RPS Feature That's Where International Waters Begin
Petroglyph and Trion Worlds are close to releasing End Of Nations, and they are hoping that it will change things for the MMORTS genre. Seeing the game at Gamescom has given us some clues as to whether they are going to realise that dream.
Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Riot Games Interview
At GamesCom we had a talk with producer Travis George and designer Ryan Scott from League of Legends. Dan Griliopoulos was left feeling like the world’s biggest doofus, for not having played their game and for having fallen behind on the special language employed in competitive gaming.
Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature With Playable Dog
Roving reporter Dan Griliopoulos is driving home from GamesCom, but he turned the wrong way at the Baltic. Today he’s passing through Belgium.
Belgium! Where the only heroes are fictional! Hercule Poirot, Tintin and… The Smurfs? Anyway, it’s easy to sneer at Tintin; the plucky Belgian journalist went through an odd inception, passing quickly through the same facist, colonialist and racist phase as much literature of the 1930s. (Tintin in the Congo is essential reading if you want to understand why your great-grandparents in all probability shared these traits). But his adventures were always Jolly Good fun, in that way that inter-war kids stuff could be; all villainous millionaires and smugglers, where no-one who mattered was ever hurt except by fisticuffs, and the Cluedo-esque cast retired to Marlinspike Manor after an adventure to have their lugholes rent asunder by Bianca Castafiore’s rendition of the Jewel Song from Faust. When I was a kid, he was up there with Asterix and, um, Johnny Alpha. Apparently, Simon Pegg loved him as much as I did, because they’re making a film. And John Walker’s beloved Ubisoft have the rights to the tie-in!
Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature A Spot Of Skiing
Roving reporter Dan Griliopoulos has left Alec in Cologne and is heading deeper into Europe, writing up what the best of GamesCom as he goes. Next up is Hi-Rez Studios’ Tribes reboot, Ascend.
Switzerland may have been condemned memorably by Orson Welles as having “five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock”, but (aside from the cuckoo clock actually being a German invention – Pedant Ed) these days the most vertical of European countries is better know for its winter sports. As we rattle through its tunnels and stare up at its mountains, though, I’m thinking of a very different kind of skiing; I look at the 80 degree slopes of the Stelvio pass and think “you’d pick up so much speed on that and then you could jetpack off that glacier and…”
Read the rest of this entry »
We were pretty gosh-darned excited when we learned that excellent trade and building series Anno was going to continue its exploits in the near future, but the glimpses of futuristic island cities were only half of it: the full game of Anno 2070 will contain underwater colonies, too. This game is all about painting a portrait of a (frankly fairly likely) near-future of scarce resources and adaptable strategies towards surviving in a changed world. You’ll be asked to choose between “industrial power” and “renewable energy” routes, and deal with the trade-offs that each of them are forced to make.
No precise release date for this as yet, as Ubisoft are still quoting “Winter”. I’m hoping to find out a bit more soon, as it’s the Ubisoft game I’m most interested in right now.
Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier in the week we revealed that NCSoft will be publishing Carbine’s space MMO, Wildstar, and Alec delivered his impressions on that. Now eight minutes of footage has appeared (below), and holy crap there is a lot in that eight minutes: the player-character starting out getting revived by an NPC, exploring a valley and dodging avalanches, setting up and using bits of equipment, fighting some kind of space yeti, and appearance and destruction of some awesome spacecraft thing. The visual references are clear, and it’s certainly an MMO in the classic sense, but with some surprises. It does look like it might be entertaining.
Read the rest of this entry »
Salem – the forthcoming free-to-play crafting MMO from Paradox – has teased us with its first teaser, which you can see below. It’s apparently a taste that’s just getting the essence of the game across, and in that regard looks pretty interesting, especially when you consider the feature list: open PvP combat with perma-death, crafting and building as core mechanics, as well as being free. Now we can add “Being Cute” and “Being Spooky” to that list. I’ve also reposted the video of the developers talking about their idea for the game, so you can refresh your thoughts on it, because I think Salem could be genuinely interesting.
Read the rest of this entry »
We saw the Gamescom trailer from forthcoming MMORTS End Of Nation last week (although reposted below), but there’s also a piece by Petroglyph talking about the metagame (also below) – which is the whole conquering-the-world thing that the game has going on. They talk about how you can deploy anywhere on the map to help friends out in the their conquests, and talk a bit about how that wider conflict will play out. We also learned last week that the game will indeed be free-to-play and so if Dan’s message about the game from Gamescom (which read simply “strong”) is to be believed, then we might be in for a cheap treat of RTS persistence.
Read the rest of this entry »
If you want to see the demonstration that was shown to journalists at Gamescom over the past couple of days then you need look no further than the crypt in the foundations beneath this post. Nine (count ’em!) minutes of the next Assassin’s Creed game in action. There is snow, sneaking, and some stabbing. It looks lovely, but then I always think that about the AC games, and then I play them and oh.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Gamescom* Planetside 2 trailer is below. There is SOMETHING familiar about it. It doesn’t show much of the new bases, or more than a couple of vehicles, sadly. Just a lot of pew-pew sidearm action. That said, there’s plenty to suggest that this is going to be very like the original, with the tower under siege, a torrent of gunfire and a flight of reavers to finish things off. There are a few glimpses of familiar weapons, too. Familiar indeed.
Read the rest of this entry »
It’s tough to make Paradox’s glacial but intricate historical strategies look interesting in a trailer, but those plucky chaps have had a go for their Gamescom flag-waving attempt. Crusader Kings II, which puts you at the controls of a medieval European dynasty, is really all about the menus, and the trailer doesn’t deny that, but it does editorialise a bit and try to show how the game is telling the story of the 1066 Norman invasion. It doesn’t quite go for the big finish, but that’s history. The game is still a way off, too, as it’s due early 2012.
Right, so anyway, I’ve actually run out of trailer reblogging juice today, so this will have to be the last one, ‘lest my glands need replacing. I’ve got Red Orchestra 2 and Trackmania 2 betas to wrestle with, too. So serious business ahead, indeed.
Read the rest of this entry »
This looks a bit lovely. Frozenbyte have joined in on the “Let’s put out a new video for Gamescom” party, and have got a lush new trailer with a first proper look at their Trine sequel, which is hopefully due some time next month. Have a good old gaze at this: Read the rest of this entry »
Planetside 2’s developers were apparently abroad at Gamescom 2011, and our own sinister agents arranged a furtive rendezvous for discussion of the game. We’ll report back on what happened there soon. Meanwhile some images have escaped, and I’ve posted them in a little gallery for you to see, below. Click for full size, obviously.
Read the rest of this entry »
EA have been busy at Gamescom. Here they are showing what it looks like when a team of eight players go on a mission to stop a dangerous bloke escaping a prison, in Bioware’s upcoming space-friends MMO, The Old Republic. Here’s four minutes of unedited (but likely heavily rehearsed) in game footage:
Read the rest of this entry »
Let’s kick off the day with a fresh look at Saints Row: The Third. There’s not a huge dose of the series’ trademark silliness on display here, but I suppose they’ve got to try and sell the game to stern-faced grumpy gamers, without a taste for the absurd, too. I do enjoy how the camera wobbles during the fisticuffs, and I’m looking forwards to having a lot of fun in that VTOL plane. Trailer go: Read the rest of this entry »
These Assassin’s Creed games are pretty popular huh? I’ve never got on with them particularly well to be honest, and as (to my knowledge) the only games journo out there who actually was an assassin in a past life, I think my opinion counts double. Still, who knows, perhaps Assassin’s Creed 4 (if they want me to stop coming up with silly abbreviations they should revert to numbers) could be the one that wins my affections. Certainly this latest trailer has got oodles of nicely choreographed man-stabbing, and what look like a few new ways to get from A to B. Here’s Ezio & Altair doing what they do: Read the rest of this entry »
They’re just showing off! Stop showing off, Arenanet. No one likes a show off, ESPECIALLY when they’re pretty. As if the PvE action stuff wasn’t showy enough, the flyovers of intricately produced cities and other superlative-stretching environmental features are just too much. And then that dude totally decks a centaur… and what is that robot thing?!
Really, everyone’s impressed, you can go be humble in the corner now. Christ.
Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature By Any Other Name, Not So Sweet
Apparently, Paradox CEO Fred Wester’s dream game is set…in Staffordshire, England. Or so you’d think from the very limited CGI trailer we’ve just been shown at GamesCom, which intones “Staffordshire, 1471” at its beginning and shows a Very Serious armour-clad Lord scowling as his horse climbs through a wood, scowling when he sees a castle under siege, and scowling as he raises his sword and rides away. He probably scowled when his first child was born. Formerly “Project Postman”, this is Paradox’s big mystery game: a roaming medieval melee combat game, now revealed as War Of The Roses.
Read the rest of this entry »
There have been all sorts of horror games over the years, including plenty that made no sense at all, but never have I seen one that lets you play as the archetypal “creepy child” from various works of horror fiction. An oversight, perhaps. It’s all to change come “Q4 2011”, however, as Lucius sees you playing as the son of the devil, given the task to kill all the residents of a mansion without letting anyone guess that you are responsible. Interesting concept right? From the looks of things it’s taking a leaf or two out of Agent 47’s notebook, and has nods to The Exorcist and The Shining in this sinister trailer from Gamescom:
Read the rest of this entry »
Remember yesterday’s teaser for Prototype 2? Well here’s the trailer it was teasing, and it’s a bit of a disappointment for me. I was hoping to see some gameplay footage to compare and contrast with the original, but it looks like Activision are focussing solely on the story with this trailer. Still, I always thought the first Prototype had quite slick cut-scenes, and from the looks of this trailer, that’s set to continue with the sequel. There are some heavily edited snippets of in game footage included too I suppose, so it’s worth a watch for that. Oh, trailers… Read the rest of this entry »
