Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Neverwinter goes into a proper open beta very soon (today in fact, for those with the head start, 30th for the plebs), and we’ll finally be able to have enough time with it to properly get to grips. The all-too-short beta weekends have shown a game that’s definitely bursting with potential, not least because of the Foundry in which users can create their own in-game quests and campaigns for others to play. Also, today is the day that Perfect World release the one billionth trailer for the game! Congratulations all involved.

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If Wildstar existed back when WoW had me pinned under its hulking gorilla girth, I think my head would’ve exploded. It has pretty much all the things every fiber of my hunched, addiction-ravaged being could’ve wished for – and then some. Player housing? You betcha. Customizable guild death lairs? Oh my yes. Highly mobile combat? Try standing still and find out. Bizarrely out-of-place anime bunny people? Well, they can’t all be winners. But you get my point. Its personality reminds me of less obnoxious 3D-animated kid films, too, and it definitely has heart. I can practically feel Past Me grossing up his portion of the space-time continuum with puddles of anticipatory froth. Current Me, though? He’s living in a post-WoW world, and he’s got a family of largely inconsequential desk cacti to be responsible for. Is Wildstar’s take on the tried-and-true MMO formula too little, too late, even with a generous helping of all the things? Perhaps the now up-and-running closed beta can help us find out.

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“RF Online” are words that sow fear into my heart. 160 years ago, in 2006, I had yet to come to the realisation that “No!” was the only sensible answer to, “Would you like to review this MMO for meagre freelance pay?” So it was I took on the task of RF Online, a Korean MMO that put the “grrrrrrr” in “grind”. It is with… confusion, really, that I notice an open beta is beginning for a game called RF Online 1.5.

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It is not every day that one gets to write about space chickens. But today RPS has scrambled me, Dame Cara of Ellison, to inform you that the lovely space avians at Sumom Games have served their eggchick Humans Must Answer up on a platter for us to have a morsel of. It features Colonel Ram and Professor Bez (pictured) as your guiding companions aboard the shooty-ship The Golden Eagle.
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Someday, Firefall will come out. Maybe. Or perhaps it’ll forever lurk in the bug-riddled shadows of beta, only emerging on weekends for a refreshing hover about town. For now, we can only hold out hope for the former, but at least take solace in the latter, given that the gravity-loathing MMO’s penciled in the whole of humanity for a quick flying lesson this weekend. Get an idea of what you’re in for – set to music that suggests you’re both flying and winning a gold medal in every Olympic sporting event at once – after the break.

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With Unwritten: That Which Happened now a thing That Is Happening and Ritual Dementia still a distinct possibility, 7 Grand Steps isn’t the only multi-generational story in gaming, but it’s still the only one I’ve played and therefore the one I’m most capable of writing about. It’s a fascinating game, with the appearance of a mechanical device, token-operated and belonging to another time. Mousechief’s earlier work, Dangerous High School Girls In Trouble, was a parlour game packed full of moxie and 7 Grand Steps has similarities in design, but is a much more open, user-directed experience. The demo provides a taste of the cultural voyage through the ages and the beta of the clever IGF-nominated oddity is now available to pre-purchasers. The cost is $9.99 now or $14.99 at release.

I’ve kept Neverwinter at arm’s length. I don’t know what to think about it. I loved NWN2, and while the series more immediately lends itself to the shared world of an MMO than other BioWare properties, I’ve got those fan-nerves of seeing a completely separate studio take it on. But then that studio is Cryptic, they of the glorious City Of Heroes, so… I get in a muddle. The good news is, the first beta weekend is coming up tomorrow, so minds can start to be made.

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It is a wonderful week for insanely inventive videogames. The long-awaited Antichamber (which I’m splattering my feeble brain against right now) lands on Thursday, and 2013′s Global Game Jam just forced a hand inside its own sternum and produced a glistening goldmine of bloody great games. But in between all that, I know I’ll be needing a slightly more traditional palette cleanser. Enter Crysis 3′s open beta. Men get shot, and they neither spray you with chunky metaphysical sophistries nor make you suddenly aware of the faintly fluttering organ that could stop sustaining your life at any given moment. They just, you know, stop shooting back. And so on and so forth. But oh, there are neat powers. And bows. And some – in the grand scheme of shooters – fairly novel modes. Study up on their mysterious ways after the break.

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In my more soulful, reflective moments, I can’t help but look out into the vast sea of human suffering and ask myself, “Why? Why do we Crysis?” The answers, of course, are many and multifarious – like some kind of gigantic, infini-brained wisdom hydra – but they all boil down to one core: single-player. Case in point: Crysis 2′s multiplayer wasn’t terrible by any means, but it just didn’t do enough to stand out. Crytek, however, seems to think the series has multiplayer greatness encoded in its nanomachine-bloated DNA, so it’s once again aiming high with Crysis 3. And while things like the hunted-becomes-the-hunter, er, Hunter mode sound fun on paper, they’re far from proven quantities. So that’s where you come in, with your hideously calloused testing fingers and unrelentingly skewering skepticism. Details after the break.

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Left hand, meet right hand. Yesterday, EA armed SimCity with a ticking time bomb of a perma-ban EULA, but today, it decided to vehemently disagree with, er, itself. In short, the not-so-fine print would’ve seen players agreeing to report any and all bugs they encountered in SimCity’s closed beta or risk being locked out of all EA products. Yes, all. That’s what it said. But oh, what a difference a day – and probably a few additional pairs of eyes – makes.

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