Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Alien Rage is apparently the new name for Alien Fear, although neither game had materialised on my Release Schedule Bioscanner before today. Anyway, it has a trailer which shoes some aliens and some rage. Good thing they dropped that fear malarky, that would have made no sense at all. Anyway, the teaser trailer below makes it look like a game somewhere in the middle of the hilarious/awesome spectrum, so hopefully City will be able to pull off the “arcade FPS” that they are touting.

Go look at it!
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Sundays are for telepathy and cake. But that’s not all there is to life. There is also the contemplation of electronic contraptions. And they are many.

• An important (for the desktop colonel) article on recent developments in the strategy genre: “Strategy no longer means what it once did. The prominence of League of Legends and DOTA 2 and the recent failure of games like Age of Empires Online and Fall of Nations has led to a shift in what publishers and developers think people want. MOBAs now dominate the online space, there’s no getting around that, and who can blame them? These games are easy to get into, have a huge and dedicated community. Why would you develop anything else?”

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There are nearly as many Team Fortress 2 hats as there are snarky jokes about Team Fortress 2 hats. I see more hats in a day of browsing the Valvier parts of the Internet than I do in a year of going outside. But let’s face it: ours is a hatted man’s world, and so long as there are heads to be ogled and summarily shot, people will clamor for more carnivals of craftsmanship to cover them. You can probably see where I’m going with this. There’s a new Team Fortress 2 update, and it’s entirely player-created. Also, it’s mostly hats. These, however, are robot hats, and – as the wisest of all Benders taught us – that makes them exponentially more interesting. There’s also a video, comic, and all sorts of other post-update revelry. The break is not a robot, but it will do is best to emulate the experience.

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Hey, kid. Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you. You wanna buy some- oh jeez, shush! Police and/or an out-of-touch politician! OK, phew. They’ve passed now. Anyway, might I interest you in some videogames? Oh, don’t worry: they’re real. Fresh out of the oven too, if you know what I mean. Heh. What’ve I got? You’re in luck today, kid. Yes indeed. Ever wonder what it’d feel like to be god - and also a planet, and also some manner of crab giant? Well then, Reus might just float your boat, if you know what I mean. Heh. No good? Brain too rotten from your “Call of Honorfield” murder machines? Hm, then how about Renaissance Heroes? It’s got all of the guns and none of the plausibility! Go to beauteous portions of 16th century Renaissance Europe and then blow them up! That sort of thing. Oh, you want trailers? Mr high-roller, huh? Fine, fine. Go past the break and they’re all yours. If you know what I mean. Heh.

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At this rate, Trion Worlds might soon be forced to change its name to Trion Islands, or maybe Trion Small Yet Charming Spanish Getaway Vacation Villa. After the Rift team got hit by a major round of layoffs late last year, Defiance‘s band of trigger finger scratchers has taken a possibly even bigger hit. While the exact number is unconfirmed, many reports place the total at around 100, which is a worrisomely not-small portion of the entire company. For its part, Trion has confirmed the unfortunate turn of events, but it’s been illusive otherwise. The company’s statement is after the break, in addition to a few further details.

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I am constantly impressed by indie productions that honestly have no business being indie. You know, things of such scope and ambition that they make many triple-A behemoths look like whimpering, glitz-and-glamour-drowned mice. But they also worry me. I look at them and say, “Oh wow, that’s being built from the ground-up by a two-person team? Goodness. There is no way.” Often, the results end up being mixed bags of wonderful intentions and rocky realities. Cases in point: Miasmata, 3079, Anna, etc, etc, etc. It’s with a similar combo of stomach butterflies and stomach acid that I approach Frontiers. It looks like a more laid-back, exploration-and-survival-focused Morrowind, but can a small team really give something so massive the meticulous care it deserves? Fingers crossed. Trailer after the break.

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There are so many videogames! More than I can count with my entire, exceedingly creepy plaster hand collection. Valve tries its darndest to get the best ones on Steam, but they just keep coming. Perhaps throwing the towering Select-O-Tron 9000 and 3/5 into hyperdrive is the answer? Valve’s having a go at it, at least, and so far the result’s been smaller batches of games at an appreciably speedier clip. Last time, that meant three games, but this time it’s six. Hooray, progress! Standouts include the piracy plagued Game Dev Tycoon, Harvest-Moon-meets-Minecraft standout Stardew Valley, and the creatively named RIOT, which is about riots. Details after the break.

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This morning I handed Jim Tangiers, a game of stealth with hints of Marcel Duchamp, William Burroughs, and J.G. Ballard. And what does he hand me back? Orc Attack: Flatulent Rebellion. A game about flatulent orcs. I can’t believe he’s impooned me in such a way. I should sewer him and his webshite, toot suite. I did not asscent to sulpher such an indignity, to be the butt of his joke. Well, the joke’s on him. Instead of poo poooing this, I took a look at it and ended up pumped.
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I spent ten minutes walking around my flat in an attempt to make the word “carburetor” into a car-game pun. I failed. “Car-be-better” was so blindlingly ugly that I couldn’t face seeing it in big, bold letters on the front page of RPS, and “Car-berate-r” was just too surreal to go with. Still, I got a few opening sentences out of the struggle, and my fight with the English language mimics the struggle a mechanic would have when fixing a car in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Sound the segue klaxon and dive with me into some words about Pixelbionic’s newly announced end-of-the-world car-combat game, Autoduel. WaaaaaaaAAAAaaaaaa…
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We’ve not been pointing the lidless burning eye of the internet at Runescape 3 all that much, which is perhaps an oversight on the part of the beleaguered word-hamsters of the RPS blogmill. The game is looking rather spiffing for a browsering thing, and its masters Jagex are going all out to prove that this third Runescape is the scapiest and runiest of them all. Behold! Browser-based play! Characterful characters, monstrous monsters and an uh, well-tuned orchestra! Yes. See it all in a barrage of family-friendly video images, below.

The beta, I believe, is taking sign ups over here, although maybe not since the closing date was supposed to be 10th April. Anyway.

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It really is. Developer Rablo Games explain that Lost Spirits of Kael (but not kale) is an action RPG where the focus is “atmosphere”. And: “You play the role of a young painter who has lost his inspiration and tries to get it back in the Forest of Kael. There, he meets a mysterious harpist who covers the forest with magical mist by playing her instrument.”

Sounds straightforward enough, I suppose. But let’s take a look at that video.
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