Rock, Paper, Shotgun

It’s no secret that Richard ‘King English’ Garriott is working on a spiritual sequel to Ultima, having left the series’ rights locked in an EA basement somewhere. It’s no secret because he’s said so, repeatedly. But what’s more surprising is that he apparently isn’t resigned to never getting them back – and he’s even talking about working with EA again. The lion and the lamb! Cats sleeping with dogs! THE END TIMES.

More specifically, he told Eurogamer that “We’ve had discussions at very high levels with Electronic Arts about access to the property [and]…a possible marketing and distribution relationships and things of this nature.”

Which is rather promising, presuming he’s not just making wild public declarations in the hope of changing minds. More below.
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Fortnite’s reveal trailer suggested that the game could be borrowing ideas from Minecraft, Fort Zombie and Team Fortress 2, along with many other things. Now that details are beginning to emerge, Epic have admitted that Mojang’s block ‘em up was indeed an inspiration. Lead designer Lee ‘Unscratch’ Perry took time to broadcast the following messages through his personal Tweet-o-Tron: “Minecraft lets you build ANYTHING, we are focusing on constructing ‘buildings’ specifically”. A later tweet contained this: “Minecraft was an inspiration for sure”. With that out in the open, the obvious thing to do was to ensure Notch backed our demand that the game come to PC. A few more details about the game await below.

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Edit: The video is below now.

Perhaps not the most catchy of names, Nexuiz has just been announced as receiving a publishing deal from THQ Partners and Machinima. And thus into the public gaze it heads. IllFonic’s CryEngine 3 game is an FPS “reimagining” of the game’s previous incarnation when released by Alien Trap in 2005. Then it was intended to be a GPL shooter, free to play, and free software, available on PC, Mac and Linux. Original designer, Forest Hale, has moved over to IllFonic for the project, currently suggested to cost $10 on release, which we can probably assume won’t be equally as Free with Crytek’s code underneath. And it’s a properly mind-bending concept.

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Who fancies a mystery? Valve prepared what must have been an incredibly expensive video for the VGAs’ best character category, starring Wheatley, complete with Stephen Merchant’s voice, floating in space and begging for help getting home. So, that’s nice and fun, if lacking in the big laughs. (He didn’t win.) But of course Valve being Valve, they’ve filled it with more details. Not many, but there’s Russian text, star constellations in the background and weird numbers, which of course means those with a mind for such things are tearing it to pieces. Of course, it might have just been filler to make the image more interesting. But Valve MUST know by now that anything they add is going to be analysed to pieces, and they’re clearly the sorts to troll their community in every imaginable way. What do you make of it?

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The video that first made me aware that Rainbow Six: Patriots would allow me to press square to kiss my wife was a breath of fresh air in the stale confines of this business called game. Tom Clancy’s skill as writer, computer graphics wizard and cinematographer allowed him to deliver a rollercoaster ride. I gasped with delight as foreclosures were topically referenced, screamed in excited glee as a wiggly-hipped woman was held at knifepoint and actually raised my arms and went ‘wheeeee’ as a man wearing a suicide vest was thrown off a bridge and exploded. I was concerned that this level of intensity was impossible to maintain. But, lo! A new teaser trailer shows that Tom’s still got it where it counts. In his willingness to ensure that all promotional materials contain an unarmed man being forcibly blown to bits in an urban environment.

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First: we do not know what the Skyrim DLC will be. I’m not pretending otherwise. But Todd Howard has been musing upon the nature of add-on chunks for the game of swords and shouting, and while he’s obviously PRing to some degree, it sounds like the thinking is along ambitious rather than cyncial lines. Bethesda are looking at “ways to make the game better, not just have more, because the game is so big,” Howard told Joystiq. “So we’re going through ideas right now, and processing everything people are doing in the game, and trying to think of ways that we can improve it.” I would take fixes and thoughtful improvements to abilities and world behaviour over another chunk of quest-littered terrain any day.
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Darksiders II was also revealed at the ridiculous VGA Spike thing. THQ’s sequel to, well, Darksiders, has been quiet since July, when we took a look at it. But it was waiting for the annual fartfest to reveal itself a new teaser trailer, and indeed its release date. Which will be, oh, “Summer 2012″. Well, it’s better than “TBA”.

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The VGAs coughed up a new trailer for Hitman: Absolution, which is crammed with sneaking, stealthery and silence. Except for all the parts with windows exploding in slow motion and The Bald One murdering almost every single person in his path, which just happens to take him through a hospital ward. Those parts are quite noisy. There’s also a crying nun. She is crying because of the constant gunfire and images of men being shot through the abdomen at point blank range. Do you want to see such things? They are below.

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I’m a simple man, driven by simple pleasures. Such as when playing a climbing simulator, deliberately placing one foot on the rock, and then with arms by my side, placing a second foot on the rock. And watching the character fall stupidly on his back. But then I’m a twit. Vertigo is actually a rather serious climbing game, very impressively recreating the necessary actions and thought that goes into scaling a vertical surface. Using ragdoll physics, you control each of the guy’s four limbs to find grips on a rockface, seeing how high you can get him. Which is more interesting than it sounds.

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