Winter Isn't Coming
By John Walker on February 11th, 2013.
Cryptic’s Neverwinter had its first beta weekend these last couple of days. I jumped in, rolled a young half-elf, and had a look around for a couple of days. With the game still without a fixed release date, there’s clearly still a lot of time for change. But as it stands, here are my hands-on impressions of the game so far.
It's dangerous to go Stallone, take Plissken
By Adam Smith on February 7th, 2013.
The Showdown Effect stood out at the Paradox Convention. Among the fine Port*, maps and history, here was a game that threatened to introduce itself like a shot of Tabasco sauce to the back of the throat. GUNS! ONE LINERS! SWORDS! BLOOD! ACTION MOVIES! THE EIGHTIES! I was braced for impact but as the sauce settled, I paused to swirl it around my mouth, nodded appreciatively and then turned a man’s head into a blood pudding by liberally applying a fire extinguisher to his face. There are explosions and gibs aplenty, but between the bullets and blades, there’s a great deal of precision.
Putting Falkirk on the map
By Cara Ellison on February 7th, 2013.
As SimCity nears release (March 8th in the UK), we sent natural born mayor Cara Ellison to sit down with the game for a day. She recreated inner-Scotland.
I dreamed of marching into EA HQ in a black pencil dress and high heels and Malcolm Tuckering all my consonants: “ALL RIGHT EA. RUIN MY CHILDHOOD. COME ON. RUIN IT.”
As it is, I stumbled into EA covered in doughnut crumbs wearing a bedraggled jumper dress and giant wooly socks and then squeaked “Hi I’m Cara hi can I see Simcity please.”
More of a strut, really
By Adam Smith on February 5th, 2013.
I didn’t expect it to happen like this. I knew that one day I’d end up sucked into a multiplayer affair that left me checking over my shoulder, erasing entries in my diary and losing sleep, but I figured it’d be Planetside 2 or Day Z, not a strategic wargame. In the last week, I’ve spent a few hours playing March of the Eagles and Europa Universalis IV multiplayer and, despite myself, I’m ready to admit there’s a future in this ‘gaming with other people’ malarkey. More on EU IV soon. First, it’s Napoleon time.
Not So Super
By John Walker on December 17th, 2012.
Over the last few days I’ve played through all the available content in the closed beta for Diablo-like MMO, Marvel Heroes. And throughout there was one thought in my head: why did they let journalists look at this now? It’s possibly not the most positive thought.
Aliens versus Editor
By Adam Smith on December 11th, 2012.
Recently, I had the chance to play Aliens: Colonial Marines and I’m going to try and write more than one thousand five hundred words about the experience without quoting Aliens once. Will I manage to describe two varieties of multiplayer from the perspective of both alien and marine without once using the words of Hudson or Hicks? Will I convey my thoughts about the small portion of campaign I experienced without inserting a Vasquez line or two? Probably not.
Eastward ho!
By Alec Meer on December 7th, 2012.
Last week I got to sit down and make my hands do things in Relic’s next strategy game, the Eastern Front-set World War II war of men that is Company of Heroes 2. While previously we’ve been shown frozen landscapes with dramatic new snow effects, this time I got thrown into the mud.
I was in a war, you know. A big war, with explosions and tanks and dug-outs and men with flamethrowers and men with mortars and men with machine guns and men with rocket-propelled grenades. It was awful. So I’m only too happy to go back to it.
In my couple of hours with Company of Heroes 2, I swiftly established that it is very much the sequel to Company of Heroes. Perhaps more so than I’d been expecting, given the action-RPG stylings of Dawn of War 2 was a sharp turn to the left from Dawn of War 1′s tried and tested real-time strategising. Company of Heroes is Real War though, so a careful sticking to strategic roots is to be expected.
Dig For Victory
By Adam Smith on November 20th, 2012.
There are spades for digging, blocks for building and a drill for tunnelling or demolition work. Ace of Spades a bit like Minecraft, you might think. Well, there are also rifles for shooting, grenades for exploding and sniper rifles for long range headpopping. It’s a team deathmatch game on large, destructible maps! But when I played it last week, Ace of Spades put me in mind of something else entirely.
Virulent
By John Walker on November 15th, 2012.
After the disappointment of a failed Kickstarter in July this year, Retrovirus developers Cadenza fought on regardless. Instead they found funding through Gamestop, in exchange for their launch being via the US store’s digital download service. They got a pretty sweet deal, the sort that usually only goes to AAA games, with in-store promotion and a lot of exposure. Other release platforms will come later, with the full game due early next year, and it’s all DRM-free from the off. Right now buying it for $18 gets you into the game’s alpha. Meanwhile, I’ve had my hands on the about-to-be-launched beta version, written about below, along with the latest trailer.
Into the Danger Zone
By Adam Smith on November 12th, 2012.
Forced is a co-operative arena-based ARPG, currently around half-way toward a successful funding campaign on Kickstarter. Developers BetaDwarf sent me a demo of the game, which has been in development for almost two years. The first thing I noticed is that I shouldn’t really keep calling it an ARPG in the Katchup, since it’s more like a tactical action game than a roleplaying game. Then I realised I was going to have to involve a friend if I wanted to experience the game at its best, and so I did. Now I understand what Forced is and it’s not quite what the videos had led me to believe.
Roll one up
By RPS on November 1st, 2012.
We sent Rich Stanton to the exotic location in front of his keyboard to play Scrolls, the next game from Minecraft maker’s Mojang, which is currently in the throes of its alpha test stage. Needless to say, the deck-based card game has some familiar influences.
I’m going to tell you about Scrolls, the new game from Mojang, but first it’s confession time. This is the opinion of a loser. And not just an occasional loser. I’ve played twenty five games of Scrolls and, while there have been chinks of light in the darkness, I’ve been getting absolutely stomped.
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