well it is. A French expressive game about a man exploring his past to fix his future. It’s called Keys Of A Gamespace and for one glorious moment I thought it might be my new favourite point and click game, for at least today. In the end, that wasn’t the case. Let me tell you why.

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The news horn of Eurogamer sounds a clear note of DRM alarm as it points out this voluminous thread on the Football Manager 2012 forums. The situation nothing like as venomous as other DRM solutions we’ve seen of late, being a one-time only Steam activation, but it has nevertheless been greeted with scorn by thousands of players. Publishers Sega have responded defending the DRM solution, and saying: “Make no mistake, if a quarter of the people that usually pirate the game switch to purchasing Football Manager 2012, the sales of the game worldwide would more than double. This would lead to increased development budgets and more benefits for all of you who do buy the game.”

Oh dear.

If I have read the entrails of this internet correctly, then it would seem that the open beta part of Vindictus’ EU roll out is happening this afternoon. You can currently sign up on the site, but the actual servers are down, so no playing. But “what is Vindictus”, you might ask. It’s an online action game of melee combat, persistent and quasi-MMOish, built in the source engine. It features a lot of creatures getting very killed by weapon-wielding characters. Take a look a the video below for an illustration of how that happens.
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Is anyone interested in watching an hour and a half of Salem’s developers playing an early version for an hour and a half while answering viewers’ questions? Salem isn’t the easiest game in the world to describe, being a crafting-based MMO set in 17th Century New England, with permadeath, alchemy, farming and beasties. That’s why it’s so impressive that I just described it, even if I may have told you nothing you don’t already know. Thankfully, you’ll find out lots you don’t know in the video. The audio is more informative than the actual game footage, with combat in particular looking a bit of a chore at the moment, but there’s a lot of detail on how things will actually work. The first fourteen minutes of the video is dead air, as this was originally a livestream that started too soon.

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Update: new video!

Adam Jensen’s story (which he never asked for) may be the canon prequel to the cyberpunk conspiracy theorising of the original Deus Ex, but the future-world’s a big place – there’s plenty of room to tell new tales from the time before JC Denton trotted across the globe. 2027 is a massively ambitious, Russian-made mega-mod for Deus Ex 1, the English version of which launched last week. It offers a new, apparently highly non-linear story, levels based on real-world locations, amped-up DirectX 9 graphics with stuff like weather effects added and a slew of new abilities, weapons and spider-bots. Also, new fonts. I do so like a font. Haven’t had a chance to give it a spin yet, but the below in-game footage certainly speaks for the visual upgrade.
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Eccentric 2D MMO Glitch (the team recently hired Katamari-creator Keita Takahasi and the game is set inside the combined dreams of eleven giants) is out of beta and now available to play. What’s interesting about the game is that it has some player-driven emergent potential to it. Not only is much of the in-game economy powered by players, a la Eve Online, but the world itself is expanded by players as they unlock high-level items at the fringes of the existing game. There’s also some complex factional stuff going on which hinges on which of the dreaming giants the players end up favouring. All intriguing, all a bit weird. You can check out the most recent video below, or sign up and take a look for yourself.
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Above and Beyond Technologies have announced the existence of a new MMO, dubbed The Repopulation. It’s powered by off-the-shelf MMO system Hero Engine and is described by its creators like this: “You begin your adventure as a second generation clone colonist on the planet of Rhyldan, with mankind on the verge of extinction, and in the midst of a civil war. We’ve taken a fresh look at every feature of the Massive Multiplayer genre, with an eye on revolution, rather than evolution. The end result is a unique feature set aimed towards old school fans and new players alike.” Hmm! So what sort of unique features? Well, “Hybrid approach which blends Sandbox and Theme Park mechanics.” That sounds promisingish. “City building system allows Nations to form their own cities complete with Walls, Turrets, Harveters, Workshops, Houses, and other forms of structures geared towards benefiting the owning character, or the City as a whole.” More interesting! “Be rewarded for your travel through the exploration system.” That’s interesting, too.

“Pre-alpha” video, below. It certainly looks like a sci-fi MMO.
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You know, the only MMO I’ve ever missed playing, apart from Eve Online, is City Of Heroes. I am vaguely tempted to see if I can somehow resurrect my age old tanker character in the new, free world that NCSoft are touting. I bet it’s changed a bit since I was last in there over three years ago. The latest update “Freedom” has a bunch of stuff new content (see below for the full feature list) but also opens up the game pretty substantially, allowing people access to most of what made the game great (character creation) and the capacity to play through to level 50. Paragon’s Brian Clayton says of the update: “We aren’t just flipping a switch and going ‘Free-to-Play.’ We’re embarking on the biggest content and feature update to City of Heroes in its seven-year history.” I hope he’s right, because I have a genuine soft-spot for the ageing villain-biffer.

Details and video below.
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