Rock, Paper, Shotgun

It seems like everywhere I look there are games springing up with procedurally generated worlds and fully destructible environments. That’s partly because I spend most of my waking hours looking at websites for in development, ambitious indie projects, but I’m still surprised by how many of the things there are. There are 3D and 2D choices, there are more complex iterations and this one here is set in space. It’s called Blockade Runner, which is the headline gag I would have used if it had been called literally anything else. Although in pre-release at the moment, it is possible to preorder and play around with the ship designer while waiting for a more functional version next year. Video and more details below.

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The great and terrible Final Battle between Bethesda and Interplay regarding the latter’s right to create an MMO based on the Fallout licence they part-sold to the former some years ago is still yet to be fought, but the litigation-lovin’ folk at Bethesda have seen a potentially major setback in their efforts to take full control of wasteland adventuring. For a while, the two parties have been locked in snarling battle about whether Interplay are still allowed to make a Fallout MMO, with Bethesda claiming they failed to meet time and budgetary criteria outlined in the original license-selling deal. Interplay have claimed they’ve stuck the agreement, and thus continued with working on said MMO (actually contracting developing Masthead Studios to do it for them). Bethesda tried to stop ‘em, but a US judge has now stopped Bethesda from stopping them. Got that? Read the rest of this entry »

Arkham City is going to be packed full of villains but the place wouldn’t be complete without the Joker. We knew he was going to be there, of course, but this trailer tells us a little bit more about what he’ll be doing. Referring to deadly plans while holding up a twisted carnival mirror to Batman’s unsmiling granite face and cackling like Luke Skywalker’s demented uncle, that’s what he’ll be doing. Nothing much new then, although he is looking more horrible than ever and hopefully now he’s not pulling all the strings (unless he is), he’ll be more chaotic and frightening. Just when I’m feeling extremely happy at the idea of beating up goons and twirling my cape in their faces, the trailer ends with a release date. It’s not the right one though.

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The kerrrrayzeeeee hi-jinks of Adam ‘Elbows’ Jensen are set to continue very soon, with the impending The Missing Link downloaderised content injection. What mad scrapes and hilarious misunderstandings will our man with the facially-implanted sunglasses get into this time? Well, let’s have a little look, as Eidos Montreal’s Lead Narrative Designer Mary DeMarle narrates a five-minute taste of the new, ship-bound corridors, staircases and security control rooms Elbows is due to explore.
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Sundays are for a breath of fresh air. They are also for sitting in a cold room somewhere in The West and meticulously combing through the internet for clues. Let’s see whether we can find any.

• BitGamer’s Craig Lager has taken some time to investigate microtransactions. This is definitely an important topic: “There’s little point in diving into Korean MMORPGs that explicitly follow the ‘pay to win’ business model, as those games will be deliberately imbalanced to favour regularly paying customers. Western developers, however, claim to avoid falling into this ‘pay to win’ genre; which begs the question of whether they’re telling the truth or just selling empty promises. Thus, these are the games we’re going to analyse – flip the page to see the seven games we’ve chosen to look at.”

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Star Wars: The Old Republic has a release date or two: December 20th in North America and on December 22nd in the Europe. Speaking at the Eurogamer Expo, Bioboss Ray Muzyka said: “This is an incredible moment for everyone at BioWare and our partners at LucasArts who have dedicated their lives to build this extraordinary game. We appreciate the patience from the millions of fans who have been waiting for the game’s release.” No problem, Ray! We had plenty of other games to play, to be fair.

Pricing was also revealed this weekend:

1 Month Subscription: $14.99 (£8.99/€12.99)
3 Month Subscription: $13.99 per month (one-time charge of $41.97/£25.17/€35.97)
6 Month Subscription: $12.99 per month (one-time charge of $77.94/£46.14/€65.94)

Pleasingly-looking RPG Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning (which Alec got to have a look at in detail recently and will be writing about soon) has a new trailer, with a lot more detail about what’s going on in the world, and what you can expect to see and do a “hero” of that world. Go take a look, below. (Via Blue.)
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Since the rest of the hivemind have absconded to comrade Walker’s wedding, I’ve taken responsiblity for getting this posted, but it’s actually my Savy-minions Will and Tony who put together this week’s bargain bucket. I’m too busy playing games and drinking all the free tea I want (press perks!) at the Eurogamer Expo. I shall leave you in their capable hands: Read the rest of this entry »

Valve’s DOTA 2 blog has word that their plans for a year-long beta “was dumb”. Here’s the brief from IceFrog:

We’re going to take the current version of Dota 2, which has The International set of heroes, and get it out there as fast as we can. We’ve still got some work to do in a couple of areas, so we’ll be keeping it invite-only for a (hopefully short) period of time. But there’ll be no restrictions on what players can do with it – they can release screenshots, make movies, shoutcast matches, write guides, publicly make fun of our HUD, or anything else their hearts desire.

Interesting! Looks like we could be in for a dose of DOTA 2 much sooner than anticipated. But will it overcome my general MOBA-reticence? Hmm. Sceptical.