Rock, Paper, Shotgun

There scarcely seems like a more logical target for online worlding than Star Trek, so hopefully Cryptic will get it right with Star Trek Online. They seem to be bang on with the sub-par special effects, at least judging by the exploding ships in this trailer. I’ve made more cataclysmic explosions with a balloon than the ones we see here. Nevertheless it’s good to see the game in motion – the third-person away team stuff seems a lot more developed, but perhaps that’s only to be expected, given the Cryptic back-catalog. Anyway, enough with my space-cynicism, I am like a Cardassian who hasn’t had his dinner – go watch!
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Turbine might be challenging their publisher Atari to a bout of fisticuffs about the fate and funding of Dungeons & Dragons Online, but such conflict has not delayed the re-release of said formerly underpopulated MMO as a free-to-play affair. Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited, as it’s now known, can be had for the princely sum of no-pennies from here. There is, of course, a catch. Two in fact, but one of them might be my fault.
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Something is rotten in the state of pretend online roleplaying universes. Atari, or at least what’s left of it these days, remains license holder for most videogamilial adaptations of Dungeons & Dragons properties, most notably Forgotten Realms titles including Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights. They also publish the Turbine-developed Dungeons & Dragons Online, which is shortly to be relaunched as the free-to-play DDO Unlimited. Only Turbine reckon Atari’s gearing up for betrayal…
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If you’ve been trying to keep up with the development and publishing of the Ghostbusters game, then you’ll be understandably dizzy. Victim of the Hadron Collider’s experiment to merge Activision and Blizzard (I think that’s how it happened), thrown between publishers like a radioactive ball, eventually picked up to be part of the misadventures of Atari, and then at the last second swooped in on by Sony like a mad buzzard, it’s been a deeply peculiar process. Then it got weirder. It’s currently on sale in the US on all formats. And in the UK and Europe? Due out today, it’s on PS3, PS2, and er, nothing else, the PC and other console releases pushed back to October. Then another twist – the Americanly released PC version turns out not to include the multiplayer features. What the cripes is going on?

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It’s taken me a while to get around to Starbreeze’s remake and expansion of Chronicles Of Riddick, but I’ve finally punched and stabbed my way through it. The original game is one of my favourite olden FPS games, as detailed here, but can this contemporary-tech revamp and sizable sequel live up to the legacy? Here’s Wot I Think.
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Today is competition day on RPS. For the first time since it was released in 2003 the brilliant space-faring MMO Eve Online has a retail box, and to celebrate that CCP have sent us six copies to give away. Somewhat unusually for RPS competitions there is no region-constraint on any of our prizes today, so anyone may enter. If you want to find out how to win Eve Online then click onwards.
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The Rook is clearly going to be the first demigod that each of us try in Demigod. It’s a giant brick golem with castles for shoulder-pads. It also has a hammer. Lead designer Mike Marr shows it off in the walkthrough below, and although he cackles at one point, he doesn’t sound excited enough for me. Gas Powered should totally get the Black Prophecy trailer dude in to narrate their videos. THE ROOK IS DESTINED… TO SMASH!

Demigod is out soon, and we’re going to review the crap out of it.
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At last we have a release date for the remake-come-sequel to Starbreeze’s brawn+brains opus, The Chronicles of Riddick. Seems like the thing’s been in development for ages, presumably because at some point in the process it sprouted a whole new storyline in addition to high-definitionifying the original Escape From Butcher Bay Campaign. We’ll get to hear Vin Diesel pretending the last five years of career suicide didn’t happen and stepping back into the gravelly larynx of his most successful character on April 7th.

Well, I say “we”, but I mean “you Americans.” We Europeans have to wait until April 24th. Atari are distributing, and I have this to say to them…
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We usually avoid posting random pre-historic retro stuff, but I have a soft spot for ultra-weird proto-shooter Yars’ Revenge. Peerless gaming esoterica journal Offworld dug up this 1982 Atari 2600 TV ad that somehow manages to capture just how profoundly sinister Yars’ Revenge actually is. The bizarre setup and constant droning of the game means it’s quite a unsettling experience, and subsequently it often goes forgotten in retro musings. I’m amazed it was actually advertised on TV. The commercial goes on to have a monologue about Asteroids and Star Raiders too. Have a look at this and then stare out of the window for a moment, while considering how much modern advertising fails us. Clickwards for the ad.

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Here’s another of those stories we should have posted about a little earlier, but we were too busy trying on each other’s clothes and saying how nice we looked. In a fair old shocker of a move, Infogrames-In-Disguise announced yesterday that they’d scooped up Cryptic Studios, the MMO outfit behind City of Heroes, Champions Online and Star Trek Online. It was a weird, and possibly kinda sad, thing to hear about a developer who’ve been famously independent – so much so that in parting ways with ncSoft they lost control of the august City of Heroes.
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