Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’ve been meaning to write about Towns for a while and since it fits neatly with my thoughts about ‘living’ game worlds, this seems as good a time as any. In its isometric countryside, the player takes the role of a town mayor, building up from a patch of wilderness and attracting newcomers with housing and entertainment. However, your settlement sits atop an ‘orrible dungeon so among the folks you’ll need to attract are heroes, who will need incentives to quest into the depths and fancy equipment if they are to delve deep. Majesty meets Dwarf Fortress? Play now or journey downtown for more details.

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There’s a new screenshot of SMITE. What’s SMITE, you ask? You’re so forgetful. It’s Hi-Rez’s Thor-themed DOTA-inspired hyphen-inciting free-to-play multiplayer that we mentioned back in April. Why are we posting when there’s only one bloody screenshot in the last three months, when you’d think a developer proud of its game would release hundreds to make sure we can all see how great they think it is? Because this one pic is rather pretty, and I like pretty things. Oh, and I’ve put in the other seven pics they’ve released so far this year below.

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This six-minute “making of” trailer for Risen 2 (below) is definitely worth a look. It shows off some of the environments in detail, but more importantly the developers take their chance to talk about some of the decisions that went into to making the archipelago world. A bunch of factors are at play in making Risen 2 the game it is going to be, not least of which is the implementation of a terrain engine, which was opposed to the usual handcrafted worlds that Pirhana Bytes had worked on. It’s looking impressive, though.

The video does make the peculiar decision of mixing translated voice-overs with subtitles, which is a little awkward, but then perhaps that’s just me. Anyway, it has added 43.7% to my anticipation of the game, which was already fairly high after the moderately excellent Risen.
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After a year of controversy and bellyaching, it’s good to be able to report on what Eve does best – large, interesting expansions that are full of shiny space stuff. The next one of these, which is due to arrive on the 29th of November, apparently improves and updates “three dozen features”, which sounds like an awkwardly large amount, but in fact include combat and interface tweaks, changes to the all-important starbases, as well as bringing in the most important thing for many players: New spaceships. These are the tier 3 battlecruisers – large, shooter vessels – and they have me longing for Eve once again. I do love a good battlecruiser.

More information here.

Edit: Still working after all! But you have to ‘buy’ it and apply the code via the Origin client, not the website. UK only, by the sounds of things.

Me: Fancy a free download copy of the pretty good Burnout Paradise?
You: Ooh, yes please. You’re so good to me, Alec. I think I might love you.
Me: OK. first you’ll need to install EA’s controversial Origin…
You: WHAT NO, NO I’M NOT GOING TO DO THAT NO NOT FOR ANYTHING I’D RATHER EAT MY OWN NOSTRIL HAIR. And I defiitely don’t love you anymore.
Me: Well, whatever. My cat loves me, so I’ll be alright. Anyway, then add Burnout Paradise to your basket from the Origin store, and enter PARADISE at checkout to remove all cost from it. Yes, in capitals.
You: OK, I might do that, but if you tell anyone I installed Origin to get my hands on a freebie even though I’ve spent the last month loudly saying I would not, I’m going to kill your cat.
Me: Deal. Oh yeah, and this probably won’t last long, so get a move on, right? And stay the hell away from my cat, you bastard.

Via HotUKDeals via PCG.

UDK-powered twin-stick shooter Waves is now available for purchase. I played it at the Eurogamer Expo and had a grand old time even though I clearly need plenty of practice to even scrape the bottom of any kind of leaderboards. There are a variety of game modes, one of which you can try in the demo, and the colourful chaos is somehow balanced while unpredictable. It’s also quite spectacular to behold. Buy DRM-free direct from the developer for £5.94, or from Gamersgate with a current discount of 15% to £5.91. Will be on Steam by 6PM GMT but buying direct supplies a Steam code anyhow so that would seem the ideal option.

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How does 7pm tonight sound? And how does 7pm UK time AND 7pm US time sound? Eh? What I mean, of course, is not that I have changed the timezones across the world (although I do have that power), but that we have a UK RPS Community BF3 Server in London, and a US RPS Community server in Chicago. Which one is best?! Only you can decide.

And yes, only 32-player servers for now, but if these two get used regularly we’ll see about getting you a great big 64-player server or two for you to play on.

There has already been a short trailer showing the chip-fipping, face-slamming action of the Syndicate reboot, this being the boot that may stamp on the face of your gaming past forever. This longer video shows an actual play session on the same map, jumping between agents’ viewpoints to confuse me but otherwise giving a fairly good idea of how things will play out. There will be lots of violence, death and use of cover. Strategy? Well, you’ll have to wait for team-mates before opening certain doors and really tough men will absorb thousands of bullets so you’ll need to heal one another during those fights. Oh, just look at it.

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Brink: a most curious beast indeed. I’m still not entirely sure what I make of it. While I wish it had done quite a few things a little differently, I’m heartened to see that it hasn’t been left to die: a forthcoming update will better turn it to the not-so-tender mercies of community-centric play. Clans and tournaments will be the focus of the patch – the kind of stuff that perhaps should have been there in the first place, but hindsight is 20/20, as my Dad so helpfully observes several hundred times a year.

You’ll be able to create a clan, recruit members, create some sort of no doubt nightmarishly ugly clan symbol, manage things via a dedicated profile page and, of course, wage war on other clans. They deserve it, the rotters.

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Good news – after yesterday’s surprise that Call Of Duty ELITE developers, Beachhead, had implied there was a good chance we’d not see a PC version of the multiplayer tools, the team have taken back to the Twitters (cheers, Chris) to put right what once went wrong. Last night they explained that they “misspoke”.

“We misspoke. [See? - Ed] Our goal has always been to provide a free PC offering for ELITE. Stay tuned for an update as timing is still being determined.”

It’s still perhaps not all that impressive, since it was supposed to accompany a game released eight days ago, and there’s still not even a vague deadline for when they think they’ll have it sorted. But at least those who bought MW3 on the understanding that it would work with ELITE, will have something to look forward to. So come on, ignore the braying of those who haven’t even tried it, are you enjoying MW3′s multiplayer on PC?