Rock, Paper, Shotgun

NCSoft send word that the mighty Korean grinder Lineage II will be ending subs and allowing currency farmers (and maybe some players) to sign up for free! Good times. They explain: “Unique among MMO offerings in the west, Lineage II will be available to players completely free – there will be no restricted zones, no limited class selection and no gear stuck behind a pay wall.” (Is that really unique in the west?) There will even be new content for players to enjoy during their trip through Lineage II’s 99 (!) level structure. As for the how and the why of the cash payment system they say that players “will have the opportunity to buy supplemental in-game items and premium item packs from the L2 Store”.

It is now par for the course for most big-name videogames to release a special edition designed to enrapture the more passionate/nerdly fans, ensure more pre-orders and make a few bonus groats on each copy sold. It is also now par for the course for many big-name videogames to include bonus DLC, skins and that sort of thing when pre-ordered at certain retailers – designed to ensure the promotional support of those hollow-eyed high-street rotters who so regularly place their hands around the neck of the games industry. For Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, both of these steps have been taken. And then some.

There are no less than seven different editions of Ubisoft’s latest man-stabber due, each with its own bonus content and tchotchkes, plus assorted pre-order DLC shenanigans on top of that. And that’s before you throw in whatever they end up doing with the download version(s) of the game. What fresh madness is this?
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Do you want to see all the colours in the rainbow? I believe I have them here for you in this Sonic Generations launch trailer. Why not make a checklist and see if you can tick off every one of those colours and then list any more obscure hues that you can spot. It’s a game I like to call Sonic Colours, which makes it the unofficial PC port of the existing game Sonic Colours. Open Notepad and type them all in as fast as you can!

Sonic Generations, thankfully, has a fully-fledged port which is out November 4th on various downloadable services, Steam included.

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EA’s Origin service has come under unusual pressure in Germany after a number of (unconfirmed, as far as I can tell) analyses seemed to show the program accessing data used by external programs. Additionally, German newspaper the Spiegel caused particular consternation by running an article suggesting that the licence agreement that came with the service might not hold up under German law. The situation has become so fraught that German retailers have taken the unusual step of offering to refund Battlefield 3, even after redemption of keys and registration with EA. Eurogamer report that EA Germany issued this statement yesterday:

“We have updated the End User License Agreement of Origin, in the interests of our players to create more clarity. Origin is not spyware. Neither do we use nor install spyware on the PCs of users.”

The devious wee sods. It’s always like this: the Humble Bundle announces its latest pay-what-you-want indie deal, so we duly post about it because the people should know and all that. Then, a few days later, they go and add more games to the bundle, so it seems wise to also post about that. They’ve got us by the short and curlies. Joking aside, clan Bundle’s machinations are becoming perhaps over-obvious by this point, and I do hope there will be updated rather than ritual tactics in future.

For now though, let us celebrate that the Voxatron bundle has seen the excellently screwed-up The Binding Of Isaac and tight puzzler Blocks That Matter added to it.
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EDIT: Aw, repost. I didn’t tag this post properly so I couldn’t find the original. Bum.

RPS chum Pixel Prospector sends word of a big deal in the tiny world of indie game dev: Tiny And Big, by Black Pants Game Studio. It’s a splendid sandboxian platformer thing where you use a laser to chop up rocks, and a grappling hook to drag them around and to stuff. There’s even a demo available over on the main site. It’s a little rough, but I can report the art style and concept to be lovely, with enormous potential for it to be a minor gem. Go take a look.

Trailer below!
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“All of the little things are what we obsess over,” says a Bethesda developer in the new “behind-the-scenes” video. “Is that so?” I muse, wondering if that includes conversations this time out. Or menus. But take a look at some Bethsoft peeps chatting about why they’re just so gosh-darned excited about Skyrim, which unbelievably is out in only ten days.

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WITCHCRAFT, TRICKERY, DEVILRY, PERVERSION. A man, if he truly deserves that title, has sullied the noble art of waiting a long time for a new videogame. He has jumped the gun in the most devious possible way. He has… no, I can barely stand to repeat it.

But I must. His crime must be known. He has recreated the units from the impending StarCraft II expandosequel Heart of the Swarm, before it has even been released, and packaged them into a four-map mod for the current version of Wings of Liberty. I… I don’t know what to say. He might as well have wiped Blizzard’s hard drives and then taken the very bread from their mouths, such is the heinousness of this thought-crime and the surely catastrophic consequences of making something that looks and plays a bit like something in future might play.
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Red 5′s Tony Park (who runs the Singapore studio) has been talking to Gamespot about the art style of Firefall, as well as showing off some gameplay footage and touching on the PvP and PvE aspects of the game (below, with some new game footage, and some old). The shooter-MMO, which has talent from both Tribes and World Of Warcraft directing it, is currently undergoing closed beta-testing, and is scheduled for a December launch. I am quite keen to take a closer look.

Amazingly incongruous music, too.
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