Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Total War: Rome II has a release date. Facts, straight at the front. That’s what I’m all about: business. Focused on the matter at hand, not allowing myself to wander off and start writing about bees or nostrils, like some airheaded buffoon. Too many gaming sites these days seem to think that they, the author – in my case John Walker, aged 35, living in Bath, son of Meg and Hugh, about 5’11″, blue/green eyes, first class degree in Youth & Community Work And Applied Theology, married, no children, one cat – are the more important aspect of the story rather than the news itself, the precious pieces of information for which the reader has come to the website, not wanting it to be obfuscated amongst trivial nonsense about the writer’s breakfast (I didn’t even have any breakfast today, so couldn’t tell you if I wanted to) or what colour socks they’re wearing. (Black.)

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Did Sega and Gearbox create a false impression of the final quality of Aliens: Colonial Marines? That’s now a legal matter, for lawyers to battlerap about and judges to scorecard (lawsuits are much more entertaining in my head). Multi-faceted games site Polygon has obtained a lawsuit that was filed yesterday, claiming that both companies falsely advertised their troubled Alien troubler, showing off demos to the public that were unrepresentative of the released game.
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It’s been one of those days. And by that, I of course mean what everybody does when they say that: a day during which basically everything you read somehow relates to THQ’s slow, withering dismemberment at the vulture-like beaks of hungry publishers. But that goes without saying. Some things, however, aren’t quite as simple as months and months of studio and license sales, culminating in more questions than answers. For instance, what happens if a series gets tangled up in the crisscrossing webs of multiple owners? Sure, THQ’s now history, but that still leaves Relic, Sega, and Games Workshop to figure out the logistics of bringing Dawn of War back from the brink. And yet, while it won’t necessarily be the easiest thing in the world, Relic game director Quinn Duffy is confident that it can – and probably will – eventually happen.

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After slip-sliding into June like a typically graceful, majestic tank suffering from momentary tread lapse, Company of Heroes 2‘s march to completion is fully back on track. If you weren’t already aware, a closed beta’s actually been humming along in the background for a couple weeks, largely with pre-order folks (I’m sorry, I can’t use the word “pre-orderers”; there are too many rers) in mind. Now, however, there’s another guaranteed front-door entrance to the war room. Keeping with the desperate, blood-spit-and-iron spirit of the Eastern Front, it’s the most tangible symbol of the harshness of our times: Facebook. One simple “like,” and COH 2 beta access is all yours. Yes, it’s obnoxious, but the end actually justifies the means in this case.

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IN A WORLD where game publishers are all in competition over very silly, largely pointless things for no real apparent reason…

[Scene: the world]

Sega: “Push the button.”

Creative Assembly: “This is madness. We can’t do it. If we take this step, there’s no turning back. Not just for us, but for the world.”

[Scene: still the world]

Epic: “Did you see the readout coming from Sega? They’re just mad enough to do it.”

Crytek: “But why? This is going to change everything. We’ll have to fire back with something even bigger. Somehow. Otherwise, the Graphics Wars will be lost.”

Epic: “It’s a goddamn arms race from here on out. Best buckle up, kid.”

[Scene: that first portion of the world again]

Sega: “PUSH THE BUTTON. PUSH IT NOW. FOR ROOOOOOOOOOOME.”

[Scene: space]

An astronaut, gazing down at Earth: “Sweet mother of god.”

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The videogames industry isn’t all sexualisation, lies and Doritogates, you know. Sometimes nice things happen because they are nice things. Case in point, the Creative Assembly giving a fan with not long to live a chance to play pre-alpha Rome 2 code, advise on its development and be recreated as a proud soldier of the Roman empire in-game. Tragically, the chap did not survive his battle with cancer, but this seems a touching memorial.
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Seeing that Gearbox have put out a 3.8GB patch for their rather woeful Aliens: Colonial Marines makes me feel like a nurse in a hospital drama, the one who sadly, calmly puts an hand on the shoulder of a crying, screaming doctor who’s desperately trying to resucitate an expired patient he thought he could save. “It’s no good,” I would say. “It’s over.” Then we’d have a hug and a cry, and maybe a slice of cake. Only I don’t think it’s possible to hug an entire game development studio, and I don’t know whether Randy Pitchford likes cake or not.
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One of the many unhappy aspects of the death (sort of – the name still exists and I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to see it return in some form later on) of THQ is that it had several projects really very close to completion when the axe fell. Foremost, perhaps, of those were Metro: Last Light and snow-bound WW2 strategy game Company of Heroes 2, but fortunately (we hope) both have found new homes. Metro’s with Koch, and Company of Heroes 2 is with SEGA, as is all of Relic – making the house of hedgehog, who also own the Creative Assembly, an unlikely bastion of real-time strategy.

COH2 has a new release date – later than planned but not very far away. It is… Read the rest of this entry..

Nah, only joshing. It’s in June this year.
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If you dig deep in any random farmer’s field or carpark in Britain, you’ll eventually find a Total War: Rome 2 trailer. They’re impressive too – shiny, dramatic and packed to the brim with tiny men of war. While I’m convinced that, at times, the game will be as attractive and grand as the videos suggest, I’m also aware that a great deal of the footage contains heavily edited historical battles rather than the kind of backwater skirmishes I usually find myself panning across from a distant vantage point that is actually tactically useful. The latest video shows the battle of the Teutoburg Forest, in which Germanic tribes ambushed Romans and total warred them to death.

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