Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Any fool with a copy of AGS can make an adventure game, but only a select few come up with ones that are truly worth your time. Egress is a game about astronauts and disaster (I presume The Dig is in an inspiration, but it also evokes the likes of 2001, Event Horizon, Moon and Defying Gravity), and while it can err a little too much towards trial and error there’s a lot of clever stuff there, intermittently excellent presentation and an appropriately tense atmosphere.

Told from a claustrophobic first-person perspective, as well as delving into open sci-fi-horror and offering multiple endings, it gets across the anxiety and glacial slowness of lumbering around in a big suit in an unknown place really rather well. 50MB, free, from here.

RPS has an issue with Kickstarter projects, as we’ve mentioned before. We are contacted by very many developers who tell us about their wonderful ideas for games, perhaps even with a concept teaser video, and then ask if we can promote their Kickstarter so they can make it. Well, we’re afraid not, because that puts us in the position of asking our readers to give money to a game for which we’ve not even seen a screenshot. And we’re not okay with that. Then there’s the more subtle issue with games that do have some content, and then want Kickstarter promotion, when we’ve no way of knowing that they’ll actually make the game. Such a situation occurs with Molecat Twist, from a four-person multi-national indie team who want a bunch of money to finish their game. Except, well, they’ve a working demo of the game you can play right now. So that’s what I’m posting about.

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Dirigible fans might recall browser game Guns Of Icarus, in which you manned an airship as it took on aerial foes, and they might also be aware that the game is now being rebooted as a full-blown MMO, Guns Of Icarus Online. They’re likely to be unaware, however, that the first in-game footage of the reboot has been released. Until now: here it is.

Looking pretty atmospheric! Ahaha. Do you see what I did there? Between this and the Air Buccaneers remake it’s looking like 2012 will be quite the year for lighter-than-air combat.

Panzer Corps, a game I am more likely to eat than play, has just released a demo. Which is splendid news if you’re not a giant strategy wimp like me, but rather a brave, strong, firmly-featured type. Within the demo you’ll find six missions from the unenigmatically named Bootcamp Campaign, as well as the invasion of Poland (cripes) and “the first few turns of the Norway scenario”. It should give a good feel for how progression takes place. They’re also putting in a “limited” version of the scenario editor. Oh, and for the next two weeks the game is half price from Slitherine.

Battlefield 3 has patched itself on PC now. Remember when we all used to scream and shout about games that needed patching after release? It was this massive faux pas, and we’d all condemn any who released a game “unfinished”. And now sites report the “news” that a patch is forthcoming for a game, as if it’s a free DLC bonus feature for us lucky players. Well, hey. That’s what you get when you don’t revolt in the streets. So it is that the free bonus patch for BF3 is now out for PC, and brings with it a raft of changes, which I’ve meticulously repeated below.

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See this hat I’m wearing? The one with the dark tuft at the top? You should be afraid when I wear this hat. Very afraid. Because this hat means I’m grumpy. But it’s okay, I’m not grumpy at you. I’m grumpy at unidentified tech sorts at Bethesda Softworks who last night released the first patch for Skyrim. A patch whose only effects was to limit what we can do with the game. It was released without fanfare or explanation, but forums swiftly figured out its purpose.

The 18MB downloadette is essentially there to stop the game from running without Steam: the main executable is now tied thoroughly into Valve’s security, unreliable offline mode et al. Nothing remarkable there, save for the surprising fact that it was at all unbound at release, but one of the upshots of this is that we’re now limited from faffing about with said executable. Most particularly, the large address aware third-party patch that enabled Skyrim to use more than 2GB of system RAM.

Update: a new LAA workaround that apparently does the job without altering the exectuable! Phew. Now can we have official support for all our lovely RAM please, Bethsoft?
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Just in case there were any doubt left that the owners of Lego Universe were completely bonkers to just close down their subscription game without trying a free-to-play model, DC Universe is reporting a slight increase in revenue since they made the switch. The small matter of an extra 700% per day. Eurogamer spotted that the very enthusiastic Sony Online Entertainment president, John Smedley, tweeted his good news. News that will surely be yet another blow to the subs model.

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Actually, I’m not quite sure what age kids really start riding bicycles, at least without stabilisers and/or a worried parent holding onto the back of the saddle. I think I was at least around seven when I first managed a brief, unassisted pedal down a country lane (and, more excitingly, was rewarded with a second-hand Superion for my efforts. I still have that somewhere) so I’m going to go ahead and say that Blizzard’s MMO should be capable of such a feat.

Yes, World of Warcraft, the main man of the MMO industry, has been around for seven years this week, which is an alarming prospect. How did it get so old? (By which I mean ‘how did I get so old?) And it’s remarkable it’s only seen three expansions in that time, given what a cash-cow it’s been for Blizzard, Vivendi and Activision. There are gentle celebrations in honour of this birthday, primarily in the form of a ‘feat of strength’ item dropped into the inventories of any players who sign in between now-ish and December 3.
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Gold bullion! Pieces of eight! Booty in unimaginable quantities! All these things and more await in free open world platformer Treasure Adventure Game. It’s a rather self-explanatory title, like if David Cameron went by the name Laminate-Face Eton Man or Richard Branson was simply called Money Beard. TAG, as I’m calling it, is the first release from Robit Studios, which appears to be a fellow by the name of Stephen Orlando. There’s a downloadable beta available now and the finished release should be available next weekend. For free! The simple aesthetic and emphasis on exploration remind me of Knytt but there are plenty of baddies to fight as well. It says so right there in the trailer, which is buried beneath the X below.

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It’s on days like today, when there is NO PC NEWS AT ALL, that I remember to return to Neko Games. The creator of the wonderful Hoshi Saga series has always created a new gem since my last visit, and it’s just as true today. Today there’s Ouka. It’s similar to the star-hunting antics of Hoshi Saga, in that you’re aiming to complete lots of very short Flash-based puzzles, but this time it’s all about clicking on the flower. How you can go about doing that is the unique puzzle for each level, with that unique Neko Games logic. And then, wait, oh my goodness, is that a new Hoshi Saga too?

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