Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The great thing about the aftermath of Ludum Dare is that there are so many games out in the wild, just waiting to be tracked down. While carting my blunderbuss around the steaming jungle that today’s expedition of Colonel Freekirk’s IndieToy Hunting Party chose to visit, I became aware of a rustling in the mulchy remains of a collapsed banana grove. Nudging a cluster of razor-sharp yet brittle fronds aside with the butt of my gun, I was startled to see Abandoned, a gravity-flipping box-and-button puzzler, feasting on a strange purple fruit. It ran as only an indie game can but I gave chase, bagged it and present its trophied face for your appreciation.

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You might just recollect my rantings about my favourite Quake III map, Q3WCP9, back in the mists of time. I had sort of resigned myself to the idea that it would never appear on Quake Live. Until now! The Quake Live Christmas premium update has it! Depressingly this means that the maps were only available to free players for a week, a week which ends today. I am sad. It is, however, just enough to push me into taking out a premium account for the hols. Man, I hope I can get some decent CP9 games. I’ll report back.

If you’ve used Direct2Drive to get any games, then you might want to pay attention to this. The service is being merged into GameFly, and that means that not everything you bought will necessarily survive the transition. They warn:

1. Download your favorite game purchases from Direct2Drive. We plan to have as many game files as possible available on GameFly. Just to be sure, please download your old game files before the transition.
2. Download all of your non-game files (like Prima Guides). These will not be available on GameFly after the transition.

More details here. Thanks, Lewie!

Edit: Turns out you can’t redeem codes anyway, as that’s broken at the moment. A lot of players are a touch upset that their 30 days free with the game aren’t actually accessible until you enter payment details to pay for the next month.

Aaaand now my patience has run out. As if the extensive hours-long queues to get in to play Star Wars: The Old Republic weren’t frustrating enough (that’s if the game’s online to let you play, of course), now BioWare/EA’s infrastructure can’t cope with people trying to visit their website. I have never, in my life, ever seen a queue to visit a website before. Yet that’s the position I’m in, trying to enter a code so I can carry on playing the bloody game. A queue I can’t seem to win at.

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The guys over at PCG noticed that the US Army’s CryEngine-powered “Dismounted Soldier Training System” has two trailers out. Do military training technologies need trailers? Hard to say, unless they are angling to become the third contender for the military manshoots arms race? These trailers are perhaps a little austere to complete with the big boys boombox bombast, but it’s nice and simulatory, as you can see below, so perhaps they could square off with Arma 3.
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We sent Craig into what I can only assume was the heart of a diabolical sandstorm to take a look at Spec Ops: The Line. Despite misgivings, he admired the impressive spectacle, most of which seems to be due to the game’s setting in a decaying and sand-suffocated Dubai. A new trailer, which shows a fair bit of gameplay, does manage to impress with its sense of scale. There are towering, shattered buildings and a beach’s worth of sand being dumped onto unsuspecting enemies. That goes along with some cover-based shooting and some excessive violence, including a foot stomp that Isaac Clarke would be proud of. Put on your shades, then take a look.

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Dear me, I wasn’t paying attention yesterday. Remember that we told you about the excellent trailer for a Left 4 Dead fan-made film, that to my eyes at least look Hollywood scale? The full 10 minute version is now there for you to see. And by “there”, I mean, “just below these words”. It really is remarkably good.

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Fancy a game of Star Wars: The Old Republic? Well tough, because the servers are all down this morning until 12pm, for scheduled maintenance work. And this isn’t the first time. In what appears to be a very strange decision for such a high profile game, European servers are all being taken offline for hours during the daytime, for a game that’s only just launched. And even more strange – doing this takes down the entire www.swtor.com website too, meaning anyone wanting to say, learn about the game, can’t. And then you notice this is an international thing, and Europe starts to look a little unloved.

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I do like destroying things. Buildings, hope, people’s lives. So I’m immediately drawn to Nitrome’s Rubble Trouble Moscow. You may remember the original Rubble Trouble in Feb last year, and apparently there was another one between then and now. This one is Russian themed, in so much as the characters are wearing hats, and the music is a bit Russian. The actual game is still blowing up buildings using a constantly changing arsenal of strange weapons. Now including tanks, dancing bears and gymnasts. And it’s still good fun, apart from a frustratingly drifty camera, and a game in a box which doesn’t capture your cursor. Which is annoying. But fortunately the rest of the game isn’t, and is infuriatingly morish. Even though I’m currently stuck on a level and getting increasingly frustrated.