Rock, Paper, Shotgun

(I’ll stop it with the iiis now). Yes, a third Syndicate game has been raised as a possibility. Happy! Happy! Happy! That said, the raising was done by one P. Molyneux, the man whose picture appears next to The Big Book Of Hackneyed Phrases & Sayings’ entry for “pinch of salt.”

Here’s what he told Shacknews:

“I really would love to redo a version of Syndicate. Syndicate was probably one of my favourites.”

Whether he’s just thinking aloud, hinting at an actual project or none-too-subtly putting it out there in case EA offer him a vast sum of money to leave Microsoft and come make it for them, I really don’t know. Let’s be pleased that Syndicate hasn’t been forgotten, anyway. (Insane fantasy-land: given EA’s recent talk of regretting killing off Bullfrog, they quietly re-recruit all its major minds and get the band back together. /Insane fantasy-land).

And in bonus happy! happy! happy! news, he offered this in reference to Dungeon Keeper (and Magic Carpet too, but I’m a bit mono-vision when it comes to DK), “One day, I’m sure that opportunity is going to come up and I’d love to do it.”

In other news, J.D. Salinger announces a sequel to The Catcher In The Rye.

Often mis-described as a management title, Bullfrog’s last game before collapsing into a mess of sequels (and eventual death) is much closer to real-time strategy. You build a base, harvest resources and train an army. The same old song. The difference is this is an RTS that fights against you, that actively resists your feeble attempts to control it. It’s like driving a car with three wheels, no suspension and a crazy shouting hobo in the passenger seat. It is entirely unwilling, and it’ll take any opportunity to steer itself onto the pavement and mow down a few dozen pedestrians. That is, of course, the charm of Dungeon Keeper.
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Another alumnus of PC Gamer’s Long Play series, slightly remixed and expanded

A ninja dressed in gaudy blue has just grabbed hold of the eyesockets of his opponent and torn his head clear of his body, dangling a couple of feet of glistening wet spinal cord behind him. Cue screams from the horrified Tabloids. Gamers laughed at or with it, depending on their temperament. It’s 1993, and Mortal Kombat, in terms of press controversy, is the Grand Theft Auto of its day. But only in those terms. Anyone who actually plays it understands that this game exists purely in the Grand Guignol traition of video nasties, a comedy fountain of gore. It was just slapstick with a very sharp stick.

It wasn’t bad to the bone.
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Not too long ago, a selection of Britain’s best games writers and I gathered in someone’s front room to eat pizza-pie, play a lot of Peggle and come up with an informed if quasi-arbitrary list of the best 100 PC titles of all time. There were several games whose sole voice of nomination in the room was my own nasal insistence, all of which I’ll be shouting about on RPS over time.

UFO: Enemy Unknown (the first X-COM game) was one, and reminding folk of it saw it argued into the top ten, pleasingly.

Aliens Versus Predator was another, but no chorus joined me on that. If I’d have known then quite how well-loved it still is, I would have Phillybustered it far higher.

My third, and least supported, cause celebre was… Aha. You’ll have to click below to find out, won’t you? Well, clearly the tags below reveal exactly what it is, but pretend you’re suprised, eh?
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