Rock, Paper, Shotgun

A lot of indie games have just changed their names. Remember Fez? It’s now Fedge. Tyler Glaiel’s Closure is now named Closure: on the EDGE of reality™. The forthcoming iPhone game Critter Crunch is henceforth referred to as Critter Credge. And the enormously enjoyed Canabalt is now called Canabedge. Although Atomic Edge Games aren’t too pleased about it all. Other new games have been announced including Ted Marten’s Edgeward McEdgington, Secret Exit promises to bring us LEDGE, Steph Thirion’s Eliss declares a sequel, Edgeliss, Tyler Glaiel is back with a new game, Edgeform: On The Edge Of Insanity, and there’s rumours of a new game from Dejobaan, EeeeeEEeeeEEEeeEEEEeEEEEEdge! A Feckless Disregard For Poopieheads. You may have noticed a pattern. This is a solidarity movement amongst the indie development community to stand up to the legal actions of Tim Langdell, who has recently launched another attempt to remove a game from Apple’s iTunes store due to including the word “Edge” in its title.

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A preview of Warhammer Online has appeared on Edge’s website, Next-Gen.biz. But being Edge, it’s literally impossible to know who wrote it. It will forever remain a mystery, not even to be solved by futuristic robot races with special Knowledge Tablets.

It begins,

Clearly, this is tentative ground. Warhammer is an enormous license, and proves itself regularly in the strategy market. But it also has a lot in common with Blizzard’s behemoth. Orcs, dwarves, dragons and wizards – we know it very well. But will familiarity breed contempt, or an enormous pre-cooked audience? Clearly, the desire is to be just similar enough so everyone’s comfortable, before it begins to subvert you with what Mythic calls Realm Vs Realm.

And carries on here.

What fortuitous timing. I was going to link to Edge’s extensive piece on DICE’s (i.e. The BF2 Guys) shooter when Eurogamer lob up some actual screenshots found by fansite. So now we can start with a picture…

Before going to give some choice cuts on why this Le Parkour-influenced FPS is – for me – the most exciting looking first-person game of the next twelve months.

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PC Gamer have lobbed their annual Top 100 Games EVER online and… no, don’t groan, at least too much. PC Gamer have been doing this Top 100 every year for over a decade, before the actual list-malaise took over our whole society (Personally, I want to do an article which lists the Top 100 Top 100s ever). Since it’s actually a yearly event, it tends to stress different things than most one-offs Top 100s – basically, the ebbing affections of the writers staff. If you want a picture of where PC Gamer’s head are at circa 2006, it’s a fascinating picture.

Avuncular editor Ross Atherton explains it so…

“At this meeting we will devise a list of the Top 100 Games 2007, and its order. This list is to reflect the games we love, games which we would gladly play today. Argue for the inclusion of your babies – not at the expense of other games, but in support of your favourites, telling us why. Whether released in 2007 or 1987, if you love it and honestly want to play it right now, its inclusion is valid.”

100-51 is here while you’ll find 50-1 here. All four of RPS were involved in the process, which involved a delightful afternoon sitting around, talking games and shouting “PEGGLE!” far too often. I won’t spoil the results for you, but suffice to say you’ll disagree with most of it, which is how it should be. A good list is meant to be the start of a debate, not the end of one.

Which brings me to Edge’s Top 100 which, by those criteria, is a pretty good list. More under the cut, including gleeful bitchery. Read the rest of this entry »