Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Look at them! So lovely. Fluttering their big eyes in my direction. I would kiss them all. Failing that, I will blast the sparking guts out of robots on them. Same thing, really. Hawken‘s latest map is called Facility, which seems like a very pretty name for a really outstandingly handsome death-arena. Sigh. Such beauty. Harvesting floating rock minerals like a Greek god. Mmm.

This latest update also includes a bunch of minor changes, which can only add to Hawken’s eligibility on the dating circuit.
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The Call To Arms event was another huge success, with the Vanu group peaking at about 235 concurrent RPS players across five platoons. The NC Outfit was also in action, and there were dozens of other allied and opposing groups which made the evening a splendid brawl across the continent of Indar. We saw several large tank battles across open ground, and dozens of smaller, intense battles for territory. It has to be have been one of the most spectacular multiplayer events I have seen, and I enjoyed leading one of the platoons enormously.

See you all at the next one. Perhaps a Sunday night for the next one.

Tonight on Planetside 2‘s Miller server, from 7pm UK, we will be doing laser war. Everyone is invited. You are doubly invited if you haven’t played the game before. On the Vanu faction, our heroic team of giraffe-fatigued warriors will be organising platoons for you all to play in, making an ideal introduction to the game. They’ve provided a guide to play which you can read here. That’s presented as a video, if you want to watch it as such, below. Also: action video!
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First of all, I’m bringing you the most important news: there’s a game whose name is Farm For Your Life. Let’s not let that get buried under any other information I might provide after this point. Farm For Your Life.

Other interesting factors, albeit ones that pale in comparison, are that you can buy it right now, or… earn it for free.

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Schein‘s a puzzle-platformer looking for crowd-funding. I should probably get a special button fitted to my keyboard which automatically types “a puzzle platformer looking for crowd-funding”, actually. But Schein also has a demo, showing off its light-based conundrums and slightly Limbo-esque vibe, which makes it much easier to say something useful about.
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Watergate: The Videogame is sort of based on All The President’s Men, a book about the investigative reporting that ultimately exposed US President Richard Nixon’s massive Watergate scandal and forced him to resign. Now, I say “sort of” because the game’s about as rooted in true-to-life fact as the concept of Richard Nixon’s honesty – which is to say, basically not at all. Watergate begins as a clunky point-and-click adventure with you in the role of journalist Bob Woodward, but quickly plunges into fourth-wall-obliterating, genre-wire-crossing madness. It’s often silly, frequently dumb, and occasionally educational. I think the best part was when I became Mega Man.

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When one of the finest PC releases of 2013 is a side-scrolling motorbike game – Trials Evolution: Gold Edition – I can understand that some who’ve not played the Trials games before might be confused by concept. Fortunately there’s now no excuse for not having a play of this ridiculously fun game, as at last there’s a demo.

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Wowee, this is something I need to magic up a fortnight for. Since 2009, the OpenXcom project has been unhurriedly continuing in its quest to make the original X-COM more contemporaneous, – a standalone version that doesn’t require DOSBox, that makes the interface a little more modern, that offers more rule-tweaking for those that want it, that finally kills some of the bugs which have dogged the original for the past two decades, and even one that scales up to mega-resolutions impressively convincingly. As of the new version 0.9, it’s basically got everything working, and you basically get an in theory improved, but faithful, X-COM to play right now.
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It might be, though. I’m pretty bad at picking up on subtext, after all. For instance, I had no idea that Far Cry 3 was actually all about an episode of Basil Brush from 1976. I’m pretty sure Dream Island is made according to the ‘throw enough poo at the wall’ theory rather than because it has any kind of comment to make about anything. Although it’s 80s dinosaurs with ghettoblasters, sad robots and dogs who want jaws rather than actual poo, so it’s all good clean fun.

It’s pretty stupid. It’s rather nice.
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The last RPS Call To Arms event was a thing of legend, with hundreds of readers teaming up for colossal conflict on the Miller server. We’re doing it again this Thursday. Organisation will once again be done via our forum, and via the RPS Mumble server. You should not miss out on this, it will be memorable.

Planetside 2 is free-to-play.