Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The Cannon Fodder games are inserted deeply within the Fond Memories Gland of many of the RPS team. It was therefore surprise that we learned that a third Cannon Fodder game would be released in Russia. It is with even more surprise that we discover, via Strategy Informer, that an English version has been released on GamersGate. I’ve not had a look at it yet, so I can’t gauge the entertainment value, but we’ll try to amend that soon. (The total lack of fanfare makes me raise an eyebrow, of course.) In the meantime: this.

I’ve deleted the official spelling of Codemasters’ “Dirt” three times now. Every time I attempt to write big d small i big r big t my keyboard starts to glow red, smoke comes out of it and I hear a thousand voices screaming. That’s what I get for using Vigo the Carpathian’s old mechanical keyboard. But he calmed down when he saw the smashing cars of this raw footage from Codie’s arcade spin-off of their rally series. His giggle was almost infectious.
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May will see the highly-evolved dust-and-mud particles of a new Dirt game being thrown up onto our screens. This one is called Showdown, and is as glitzy and noisy as any off-road racing game could possibly have any right to be. As we mentioned previously Showdown is more of a spin off from the main series than a genuine sequel, and will be less focused on the traditional racing and more on destruction and the alarming things that happen with cars crash into each other, or static objects. So that should be entertaining. The trailer below shows something called Nevada 8 Ball, which seems to involve large American cars coming to a sticky end.
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Okay, how to go through this without getting confused? Well, since I can barely get through putting on a pair of trousers without confusion (why do they make the arm-holes so big?), it’s not likely. But as far as I can tell, Insane 2 is a sequel to the Codies game from 2000, 1nSANE, a multiplayer off-road racer. And is nothing to do with inSANE, the THQ project from Pan’s Labyrinth director, Guillermo del Toro. But then, it also appears to have previously been released in October, onto GamersGate exclusively. And, oh, I don’t know. It’s out on Steam today, which they appear to be treating as a second coming, and there’s a trailer below. You know what, it looks decent.

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Is Formula 1 still popular, then? I thought it would have gone out of fashion now it’s been followed up with Formula 2 and Formula 3. But then people still play Battlefield 1942 even though Battlefield 3′s out. You hopeless nostalgics!

The sport of driving long, fast cars around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around remains well-liked enough to keep spawning videogames, the most recent of which is Codemaster’s F1 Online. It’s free to play, it’s, uh, online, and it now has a closed beta and the first trailer for you to videowatch.
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Dirt! I’ve always thought it was an odd name for a series of racing games no matter how you choose to muck up its capital letter placement, although I quite like the idea of a snooker game called Chalk. Here is the newly announced Dirt Showdown, a spin-off from the main series that has more of the destruction and less of the speedy driving. It’s the kind of game that the press release informs me will be ‘uncaged’ in May 2012 rather than just released. That should tell you something about how off the hook Showdown is going to be. Cars spin around for your pleasure in the trailer below and I’ve also included some easily digestible details.

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Update: Confirmed as Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk, but for iOS and Android only. Bah!

Dizzy: a smiling egg-man controlled in assorted platform-puzzle-adventures by old European men such as I back in the late 80s and early 90s. For some reason (perhaps because he wasn’t the figurehead of a console company; perhaps because the key devs left to start their own company; perhaps because he was, well, an egg), Codemasters’ one-time flagship character didn’t really survive into the 21st Century. But now the delicate wee fellow is apparently due for a return. What kind of return is a mystery: all we have to go on is this none-too-cryptic image at the brow-rasingly-named eggcitingnews.com. Are you willing to shell out for the yolkfolks’ return?
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When I saw the announcement for Insane 2, which is out a little later this year, something stirred, deep in the lost vaults of my head. Insane. Yes. Why do I know that name? A bit of Googling later and I realise that the original insane (which cleverly anticipated the letter-as-numbers-in-sequels thing by being called 1nsane, which surely means this one should be called In2ane) is one of the first games I ever reviewed in anger – a multiplayer offroad racing game from Codemasters released in 2000. 2000! That’s almost a thousand years ago. Quite why Codies decided to make a sequel to a game that people who played it can barely remember is beyond me, but there it is. Actually, I vaguely suspect it is a rebranded version of a game that has already come out in Russia, but I can’t be sure. There’s a video of the game below. You sure to race about and stuff.

Mmm. I am going to go back to Rage. Where I can also race about and stuff.
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“Codemasters: Birmingham” really doesn’t have the same ring to it as “Eidos: Montreal” or “2K Czech” does it? But despite its inauspicious origins, their F1 2011 is looking pretty snazzy. Also, from my non-F1-caring-about perspective, massively daunting. It reminds me of when F1GP2 came out in 1734, and my tiny brain couldn’t understand why you’d play a game where touching gravel once in three hours was a game over. But that’s because I’m an idiot of the highest order. Check out the launch trailer for the game below.

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Codemasters have already talked about their multiplayer focus for F1 2011. Cynics might think that’s because people were upset about the AI last time out so they’re hoping we’ll replace it all with real people. Imagine that. Your friends may be part of a nefarious plan to improve a game. This new video is all about the co-op championship mode, which will allow you and a friend to enjoy a bitter rivalry disguised as teamwork. Video below, as well as an earlier dev diary which does have some talk about AI.

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News that an eyebrow-raising 3 million Steam activation codes for natty racing title DIRT 3 had been leaked online broke earlier today, and now has an official oh-dear air to it as a result of confirmation from AMD that, yes, the codes were intended for vouchers that shipped with their Radeon graphics cards and yes, a database file containing them was purloined by bad eggs. I’m sure no-one at AMD or DIRT 3 publisher Codemasters is terribly calm right now, but at least it doesn’t appear to be the case that either of their sites or servers were directly hacked.
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