Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Any day with more King’s Bounty in it is a good day. There’s no sign yet of a proper sequel to what was one of the best PC games of 2008, but we have had an expansion pack in sequel’s clothing, in the form of 2009′s sprawling but slightly underwhelming expandalone Armored Princess. Now that is getting its own expansion, Crossworlds. There’s only one possible name for it. It’s an expandapandalone.

And, peering at its content, there is a good chance Crossworlds could inflate AP into the game it should have been…

Read the rest of this entry »

Let me tell you about my dragon.
Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I’d hoped to have loads to tell you by now. Remember the zombie bride, the battle inside my own belt, the dragon with a toothache? Last year’s King’s Bounty: The Legend was splendid at generating absurdist anecdotes. I’m a few hours into its addon/sequel Armored Princess, and I haven’t hit anything like that yet, to my chagrin. I met a drunk guy at one point. And a bartender hit on me, until I threatened to pull his arms off. That’s about it, though. However! I am not having anything like a bad time. Quite the contrary – I’m enjoying myself, and I wish I was playing it now. But I can’t because I’m on a train. Oh look, there goes Battersea Power Station. And the man opposite me has eyes that look in different directions. I need the toilet, but I can’t quite be bothered to get up and trudge over to a small, smelly metal room. And… oh yes. Sorry. Armored Princess may not have given me any anecdotes for you yet, but what it has done is make me enjoy KB’s complicated battle mechanics a fair bit more.
Read the rest of this entry »

Man, I pick my moments. If I’d have waited just one more day, just one more measly day, I could have ended my post about King’s Bounty: Armored Princess yesterday with a link to the just-released English demo. I didn’t. I got too excited. I have failed you. I’m sorry. You won’t ever hear from me again.

…At least not until my Armored Princess diaries, starting next week. (There will be a conclusion to the Risen ones at some point during the coming weeks, by the way – I’ve just been waylaid by Too Many Games.) Meantime, try the 470MB demo and see what you make of it. Too similar? Too cute? Too wordy? Too wonderful? I’ll admit I’m approaching it with some trepidation – you can have too much of a good thing, especially when it comes to games – but I’ll be very surprised if I don’t enjoy myself.

Argh! I’m swamped in Big Important Videogames at the moment, and during that one of the games I’ve most been looking forward to has dropped onto my hard drive. Not, not, not fair. It’s Armoured Princess (or Armored, if you’re from one of those countries that’s afraid of the letter U), the sequel/add-on to last year’s excellent strategy/RPG mad thing King’s Bounty. The Russian version’s been around for a little while, but the English edition is finally here. I am this: pleased. Yes, I am.
Read the rest of this entry »

The expansion to Katauri Interactive’s glorious, beautiful, deep, clever, irreverent and very silly 4X game is on its way fast, but it’s not here yet – so I got all clappy-happy when I spotted a demo had hit the tubes yesterday. Except it’s in Russian. Hmm. Arrogantly, I presumed myself so familiar with the menus and mechanics of the first game that I’d have no problem mastering this one.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ooh, the first footage of the expansion for my favourite game of last year, the Heroes of Might’n'Magicky King’s Bounty: The Legend. So far, all we knew was it featured an impractically-dressed female hero, a grown-up version of the parent game’s Princess Amelie, a pet dragon, a pegasus and a race of angry anteater types. Can’t say I feel terribly threatened by anteaters, but presumably their master plan involves more than mass insect ingestion. A pair of new videos show the game off rather better, and while editing can often achieve miracles, they do rather suggest we’re in for a bigger, grander experience than the crawl’n'grind of KB’s latter half. Many bosses, many ultra-powers and the option to fly across the map should make it a leaner affair.
Read the rest of this entry »

The RPS Klaxons sounded their loudest AWOOGAS in some time today, upon the news that King’s Bounty: The Legend, the mad, wonderful Russian strategy-rpg weird ‘em up, is to get the expansion pack treatment. True to the parent game, the details sound cheerfully batshit. So we figured that, rather than just post them, we’d go through each of its announced features and say clever/stupid (mostly stupid, really) things about ‘em.

Below the cut then, more details of the excellently-named Armoured Princess, and the sad sight of me attempting to have an actual conversation about it while Kieron alternately shouts nonsense and totally ignores me.
Read the rest of this entry »