Archive for the ‘Featured Articles’ Category
Night of the demons
By Alec Meer on May 22nd, 2012.
I’ve been playing Diablo III solo, in snatched time during the wee small hours of the last few days. Late to the party as always I know, but the urge to muse ‘pon what I’ve played so far was too strong to resist.
I was unlucky, and yet incredibly lucky, to be away during Diablo III launch week. That means I’ve missed the worst of the server troubles resultant from the blatantly mercenary and ill-considered always-online DRM for singleplayer. That means I’ve been able to simply login and play the thing, leaving my my mind free to consider Diablo III itself, rather than its nasty corporate trappings. Like I say: lucky.
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Blizzard, Diablo III, feature.
Tragedies, not statistics
By Adam Smith on May 22nd, 2012.
Looking back, I should have known it would be the Eastern Front. The entire world may well know by now that Company of Heroes 2 is in development at Relic, due for release sometime in 2013, and if they’ve paid any attention whatsoever they’ll also be aware that it’s set on the Eastern Front with a campaign beginning in 1941. What they don’t know is that we are among the few outside the studio who’ve already seen the game in action and right up until we entered the briefing room, we had no idea when or where it was set.
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Company Of Heroes 2, feature, preview, Relic, THQ.
Interview
By John Walker on May 22nd, 2012.
As the current trend to Kickstart every adventure series I loved in the 90s continues, I jumped upon the opportunity to speak to Tex Murphy himself, Chris Jones. With the new FMV-driven noir science fiction adventure already well over halfway to its half-million goal, there’s cause to be optimistic for Big Finish Games’ project, Project Fedora, going ahead. And as Jones reveals, his team are putting in quarter of a million of their own money too. We talk about bringing Tex back, updating the genre for a modern audience, and why Jones believes FMV characters can connect to players in a way CG ones never can.
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big finish games, Chris Jones, feature, interview, Kickstarter, Tex Murphy: Project Fedora.
And the Earth died screaming
By Adam Smith on May 22nd, 2012.
It’s Alec who normally brings you the latest on Firaxis’ XCOM remake so I expect you shall be somewhat confused to hear that I actually played it last week. Alec will probably never forgive me for taking what he saw as his rightful place but he was too busy being rained on in Greece to defend the Earth from invasion. I didn’t manage to protect anyone from the invasion either but I did cause a few soldiers to die trying. They might have specialisations and there might be less of them per squad, but the poor sods are as vulnerable as ever. This is how they died.
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feature, Firaxis, hands on, preview, xcom, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, xcomho.
Adventure at a price
By John Walker on May 21st, 2012.
Former AGS adventure, The Journey Down, has now had its first (and so far only) chapter remade and re-released as a commercial product. How does it do going from retro-pixel adventure to something more modern, voiced and priced? Here’s Wot I Think.
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adventure, feature, indie, review, Skygoblin, The Journey Down: Over The Edge, wot i think.
Give And You Shall Receive
By John Walker on May 19th, 2012.
This makes sense as a thing to do. With so many gaming Kickstarters running, for games we’re genuinely interested to play, let’s have a look to see where they all are this weekend. The headline news is that Grim Dawn has finished its run, with just shy of double its target reached. Below you can catch up on Moebius, Xenonauts, Tex Murphy, and many more. And you can also note that almost all of them aren’t pledging to Kick It Forward, which completely sucks, so you should get in touch with them all and yell at them.
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Carmageddon: Reincarnation, Drifter: A Space Trading Game, Grim Dawn, Kickstarter, kickstarter katchup, legends of eisenwald, Moebius, Skyjacker, Tex Murphy: Project Fedora, Two Guys SpaceVenture, Xenonauts.
Run And Hide
By Jim Rossignol on May 19th, 2012.
I think I’ll annoy some Arma fans when I say that Day Z is a better showcase for that tech than the original game’s campaign or multiplayer missions. But I have my reasons, and I’ll explain some of them below. I’ll also continue the story which we began the other day, which will serve to illustrate a bit more about why both Arma 2 and this modification are something singular and brilliant in the landscape of gaming.
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Arma 2, Day Z, feature, mod news, Surviving In Day Z.
Shooting the skin off someone's head?
By RPS on May 18th, 2012.
World War II shooter Sniper Elite V2 has topped the all-format charts in the UK for the past couple of weeks, which meant it was time to turn the searchlight of RPS judgement on this high flier. Was it one of the great FPS sniping experiences? Or had Rebellion really just given everyone a good excuse to put a bullet in Hitler? Turns out that without his robot-suit, he wasn’t so tough.
Jim and Adam got together to talk killcams, testicles, and Thief with a rifle.
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505 games, feature, Rebellion, review, Sniper Elite V2.
Simulation and wargame news
By Tim Stone on May 18th, 2012.
The mud on the T19 was always bad, but that Spring it had to be seen to be believed. Bergmann, TransGlobus, Hipponaut… everyone was losing two or three vehicles a week. Even with jug-floats and plutos fitted, you didn’t stand a chance. Which is why all of us barons eventually got together and bought The Matriarch. She arrived on three special trains from Port Hendy. Took a week to assemble. Your Uncle Fergus won the driver ballot. It was only because he went down with appendicitis at the last minute, that the second-place man, Canter Spriggs, took the reins. I can still see Canter up there in that cockpit, grinning like a pookaduke. The poor bastard had no idea what he was heading into.
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AGEOD, Alea Jacta Est, demo, free, Oovee, Spin Tires, The Flare Path.
Repeat Until Unfunny
By John Walker on May 18th, 2012.
My companions have stopped following me. The map has suddenly blanked out. The dungeon doors aren’t opening. And despite my just having cleared out a two-storey dungeon for the second time, there hasn’t been a checkpoint in over a half an hour. If I quit out to fix it, the entire area map will be reset yet again (a previous quit to see if there was any way to raise the difficulty had already done this to me once, and is how I discovered the dungeon wasn’t checkpointing), so in total an hour’s play time lost, and, well, here’s the thing: Diablo III just isn’t brilliant enough to warrant this.
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always-on, Blizzard, Diablo III, DRM, feature.
C**ematic
By Adam Smith on May 17th, 2012.
‘Cinematic’ should rightfully be a dirty word when discussing games and yet Max Payne 3′s marketing wears it proudly, like a sweat-stained vest or an inappropriately jaunty tie. A cutscene is cinematic, every detail and angle just so, no room for accident or deviation, but to aspire to a ‘cinematic’ experience during play is to ignore so much of what makes experiences within a game unique to the form. We run, gun and react in worlds that rely, for the enjoyment they bring, on the accidental and the curious as much as they require adherence to a plan. Here’s to the unexpected, the unplanned and the unforgettable.
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cinematic denial, Day Z, Dwarf-Fortress, feature, max payne 3, stalker.
