Talk The Line
By Adam Smith on February 8th, 2012.
Drawing inspiration from Joseph Conrad as much as the series that it seeks to reinvent, Spec Ops: The Line is a brutal, plot-driven third person shooter. After playing a few chapters of the game, I sat down with senior designer Shawn Frison to talk about Dubai, war stories, and the tension between horror and entertainment.
Investigating the unknown
By Alec Meer on February 2nd, 2012.
In this next chunk of a mammoth chat with XCOM: Enemy Unknown‘s lead designer at Firaxis Jake Solomon, we talk Chrysalids, the death and critical wounding of your soldiers, the fanbase, why min-maxing X-COM’s not all it’s cracked up to be, the base, the geoscape and which of the original game’s aliens didn’t make the cut…
Read the rest of this entry »
The origins of a reimagining
By Alec Meer on February 1st, 2012.
They did it. They really did it. As we unexpectedly discovered last month, Firaxis are remaking/reimagining the original X-COM, the 1993 title that is quite rightly often hailed as the greatest game ever made. Recently, I had a long, fascinating and genuinely reassuring chat with XCOM: Enemy Unknown‘s lead designer and evident fellow X-COM gonk Jake Solomon – in this first of three parts, he talks how, why, when, the response to the controversial XCOM shooter, Cyberdiscs, whether it’s being simplified for console, 2K’s infamous ‘strategy games aren’t contemporary’ comment and missing hyphens.
Read the rest of this entry »
Free 2 Flay
By Dan Griliopoulos on January 28th, 2012.
Whilst we were down in the RPS dungeon, thrashing kobolds for copper pieces, we stumbled upon a group of MMO developers coming the other way through the Underdark. Sitting down by the light of our magic auras, we made a nice cup of elf-leaf and talked to Fernando Paiz, Executive Producer on Dungeons & Dragons Online (married to Kate Paiz, the executive producer on Lord Of The Rings Online) and Adam Mersky, Communications Director of Turbine. These bold adventurers in online gaming had much to report about about DDO’s history, the first DDO expansion, and the mysterious emanations coming from upcoming releases.
Read the rest of this entry »
Hit and miss
By Brendan Caldwell on January 27th, 2012.
Our London-based agent Brendan Caldwell recently talked to the men who are responsible for the resurrection of ill-fated MMO-shooter, APB. Michael Boniface and Zak Littwin, who hail from the original Realtime Worlds team, had quite a lot to say about the current state of their project. Read on for Uzi lovin’.
Read the rest of this entry »
In Space No-one Can Hear You Stream
By Dan Griliopoulos on January 27th, 2012.
Dave Perry is the sometime creator of MDK and now CEO of Gaikai, the streaming game provider. He thinks his tech is going to take over PC Gaming; because he’s got his hands on one of those Molyneux Inc. Reality Distortion Fields, he’s VERY persuasive. We caught up with him at the superbly-stimulating Cloud Gaming Summit in London to talk about Gaikai, inspiration in game design, why Battlefield games are awesome, and a few other topics that might interest you.
Read the rest of this entry »
Flying High
By Jim Rossignol on January 26th, 2012.
Swen Vincke is the bossman at Larian, they of the Divinity games and now ambitious Dragon Commander, and he’s taking his studio in a bold new direction: free of the publisher contract, they are going to develop and publish the game themselves. Vincke talks about this strategy – and few other issues like the real reason people said the PC was “dead” – in this wide-ranging and fascinating interview.
Read the rest of this entry »
Cockpit Chatter
By Tim Stone on January 25th, 2012.
Pressing the ‘SUBMIT’ button on the Microsoft Flight beta application page does one of two things. if you’re lucky it propels your application down PTT tube ‘A’ – a trans-global conduit that terminates just above the desk of Merlin Packard, the MS Flight beta manager. If you’re unlucky it sends your missive down PTT tube ‘B’ – a trans-global conduit that terminates just above the maw of Kīlauea, Hawaii’s most energetic lava vent. Unfortunately, my application seems to have ended-up in the volcano. Deprived of first-hand Flight experience I’ve been forced to fact-gather by quizzing the developer. Descend ten thousand micrometers to see the result of that quizzing.
World Exclusive
By RPS on January 25th, 2012.
The puzzle game AVSEQ from indie developers Big Robot has recently been released. We managed to get hold of project lead, Jim Rossignol, for a world exclusive interview. Read on for details.
"Maybe I have a weird fetish for tennis I never thought about…"
By Alec Meer on January 24th, 2012.
Yesterday, we brought you Ken Levine’s explanation of BioShock: Infinite’s 1999 mode. The response was, perhaps inevitably, divided. Here’s the second part of my chat with him, in which he anticipates that, as well as addressing the fact he can only offer a biased opinion of his game, the problem with out of context headlines, tennis in BioShock, why SWAT 4 would have been a very different game under his stewardship and, yes, why “if you’re a reader on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, you are sophisticated enough to not listen to what Ken Levine says.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Why BioShock: Infinite is for you
By Alec Meer on January 23rd, 2012.
Late last week, Irrational announced 1999 mode for BioShock: Infinite – an attempt to recapture the sense of binding decisions, permanent consequences and hard-as-nails challenge that we perhaps associate with a lost era of gaming. In this first of a two-part interview, I nattered to avuncular Irrational bossman Ken Levine about why they came up with 1999 Mode, what it entails, why it’s a very different prospect to simply a ‘hard’ difficulty setting, why he doesn’t want non-hardcore gamers playing that mode, and whether or not it’s a reaction to disappointment about BioShock from System Shock fans.
Read the rest of this entry »
