Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The delicately-named Mangled Eye Studios have gone and made an “old school FPS” from id Tech 3, and that means guns, demons, evil monsters, and lashings of neo-gothic architecture. You’ll be able to sample all these delights for yourselves, thanks to a 480mb demo, which is now up on the Mangled Eye site. I expect it’ll be mirrored elsewhere in due course, so do mention in the comments if you spot alternate sources. The full game is available for purchase on Direct2Drive, should you be so inclined. I’ve not had a chance to play this yet, thanks to yet more accursed connection troubles, so let us know what you make of it if you take the time to have a play. Does it match up to obvious rival, Painkiller Resurrection?

In case you hadn’t spotted, the Left 4 Dead 2 demo is now open to all, whether you’ve pre-ordered the game or not. Which you could well argue is the point of a demo. It’s the first two levels of one campaign, so while not offering a big finish, will give you a taste for the new special infected, the melee weapons, and of course what it’s like to play L4D in the sunshine. They say to go to the official site for more details, but I can’t find any there. So instead open Steam. (Oh, and in exceedingly stupid news, if you pre-ordered L4D2 you will now also have a new hat in TF2. I feel like I’m writing news about a Barbie game.)

Always good to see a developer who knows exactly what they’re doing. I’ve clicked on the link to play the flash demo of Rocketbirds Revolution, and come away thinking “a modern Flashback, but with Chickens”. Going back to the mail and I discover that the Delphine-classic is the top of their list of influences. In other words, it’s in the line of the original Prince of Persia of slower-paced, “adult” 2D platform adventures. But with – er – chickens and assorted other fowl. The other thing to note is that it’s what I’ll describe as a premier flash game – in that while there’s a demo to play, you have to pay to unlock the full adventure, which you play on their site by logging in. The advantage is being able to play wherever in the world there’s a net connection. The disadvantage is requiring a net connection to play. I’ve only played the demo so far, and plan to go back soon, but this is an enormously slick and stylish experience so far. With chickens. Footage follows…
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The Left 4 Dead 2 demo is go. If you pre-loaded it on Steam, it should have unlocked now. (If it isn’t showing up for you, quit out of Steam and restart.) If not, get downloading. And then let us know what you think below.

Er… by which, I don’t mean giving a sort of guide to what it’s like to date Agatha Christie. But… well, I saw there was a demo of Agatha Christie: Dead Man’s Folly. Being unfamiliar with period detective dramas, I realised it was time to call in an expert to see whether it lived up to the legacy of mustachioed Belgians. Hence, I turned once again to expert Christie-ian, Delightful Girlfriend who spent some time with the game. And then I interviewed her on what she made of it. Find the results below…
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Well, not really. While John and Alec play the Torchlight demo, I try and up my indie-cred by playing this comedy-WW1 action-RPG instead. More fool me. To be fair, it’s a hyper-lo-fi thing, and does feature a three features I really like. Firstly, that there appears to be some hit-location elements, so if you head-shot, the comedy-Hun go down quicker and you save ammo. Secondly, when you get shot, occasionally your trousers fall down in an International-Karate-Plus fashion. And thirdly… well, the unusual setting married to more traditional mechanics. I’ve love to see more Indie RPG push in this direction – the Lovecraftian Cyclopean will be great, but I’d love to see a whole lot more. The rest… well, it’s not enormously good. I wouldn’t recommend someone buying it even if I could work out how to buy it. The demo doesn’t include any mention of it. Its website doesn’t either. And neither does its documentation. I highlight this, because it’s worrying Indie Marketing fail. Releasing a demo is the first and possibly last burst of publicity your indie game gets – even if the full version isn’t available, you should have explained that. Man!

The demo for Runic Games’ charming-looking hack ‘n slash RPG Torchlight is up on Steam, and should be appear on non-Steam mirrors soon too. The full game is also out this week on Runic Games own site, and we’ve been delving into the randomly generated dungeon levels so that we can offer our own verdict later in the week.

Yeah, I thought that was the actual ball at first glance. Shame really. Anyway, is Cricket season over? Or is that just in this hemisphere? I can never tell. Whatever the timeliness, multiplayer cricketing game Cricket Revolution has a demo out. You can get it here. The game boasts “unlockable deliveries, and batsman knock-out injuries”, which sounds nasty. There’s a bunch of offline stuff, apparently, so it’s not purely “PvP” cricket, in case that worried you. Trailer placed silly-mid click.
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Yes, it really is the season for the football season. Following Championship Manager and Football Manager, we have EA’s just-shy-of-a-gig FIFA Manager. There’s a full list of features and improvements. The three way split between the management games, in terms of what resources each brings to bear, interests me. Football Manager has the rep. Championship Manager has the name. And FIFA have… well, the other name. Anyway – the trailer follows, which proves that Football Management games really are trying to avoid that Real Game Footage thing. Understandably.
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A Three Musketeer RPG? You have to admit, it’s a classic set-up for a Party-based RPG. This recently-released Indie RPG puts you as d’Artagnan and sets you off on adventures, following the actual plot of the novels. Which means, I’d imagine, that there’s not many twists for those who read it and/or watched Dogtanian and the Thee Muskehounds. Anyway – you can download the demo from here, order the full version here and watch its footage below…
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