Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The internet is littered with the rotting corpse-stories of ‘game x optioned for movie’, so many of such headlines failing to come true, Hollywood executives’ frothing plans simply ending up mired in cinematic red tape for years to come or Uwe Boll somehow getting his hands on the license. Perhaps Dead Island is destined for a similar fate, today bringing news that Lionsgate plan to bring its foul-mouthed tale of holidayers versus zombies to the silver screen – but the hullabaloo over that trailer might sharply increase the odds of something actually happening.
Read the rest of this entry »

Hey, everyone, please join in with the rest of the internet and laugh at ITV. They’ve only gone and made a documentary about Gadaffi’s links with the IRA, and then used footage from Arma II to illustrate it. “IRA Film 1988″ it says over a dodgy Frapsing of Arma II. No, they actually did that. Presumably, as PCG points out, because of this dodgy YouTube video. You can watch the clip in question below. (This spectacular stupidity was originally discovered by the BI Forums.)

The timing of this event, given recent trends, is impeccable. Good times.
Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, the Eurogamer Expo, of which our Indie Games Arcade was a tiny part, will be happening again next year. We’ll be there, of course, with our beards and our indie games. Next year’s event will take place between September 27th and September 30th, once again at Earl’s Court. It seems like people generally had good things to say about the event, perhaps because Eurogamer’s worryingly youthful bossperson, Rupert Loman, limited the number of tickets that could be sold for the event, allowing people to get to the games they wanted to play without having to queue for too long. Hopefully that’ll be the policy next year, too.

We, meanwhile, decided to put indie gamers in a black box with pop music playing outside, because that was some kind of metaphor. Anyway, did you attend the expo this year? Will you attend it next year? Will you come to our drink up next year? Will John be getting married again on the same weekend? All good questions.

A veritable who’s who of people you sort of recognise, Skyrim’s voice cast appears to promise the starriest Elder Scrolls yet. We already know about Max Von Sydow, but just announced are the excellent Joan Allen and Christopher Plummer, plus a raft of cult TV familiar faces. Battlestar’s grumpy boozehound Saul Tigh is in there, Bablyon 5′s Claudia Christian turns up, and best of all is Wonder Woman herself, Lynda Carter.

Plus some other guys! Yessir, those are some people’s voices alright. Full details below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Speaking of MMOs, Turbine send word that LOTRO’s expansion, Rise Of Isengard, which sees the level cap raised to 75, and adds some familiar locales and characters to the line-up, is out today. Free-to-play adventurers can now adventure freely in Dunland, the Gap of Rohan, and Isengard itself. Fun times are to be had with Saruman The Betrayer, Grima Wormtongue, and other unpleasantmen. There’s also a 24-player dungeon in which you can “Face the ancient evil of Draigoch”. Mmm.

Watch the trailer below!
Read the rest of this entry »

Squeenix ultraboss Yoichi Wada has spoken about the ongoing woes of troubled MMO, Final Fantasy XIV, saying “The Final Fantasy brand has been greatly damaged,” when asked about the game. VG247 reports that the Square man, speaking at a press conference in Japan, said that they company planned to “continue with our reform work, which basically amounts to fully redoing the game, and hope to revive the FFXIV that should have been released.”

The XIVth Final Fantasy game, which was launched in September last year, has been so beleaguered that its intended subscription model has never actually come online, with trial accounts being extended indefinitely. The PC version of the game sold 630,000, with the PS3 version, which was intended to appear in March of this year, returning for further development at a heavily reshuffled internal dev team.

Need For Speed: The Run, EA’s attempt to blend racing with scripted action, continues to intrigue me with the latest trailer. It doesn’t really show off that much in-game action, instead opting to set up the story in which the protagonist, Jack, finds himself forced into a $25m-prize race from San Francisco to New York. The trailer seems to hint a few of the events that might take place along the way, such as avalanches and fights with cops. It’s going to be genuinely fascinating to see how people react to this hybrid approach.
Read the rest of this entry »

Oh dear, I really am very grumpy today. I fear for how misanthropic my posts will be come this day’s end. Let all quail before my bloodless semi-wrath! Next is Afterfall: InSanity, which we last posted about almost a year ago and which manages three notations in my Almanac of Cliche within seconds of watching its pre-launch trailer. Number 1! Forgettably meaningless Something: Subtitle naming structure. Number 2! Pointless grammatical abuSe in its title, usually intended to make the name stand out in write-ups (e.g. RAGE, F.E.A.R.). It is thus our job to only ever refer to it and similar offenders using standard sentence structure, and resist the foul case-mangling of these marketeers. Number 3! Random, insensible whispering as an attempt to induce terror.

The Polish-made, Unreal engine-based horror shooter has just had a November release date stuck to it, and features guns, screaming, the sounds of metal on flesh, heavy rock and some manner of robot. Doesn’t look like my kind of thing, because I am 32 years old. Perhaps it’s of more interest to you?
Read the rest of this entry »

Guild Wars 2 lies in a strange place between being something of a man of mystery and having been on show for so long that our eyes have crawled across most every element of it. A lot of the promises being made are conceptual or may rely on idealised circumstances, but nonethless people are being won after dramatically: most recently, it won game of the show at the Eurogamer Expo. So when do we all get to try it? Well, a closed beta has been promised before the end of the year, with an open beta to follow and then a release date dependent on the success of that.

For now, perhaps the best you’re going to get is TotalBiscuit’s substantial videoing (a good 40 minutes, all told) of his high-level play sessions at the Expo – it shows off some the more ambitious mechanics as well as plenty of day-to-day beast-slaying. He seems very impressed indeed, for the most part.
Read the rest of this entry »