Rock, Paper, Shotgun

This took me by gentle surprise: ongoing fan patching of Pandemic’s seminal but rarely namedropped 1999 RTS/FPS/tank ‘em up Battlezone II. While it’s admittedly an acquired taste, it’s one of those games I regularly bust out whenever I feel a spot of joystick nostalgia, alongside Crimson Skies and Mechwarrior 4. The unofficial 1.3 patch for what was once an infamously buggy affair was originally created by two Pandemic chaps, and they’ve continued to update it even as they spend their day working on other games. Ten years on from the game’s release, patch 1.3 beta 5.1 (crivens) has just hit…
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We mentioned The Saboteur last week – Pandemic’s Second Earth War game, following the semi-fictional story of a professional racing driver turned French Resistance pioneer. This week, courtesy of Comic Con and GameTrailers, there’s a video interview with lead designer Tom French (whose excellent beard means his head is the same both ways up, apart from the eyes/mouth thing), which includes lots of game footage.

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Electronic Art’s latest LOTR title – a third-person thing of swords and armies – stumbles rapidly towards us, with a January 19th release date. Some videos and such have turned up for our inspection, and so without further ado I must point you to the click, beyond which I ruminate on said assets and post a video of Tolkien talking about naughty elves. Go read/watch.

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The drop-in-drop-out co-op mode on Mercenaries 2 is the thing that is, for me at least, making it one of the more desirable games coming out this year (August 31st). The first live footage of the game being played co-op has just turned up, and you can see it after the jump. Explosions come as standard, and you can drive a Monster Truck into battle…

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Dudes explode, stuff gets kicked, or something. Mercenaries 2 is going all out for this year’s Most Macho Explosion Awards – even if it is a lady carrying the bazooka in this instance – and it demonstrates a level of violence that causes us to make cooing noises under our breath. In fact Kieron came back from a recent hands-on talking about how he was going start drinking protein shakes and wearing a mohawk so that people would take him seriously.

Beyond the jump we see three trailers: rocket-propelled-grenadiering (with some mild car-violencing), jeep theft and… swimming. Can’t get enough of that swimming, eh Olympians? The sandbox shooter with co-op splendidness is due out on 31st August. Strong!

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Pandemic Studios’ latest ludo-spawn, Mercenaries 2, is looking mighty explody. They’ve just released some new game footage with detailed developer-commentary over the top, which you can see beyond the click. The most sensible thing in there is also one of the more minor features, “vehicle disguise”, which makes so much sense, and yet breaks the logic of most action games ever. I’m sure the idea of using a stolen enemy vehicle as a disguise has been used in plenty of other games, but somehow I just can’t think of any.
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Lord Of The Rings: Conquest is a Battlefield/front type game set in the Tolkien universe currently under development by Pandemic Studios. “Our experience creating massive, rich, action-packed games means that The Lord of the Rings: Conquest will give fans exactly what they want: full control of the blade, bow and magic to fight its epic battles any way they want – even if they choose to play from the evil side,” said Pandemic’s Josh Resnick. And who wouldn’t play as a orck (yes, I’m going with a franchise-neutral spelling from now on), that’s what I want to know. Anyway, more details and screens after the jump.
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