Rock, Paper, Shotgun

As one of the nerdiest PC game publishers out there, it’s only right that Paradox Interactive and RPS should be well acquainted. Look! Here’s Paradox CEO Fred Wester talking on his new blog, The Wester Front, about why he loves the PC as a platform, with some hard stats as to why it’s growing, not dying. That’s interesting.

Anyway, I caught up with Fred at GamesCom for an excitable chat about the state of PC gaming, DRM, witch doctors, Paradox’s growth and why complex games have fallen from the shop shelves in recent years. It was a good time. Read on after the jump.
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I dropped by the End of Nations booth at GamesCom for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I’d heard they served the most wonderful amuse-bouches in the VIP area, which was true. You got a whole peach, and inside that was a smaller, marzipan peach, and inside that was lots of money! I ate four. I even ate the money, and spared a thought for Alec. I’d seen him earlier that day, looking like the thing behind the dumpster from Mulholland Drive. What was happening there? Maybe I should save some money for him.

Then I remembered the other reason I’d come to the End of Nations booth- this game was touting itself as the first MMO RTS, and had a serious budget behind it. How on Earth did an MMO RTS work? Handily Michael Legg, the President of End of Nations developers Petroglyph, was on hand to tell me everything over a couple of cigars. You should have seen these things we were smoking! They were like trumpets.
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Troubled action space-MMO Black Prophecy seems to have had a fairly good showing at GamesCom 2010, and both trailer and off-screen wobblecam footage of the demo (via MMOReviews) suggest that it is looking like one of the most promising free-to-play games in Gamigo’s rapidly-swelling portfolio. The “real” flight model combined with persistent world stuff might just make this a viable alternative for all those folks who wanted to like Eve but couldn’t swallow the third-person model. There are beta sign-ups going on over at the game’s main site, and the beta apparently starts soon.

No firm release date yet either, but it’s out later this year.
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Day 3 was when it all went down. I had appointments to see Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Red Orchestra 2, Guild Wars 2, Bioshock: Infinity, The Secret World and Dungeon Siege 3, among others.

At least, I presume I had appointments. I’ll admit to some amount of shouting and pulling of my arm as I went waltzing into the more exclusive booths, but it’s remarkable how people will reconsider their attitude towards you after a slap.

Also featured in this final batch of hastily typed-up impressions is my own personal Game of Show. What could it possibly be, do you think?
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Quintin mentioned this in his round-up of the second day of events at GamesCom 2010, but it warrants a post all of its own. Paradox have announced Crusader Kings II, a sequel to the quietly successful historical grand strategy, Crusader Kings. The success of the original rested on its complexity, and the unusual model of play: it was based around dynasties within Medieval Christian Europe, rather than specific nations. Managing individual characters, the lords of your realm and your own family, were at the heart of the game. This creates quite an open-ended sandbox for management and strategic experimentation, which is something Crusader Kings II should build on fairly significantly, with new depth to the characters, and much more engagement with religion and the church, which is obviously a motive force within the game’s world. Anyway, don’t get too excited because it’s not out until early 2012. We should have more information on this quite soon.

There was a little – though less than I expected, I’ll admit – naysaying about the announcement of Jagged Alliance Onlne. Well, those who craved a more traditional Jagged Alliance are getting it too. In short, it’s a complete re-make with re-done graphics, a new UI and tutorials to ease us into the world of this turn-based tactical-combat game/management combo. There’s some comparison shots from the remake and the original over at Worthplaying. What’s not yet clear is what it means for the previously announced Jagged Alliance 3. Either this is it or there’s still that to look forward to. I suspect (and hope) for the latter. And – to state the obvious – I suspect there’s many people reading this who’d kill for a X-COM: Reloaded style remake. C’mon 2k! Do both!

Also at Gamescom was… actually, I’m having trouble writing this. Part of me thinks it’s a good idea not to cover this at all, because of one of the most egregiously awful titles I’ve seen in my fifteen or so years of gamesjournodom. The other part of me really likes the bit where you’re flying through the air on your ATV and flipping between the enormous rotating blades of a wind-turbine. Fuckity yeah, etc. I’m posting about – hnnngh – Nail’d, as I have a terrible weakness for the awesome. It’s out before the end of the year, you can find more details on its site, look at new, oddly grainy shots over at Worthplaying and see the trailer below…
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We’ve had a lot of videos of the next game from King Arthur developers neocore which feature – like above – large groups of men getting handy with one another. What we haven’t had as much of is a look at menus. Because that’s what strategy games are about. Menus. That’s where the strategy happens. Yes, there’s some panoramas of the battles too, but rest assured, if you watch the following video, you’re going to see some hot menu manipulation. More info on the site, obv.
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As previously reported, Everquest II is adding a Free-to-Play option. The story is no longer true. It’s gone into Open Beta, so now totally has a free-to-play option. The unique twist is that it doesn’t touch the traditional game at all, instead offering a parallel Everquest II Extended free-to-play option. So if you want to play a sub game you can, and if you want to enter a more micro-payment option, you can do that too. You can download the client here, which has Guild-War-esque streaming tech to allow you to start playing rather than waiting for Gigabytes of stuff to squeeze out of your internet-pipe. Also, according to the FAQ, despite being a Beta, there won’t be a character wipe when it goes live properly, so all your progress (and expenditures) will carry across into the full launch. This free-to-play second-life for 3rd-wave MMOs is very much a trend of the year, and you can see the Gamescom trailer below…
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You care about the games. I understand. That’s why at 9am today I left the glittering party I was attending and went stumbling over to the convention centre for another tour of the PC’s most exciting upcoming releases.

I didn’t think they’d let me in. As I understand it, trousers are mandatory at these events and I’d lost mine around dawn. But as luck would have it, at the turnstiles someone mistook me for Cliff Bleszinski and I spent the whole day with a beefy minder shouldering the crowd out of my way. Marvellous!
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As Alec excitedly told us a week ago, German developers Realmforge are creating Dungeons – a game that’s very obviously an updated tribute to Dungeon Keeper. To get the man even more worked up, there’s a CGI teaser trailer below. It really doesn’t tell us anything useful about the game, but if you listen carefully you can hear Alec squealing all the way from Cologne.

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