Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Since its earliest inception, 7 Grand Steps has been an intrigue among intrigues. For one, it comes from Dangerous High School Girls In Trouble maestro Mousechief, which already pretty much guarantees that the end result won’t step outside the box so much as it will scream forth from it, Hulk-like, in a confetti shower of splinters. 7 Grand Steps adopts a boardgame-style rule set to weave a highly reactive, multi-generational tale – letting you lift a family line from squalor to, well, pretty much whatever you see fit. I’m quite excited to find out what’ll come of my first run, though my real life habits suggest it’ll probably be widespread infamy or being held responsible for one of history’s most destructive fires. Soon, however, I’ll be able to find out for sure, because 7 Grand Steps is coming out next month.

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I am once again reminded of the existence of a game by the announcement of an expansion. Dungeons & Dragons Online’s shift to free-to-play years ago has given it enough success to keep quietly humming along, with the second expansion in seven years launching in the Summer. The Shadowfell Conspiracy is a content update, with new adventure packs (missions), monsters, and companions. It’ll also bring “Iconic Heroes”, ready-made level 15 characters for those who view grind with haughty disdain. You pay to not play! A teaser trailer for all the new content is beneath these words and some more words.
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Hey everyone, did you hear? There’s a new Xbox! It’s a prequel set 359 years before the current one, starring hip new actors, gratuitous explosions, and a patchwork quilt of nostalgia held together by your frayed heartstrings. Also, a man with “beautiful arms”. Wait, no, that’s the new Star Trek. For some reason, though, Microsoft’s calling its new machine the Xbox One, and with shiny hardware comes fresh hope. Maybe this time, PC and console will finally bound through a field of competitors together, hand-in-hand. Mayb- nope. Sounds like Microsoft is hoping to keep the two even more separated than ever, based on some comments from Redmond Game Studios general manager Matt Booty.

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Humans react differently to animal violence. I imagine I’ve seen about 200 on-screen deaths over the past few days, but at no point did I feel bad or empathise with the opposition. But every second of the Shelter’s trailer, where a mother badger must protect her tiny cubs, was like a force choke right in the feels. That hurts all over, let me tell you. I’m not even sure I’ll be able to play it given what it did to my heart rate. The horrible sense of death, of Mother Nature’s cruel indifference, the looming awfulness of it all. It’s is right here in a stealth game about badgers. Developers Might and Delight better be offering hugs in the comment section below.
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Very soon I will have finished the first ever Virtual Novel RTS game. This follows hot on the heels of my first ever top-down football manager (you can see the very thin lines of the top edges of the graphs), and the first ever basketball third-person shooter. I WILL CORNER ALL MARKETS! Unfortunately, beating me to the first ever FPS tower defence game (or so they claim – there was bound to be one on Amiga that was only released in Poland), was Sanctum, and now there’s a Sanctum 2. A game that Jim described as “decent”. But Jim was given a copy to review, in his usually corrupt fashion. You, as just some ghastly member of the ordinary public, will have to pay £12. So that’s why I’ve just invented the concept of the “demo”.

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Unrest is described as an “unconventional RPG set in ancient India”. The unusual setting isn’t the only aspect of the game that is defying the popular course that has been ploughed by role-players since a dragon first got its dunge on. Unrest is a tale of survival on the streets of a city crushed by poverty, famine and drought. Combat is swift, deadly and always avoidable, and there are “no fail states, just failures”, meaning the narrative adapts to the player characters’ mistakes and mishaps. The big draw, for me, is the chance to experience new stories about characters who would be nameless extras in so many big budget troll-stompers.

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Somewhere out there is an Omerta: City of Gangsters fan. He’s furiously whacking his F5 key with the butt of his Tommy gun, hoping that his favourite and only source for Omerta news, Craig “The Craig” Pearson, will fearlessly risk breaking the code and write something about it. Stop putting a beating on it, Jeff. Put the gun down and come out with your hands up… in triumph!

Omerta has just updated with a horse’s-head sized whack of free content. There’s Mafia* dollar there, and make no mistake. Can you refuse it?
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This post is brought to you by the incorrectly used letter K. No other letters, Egyptian hieroglyphs, or wingdings were harmed in the making of Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition. Just K, which has been forcefully fused with various words in some kind of bone-splintering reverse-fatality. But enough sighing over English’s desecrated corpse. We’re getting a videogame! The Komplete Edition brings together 2011′s rather enjoyable series reboot and all of its DLC, so there’ll certainly be plenty to do. Will it make up for two years of waiting? Fingers, subcutaneous arm blades, and limp, disembodied spines crossed.

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Do you have between one and infinity dollars? Are you waiting for Alan Wake to be ‘bundled’ up with the expansion and extra materials, where the costs are distributed between the developers and charity? Those are some very specific conditions you have there. Gaming welcomes you, but if that’s your criteria for every game then you might want to relax it a bit. Just buy games in sales and give money to charity, okay? This week’s Humble Bundle sale presents Alan Wake, Remedy’s love letter to Stephen King novels and lovely naps. But it’s more of a nap that a baby has, where it wakes up screaming and smelling of poo, because the bundle also marks the end of Remedy’s work on an Alan Wake sequel.
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I always felt that World of Warcraft didn’t get me as a player. All I ever wanted to do was wander the world and look at what had been made, but the gated realm that it offered made that tough. Not impossible, though: my first few weeks of WoW were slow-going, because I’d be impatient and run into leveled lands without the appropriate character. Then I’d die, return to my corpse to resurrect, and carry on. It was ridiculous, but I took my low-level character to places she was never meant to see by judging where best to run between higher-level NPCs. My desire for a tourist class in an MMO has yet to be fulfilled, but looking at Wildstar’s latest pair of videos it looks like Carbine has made the best attempt at it so far: Paths are Wildstar’s way of giving you more of the specific content you like, and the pair of videos below has already convinced me to try out as an Explorer.
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Yesterday’s Xbox One reveal may have prompted long sighs and tweets of derision from everyone not also watching ESPN and drinking beer from a hat at that very moment, but one portion of it at least sounded pretty impressive. Apparently Kinect One (which is actually Kinect Two, which I guess makes the original Kinect A, Kinect Prime, Kinect Route Zero or some other confusing designation) is quite a technological step up from its predecessor, allegedly able to track facial features, joints, fingers, and even the number of calories you’re burning while moving around. It’s also always watching as long as it’s plugged in, which – privacy promises from Microsoft or not – is basically terrifying. Intrigued? Researching the logistics of living among the animals in some far-off wilderness? Well regardless, Microsoft’s even more all-seeing eye will eventually end up on PC.

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