Rock, Paper, Shotgun

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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Codies are apparently working on another F1 game (as distinct from the standard full-priced simulatoryish racing game offering) which will be a free-to-play thingum snappily entitled F1 Online. It is powered by that lovely Unity engine, and as such will appear in a browser, allowing you to manage a Formula One team but do some fancy (what appears to be top-down Micro-Machines style) racing against other online petrolnerds. F1 will, of course, play host to the names (and maybe even the wealthy faces) of the actual drivers, as well as having up to date teams and circuits from this season.

Interested? Well, you can’t play it yet, but you can sign up for news over here. It’s due early next year.

What a funny world we live in. A world where $5 DLCs for a PC game must be purchased from their Xbox.com site. It’s a bit of a shame that something like that should be buried there, but the Codemasters.com URL now redirects to Facebook, so I suppose that’s not any more of an appropriate location to sell DLCs for a rather good racing game from, is it?

So what’s the download in question? Why it’s the X Games Asia pack for Dirt 3, a game which I thought was great. Something tells me I won’t be playing this particular set of tracks, however. You can check out if it tantalises your track-buds via the trailer, below.
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Codies have let loose a developer diary for their forthcoming F1 2011, which shows off polite Englishmen explaining their work, combined with plenty of healthy-looking game footage. It also reveals that the focus this time is in getting people to play online with “16-player races” and also a co-op campaign mode so that you can play through a season with a team-mate. There’s going to be some fancy racing going on, yes sir. I just hope the launch can be as solid as the Dirt games this time around. The game is out on 23rd December. That diary is below.
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Earlier in the week John noticed that all Codies websites were pointing at their Facebook pages. But why? Well, Codemasters have been hacked by miscreants. The British company has started contacting affected persons, and the details of that missive are posted below.
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