Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Lots of footage from The Secret World reaches us via a new developer diary, showing factions, monsters and huge player versus player battlegrounds. At times, it’s in danger of looking like every other MMORPG video out there, with flames and bullets flying back and forth, giant beasties roaring aggressively, and groups of oddly clothed gents and ladies flailing at each other in a determined but ineffectual fashion. That aside, I’m more interested in the setting and factions than just about any other upcoming RPG, and having real and mythical places existing alongside each other is fun stuff. Watch the video below and see what you think.

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Cliff Harris has sent word that the first footage of his next game, Gratuitous Tank Battles, is now available. You can see it below. Cliff describes this as “a video showing early work-in-progress footage from battles in ‘Gratuitous Tank Battles’, the RTS/Tower Defense/ Sim strategy game.” In it you can see elements of both the attacking and defending games, as well as some of the conditions of battle, such as pesky darkness. For more on this you can have a read of my interview with Cliff, in which he explains the inspiration for the game and his aims for building on Gratuitous Space Battles with a more complex and strategic game.
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Gather round to hear a tale never before told! There was this general, Caesar, and he conquered a huge region that went by the name of Gaul, fighting off potion-swilling men of wildly varying proportions and taking control of awesome military power. With the great name he made for himself, and the awesome military power he controlled, Caesar triumphed in a civil war and became dictator of the most powerful empire in the world. Then (Spoiler Alert) people stabbed him. A lot. Now you can be Caesar but without the puncturing perfidy of his later life. Hegemony Rome: Rise of Caesar is an indie RTS about the conquest of Gaul and Ceasar’s time as a great general. Judging by Longbow Games previous Hegemony titles, it’ll offer a surprising amount of tactical depth. Here’s a trailer with a bit of Placentia in it.

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CCP have announced that folks who quit over recently disgruntlings can now sign up again for 30 days at $4.95. If you are a recently-lapsed player then you should have received the offer by email. Not that this in itself is interesting or enticing as such, but this is. CCP are finally talking about rebalancing capital ships to make them less overwhelming in fleet fights, less able to escape by logging off, and less versatile overall. If they’d done this a couple of years ago I might not have become a lapsed player myself. Let’s hope it has the necessary impact on the game and reduces capital ship use overall.

The Sun, yesterday:

COMPUTER games and Facebook can addle kids’ brains, a top scientist warned yesterday. Baroness Greenfield said they may lead to temporary “dementia”.

It’d be great to think this was just the tabloid rag taking Greenfield’s words out of context, but sadly she has a record of saying unfounded things about the “negative” impact of technology. Not that I deny that kids should be going out and playing in the fresh air, Baroness Greenfield, it’s just that they’re probably not going to end up demented (temporarily or otherwise) if they stay in all the time. They’ll just be a bit sad.

Needless to say, they’re celebrating with a big old hat-infrastructure update to Team Fortress 2. The ability for people create and submit and submit items has apparently now earned the community creators $2m, and Valve obviously want that trend to continue, as the update is a big ‘un in that direction. They explain: “The Manniversary Update includes several new features, including Steam Workshop, an improved item submission system that allows community item-creators to test, share and track the status of their creations. The entire TF2 community will also be allowed to participate by browsing, rating and offering feedback on all submitted items. The Steam Workshop will be fully integrated with the Steam community. In addition to the Workshop, the Manniversary Update will also ship 30 new hats and cosmetic items, an item decal system, weeklong “try before you buy” item tryouts, loadout presets, multiple miscellaneous items slots, improved game performance, and a new taunt.”

Everything will be on sale until Monday, too. The details, they are here.

In an interview over at The Guardian, EA Sports’ Andrew Wilson has been talking about foot-to-ball game Fifa 12, which according to sales figures all of you own several hundred copies of. There’s an interesting curveball of a comment from the interviewer though when he compares Fifa to an RPG leading vice-president Wilson to respond thusly:

“I think it’s pretty perceptive to look at it as an RPG, and while we don’t use that terminology for the game externally, we certainly look at it that way internally. An RPG is made up of a number of things: you have to have a unique ID – or unique character – you need persistence and progression for that character, ever-changing content which keeps the world rich and it’s a good idea to wrap it up in a rich economy.”

To the Deciphertron!

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UPDATE: THQ sent this statement to Massively:

It has come to THQ’s attention that some media are reporting that we’ve announced game details and a release date for our upcoming massively multiplayer online project, Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online. At this time THQ has not officially announced a release date and any reported features are pure speculation. THQ will announce confirmed game features and an official release date at a later time.

Strategy Informer have posted a big old list of information about forthcoming Warhammer 40,000 MMO, Dark Millennium Online. I’m not sure where it’s derived from, since they do not quote a source (presumably everything they know so far from the limited previews and stuff) but presuming it’s genuine and accurate – and we are presuming – it contains a few interesting nuggets, which I’ve highlighted below. I think we were aware of a chunk of this stuff, but things like class details and so on have not previously been available to my brain.
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Live action roleplay so rarely takes the form of point and click adventures. Yes! A gross oversight! And one taken care of by a German group called machina eX.

This is remarkable stuff. They’re not just mucking around here – it’s a combination of adventure gaming and live theatre, in which players interactive not only with actors, but also all the objects found in the room, in order to solve puzzles. There’s a great deal of footage of this below.

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Crikey, from being an unknown (and yet somehow inevitably always an FPS) project of rumour and vapour, there’s already footage of Syndicate to coo at/smash up your house in rage because of. Ten minutes of it! Which you can watch below.

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