Rock, Paper, Shotgun

A thread over on NeoGAF has spotted that the German magazine PC Action is previewing Dark Souls for PC, unofficially confirming the release of Namco’s hardcore melee RPG on the PC. There will apparently be new bosses for PC, but with everything else having parity with the console version. A release in August.

Namco are busy teasing a Dark Souls announcement on their Facebook page, and it looks like it could be confirmation for the heavily petitioned-for PC version. That is not clue enough on its own, of course, but it seems that Australian PC mag PC Power Play are teasing their next month’s edition with a page reading “You Died”. HmmMMMMmmmmMMMMmmmmm!

Masanori Takeuchi, head of R&D at From Software, spoke to Gametrailers at GDC and, among his lust for cleverphone development, he did find time to acknowledge the existence of a much-signed petition for a PC version of Dark Souls.

“That’s going to be a decision left up to the publisher, Bandai Namco, but yes, we have seen the comments and we do know of the desire for a PC version.”

Namco need to understand how easy this whole process could be and how much I would love them if they could only work things out.

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The original community manager who posted about Dark Souls needing public support to make it to PC has posted again, saying:

I honestly wasn’t expecting such a massive support. My boss(es) even came to talk to me about this, after it explodes all around the world. If you wanted to have the attention of Namco Bandai Games, now you have it. The future is in your hands, and I hope you will keep supporting this. I make a personal objective to make sure every relevant people in Namco Bandai Games is in touch with this formidable effort. Great Thanks!

Our PR contact at Namco reports that they are hoping to get an official comment soon. The petition is at almost 72k signatures at the time of writing.

Following this story in which I condescendingly suggested that Namco could convert a couple of its better games to PC, 59,900 people have so far signed an online petition to bring the game to the one true format. Is that enough to change the publisher’s mind? Hard to say, but we’re expecting Namco to make an official statement about this at some point soon. Might as well throw your name down if you want another hardcore melee combat RPG on the PC, eh?

I had a fun weekend blowing the minds of distant relatives by showing them that the PC can actually run games better than the Xbox. They were pretty sceptical, but a brief trip through hi-resolution land later and they were nodding along amiably. I tried to show my teenage cousin the stealthy, choice-rich excitements of DXHR, too, but he wasn’t convinced. “I just use my laptop for Facebook games,” he said. Sigh. But that reminded me that that I wanted to ask you lot if there are actually any good Facebook games now. Stuart has been insisting that gaudy retro-remakes of games like Pacman-S and New Rally-XS are actually worth visiting Facebook for, and he’s probably right, but I suspect there’s probably some more RPSy games out there.

I mean there has to be, right? Anyone?

Why not? Well, I’m afraid our code only unlocked at midday yesterday, and I’m not going to rush this for anyone. We’d been told to expect to get the game last week, but CD Projekt later insisted that RPS, Eurogamer, and a number of other online outlets wait for their day zero patch, which they completed on Sunday. You will see some print magazine reviews go up today, these are based on early code which CDP described to us as “outdated”. We’ll be reviewing what you’ll actually be playing this week. I have some early thoughts below, and will follow with further impressions and then a full WIT later in the week.
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Unbounded? Really? Is that even a word? I suppose language matters not a jot to muscle cars. What they care about is getting somewhere quickly. They hate to be late. Me too, frankly. One of my pet peeves.

Anyway, Ridge Racer “Unbounded” will be arriving on PC some time in 2012. In the meantime you can look at the latest teaser trailer, below. It shows a car driving through a wall which suggests… destructible scenery? Could this be the BFBC2 of racing games?
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What follows are impressions of The Witcher 2 based on the limited preview code that Namco and CD Projekt recently released to the press. It’s the prologue and first chapter of the full game, and as such makes up a healthy chunk of play time. People are saying about ten hours, but I think I spent longer than that with it. I’ll avoid specific narrative spoilers, but I won’t be avoiding game-mechanic spoilers. What that means is that I’ll be talking about how the game works, but not that much about what actually happens. This is not a game where you want to know about the surprises.

So let’s take a look at everything else.
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My comrades failed to observe my prompting about this bizarro-world gem earlier, so now I am out of my day job skin, I shall do it. Hmmph. Wasters.

So: there’s going to be a Pac-Man TV show, all CGI and 3D and whatever else is buzzwordy.

It’s not going to be a simple tale of a yellow orb eating pills and running away from ghosts, oh no. This is about human interest and social messages. Pac-Man. Human interest and social messages. Pac-Man. Y’okay.
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VG247 are reporting new details and grabs emerging from Namco’s Pre-E3 press event in Spain. Well, “details” is a bit much – it’s all very much generalities. That said, things like “no fed ex missions” is going to be an interesting one to watch, if only to see if they actually do it (In the same way MMO devs claim “No Kill 10 Boar quests” before inevitably having Kill 10 Boar quests.) A quote on sex and eroticism screams out, promising it’ll be dealt with in “a much more realistic, involving and mature way, thanks to which sexual relationships are presented more credibly than in TW1.” You know, a meaner commentator than I would take that as a Mea Culpa. Still: I’m increasingly excited about this. And it’s still due for early 2011, apparently. Yays.