Rock, Paper, Shotgun

You know how Dead Island dev Techland can’t resist pairing zombies with CG trailers and dismally sad twists even though their games aren’t at all about the latter two things? Well, they’ve done it again, though I will admit that Dying Light seems to have clambered into the Realm Where Gameplay Dares Not Tread with a bit more of its overarching concept intact. Running! Jumping! Thwacking with objects that weren’t designed with thwacking in mind! You’ll find all of that Mirror’s-Edge-meets-zombies action with a shiny, cut-heavy makeover after the break.

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ZOMBIES ARE EVERYWHERE. In the schools, under your refrigerator, buried deep within the collective cultural conscience. Especially that last one, which is probably why a new zombie game gets announced every 0.4674 seconds. That brings us to the current undead re-deadifier du seconde: Dying Light. It comes from Techland and takes place in a balmy, bloody tropical setting, but it’s not part of the Dead Island series. The main differences? Fleet-footed, Mirror’s-Edge-esque parkour and a Minecraft-like survival element. Don’t worry, though: you can still make an electrified machete.

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Well, my cynicism was WELL placed [engage smug mode]. After staring at the teaser trailer for the new Batman: Arkham Origins and grumpily reporting that it provided no game footage, I’d hoped Warner Bros. would sneak in a few moments of in-game action somewhere into the full trailer. Nope, they instead created a CGI story and fight sequence that stretches to nearly five minutes. It’s Batman, goons, Deathstroke, and Black Mask. At least it provides a little bit of context this time, and there are a few screenshots to coo over now.
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Or at least, as real as tiny god people from the bottomless depths of mute rooster boy’s imagination can be. But yes, the oft-rumored DC edition of 5th Cell’s boundless bowl of alphabet soup – titled Scribblenauts Unmasked – is now official, and it looks to be quite the thing. Adam expressed concern that attaching an official license to Scribblenauts might leave players with a world they can’t truly own, but this one has far more up its sleeve than DC’s tried-and-true roster of people who don’t understand how underwear work. On top of boasting every hero ever (incredibly obscure ones included, of course), you can make your own from a veritable toy factory of bits and pieces. Leap the break in a single bound for the debut trailer.

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Here at RPS, we make a policy of loving Scribblenauts in spite of its flaws, and sometimes we use it to construct elaborate, oddly poignant superhero parodies. And yet, even before DC license announcements entered the picture, I was always impressed by how carefully the series balanced on the glossy lip of pop culture without falling into a bottomless well of legal troubles. No, it’s never applied names (or any proper nouns at all) to its homages, but some of the candy coated likenesses are uncanny. So naturally, it’s finally happened: a lawsuit. But it didn’t come from Rick Astley, Barack Obama, or even a wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man. Oh no. So then, who are 5th Cell’s mighty legal foes? Why, none other than the folks who created Keyboard Cat and Nyan Cat. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Internet.

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I have to admit that it had passed me by entirely that there was a DC Universe MOBA going on. But there is! It’s being made by Turbine and is called Infinite Crisis, and there’s a whole beta application thing going on over here. Seems like things are pretty quiet on this front, though, since the only reason I realised it existed at all was the appearance of two new videos on my video-detector, one showing Gaslight Batman, and one showing the lovely Doomsday. Sure looks MOBA-y.
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Oh no! The DC multiverse is exploding again. Heroes and villains will have to work together to save it by engaging in some sort of free-to-play MOBA called Infinite Crisis. I know quite a lot about DC comics but I don’t know anything about MOBA games but since I’m all alone in Castle RPS at the moment, I’m going to have to tackle this anyway. In place of informed opinion, I present to you a brief anecdote. I installed and played DOTA 2 for the first time this weekend and played through the tutorial, which involved hitting things and then getting dressed. Then I tried to play a game with bots and realised that I didn’t even know what my objectives were, beyond wearing armour. Here is the trailer for Infinite Crisis.

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Remember when Scribblenauts Unlimited simultaneously launched in all territories thanks to the lightspeed techno-magic of the 21st century? Well then, congratulations. You evidently live in a pristinely wound clockwork dimension where things actually make sense. Others of us aren’t so fortune. Case in point: the entirety of Europe. While North America got the whimsically open-ended puzzler back in November, Warner Bros decided to shove its European release date into “early 2013″ for no apparent reason. Seriously, even developer 5th Cell was basically baffled. But now, finally, mercifully, anyone can grab it on Steam.

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Lego Lord of the Rings is still a few weeks from building a bridge to our machines (and hopefully, using its quirky brand of Lego charm, our hearts), but Traveler’s Tales has seen fit to release one mythical creature from its grasp early: an honest-to-goodness, flesh-and-brick pre-release demo. In the modern age of un-middle Earth, these poor things are all but extinct, so treat it with care. Unless you find it to be kind of sub-par, anyway. Then feel free to scold it for not quite living up to the expectations set by its made-of-plastic, nearly fantastic brothers and sisters as I’m about to after the break.

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Our world was not built with Lego figurines in mind. They are small, plasticine, and worrisomely edible, while we are almighty giants with colossal living rooms and all-consuming sofa cushions to match. In other words, pretty much everything dwarfs our favorite race of jaundiced, ear-less architects – regardless of mundanity. Tables, chairs, lamps – you name it. So what happens when we fling them into a world that even made cave trolls and gigantic tree people seem insignificant? Well, then we get Lego Lord of the Rings. It’s something of a jarring mix, to say the least. But it also kinda, sorta somehow works. Venture past the break to see how.

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Horses! They go fast. Except when they don’t – for instance, while asleep or carrying a very, very large person. And then, of course, there’s the most common horse sloth cause of them all: beta tests of MMORPGs based on the most culturally pervasive mythology ever to be written by a man with an irrational hatred of cars. The latter has claimed yet another victim today, as Lord of the Rings Online: Riders of Rohan has officially been delayed into October.

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