Sorry this isn’t a more in-depth post, but I’ve run out of time before my holiday is due to start, and I really want to tell you that Gorescript [official site] is brilliant fun.
Found while trawling Steam’s New Release list yesterday, this is a classic-style FPS, but oh so much more deadlier, and presented with some charmingly enormous pixels. Read the rest of this entry »
Do you like guns? Do you like guns that realistically jam on you because you scavenged them in a war-torn Eastern European city and you had no other choice because people were trying to kill you and you had to defend yourself? Well that’s kind of what Escape From Tarkov [official site] is all about.
Last week, some of developers from Russian studio Battlestate Games hopped onto YouTube for their first ever livestream to dig into the atmosphere and complex systems of Escape From Tarkov. The parallels to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and its sequels are pretty obvious, but Escape From Tarkov is aiming to translate all that hardcore shootyness into a hybrid-MMORPG.
RPS Feature Frontin'
The hot potato of gaming, tossed from publisher to publisher, is somehow complete. Homefront: The Revolution [official site] is out today in the US, and then anachronistically, for no bloody sodding reason, delayed for Europe until Friday. (Is there still a shop that even sells PC games?) In development for five long years, can it possibly hold together? The answer for this open-world shooter is an interesting one.
RPS Feature Remastersaurus
Here’s a thing – I’ve never played a Turok game before. Despite living in a late 90s university hovel with the requisite N64, for some reason it was a cartridge I never put in. And I haven’t caught up since. So seeing Night Dive’s remastering of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter [official site] was out, it made sense to fill that rather large gap in my knowledge. Gosh, Turok’s rather good, isn’t it?
P.A.M.E.L.A. [official site], the upcoming sci-fi survival horror FPS from Canadian studio NVYVE, has been Greenlit after reaching the number one spot just two days after launching on Steam Greenlight. When we last visited P.A.M.E.L.A. earlier this year, information was thin on the ground. A whole lot more has been dropped since, including a trailer, and it looks equally as pretty as it does terrifying. Take a peek:
RPS Feature The Fallout
There is a peculiar irony to the impression people have of gaming. When “videogames” are lazily portrayed in the wider world, they inevitably show a soldier being shot through a gun scope. Hell, even within the highest enclave walls, people are wont to dismiss the poor taste of others by snarking, “They’d probably like it if it had a gun floating at the bottom of the screen.” The first-person shooter is the most emblematic genre of gaming, and yet it’s now the most under-served, under-developed, and rarest of mainstream releases. There are barely any new non-indie FPS games. And it’s all Half-Life’s fault.
Corporation, a shooter the world outside Europe came to know as Cyber-Cop, was one of the first FPS games in the modern sense and, though it’s nowadays quite a chore to play through, it still looks lovely. Its flat shaded environments still work beautifully and also happen to be what stealth-’em-up Adams Drive 32 instantly reminded me of.
RPS Feature A completely reasonable reaction
Over the holidays I started playing Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare multiplayer. After initially mistaking it for a “shooting people in the back” simulator wherein I had accidentally signed up to play the exciting role of “sole target” I started to pick into it a bit further, upping my KD ratio and experimenting with a bunch of the loadout perks and options. I think an 8 kill streak is my current most impressive achievement and I’m kind of in love with my Steel Bite variation on the ARX-160. It makes me feel like a weaponised Pat Butcher.
But another thing I started to pick into at the same time was my own behaviour when starting any new multiplayer FPS game – hi Titanfall, Counter-Strike, CoD… I get exceedingly grumpy for about the first 10 hours. It’s for this reason I prefer to grapple with multiplayer in a quiet room where people who think I’m a reasonable member of society can’t hear me wailing about the unfairness of it all, swearing about IMPOSSIBLE odds and declaring that I never liked videogames anyway and that I’m going to go and have a calming walk (all the while queuing for another round).
With that in mind, here are the five stages of an FPS multiplayer experience*:
You’d think that creating a retro FPS in the vein of Wolfenstein seems like a simple thing to pull off, what with the power of today’s tools and all the game design experience of the past 20 years. Yet ESC Ape is one of the select few first-person shooters of this type worthy of your attention.
You may have not noticed it, but I try to keep the Freeware Garden as varied as possible. No, really, and the fact that I haven’t mentioned any multiplayer FPS games yet has been completely coincidental and not at all the result of my being hysterically bored of anything even vaguely resembling Quake.
Besides, here’s the lovely, lovely S.W.A.P.. The S.W.A.P. is very much an FPS, though refreshingly one that doesn’t come with a shoot-to-kill mechanic. Yes, it’s a pacifist’s dream. Should you actually click your left mouse button when an opponent is in sight, you’ll simply exchange bodies.
I’ve been harboring a desire to return to Red Orchestra 2 for a month now, but perhaps I might be derailed for duty on another muddy frontline. Verdun is a multiplayer first-person shooter set in World War 1, about trench warfare, slowly shifting frontlines and squad tactics. It’s currently in alpha, and there’s a new trailer showing the game’s impressive progress below.
As more space games get announced, we’re heading towards a point at which every potential role and fantasy from Star Wars is playable as a game, whether under the official brand or not. Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous let you be Han Solo. EVE: Valkyrie lets you be Luke Skywalker. Now Flagship might let you be Admiral Ackbar. It’s a first-person space RTS in which you stand on the bridge of a space ship, use a tablescreen to command your fleet, and then watch the resulting battle play out through your space windows.
There’s a trailer below and it’ll make your eyes open wide. And then move around to the side of your head like some sort of fishman.
RPS Feature Dreaded Wheat
If you haven’t read my thoughts on the first three hours of Call Of Duty: Ghosts, it’s worth looking through those first. But now the single player campaign is finished, here’s wot I think:
Betrayer, which I’m sure only came into existence about nine minutes ago, is already available to play on Steam. Albeit an alpha version, with plans to change based on feedback. Sorry, what’s Betrayer? It’s only a new FPS from the people behind No One Lives Forever and FEAR.
I do love it when a press release attempts to sell a slip as a piece of news. Deadfall Adventures’ release date was so very much set for July 30th that its own website still hasn’t shaken the belief. Today it announces it’s “confirmed for September 27th release”. Phew, confirmed! Anyway, that peculiarly needless griping aside, the real news is that they’ve announced a co-op mode for the third-person actioner.
RPS Feature an elaborate shooting
While it’s the fourth game in the Call Of Juarez series, Gunslinger is not directly connected to its preceding brethren. A Western that tells the unreliable memories of cowboy bounty hunter Silas Greaves, through first-person shooting, for a remarkably low £12 pricetag. Should it climb atop a horse for dairy consumption, or might it be the sheriff of this here town? Here’s wot I think:
RPS Feature visor-wearing Donnie Darko-hassler
Remember those first fiercely atmospheric moments of Doom: you peering into the soupy murk, only stark corridors around you, and the echo of what sounds like someone clearing their throat repeatedly, but is actually something that will come to make you tense your muscles and prepare to mash ‘Fire’? I got this feeling when I started up the demo for Sapience, a retro-style FPS with RPG elements by Peter B. Funnell. It’s a sort of tingly feeling you get from your youth, I think.
Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature I've got a bad feeling about this plop.
Of course you remember Aliens, right? Who could forget Danny Glover kicking ass on the Discovery One, Sarah Hamilton shouting, “That’s how they git you. They’re under the goddamned ground!” Ah, the memories. John’s spent the day ploughing through Aliens: Colonial Marines, so he can tell you wot he thinks:
RPS Feature Antibiotic
Cadenza’s six-axis FPS hasn’t taken the easy path. But via its circuitous route Retrovirus is now out on Steam for about £14, and I’ve pew-pewed my way to the very end. With massive improvements since the last time we saw it, just wot will I think?
