Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Mod-making mothership Moddb has announced its mod of the year winners. You can see the full list of winners here, but the all important top ten – the players choice for mod of the year 2009 – is here. The prizes aren’t bad either. And yes, we’re acutely aware that we don’t do anything like enough mod coverage here on RPS, so consider this your notification to download and play all the top mods of 2009. If you don’t already own Crysis, this might be a reason to get it…

Reverie World Studios haven’t exactly managed to come up with the most excitingly original name for their new MMORTS – it’s called “Dawn Of Fantasy” – but other elements of the game give us reason to murmur to each other over the internet, and surreptitiously keep an eye on things in the months leading up to release. Dawn Of Fantasy is a traditional orks vs humans type strategy in the style of the Total War games (so it’s a big old campaign map punctuated with 3D combat), and most interesting of all, it’s going to be a single player campaign and skirmish game with an option to turn it into an online game if you wish. Most recently they’ve revealed elements of the game map and, well, I’m just a sucker for maps at the worst of time, and this lures me in. If this can work as a single player game and an MMO then Reverie will have hit the jackpot. Naturally we’re sceptical that anyone can pull this off quite so readily, but I guess we’ll find out when the game turns up later this year. Slightly dodgy trailer below.
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Sundays are for gathering ancient Ogres to give to my brother in a sinister North-London meeting before he sods back off to Sheffield and compiling a list of the fine (mostly) games related reading from across the week, while trying to not include a link to a new Mix-tape that’s tweaking my monkey and a track by the band I went to see last night. Tweaking my monkey? I don’t know. I just don’t know. GO LIST!

• This ties in amusingly to what’s the main game the half of RPS who don’t review the sexy new stuff are playing this week. Neptune’s Bounty has been picking up a gear and… well, we’re wrestling with how on Earth we’re going to write about the bastard thing. Anyway! Graham PCG, who’s playing an important part in the game in the last 24 hours, writes about his teenage gaming with Planeterion: “At my Secondary School, for a few months at least, our teenaged politics was defined by who was kissing whom, who had insulted whom, and who was sending spaceships to defend or attack whom.” We do forget the personal a bit, being grown-ups, I think. Well, mostly grown ups.

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Stop paying full price for games you silly goose! Come here, look at the cheap games you can get for 10%, 20% sometimes even 30% less than RRP! Throw just a little bit of cash into the bargain bucket, and out pops hours worth of electronic entertainment. Monetary Magic! For more ways to stretch your gaming budget, head to SavyGamer.co.uk.
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Via the almighty news node of VG247 we cyber-pilfer news of a new Dawn Of War II: Chaos Rising trailer, this time with footage of a demon in action. Not sure about that narration, though, because it really just sounds a bit like me when I get all excited and do a space marine voice.
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Man versus dinosaur. We all know the days are coming. In preparation for the ultimate war, there’s Primal Carnage. It’s to be a team-based FPS multiplayer, in which one side plays as the humans, the other the giant stompy reptiles. It’s from indie team Lukewarm Media, previously noticed for their unreleased mod/full game, Light Spire. But we’re focusing on dinosaurs just now, and Primal Carnage has just opened itself a website, announced a deal with Ungine, and offers a few tech videos to look at.

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Demos are great. Like when you go to the supermarket and they have those plates of demos at the cheese counter. You can download a small chunk of cheddar, and if you like it there’s this unlock code you type in to access the full wedge of cheese. Or at car showrooms, where you’re allowed to have a go in the car for free, see how realistic the driving is, find out if it’s one of the ones that lets you drive through barriers and run over spectators. Another place you can find demos is with videogames. Like, for instance, this one for Aliens Vs. Predator. It’s only available via Steam, and is 1.3 of your gigabytes. And here’s some video-isual watch-o-footage…
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Console monster-bothering shooter The Grinder has just been confirmed for PC, which means you too can (re)murder a metric death-ton of zombies, vampires and werewolves next Halloween. Key features are co-op play between four dudes with specific powers, and being able to mess up rather a lot of enemies at once. A little bit Left 4 Dead and a little bit Gauntlet, by the sound of it – and, judging by the trailer below, a bit of a Clive Barker vibe.
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Standard webcam + standard PC = full-body, real-time motion sensing browser game developed from military research. That’s the plan behind TrendyEntertainment’s VisionPlay, anyway. It claims to know where your heard, arms, legs and torso (AND NO MORE, filth-mongers) are, and maps them to in-game actions. So, in theory it’s like Microsoft’s Project Natal – the difference being it’s not supported by high-budget games in which you hold creepy conversations with a creepily real young boy. Though, if the tech behind it takes off, there’s no reason it couldn’t creep into major PC games. Take that, Mister Microsoft! Well, specifically, take a cartoony tennis game.
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There’s two things which RPS love. One: Tanks. Two: Demos. As such, the release of the Theatre of War 2: Kursk 1943 demo is a prompt for celebrations in the RPS shack and/or a post. You can download the whole getting on-for-700Mb demo thing here. Kursk was the largest tank battle of all time – at least, until Jim gets his Elite-with-robots game idea made by someone. Lots more details on its own site, or you can watch a teaser trailer below.
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