Rock, Paper, Shotgun

We’ve talked about League of Legends before. We’ve given away Beta keys before. We’ve danced sensuously in the moonlight, away from prying eyes, in naked, physical worship of our infinite Ursine god. But now the League of Legends Beta is open for the next week. If you’ve avoided the close beta, you can go and sign up for a free account here and have seven days of Defence of the Ancients-esque thrills. And inevitably be called a newb a lot. If you need explaination of the game’s concept, you’ll find a tutorial video below…
Read the rest of this entry »

I admit, I haven’t looked closely at RTS-MMO World of Battles yet, but a release of a new Beta caught my attention today. Partially, because last night’s GMAs have destroyed 50% of RPS so any images you put in front of us provoke staring, but partially because a big old Free MMO RTS… well, that could be cool, right? You can download the just shy of 800Mb client from their site if you want to try, but since the site’s currently doing maintenance, you won’t be able to make an account and play until later. And here’s a fan video to show what it looks like…
Read the rest of this entry »

There should be a gameshow in which contestants pick a subject about which they know almost nothing, where the aim is to demonstrate the absolute minimum amount of knowledge about a subject. So getting something completely wrong doesn’t score you anything, but showing any depth or proficiency of understanding about the subject gets you eliminated. My chosen subject that I know the bare minimum about would be American Football. Or as our American readers know it, baseball. See? No points, but I wasn’t eliminated. I mention this in light of a new, free MMO called Quick Hit Football.

Read the rest of this entry »

…just for one Beta period. Matt Coddington gave us the heads up on this. Heroes of Newerth are giving 30,000 keys away via Facebook. There’s 27K odd left at the time of writing, so time for you all to get into this videogame thing. If you don’t know about it, it’s another of the Defence of the Ancients derived games which are appearing this year (See also: Demigod). Anyway, go get your code here or watch some manner of footage below…
Read the rest of this entry »

Woah, woah, woah. Calm down, Excited Bob: this ain’t yer everyday beta. It’s a little different, this one – specifically, it’s to test the toolset for Bioware’s upcoming spiritual sequel to Baldur’s gate. The follow-up to the long-lived, enormously successful Neverwinter Nights modding kit, in other words. So it is indeed an early chance to play with the engine, but you’ll be making your own adventures rather than carving through Dragon Age’s story.

The good news, though, is that they’re not looking for veteran modders: rather, they want a range of guys, including total game-fiddlin’ newcomers, in order that the toolset really gets put through its paces. If that appeals to you, apply over here and cross your fingers. You’ll need to create a Bioware Community account first, however -and that happens here.

After going very, very quiet for a few months, EA and DICE are reopening the Battlefield Heroes closed beta today. Which means if you already had a key, you’ll be able to get back into the new and improved version of the game when you receive an email. Should you not have a beta key, you can still get in line, with DICE planning to send out a few thousand invites in the near future. You’ll need to create an account here, then fill in the sign-up form here.

Read the rest of this entry »

I wanted to post about this quickly. We’ve mentioned Plain Sight before, but the charming and sociopathic multiplayer action game has just entered its Open Beta. You can download its client from here. In fact, that’s what I’ve just done, as Eurogamer want me to write about it. Is it good? Let’s hope so. Because the trailer certainly is…
Read the rest of this entry »

To tie in with the early access to the Dawn of War beta kicking off, I wrote up some impressions over at Eurogamer. I had to resist just making Tyranid impressions for my entire word-count, because I’m weak like that. The beta turns open on January 28th, but until then anyone with a Dawn of War: Soulstorm key can play. It’s now available at 75% off on steam – so about four quid – which sounds a highly acceptable price for a game we weren’t totally enamoured with. (Actually, if you’ve never played DoW at all, I think for four quid, Soulstorm is where I’d suggest you start, even without the early access stuff). Alternatively, Eurogamer are giving away 3000 (count ‘em!) keys at the weekend.

Press release beneath the cut? Sounds about right.
Read the rest of this entry »

Call of Duty: World At War, the fifth game in the CoD series, is now in multiplayer beta mode. The series has gone back to WWII for this instalment, developed by Treyarch (who take care of the odd numbered games, Infinity Ward doing the evens).

The game’s been betaing on the 360 for a couple of weeks, and now finally the PC version is ready to roll. You can get the 850mb of code here or here, but to be able to take part you’ll need to create an official account here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Champions Online is taking registrations for its closed beta. Is it that time already? Blimey. And hurrah. If you want to apply to be one of the early few to fight crime and bugs, you need to head over to Cryptic’s site, sign up an account, and then apply. While the game is also coming out on 360, the beta is PC only (at this stage at least). You can read all about the game in our extensive coverage here. Or, if you’re really lazy, here’s some video footage of the whole superhero thing in action which we haven’t linked to yet.
Read the rest of this entry »