Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Will the Kickstarter controversies never end? Simon Roth stopped making his crowdfunded procedurally generated management game, Maia, for at least five seconds this morning. I know that it happened because he spent that time sending me a link to Black Annex, a one-man production built in QBASIC that will probably remind readers of a certain age that Syndicate used to be about controlling a squad of tiny, violent cyber(punk)men from afar rather than violently dismissing a first-person shooter from afar. The hot-off-the-presses trailer shows four agents infiltrating buildings, shooting enemies and hacking computers, and it looks wonderful.

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Lewie’s away being fitted for birthday hats and I’m all alone in the Savy Tower this weekend. I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. I was racing the bargain-bots down the endless stairs when Lewie appeared to me in a text message. ‘Tony, you should probably find cheap games’ he said – in an impressive hat – so here I am. If you are in London on May 4th, please do come celebrate five years of Savygamer, more details and daily deals are on SavyGamer.co.uk. Hats welcome.

In the bucket today: Syndicate (the fab one), Gratuitous Space Battles, Total War packs, Serious Sam 3 and, oh, all sorts.
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We have a name, Cold Mercury, and we have a vague notion as to what the business model will be, free-to-play, but that’s all there is to know about Syndicate developer Starbreeze’s next game. Business smarties GamesIndustry.biz dug up the details from Starbreeze’s CEO Mikael Nermark. He said.

“Starbreeze will not leave the AAA segment. We are discussing with several leading game publisher on publisher financed games, but we will broaden our product portfolio of games in the new business models and segments that have arisen in the games industry. I am convinced that Starbreeze will be successful with the new games.”

So what are we looking at, here? Adam reckons “The first in a series of episodic FPS games following the career of American Music Club. The next one will be called Temperate San Francisco.”

The humble .nfo file is a business card, instruction manual, and score-setting rap song in ascii form. They’re the files that the piracy scene drops into their releases to claim bragging rights for that particular chunk of nefarious code. So why the hell did Syndicate Developers Starbreeze stick one in the legitimate release of their first-person shooter? Redditor MikkelManDK spotted the file in the game’s directory: it’s there to partly to mock the scene a little — the install notes read: ’1) Insert disc 2) Play ;)’ — and partly to bring the Warez groups into the games industry: Starbreeze’s .nfo asks them to apply for jobs.

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In another example of the games industry twisting a word until its meaning shatters into a thousand pieces of bacon shredding shrapnel, blinding a nearby piglet who only wanted to use his eyes to see what was happening, and who’ll now go through the rest of his life bumping sadly into your leg and hoping you’re not a rabid wolf… that piglet trusted you, damnit! See what you’ve done, industry? You’ve toss around words like “free” and “beta”, blinding curious little animals who only wanted to play with you, and now EA have gone and released a “launch” trailer for their FPS reboot of Syndicate, yet the game remains decidedly unlaunched. Well, it’s not on my PC and another piglet will never be able to appreciate eye things ever again.
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Check the Earth for giant cracks, while demons ride high above the clouds, their red wings raining down fire, because the original Bullfrog Syndicate is to be available once again, via the magic of Good Old Games.

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Hello there. The characters in the new Syndicate co-op trailer seem to be having a competition to see who can have the worst made-up soldier-person name on the team! Ooh, they’re all contenders, but sadly none have as terrible a name as the single player protagonist, Miles Kilo (pictured with his tool). Still, it’s not worth being too snide around these agents of corporate malevolence, because any one of them can break a man’s neck as if it were made from cheese-string, as this video (below) quite relevantly demonstrates. Ooh, that’s nasty. I bet Syndicate agents have a poor sense of humour, too. Look at them frown!
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Last time out, Syndicate was showing off its guns and I don’t remember seeing a single flamethrower, which made me grumble in a manner befitting a madman denied the ability to burn the flesh off his enemies. The latest piece of video advertainment is all about the power of technology, which allows agents to persuade their opponents to commit suicide and attack their allies, among other ethically questionable activities. It’s certainly far more interesting than the guns. The removal of chips from peoples’ skulls to gain experience is described as a “critical mission objective”, which is something the same mad part of me that wants a flamethrower approves of heartily. Watch between the tiny gaps in your cybernetically augmented HUD below.

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