Rock, Paper, Shotgun

My review of Dragon Age in PC Gamer is now online. All 60 million words, but short the very pretty boxouts (and thus vital details about the “taint” – snigger). It looks very splendid in the magazine. (Unfortunately an RPS review will be a while coming as our attempts to get review code were not responded to.) It’s a tremendous game, in many senses of the word. Here’s an excerpt that captures one of my favourite details:

“Whether you play as a human, elf or dwarf, a rogue, warrior or mage, a noble or a commoner, Dragon Age requires smart use of your wits and weapons. Combat is a combination of real-time fighting and turn-based handing out of orders. You have control of all in your current party (which has a maximum of four characters), as well as an elaborate Combat Tactics system that enables you to all but program your team’s AI. But there’s also an entire realm to explore, and a central, overwhelming theme of acculturation within its many towns and races. This is about politics, moral philosophy and love. And about killing dragons with swords.”

There’s been rumours around, but it’s finally been confirmed in our old comrades at the PC Gamer* podcast. Talking about their forthcoming issue where they reveal that the first Dawn of War 2 add-on pack will feature chaos. And it’s called Chaos Rising. It’s welcome, but not exactly an enormous surprise – I thought Chaos would be one of the most-likely factions to be in the original game. There’s little more in the podcast – expect more to come when the subs copies arrive with their readers shortly.

*UK. As in, the original one. Yeah, you heard.

Autumn wouldn’t be autumn in the Stone household without a spot of digital deer slaying. The following is a piece I penned a few years back for PC Gamer UK on the history and appeal of gaming’s least fashionable genre.

Throw a couple of logs onto the fire, pour yourself a glass of something warming, and come sit down here next to me. Comfortable? Splendid. Today I want to tell you about my penchant for a pariah genre. Today I want to talk of hunting simulations, a genus of games that’s been mauled, mocked, and lately, studiously ignored by British game critics. Read the rest of this entry »

My write-up of the official remake of one of my all-time favourite strategy games is in the current issue of PC Gamer UK, and now also on the magic internet. While a solid and largely faithful remake, the game wasn’t quite what I was hoping it would be, so I’m expecting outraged folk to shout at me and email a death threat or two because I didn’t score it 98% any day now.

Here’s a quote for the road:

Life is good to old Kingy. He’s fine whether or not he gets my money, and there’s not a damned thing I can do about it. He’s the bully at school you can’t touch because he’s the headmaster’s son, the seedy politician who never quite gets thrown out of office because his wife is friends with the Prime Minister’s wife. He’s unstoppable.

Apparently the official online embargo starts lifting tomorrow, but a bunch of print scores have already found their way into the realms of webby-land. Most notably, CVG have just posted a slightly bizarre summary of Tom Francis’ print review in PC Gamer UK, which is possibly a cheeky attempt to get a march on tomorrow’s online reviews. The lad scored Will Wright’s new’un a whopping 91%, but delivered a few sharp punches to Spore’s ribs. For the whole review you’ll need to read the mag, but what are, purportedly, the most pertinent comments can be found here.

On the other side of the coin, VG247 is reporting less favourable scores from a couple of German gaming mags.: 79% from Gamestar, and 73% from PC Games. Hmm. Looks like it’s silly season for huge score discrepancies, eh?

Update – Looks like those German mags are in the minority. There are ten reviews in the wild now, most of which are 8s and 9s. This one seems especially trustworthy, for some mysterious reason.

Heh. I just stumbled across this randomly, having had no idea it had ever gone online – a pop piece I wrote for PC Gamer last March on PC gaming’s finest villains. Well, the finest that fit easily within an A-Z list, anyway. No, your favourite villain is not in there, and yes, shame on me for the oversight. How dare I call myself a PC gamer, etc. Why don’t you mention him/her/it/them/[no suitable pronoun in the English language] below instead?

Read the rest of this entry »

The new PC Gamer is out, and it’s Top 100 feature is filled with pictures of three-quarters of RPS (along with the staff of the magazine as well, probably. It’s hard to be sure because we just looked at the pictures of ourselves). Kieron wasn’t present, because his beard (RIP) was deemed too dangerous for the public.

Anyhoo, the point of a Top 100 is for people to read it, throw their hands in the air, murder their firstborn, and scream about the injustices of Silent Hunter III being at 81 instead of 80. PCG has made it so much simpler with their newfangled Readers Top 100 site.

Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of love and hard work went into a remarkable feature in the current PC Gamer (UK) – 365 free games. And now you can read the entire damn thing on Games Radar.

It was a mad labour of love/hate for half the Gamer team, as well as Jim and me, taking far longer and far more people than any feature ever should. And well worth it.

Read the rest of this entry »

The new PC Gamer is well worth a look. Especially for a mighty feature offering details of 365 free games. It’s one of those ideas that sounds good, right up until you sit down to try and write it. Poor old Graham Smith nearly died trying, and Craig Pearson blushed red and fainted at the size of the task, at which point Jim and I were enlisted. Like mighty heroes we strode into the office, rested our broadswords against the filing cabinet, and joined Graham and Craig quivering in front of the thing. The result is pretty great, and if you enjoy the links we put to free games, get hold of it.

Meanwhile, the same edition also contains my review of Turok, which PCG have put on their website for utter free. Key words include: “Turok isn’t dreadful. Its fits in that far less entertaining position of mediocre. It makes some ghastly mistakes, but at the same time has giant dinosaurs you can kill with a bow and arrow.“

How silly of me – I didn’t spot that PCG posted my review of Turning Point: Fall of Liberty last week. Well, now I have, and you can read it with an eye of your choice.

What if Winston Churchill had been killed by that car that hit him in New York in 1931? Apparently, Hitler would have done an awful lot better, and invaded America. All German soldiers’ brains would turn to mush, all worldly objects would become magically sticky, jumping would become nearly impossible, and people would gain super-strength and the ability to absorb dozens of bullets.

As if the phrase ‘Games For Windows’ wasn’t ridiculous enough, Turning Point makes further mockery of any meaning it might contain. No mouse cursor for the menus, no video controls, no ability to task-switch, and a controller setup based on a diagram of an Xbox 360 controller. This is not a game for Windows by any stretch – it’s a crummy port of a crummy 360 game.

Read the rest of it here.