Adventure game Syberia 3 [official site] was originally announced in a dark and mysterious year known as 2009 . Following many delays and postponements, it finally came out in Europe today, accompanied by a launch trailer that includes some unimaginably bad voice acting and Hong Kong cinema levels of lip syncing. And although all that is probably a result of developer Micro ds localising it from their original French, I am certain the English trailer still qualifies as a tragic comedy. … [visit site to read more]

The saga of Kate Walker and Syberia 3 [official site] continues in a not-great but not wholly surprising way. Six years after it was originally due to launch, and two months before its latest release date, the pointy ‘n’ clicky adventure game is delayed once more. French studio Micro ds want more time to make it good, which is fair enough. Syberia 3 is now due in 2017, some time before April.

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If you use Google’s web browser Chrome, you might notice that Unity games embedded in web pages no longer work as of the latest update. As they’ve planned to since 2013, Google have disabled support for the way the Unity plugin works. Unity 5 does support WebGL, which works without plugins, but for now that’ll leave a whole load of browser games not working. You can re-enable support temporarily, if you don’t mind digging in settings, or simply use a different browser.

It’s been a while since I had to fire up another browser to visit certain websites that wouldn’t work properly in mine. It’s like the browser wars all over again!

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Possibly important proviso: I haven’t played beyond the introductory section of Future Wars since the 90s. There is every chance that it is diabolical. In fact, I can recall that certain sections of it were diabolical even at the time. More importantly though, I can recall it being strange, ambitious, stylish and unpredictable. It’s a fascinating historical footnote, if nothing else. … [visit site to read more]

The best thing about space is that it’s real. It may or may not be filled with aliens and warring spaceships, but the setting, the background, is actually there! All those galaxies – that’s not pretend from out of a book. As much as you may doubt me, they’re really all up there (and down, and some on the left too. We are of course on the far right of space). Space is the setting chosen for Stellar Impact, the intergalactic strategalatic DOTA-ish multiplayer, and despite our reviewing it in January, it’s out today.

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Missed this somehow when it came it appeared a couple of days ago, but it’s worth a look for anyone using Chrome as their browser: Carbon Games have release AirMech for free, here. It’s sort of RTS/tower defence/shoot ‘em up with a transforming robot, and it can even be played co-operatively or competitively with others. It’s fast paced and looks lovely with its retro pixel art. Pretty impressive for a browser game, I would say.

OK, Google’s Chrome browser just officially became scary/magnificent. It’s been able to run a few games – like Plants vs Zombies – in a browser window for a while now, but the excellent Bastion has just been added, marking a serious step up in what’s technologically possible. The game starts playing in less than a minute of clicking the button to add it, it looks just like the standard version as far as I can tell, runs smoothly and scales to your screen/window size. Oh, and you can play a free demo then pay to unlock the full thing right away if you like. (more…)

Have you encountered a Wasteland Angel? It’s a new indie action game that now has a demo coming down from heaven, which teaches you an important life lesson, and then slowly walks away toward the horizon. Or indeed lets you frantically zoom a car around, defending towns from enemy invading automobiles. I’ve no idea what the demo includes, because for some reason Steam is refusing to let me download it. However, I’ve been playing the real thing, and I can copy the information from this here press release! Ladies and gentlemen: games journalism.

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Here’s an oddball for you. Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes is a tactical RPG put together by a four-man team who describe their game as “ironic”. The plot follows a young wannabe hero called Drake who fails the final exam at his military academy only for all of his successful classmates to go off and die in a terrible battle. In the subsequent and deeply awkward quest to save the world, Drake teams whoever he can find, including criminals, the world’s greatest hero (since fallen from grace) and “still the most dangerous of all creatures, whose help they could seek: WOMEN!”

Any takers? There’s a German demo out, but the installer apparently lets you change the language to English. Trailer follows… (more…)