By Craig Pearson on November 11th, 2011.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings developers, CD Projekt, have given us the tiniest glimpse into how much Steam dominates the digital distribution market. Their lovely action RPG sold nearly a quarter of a million copies digitally since launch, with a hefty 81% of those coming from Valve’s increasingly monolothic service.
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By Alec Meer on November 11th, 2011.
Minecraft is, hilariously enough, due for release next week. The game that we’ve all been playing for the last two years will finally be granted its version 1.0 tag, but those dedicated four million who already own it can try out a near-complete version right now. Mojang have slipped out a pre-release build of version 0.9, including the fabled boss fight. That boss is, of course, an Ender dragon. Dragons are proper cool these days, see. It’s like Anne McCaffrey never happened.
Try the early build here. All that’s left from hereon in is polish and bug-squashing, apparently. Hmm, does this mean we need to do a ‘Wot I Think: Minecraft’? That seems far too weird, somehow. It’d be like running ‘Wot I Think: Breathing.’
By Craig Pearson on November 11th, 2011.
Any game that starts out like Duke Nukem Forever, with the player in a toilet, makes me wary. SickBrick does that. But then two minutes later I’m in a Portal-ish test chamber, albeit a simple one where I’m just blasting clunky robots, and everything feels just that little bit better.
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By Alec Meer on November 11th, 2011.
6.5 million copies in 24 hours. That’s the record-breaking figure Contemporary Combat The Third is celebrating today. Not only does this make it the fastest-selling videogame of all time, but one Robert Kotick, Esq observes that this means “Life-to-date sales for the Call of Duty franchise exceed worldwide theatrical box office for Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.” Only box office, so not DVD/VHS/Blu-Ray/Laser-Disc sales, but even so: wow. Ouch. Wow.
Oh, and Modern Warfare 3 made $400m in the space of that first day, beating prior record-holder CODBLOPS by some $40m. $40m? Pfft, I spend more than that on breakfast every day. That’s why I weigh 418 stone.
Simulation and wargame news
By Tim Stone on November 11th, 2011.
In a moment I am going to blow a whistle. On hearing the whistle you must scramble over the parapet that separates this paragraph from the next, and begin advancing toward the lines occupied by Commander: The Great War, Strategic Command: World War I and Bau-Simulator 2012. Do not stop. Do not look back. Do not torment yourself with tricky ethical questions like “Is it appropriate to spend a portion of Armistice Day reading about games that transmute the unimaginable suffering of the 1914-18 conflict into turn-based strategy?”. PHWEEEEEE!
By Craig Pearson on November 11th, 2011.
This is why I play PC games: ini files. I dream of ripping into the guts of a game, fiddling with the insides, yanking and tying off loops of intestine. I’m a gaming pathologist. So the first thing I did in Skyrim was head to My Documents -> My Games -> Skyrim -> skyrim, to see what was in there.
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By Craig Pearson on November 11th, 2011.
Lord British, aka Richard Garriott, aka the creator of clasic RPG series Ultima: he’s been to space, which makes me instantly worry about him being some sort of replicant. It seems that since he’s been back on Earth he’s been pondering his next game. In a lenghty post on Facebook, he’s announced his intention to make the “Ultimate RPG”, distilling everything he’s learned in 36 years of game design into the new project, his New Britannia.
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Vowed to blah blah something blah
By B Caldwell on November 11th, 2011.
Brendan’s going to tell you all about Renegade Ops, and he doesn’t care. No, he really doesn’t care. Here’s Wot He Thinks:
Boisterous. I guess that’s the word for it. Renegade Ops is boisterous, in the same way as kicking a football around inside the house is boisterous, or building a fortress out of sofas and lampshades is boisterous. Renegade Ops is a game that’s decidedly shallow and not very inventive but there’s something about it that makes me not care about all that. This dual-schtick-em-up never truly makes me feel like a kid again but it does a great job of reminding me that I was one. A tiny, one-person wrecking ball. Absolutely no regard for my environment or actions, driven solely by a deep hunger for fun.
FACT-ATTACK
By Alec Meer on November 11th, 2011.
Right, you’re all playing it now, or at least sitting miserably at work wishing you’d pulled a sickie. For those that haven’t yet made the groat-dropping decision, I have more to offer. My piece yesterday focused primarily on the experiential aspect of the game, that tending to be RPS’s bailiwick instead of the whole graphicsability out of 10 thing, but I concede there are HARD FACTS in need of additional discussion. So, here’s a breakdown of further thoughts on combat, interface and tech issues.
By Alec Meer on November 11th, 2011.
Poor old Xenonauts, Goldhawk Interactive’s Cold War-set XCOMalike, was the most recent victim of Paypal’s callous punishing of indies who fund development by selling early builds of their games as part of pre-orders – and as a result it hasn’t been available for sale for quite some time.
Well, a month on, the impressive turn-based tactical strategy game is back, thanks to Desura. You can pre-order it (again) right now, and doing so gets you immediate access to the current version of the game as well as all its updates as and when. Oh, and the price has dropped from $30/£20 to a rather more sensible $20/£15. There’s also a premium version, which gets you forum-based glory and possibly other goodies down the line for £20/$30. More details here.
By John Walker on November 11th, 2011.
Bloodhound-nosed Lewie P gets in touch to say he had a bit of an interesting encounter with a PopCap fellow, via the medium of Twitter. One that rather strongly suggested that the company might be gearing up for Peggle 2. Lead designer at PopCap, Adam Orth, sent out a tweet asking for an Art Director “for the Peggle franchise”. Lewie retweeted this, and then said on his own account, “Imagine Peggle 2″. To which Orth replied, “I am.” Which he has since deleted. Rather tellingly. However, Lewie had already retweeted it. So yes, an awful lot of he said/she said. Except without the shes. We’re going to contact PopCap to see if we can get an answer out of them. But in the meantime, let’s all just assume it’s true so hard that it has to happen.
