Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Earlier this month, Valve made a video of Wheatley talking about his nomination in the ‘Best Character’ category of the VGAs. The Joker actually took the award, which seemed disappointing at first, since he’s a decades old character who even in this incarnation is appearing in a sequel, while Wheatley is quite the original. Then I noticed that the other two entrants were Nathan Drake and Marcus Fenix, appearing in the third games of their respective trilogies. The awards mean diddly squat, but I was a little disappointed about Wheatley missing out because it meant we all missed out an an acceptance speech. No more! Here’s what he would have said.

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Polite notice: THE CODES WORK FOR NEW EUROPEAN AND NORTH AMERICAN REGISTRATIONS ONLY. If you are already a WoT player they won’t be much use to you. Unless you want to get a chum involved or whatever.

Anyway! If our interview with the producer from World Of Warplanes got your pseudo-World War II PvP glands engorged, then you might want to try their original game, World Of Tanks. We’ve got 1000 starter codes to give away, which will apparently boost you on your way into the game with a free premium tank, one day of full premium play, and 300 gold. To to claim a code you have to be logged into RPS. If you click here you will automatically claim a code, and also get to see the sign up instructions.

Planetside 2‘s launch creeps steadily closer, and SOE have quietly gone and relaunched the website to contain a bunch more information and the beta registration page. You need an SOE account to sign up, of course. Thanks to Planetside Universe for this, who also note this phrase from the new details on the revamped official site: “With air, ground and seaborne combat, the battles will be larger and more intense than ever.” Could there be boats this time? Or are they just referring to the odd hovertank? We shall see!

I’ve not put anywhere near as much time as I’d have liked into Rob ‘Squid in a Box’ Hale’s graceful-but-frantic twin-stick shooter Waves, which has built up quite a following in recent weeks – as well as snagging the coveted RPS ‘best use of the Unreal engine’ award at Indievisibility the other week. I did, however, discover the other day that it runs rather well on my laptop’s integrated Intel graphics thinger, so I expect to spend a fair bit of time shooting shapes while hiding in the bathroom from my girlfriend’s extended family over Christmas. (That’s ‘shooting shapes’, not ‘shooting up’, heroin fans).

It’s just had a healthy free update, adding a sixth mode known as Chase, known variously as ‘the hardest mode yet’ and ‘the speed metal of shmups’, so masochistic nutters will be delighted.
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Monaco, which is the indie heist game you will be going crazy for in 2012, has a video out! It shows the online multiplayer in action: you are going to be able to play peer-to-peer co-op with teams of burglars doing their business across the exquisitely-crafted lo-fi levels. Oh, you are going to enjoy this game.
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Good news and less good news from the Humble Bundle camp today. The happier end of the bargain is that purchasers of the current Humble Bundle 4 now get the base contents of Humble Bundle 3 (i.e. VVVVVV, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Cogs, And Yet It Moves, and Hammerfight) added to their pack. That’s if they’ve bought HB4 already. If they haven’t, they’ll have to beat the average price to get the bonus goodies. The average price is currently $5.17 million.
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The Drs Bioware recently lectured at BAFTA in London, talking to the assembled throng about the art of making RPGs, with particular reference to some fairly big games they’ve made recent, the Mass Effects and The Old Republic. They even bravely attempt to answer questions fielded by the BAFTA audience. I’ve posted an except below (via VG247) a more extensive version of the thing can be seen over here on BAFTA Guru. It’s worth a watch.
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Aha! The first proper footage of the RPG based on the fantasy tomes by George ‘lecherous old tease’ R. ‘making it up as he goes along’ R. ‘all that money and he still won’t buy a beard-trimmer’ Martin. After the well-intentioned but ultimately miserable strategy game Genesis, this RPG looks to be rather more lavish – and, perhaps vitally in a commercial sense, related to the TV show. The music! The Iron Throne! The armour! The glowering!
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Our post about The Ship giving away all the ships for free prompted lovely Wired UK chap (and writer of our Sim City 2000 retrospective) Duncan Geere to mention Velvet Sundown. And thus, there was yet another ship. This is one of a slate of short story-like online roleplaying games from Finnish outfit Stagecraft that throw away the numbers and the NPCs, and focus purely on players inhabiting their characters. Velvet Sundown specifically is set on board a luxury yacht, with each player assuming the role of one of its passengers.

Crime, romance, the trading of poetry and wearing sunglasses indoors: my sense of it from the video below and Duncan’s write-up was of a cross between the ad-hoc storytelling of Sleep is Death and the cheesy melodrama of a late-80s US soap opera starring rich people with too much make-up and over-large shoulderpads.
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Oh thank flipping goodness, Skyrim inventory mods are appearing. Big thanks to Rick Lane who let us know about SkyUI, which does wonders for the ridiculous inventory system with which Bethesda saddled the game. It’s not perfect, mostly because a giant great image of the item still dominates the screen, but it’s a darned site better than it was before. For instance, you can see everything on the screen without having to scroll until your fingers fall off.

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Hey you? Yes, you – the one with the face. Would you like to watch a trailer for Hedone? You would! Awesome… I’ve put it down somewhere.

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