Posts Tagged ‘hands on’
The Nuclear Winter's Tale
By John Walker on July 17th, 2012.
Every argument I’ve seen defending why there’s no writing category for the IGFs looks damned stupid when you encounter an indie game that shines through its story. It was abundantly obvious that it was a mistake when we first saw To The Moon (just released on GOG), and it’s about to look like a stupid decision all over again when Richard & Alice is released. After a 45 minute preview version, I’m already sold on the writing, and already annoyed that those awards won’t recognise it.
Disclaimer: one of the co-creators, Lewis Denby, is an occasional contributor to RPS.
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adventure, feature, hands on, Richard & Alice.
Warren Piece
By Craig Pearson on July 16th, 2012.
Overgrowth‘s slow-motion button is the Best Thing Ever Of All Time Today. Pressing TAB turns the work-in-progress bunny beat-em-up into a work of art; a dilated dalliance between lagomorphs. You can see all the systems clicking into place: the gamey legs stretching out, the lucky rabbit’s foot crunching the unlucky rabbit’s larynx, the crumple as the body is broken beneath that big, flat hoof. Who’d have thought rabbit-on-rabbit violence would be so satisfying? Not me, bucko.
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feature, hands on, overgrowth, Wolfire.
Baseless assumptions
By Adam Smith on May 23rd, 2012.
Yesterday I shared my brief experiences with XCOM’s tactical mode, telling the tale of terrified men and women sent to their untimely deaths as I gleefully discovered that any confidence I had was misplaced. They sure did die a lot. I didn’t die with them though because I’m the commander, sitting in my base and commanding. The scariest thing I have to do in person is deal with the financials and the sinister Council who administer them, that and the occasional moral dilemma.
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feature, Firaxis, hands on, preview, xcom, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, xcomho.
And the Earth died screaming
By Adam Smith on May 22nd, 2012.
It’s Alec who normally brings you the latest on Firaxis’ XCOM remake so I expect you shall be somewhat confused to hear that I actually played it last week. Alec will probably never forgive me for taking what he saw as his rightful place but he was too busy being rained on in Greece to defend the Earth from invasion. I didn’t manage to protect anyone from the invasion either but I did cause a few soldiers to die trying. They might have specialisations and there might be less of them per squad, but the poor sods are as vulnerable as ever. This is how they died.
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feature, Firaxis, hands on, preview, xcom, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, xcomho.
Finger-clicking good.
By John Walker on May 15th, 2012.
Diablo III is out. (In the UK and Asia, at least, with the US version unlocking in about four hours.) Words that still don’t make sense when you look at them. So after the struggles of server issues all experienced at the start, I finally settled in to spend three very late hours with the game. A game which is, at least so far, action RPG perfection, worryingly troubled by the requirement of its always-on DRM. This is the tale of my first three hours, joyful and infuriating.
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always-on, Blizzard, Diablo III, DRM, feature, hands on.
A Word-Exposing Article Deliverance
By RPS on May 14th, 2012.
We looked at Portal 2′s puzzle creating Perpetual Testing Initiative, a streamlined, user-friendly application for making your own Portal 2 rooms, and then cried. So instead we got Craig “Fearless” Pearson to take a look, because we knew without a doubt that no one else can create a box with some boxes in it like him.
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feature, hands on, Portal 2, Portal 2 Perpetual Testing Initiative, Valve.
Axl Vs. McGowan
By Craig Pearson on April 24th, 2012.
When I play a big multiplayer combat game, I like to stop fighting and look around. I judge a lot of games on what I see at those moments, seeing how the battle feels when I’m not a part of it: In Battlefield, it’s thrilling to see jets gracefully curving through the air as tanks blast them from below; In Team Fortress 2, ubered Heavies leading a charge as the enemy hastily rework their defenses makes me happy. During a lull in my hands-on of War of the Roses, I took stock: to my right, through grasses and the trees, I watched a knight stand up, yanking his sword up out of the face of an unseen body on the ground. The effort it took to wrench metal from skull was beautifully transparent from the animation. Behind him, a galloping horse dropped in that heavy way horses do, crashing to the ground and out of sight in seconds, spilling its lance-wielding rider. A lot of intimate battles formed as the slow, deliberate combat locked people together.
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fatshark, feature, hands on, Paradox-Interactive, War Of The Roses.
Death becomes me
By Adam Smith on March 22nd, 2012.
I didn’t play Darksiders until its PC release, which meant I’d already heard a million people compare it to Zelda and God of War. What a pleasant surprise to play the game and find that it had character of its own and kept rewarding me with new toys throughout its substantial and entertainingly silly story. Sitting down to play the sequel I thought it would just be more of the same. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
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Darksiders 2, Darksiders II, feature, hands on, THQ, Vigil Games.
Brainteaser
By John Walker on March 6th, 2012.
In the always imaginative word of indie gaming, it’s ever-increasingly the case that finding out anything about a game before you play is to take away from the experience. But then you could argue the same is true of most things in life. Which is why I like to break into maternity wards and start telling babies all the spoilers I can think of. “Puberty sucks!” I will shout, as the angry midwives drag me backward from the room. “They lie to you about cell structure in GCSE biology!” I cry as I’m thrown through the doors. But here’s the fascinating thing about Antichamber: even as the developer told me what the game was doing to mess with my brain while I was playing it, it still succeeded in messing with my brain.
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Alexander Bruce, Antichamber, feature, GDC 2012, hands on, indie.
No Countries For Bold Men
By Adam Smith on February 29th, 2012.
A persistent world map with conflicts across the globe taking place between up to 56 players, nuking each other into metal morsels as they attempt to tip the overall balance of war in their faction’s favour. End of Nations is an MMRTS, alright, but how does something like that work and, digging past the garbled mess of consonants, what kind of conflict is this and can just anybody make a difference?
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End Of Nations, feature, hands on, MMORTS, petroglyph, preview, Trion Worlds.
Illuminating
By Adam Smith on February 24th, 2012.
I’ve spent the last couple of months searching the streets for signs of conspiracy, perhaps a Toynbee Tile or two bills from separate electricity companies who are clearly trying to con me out of every last penny. To resolve the troubled contents of my mind, I took another trip into The Secret World, where my every delusional thought seems quite ordinary in comparison to the oddities around me.
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Electronic Arts, feature, Funcom, hands on, MMORPG, preview, The Secret World.
