Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Sorry about the delay on this. The plan was to judge it last night, but there were – er – unavoidable delays. In a pub. Sorry. However, I’ve judged the competition and selected the winners, turning this into a very Dragon-agey day indeed. Hopefully they’ll have their copy of the Dragon’s Age Direct2Drive shortly. The standard of entries were high. Many people did copies of famous people. Many people did copies of us. Many people did seemingly completely normal fantasy characters, with bios, which is very sweet. Some people did things which make me genuinely disturbed. Some of them are winners. But which ones? Click, to discover.
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The Big K has news that the major digital download services are boycotting troubled enormo-shooter Modern Warfare 2 because of the inclusion of Valve’s Steamworks. Apparently Direct2Drive were first out with the news, saying they had “told publishers that they’d stop selling games bundled in such a manner until Valve “decoupled its retail marketplace” from Steam’s other services.”

GamersGate and Impulse will also be boycotting the title for the same reason. The implications of this aren’t clear. Does it play into Valve’s hands and given them an even larger grip on the market? Or is this the bell tolling for Steam’s retail service as a part of Valve’s gaming community?

Over the weekend the Dragon Age pre-loading has started, meaning if you pre-order it – er – it’ll start downloading. Early. And similar. Anyway, to celebrate this momentous event, Direct2Drive have given us five copies of the Digital Deluxe Edition to give away to you. Our fine readers. So it’s compo time! To secure your copy of this much anticipated game, you have to use the recently released character creator to make the most interesting looking character you can. What does “interesting” mean? Well, you read the site. That’s your job to work out. Reverse analyse our evil noggins. Anyway – when you’ve done that, send a link to a grab of your creation, perhaps with a little in-mail elaboration of why you think it’s so splendid. Don’t actually mail us the screengrab. Mail us a link to the photo. I repeat, mail us a link to the grab of your character. We can’t have our compo inbox bunged up with enormous jpg files, you understand. Anyway – get the creator from here and get cracking. The compo will close at 6pm EST GMT on Thursday 5th, so those who don’t win still have time to actually pre-order the thing. The usual compo rules apply.

EDIT: If you have trouble grabbing, try FRAPS.

Direct to drive retailer Direct2Drive are turning five. Which is splendid, because it rhymes. But it’s also splendid because they’re doing cheap games for the five weeks around here. But it’s also splendid, because they want to run a compo with us (i.e. Rock Paper Shotgun) to give away all the games in the offers to a lucky read. Do you want to be that reader? Well, just drop us a mail before Sunday night saying what you think is the definitive RPS game – the most RPSiest game of all time – and why that’s so. The most convincing explanation will be our winner. The usual terms and conditions apply. Go!

Hurrah! World Of Goo is finally announced for Steam. It launches on 13th October – next Monday – alongside the launch on 2D Boy’s own site. You can read our world exclusive review of the game here. Still not convinced? Try Eurogamer’s review.

Aaaand, if you pre-ordered it, and are all upset because you wanted it on Steam, look happy. You pre-order magic key will unlock it on Steam too, come Monday. Add to that the news that it’s integrating with Steamworks, and will be launching with eight achievements. And there’s lots more places to buy it too…

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