Latest Articles (Page 2164)

A sad realisation came upon me this afternoon: I don't use joysticks anymore. I have one somewhere, but I don't think it's been plugged into a PC for about five years. On my consoles and PC there are gamepads galore, but the grand stick of old is gone. Some people still think themselves connoisseurs of the rubberised grip, however. One such person is Gasbandit, who has been writing about joysticks past and present. He makes a few suggestions.

2Moons, the free-to-play MMO by none other than David Perry (and not Dave Perry), has just gone live as a beta version. You can download the client from GamersHell. We'll offer some insightful and informative comment soon, probably. In the meantime here's a picture of a dude with swords:

To placate angry fans, Command & Conquer 3's Executive Producer (now there's a title which, in film-land at least, means nothing, apart from 'gets to swim in all the money') Mike Verdu has posted on the official forums apologising for inconsistencies in the game's plot in context to the C&C 'universe', and pledging to fix them ASAP.

Dungeon Runners, from NC Soft, is free. Or it costs £2.50/month to play it properly. Which is still incredibly cheap. And it's remarkably fun. I review it with real words over at EG.

Here at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, we received an email from someone calling themselves 'DefinitelyFromBlizzardHonest', telling us what will be announced at BlizzCon next week.

Like almost everyone I know I've spent too many hours capturing large red or white circles in the World In Conflict Beta. There's something particularly compulsive about trying to hold a small area on your own, while the rest of your team mills about across the battlefield, attacking the enemy without rhyme or reason. I particularly like playing as infantry and fortifying a position as best I can, fending off tank attacks and napalm deluges with my tiny soldiers. Initially I thought that playing as infantry was the very worst option, but now I understand completely that in fact it is helicopters that are actually the least interesting option. If you want to challenge your tactical self, then you need to be support or infantry.

What I think WiC does, aside from create a palpable “battlefield” atmosphere, is allow you to feel like you can influence the battle outside of your direct area of control. Even if you can't get units to an area that's in trouble, the tactical support allows you to call in artillery or airstrikes to help out.

Check out this video in which an academic physicist discusses (with some surprise and awe) the physics systems demonstrated in a homebrew vehicle simulation, Rig Of Rods.

"Every time I yank a jawbone from a skull and ram it into an eyesocket, I know I'm building a better future." So Bender from Futurama, in the guise of a biker vamp, informs me as to how he thinks the world's problems should be solved. Ah, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Truly, you are the last of your kind. I no longer think you're one of the finest, however.

Noting that yet another fan-made patch was out for the infamously broken swansong of that RPG/FPS hybrid genre awkwardly known as the immersive sim (unless you count Oblivion, which was a sort of waterered-down, action-only approach to the same concept), I've decided to revisit it. Despite slightly too fiercely defending it at the time against those who deemed it no classic because of the sheer weight of bugs, spelling mistakes and mindless combat in its twilight third, I never quite finished Bloodlines. I realised the shift from a game built on conversation, persuasion and seduction to one built on fists and knives and guns was an absolute one, so I stopped, with the story unresolved and my character not yet at the height of his dark abilities. I'd had my brainy fun, and I was grateful for it.

These were, you understand, dark times.

Dear Traveller's Tales,

I seem to recall having a conversation with someone (I believe it was John Smith, executive producer of Lego Star Wars) about whether it would be appropriate to have Lego Nazis. It seems that's no longer a concern.

RPS friend and Creative Assembly minion James Carey has spent the past few years being obsessed with PC soldier sims - first Operation Flashpoint and then its direct sequel (as opposed to indirect sequel, Operation Flashpoint 2. which was recently announced by Codemasters but won't be developed by Bohemia) Armed Assault. Over the last few months Carey has been teased a bit by me and others as he creates war scenarios, mods parachutes and "goes on maneuvers" with his weekend war chums.

Well, I hope Alec will be eating humble pie over his denouncing of the new Transformers game. I read on The Sun's website that the game deserves 81%! Alec, the shame.

An ex-Rockstar employee, Jeff Williams, chose this week to write about his experiences working at the company, blogging some interesting details about his time on the inside.

It's been a while since an online first-person shooter has consumed all of my attention. That's probably going to change. There are two reasons for this. One is called Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and the other is called Unreal Tournament 3.

I meant to post this before I jetted off to the US for a while. It's a report on my initial impressions of Medieval: Total War - Kingdoms, which may be of interest to humans.

Some dude's painstakingly coded replacement pixel shaders for the entirety of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Apparently it improves the buggy-but-brilliant FPS's both performance and appearance. So well, in fact, that it's to be a part of the next official patch. Clicky the below to embiggen and admire this fan-made handiwork.

PC game developers seem to have an increasing amount of faith in the 'free' MMO model, as we're seeing with the likes of Maple Story and Dungeon Runners. It's even being employed in the development of Saga by Wahoo Studios, which is an online persistent “massive” strategy, set in fantasy realms.

I'm preaching to the converted I'm sure, but whatever you do, do not buy, play or even pirate the Transformers game. It's no worse on PC than any other platform, but it is quite astonishingly dreadful. Part of the reason for this I lay not at the feet of the developers (Travellers Tales, best-known for the diminishingly excellent Lego Star Wars series, but in fact with a history of horrific licensed titles behind them) but at the nature of the game.

The chaps from Petroglyph have reached that vital testing stage of development with their new RTS, Universe At War: Earth Assault. You can sign up for the closed beta here, and I recommend you do so, because from what I saw earlier in the year this could be one of the most entertaining strategy games of 2007. Hopefully there will be an open beta to follow.

China View reports on Brazilian gang crime (for some reason) informing us that a top Brazilian MMO player was kidnapped for his Gunbound account:

Confused. Trying to play two MMOs at once really divides a man's loyalties, not to mention totally messes with his ability to memorise hotkeys. My muscle memory is going haywire, tapping controls that do nothing or inadvertantly cause the usage of some precious potion I'd been saving for an emergency.

The Far Cry 2 teaser site is up and running. You can click on the trees and birds fly off! Man, I'm sold. I haven't been this excited about a semi-interactive picture of an African vista since I don't know when.

Wise, wise words.

Lord, I loves me that Peggle. In fact, I love it even more than I did a couple of weeks ago when I scored it 9/10. I increasingly wish I'd given it 10, if only because our resident misery John Walker would have become so angry about it that we'd have had to kill him.

So, seeing a new game from Popcap, the casual games publisher/developer responsible for Peggle, crop up on Steam excited that growing part of me that's obsessed with brightly-coloured cartoon puzzle games that don't make pensioners cower in fear. Venice Deluxe is its name (if there's one thing to love about Popcap, it's that it suffixes its every game with Deluxe, just because it can), and shooting shapes is its game.

The Independent Gaming Source regularly blogs come interesting 'indie' material, but this Japanese Flash game based around aristocratic feminine face slapping is one of the finest referrals so far.

Spent last week reviewing UFO: Extraterrestrials for Eurogamer. Ended up being very mildly warm towards it, which was more than I was expecting. Because it's taking from such a well-conceived source - UFO: Enemy Unknown or X-COM: UFO Defence, depending on whether you're in Europe or the US*, it ends up often being highly entertaining because it's such a determined plagiarist. And God knows, everyone would like a decent successor to the Gollops' masterpiece.

I suppose that's one of the most interesting things about it. While true, it's not really fair to paint them as just plagarists. They're more akin to a covers band for a group who've long split. While other people have taken some stuff from X-COM - the UFO: Afterlight/Aftershock/Aftermath series - this is something that's deliberately much more faithful. Even then, it's not good enough. There's a determined mod community around the game who are increasingly altering closer and closer and closer to what they're actually looking for. In most mod communities, there's a clear division between the developers and people who like the game enough to want to mod it... but here, perversely, the fanbase for the game aren't actually the fanbase for the game. They're actually the fanbase of an entirely different game... exactly the same as the developers. They're like the Rabbis in Pi, searching for the name of God by re-arranging the alphabet of whatever.

Of course, it's interesting to wonder whether "A New X-Com" is even achievable. For both sides of the argument, see this debate between a load of journos and Devs over at Quarter to Three.

It seems that Valve are winning at electronic distribution, thanks to PC-pleasing publishers THQ signing up to stick their games on Steam. Having already dragged Eidos on board with Tomb Raiders and Hitmen aplenty, Valve will now be able to provide the lazy with some more of the PC's finest, like Company Of Heroes and, er, Titan Quest. Stalker and Supreme Commander will be arriving shortly too. (Blimey, Company Of Heroes is just $25, which is a bargain.)

The sheer unhindered joy that is Homestar Runner is on a short hiatus at the moment, since one of the Bros. Chaps has gone and had a baby, and apparently that's somehow more important than drawing a Flash cartoon on the internet.

One of the most interesting games to come out of E3 last week was Echochrome.

I've just noticed that my PC Gamer piece on Blacksite has gone up on their C&VG site. This kind of preview is bread and butter for us, but actually this was one of the more interesting game demo events I've been to recently, and not because it situated in the skin-draped depths of Soho.