By Alec Meer on November 21st, 2011.
Brick vs Byte usually concerns the top ten best-selling games on Steam vs the top ten best-selling games at UK retail over the last week, but as both charts are barely changed from last week and frankly that’s no fun whatsoever to read about, we instead contacted our Future Industry Analyst Dr Ian “Ian” McGuess to provide an accurate look at what he’d expect said charts to look like thirty years hence. Here’s what his spreadsheets came up with.
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By Adam Smith on November 21st, 2011.
It’s not a real war unless there are flags involved. How else would we keep score, or fully understand who is in charge? Thankfully, Battlefield Heroes now has a capture the flag mode. Admittedly, I did have to check the date on this several times to make sure capture the flag wasn’t actually added in 1842, but it really was added just now. No doubt to compete with another cartoony free-to-play team-based FPS that may be thinking of adding just such a mode in the future. Or that may indeed have had such a mode since its original incarnation in 1996. To jolly things up, there’s a trailer to announce the news and it has a rather spiffy voiceover, reminiscent of a rigid lip.
By Alec Meer on November 21st, 2011.
Throwaway, highly entertaining but with annoying music tower-ish defence-ish game time! The Engineer is not a TF2 fan-game as such, though I rather suspect there is at least some inspiration in there. It’s most of the way towards tower defence, but errs a little towards the Orcs Must Die take on things – you’re a mobile character with your own weapons, setting up death-gizmos in order to stay alive. But you cannot stop, not for a moment.
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Cabal Rousing
By Adam Smith on November 21st, 2011.
I’ve had mixed feelings about The Secret World for a while now. As more details have emerged, I’ve found it hard to hide my excitement about the real world setting and mad mix of mythology, but I’ve been struggling to shake the suspicion that stitching them to an MMO framework could squander the potential of the scenario. The promise of classless builds and a strong narrative were intriguing, but they were only promises. That is, until last week when I spent a day playing the game and saw just how convincing it was.
Please don't arrest me
By John Walker on November 21st, 2011.
Let me begin by saying this is not a spoiler. This is a random sandbox event caused entirely by something I did, and is in no way scripted into the game. Your Lydia could live forever. So…
There are few NPCs in games that have inspired me to write a song. Well, there’s one. And her name is Lydia. This is the story of her death.
The march of anti-progress?
By RPS on November 21st, 2011.
Gameworlds have become ever-more lavish, but has there been a dark price paid for this? Craig Lager believes so. Production values are up but these worlds don’t seem to react to players’ actions as fulsomely as they once did, he worries – are we allowing games’ strange logic to take us for granted? But there is yet hope. Frowned at: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Dragon Age II, Skyrim. Smiled at: The Witcher 2, Dwarf Fortress, Outcast. Please note these are Craig’s views, not necessarily those of RPS.
In my version of Human Revolution, the police station should be surrounded. There should be SWAT teams, negotiators, probably even an evacuation zone. Adam Jensen’s face should be being projected from every single screen that litters Detroit’s streets as Eliza explains him as being a more-than-prime-suspect in a new, horiffic incident. An hour ago, she would explain, Jensen asked for access to the police morgue and was declined. Now the back door has been broken into, and a path of corpses and hacked computers lead to the morgue in which a body has been clearly tampered with. Instead, Jensen walks into the main lobby and is greeted with “Hello”.
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By Adam Smith on November 21st, 2011.
I don’t know if anyone bought the first Real Warfare game, but I suppose they must have done because otherwise it’s very unlikely that a sequel would have been made. What I do know is that it was very difficult to watch videos of the game in action and not shout “it looks like bloomin’ Medieval Total War”. There was an awful lot of medieval and an awful lot of bloom. Whenever a sword glinted in the sun, retinas were scorched and unshielded eyes risked turning into raisins. The sequel doesn’t dispense with this but it does add a strategic map to the first game’s tactical combat, which should hopefully allow for more varied scenarios. As the trailer below informs, the game is set in “the Medieval Europe”, following the Teutonic Knights as they conquer Prussia.
By Alec Meer on November 21st, 2011.
Minecon is done and dusted (no, we weren’t there – the RPS private zeppelin was in for servicing that week, so we couldn’t make it out to Vegas). Anyone go? If not, here’s a taste of what it was like, with the lavish, jokey keynote speech – featuring a history of Minecraft, a specially-commissioned animated short film documenting a day in the life of Steve, amateur dramatics, and appearances from all sorts of folk, including that woman with the pink hair, the Yogscast chaps and some guy in a hat called Markus. While witnessing such fervour around an indie game about building stuff is more than a little odd, it’s all very sweet and genuinely celebratory.
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By John Walker on November 21st, 2011.
Anno 2070 came out on Friday. Did you see? It’s Anno, but in the future! Although I’m now so used to having ridiculous year names from science fiction like “2011″ that I can no longer register “2070″ as sounding that far away. Heck, it’s reasonably likely I could live until 2070. I think futuristic sounding things now require at least a “2200″ century, if not ideally the third millennium. Please take note. Anyhow, the Anno launch brought with it an Anno launch trailer, which is below. And I believe one of our number is currently playing the game in order to let you know what you should think about it.
By Jim Rossignol on November 20th, 2011.
The footage from the event, which is live for another six or so hours, should be found below. There’s been a bunch of furious Starcraft II matches going on, and I believe right now it’s the aftermath of a game between between Huk and NaNiwa which heralds the second slot for the semis.
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Apocalypse Boutique
By Dan Griliopoulos on November 20th, 2011.
By day Sam Redfern is a mild-mannered IT lecturer at the National University of Ireland in Galway. But at night, he creates and maintains his own one-man apocalyptic vehicle MMO. It’s called Darkwind: War on Wheels and consists of a two-tier game, with a web interface for social and economic interaction and a 3D racing/shooting action engine. We caught up with him to find out how he copes with the project on his own.
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