Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The free to play world, if one can call it a world, has a bunch of success stories, some of them tall, some of them short. The tale that seems to cause them all to pale, however, is the success of League Of Legends. The hero-based multiplayer battle arena game’s developers, Riot Games, have just announced a doubling of their active player based in just four months. That’s up to eleven million active players, with total registrants at thirty two million, which is getting up to Steam sort of numbers. You have to consider that when things get this popular, and are free, a number of people are going to be dipping in to see what all the fuss is about, deciding it’s not for them, and leaving again. Nevertheless these figures are not to be sneezed at, especially when League Of Legends is fairly hardcore in the scheme of things.

Anyway, Riot did a lovely (but info-lite) infographic so that you can see what 32 million registered players means. What it means is that the prize money for season two of the game is five million dollars. And I should imagine that’s a drop in the ocean against what Riot are bringing home. Mmm, cashy.

RPS chums Eurogamer asked me to review Minecraft for them a little while back. I had a bit of a funny turn in response – “review Minecraft? What, with like a score and stuff? Now? Um” – and then, of course, I said yes. With Mojang’s game finally due to achieve official release status this weekend, in the midst of the inaugural Minecon, it did seem oddly appropriate to finally look at this titan of indie gaming from a non-diary standpoint, even if I am personally not an enormous fan of putting numbers at the end of essays. So, here are my thoughts, with, yes, a big number on the end. Here’s how it starts:

“How would you review Tetris, if you were reviewing it today? “The puzzling is very tight, and the soundtrack is catchy.” That’s the thing – Tetris is so much more than that by now, but it’s almost impossible to disassociate it from its cultural resonance. Minecraft, the free-form building and survival game, hasn’t yet seeped into the global consciousness to the same degree, but it has become something far more than a mere game.“

And then I start wittering about Justin Bieber.

City Interactive have sent word of a new “gritty” FPS called Enemy Front. They explain: “Enemy Front is the realistic tale of a hardened soldier dropped behind Nazi lines to engage in dynamic, diversified missions ranging from quick skirmishes, espionage assignments, and sabotage activities.” The game is being developed jointly by studios in UK and Poland, and is designed by Stuart Black, who worked on the popular console manshooter, Black. It’s using CryEngine 3, which apparently allows “fully destructible maps that reflect the damage from every bullet fired and every grenade tossed”. So that sounds handsome. I’ve posted three more screenshots of angry or dying soldiers below.

Enemy Front will shoot Nazimen in 2012.
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It seems like a long while since the announcement of Three Rings’ Doctor Who: Worlds In Time but perhaps not. Perhaps it will actually be announced yestermorrow and I’m writing this from a place between moments, stuck in the gaps between seasons, trapped in the trembling alcove between the tick and the tock. What I have been able to discern from this aching voidspace, which echoes with the shrieks of collapsing realities, is that on 18th November 2011 it will be vital for me to inform you that Sega have acquired the erstwhile Puzzle Pirates developers and will be helping to bring the Doctor Who MMO to fruition.

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Stephen “Increpare” Lavelle has sent over a version of his spatial puzzle game, English Country Tune, and I’ve been playing it. Atmospheric, compelling, and acutely encouraging of the thinking they call lateral, English Country Tune mixes some of the kind of 3D puzzles you might have seen before over the years with some you won’t have seen, and then adds in extra layers of impossible videogame physics and Increpare experimental cleverness. I am currently gnawing on early puzzles that include faked “camouflage” gravity… Yes, it’s that kind of thing. And it’s awesome. That said, despite the name, there are no jaunty folk songs to be found. Not so far, anyway. For gist of the sort of 3D puzzling you’ll be expected to face head below to see the trailer. The game itself will be out via the website a week today, apparently.
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In a remarkable feat of reversed expectations, it was revealed that the new XIII game would not be a first person shooter. This is at a time when there’s a real chance that Peggle 2 will involve unicorn terrorists, a cover system and a screen-swallowing rainbow-themed HUD. Headshots = Ode To Joy and the rabbit is a wand-waving medic. So, an FPS becoming a puzzle game shouldn’t necessarily be reason to despair, right? It could allow narrative to dominate and make the world really stand out. And then a trailer occurs.

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Team RPS continues to warily circle Facebook gaming in the manner of coyotes sniffing at a crashed stagecoach, convinced there are delicious, meaty treats somewhere inside the wreckage but anxious they’re defended by something that will cause them harm. While the master thief that is Farmville, and its many derivatives, remain a gruesome prospect indeed, a few games are endeavouring to be, well, games. One of those is the agreeably stupidly-named Gunshine, a sort of shooty-Diablolike which I found to be not-horrible in my brief encounter with its open beta a few months back.

Supercell’s F2P light roleplayer has now reached full-release status, in case you’ve been holding off because you think ‘beta’ means ‘diseased’, so you can take a look for free now. If you prefer to steer clear of the Book of Faces, it is also available in standalone Flash-form (though does, being a sorta-MMO, require registration). There’s a trailer demonstrating Gunshine in its current form below, as I believe is the done thing when a videogame launches these days.
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Magicka is free on Steam this weekend. Download, play, if you like it, buy it for the sale price of £1.99. Thought I’d get that out of the way.

I know it’s only been a couple of days since we mentioned the expansion but if you’re rabidly opposed to Magicka and Lovecraft, you’ll just have to skip past the rest of this post. I apologise in advance to your much abused scroll wheels. Your reward for sticking with me is a fifteen minute video that contains two of the developers, right there on your screen, answering questions about The Stars Are Left. See for yourself.

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