Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Every time a slip, leak or whisper emerges from inside the caverns of PC shop owners and former developers Valve, the gaming news press (us occasionally included) gets into a frothy frenzy at the mention of Half-Life 3. “Could this be evidence they’re working on it?!” everyone cries, tickling their own legs in excitement. OF COURSE THEY ARE! Of COURSE Valve is working on Half-Life 3! It’s not even vaguely feasible that they wouldn’t be! They’ve obviously been working on it, in some capacity, since HL2: Ep 2 came out. News would be if they actually bloody finished it.

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Shadowrun’s been away since time immemorial. It hasn’t had a videogame in ages – well, except 2007′s bizarrely out-of-character multiplayer shooter revival, but we don’t talk about that. As a result, however, The Rules dictate that Shadowrun’s next digital dalliance constitutes a return, and so it is with Shadowrun Returns. The technomagical role-player looks positively fantastic, so we at RPS are awaiting it with baited breath. That’s right: we’re actively making our mouths smell more appealing so as to lure it into grasping/maybe-licking range. And clearly, it’s worked, because Harebrained just announced that it’ll be out next month – and fully editable on day one, to boot.

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I had been playing Undertale’s free demo for two minutes when the memory of Space Funeral popped into my mind like a drunken Jack in the Box. Ten minutes later, I was ready to quit and around half an hour after that I’d completed the demo, which is a complete short story, and was glad that I’d persisted. It’s a weird adventure in the style of a JRPG, with random encounters, a silent protagonist, single room puzzles and turn-based combat. Stick with the demo through the alternately bizarre and bland opening minutes, and there’s a tiny world of wonder. If you don’t play until the depressed ghost makes an appearance, you have seen nothing.

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Pro Evo Soccer may have won next season’s foot-to-ball battle before it even begins. During an interview with Polygon, Andrew Wilson, executive vice president of EA Sports, revealed that the fancy new ball-jiggling mechanics of the Ignite engine will not be gracing the PC version of FIFA 14, which will instead be equivalent to the 360 and PS3 editions. Why? Well, PC conversion would be difficult because of the architecture of the next-gen consoles and “how the CPU, GPU and RAM work together in concert in that type of environment.” It’s like an abstract alien factory in there and the conversion wouldn’t be worthwhile because, Wilson claims, using the example of FIFA 11, “the majority of the gamer base that was playing the game on PC did not have a PC spec that would work with that”. Huh.

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I’m going to have a full interview about the strange, sad tale of how/why excellent TBS Skulls of the Shogun so bewilderingly ended up as a Windows 8 exclusive, and how it all went so, so wrong, up on the site tomorrow. Meantime, let’s share the good news – this ace, very funny and tight undead Samurai battler is now free from its Microsoftian chains, and will arrive on Steam & Humble for any PC that can handle it next month. And thank God for that.

It’ll have brand new stuff on its old bones too.
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When I was a small boy, I was very excited about the idea of having my own car. Games had taught me that driving was fun*, whether through the twisting roads of Lotus III, across the ramshackle rollercoasters of Stunt Car Racer, or in the violent competition of Fatal Racing. Then my parents bought me a Nascar game and everything changed. The graphics blew my Spiderman socks off but the tracks didn’t have any unexpected curves, loops or jumps. That’s why I spent most of my time with the game driving the wrong way, trying to cause massive collisions and pileups. I haven’t played a Nascar game since and the impending arrival of Eutechnyx’ latest on July 24th probably won’t change that, but perhaps you are a fan of cars wot go round and round?

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Eador devs Snowbird have started talking about their secondary project, Caribbean! which we mentioned all the way back here. That’s Caribbean! in the sense of Pirates! rather than me being particularly excited about it, you understand. Nevertheless it’s an hugely ambitious project, allowing people to tackle that region of the world in the 17th century in a manner similar to the way Mount & Blade tackles medieval Eurasia. They’ve had a bit of a struggle with the game, and explain: “Having started with ‘Mount & Blade with ships’ concept over time we almost switched to making a war and historical colonization simulator.”

The beta, which was previously flagged up on their forums, has bene much delayed, but is now likely to happen soon, and could be worth keeping an eye on. You can also play it at Rezzed(!) So that’s nice.

Let there be Torchlight. The ARPG’s sequel thoroughly impressed John and the original is free until June 20th as part of Good Old Games’ summer sale. There will be new deals every day until July 5th and the first day’s offerings include Alan Wake and American Nightmare for $4.48, and a massive Dungeons and Dragons pack for $21.10. That one includes Torment, Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2, Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, and Icewind Dale 1 & 2. Whatever happened to every series at least reaching a lacklustre third part? It’s probably Valve’s fault. Remember, Torchlight is only free until the 20th, so best to download it right away.

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Makers of retro arcadian pixels of joy, Puppygames, send word that they are running a hi-score competition at Rezzed 2013. (That’s this weekend at the NEC in Birmingham.) If you win, you get a Nexus 7. Nice! They explain: “Under our baleful glare, hapless punters who attempt to creep past our booth unnoticed will be captured and enslaved in front of one of our games and made to play for hiscores. Whomsoever has the highest score in each game at the end of Rezzed is going to win a Nexus 7, so we’ll also be extracting contact details out of anyone who gets the #1 hiscore. Those left mentally unscarred and unruffled by the experience may wish to come back later to defend their scores if they want to be in with a chance of winning.” But there’s more! “Just in case you’re inept at blasting aliens and robots to bits but would like the opportunity to try more, we’re also giving away all our games for free to anyone who drops by.”

And then, if you want a change of pace, you can play the Space Hulk alpha at the Full Control stand, or Sir, You Are Being Hunted at the Big Robot stand. So come to Rezzed. Okay?

Lifeless Planet had a bit of a slip earlier this year, but there are finally signs that things are moving forward. A new trailer shows features a frustrating amount of the same footage we’ve already seen of the third-person action/puzzler, but there’s also some narration offering some decent voice acting too.

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