Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Straight from the Gears of War / Mad World school of ironic juxtaposition-based maudlin marketing, this new vidotrail for BioShock: Infinite features EXPLOSIVE ACTION set against someone singing unhappily. It’s quite affecting, I’ll give it that, but I think we’ll need someone to do the excruciatingly dedicated frame-by-frame analysis thing to identify exactly what new stuff we’re seeing.
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The very important #indieVisibilty awards ceremony took place in London last night, organised by SizeFiveGames, officiated by OneLifeLeft, and with awards selected by IndieGames and “Rock, Paper, Shotgun”. You can see the full list of the awards distributed below, including Best Minecraft, Nicest Man, “best attempt to do what mainstream devs will not”, and Notch’s game of the year.

Well done to all those involved!
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Sundays are for waking up early to see what the previous night’s hype ceremony has disgorged into the guts of the internet. Then, later, you turn to other things. Words on those games. What might there be amongst the debris? Let’s scavenge.

• It’s difficult not to be impressed by Totilo’s profile of Tim Sweeney, a programming legend who is about to be added to the Hall of Fame of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. Totilo talks about what Sweeney the man he is, and explains a bit about why the mind behind Epic’s tech is so important: “These days, if a company wants to show off how impressive their new computer, phone or console is, the easiest path is to get the latest Unreal Engine on it. They want Sweeney or one of his colleagues on stage showing how well it runs and how easily people can make games with it. “He enabled us to make fun games that I call ‘system justifiers,’” Bleszinski explained. “He made an engine that made it easy for developers to make good-looking things fast, which then let you get a great-looking game on an iPad 2 or through a 3D card and show your wife that ‘this is why I got this.’”"

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Yes, there’s also a Diablo III cinematic from Blizzard. Not all that interesting, I suppose, but it’s super stylish, so you’ll probably want to take a look, below.
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Yes, Bioware are making an RTS. Or more accurately: they’ve now got an RTS studio under the same label. Generals 2 is powered by the Battlefield 3 engine. It’s PC-only. Dr Ray said: ““We’re bringing BioWare’s vision for emotionally engaging gameplay and great attention to quality to the strategy genre and the Command & Conquer franchise. I am excited to welcome BioWare Victory to our label. They are a great addition and the team is working hard to make sure Generals 2 truly immerses and engages players into this intense, gritty, modern war experience.” And Executive producer Jon Van Caneghem said: “With Generals 2, we are bringing the Command & Conquer franchise back to its roots, blending strategic gameplay with fast-paced action — all set in visually stunning theaters of war powered by Frostbite 2.” (Thanks, VG247.)

It’s dated for 2013. See trailer below.
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So here’s a genuinely interesting twist. Epic’s next game steps away from space marine bombast to be a thing where “you explore, you scavenge, you build and ultimately you survive.” It’s called Fortnite and it sounds like my kind of game, frankly. There’s no word of this formats it is coming out on, so might not be PC, but I think we can assume that it will be, given the clear Minecraftian inspiration. Like Minecraft, enemies come out at night, so players will be spend the daytime scavenging to bolster their defences for the night.

Teaser-y trailer below. Thoughts, Internet?
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I appear to have accidentally spent last night (until about 6am) discovering that there ain’t no party like a philosophy party. I stumbled home in the early hours of the morning, and now what limited brain activity I’ve got is almost entirely focused on trying to solve the problem of how to make a fry up appear in front of me, without any of the ingredients or the capactiy to collect the ingredients. Thankfully, my Savy-deputy Tony Heugh took sympathy on my self-enduced shambolic mental state, and has helped me bucket up this load of bargains for you this week. There’s more cheap games over at SavyGamer.co.uk Read the rest of this entry »

There was a bunch of art posted here yesterday (thread deleted) from a source which purported to be a former artist at GSC. The images appear to be a couple of environmental scenes and a bunch of concept art. It might make for decent wallpaper which you can gaze at, thinking about what could have been…

Full gallery below. Click for full size.
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