Rock, Paper, Shotgun

You’ve probably never heard of Guild Wars 2 – a plucky little MMO that’s so far failed to draw much attention around the net. You might want to give it a look though. Maybe. They say it does a couple of moderately cool things. And it looks quite nice, if you’re into that.

(more…)

Was this already a known thing? 5th Cell’s absolutely amazing Scribblenauts series is finally seeing a version released on the mothership. No one had told me. The utterly magical platform-game-meets-actual-proper-magic is going to be on PC, as well as Wii U and 3DS, and Scribblenauts: Unlimited going to be using Steamworks to let you share the madness you create.

(more…)

I’ve only just found time to start playing Legend of Grimrock, despite awaiting it eagerly for months. Maybe I’ll manage to finish it before the release of the dungeon editor, although the latest post from Almost Human suggests not.

…we’ve reached internal beta! All the features and functionality is done, now all it needs is just a little bit of polishing and bug fixing and then we can unleash it into the wild. We’re getting close to the finish line, folks!

But will it be possible to create a step sequencer using the editor, turning dungeons into giant drum machines? If only a video could answer that question. If only that video was just below these words.

(more…)

Steam’s light has turned green, which means indie games which are not already available on Valve’s market-ruling online PC gaming store can now petition users to vote for them, in the hope that the eye of benign Sauron will turn to their game and grant it a coveted spot on Steam. I could all too easily hold forth about the pros and cons of the Greenlight system, enthuse about the potential democracy it might mean, muse about whether it’s an attempt to prevent Kickstarter stealing Steam’s thunder, wonder why a company so boundlessly rich can’t just employ a huge team of experts to assess every game submitted to them, why the blue blazes they’d include the troll-gift that is a downvote option, and offer hope that it means a bright new age of bold games finding larger audiences.

But I’m just some shmoe. So, far better to talk to the people Greenlight actually affects – the indie developers who are (or are considering) using it as a way to attain profile+profit for their projects. Specifically, developers who’ve worked on games including Gratuitous Tank Battles, Time Gentlemen Please, Waking Mars, Revenge of the Titans, Kairo, Kenshi, Leave Home, Redshirt and InFlux. In part one of this feature, read on for their thoughts on the joys of Greenlight in concept – but the possible problems in practice. (more…)

Aha, perhaps rather predictable, eh? So predictable, in fact, that when Craig wrote his thoughts about the game down for us, he said: “You feel awfully like you’ve just bought into a free-to-play shooter. On one hand it offers a range customisations for you to trim the fat from the character, or add to it if you want a tougher head to deflect the bullets. There’s an overwhelming number of weapons, body types, and costumes you can tweak. But on the other hand it’s stingy in the way that f2p games are.” But now, with it quietly going free on Steam, the primary element of stingyness, actually having to pay for it, has been removed. That probably doesn’t make it a better game, but hey, at least you can try it for nowt…

It’s always interesting watching a new sim peck its way into the light. This week’s eager egg exiter was Run 8, an indie railroad recreation short on variety but long on verisimilitude. Would the intensely tribal train sim community welcome the hatchling or nudge it from the nest? Installed in the Flare Path hide, a Nikon fieldscope and copy of Bill Oddie’s Bumper Book of Avian Metaphors at my side, I set about finding out. (more…)

Planetside 2 is in beta. You can sign up here. You should sign up, because it’s brilliant.

I’ve been in there for a week, and with the NDA having dropped, I’ve posted a few thoughts below. (more…)

When companies produce games on a regularly basis – such as a yearly racing franchise – the changes tend to be incremental, rather than revolutionary. What matters, then, are how your new version improves on the last, even if the really big issue is the up to date teams, cars, and so on. That’s precisely what Codemasters attempt to explain in the F1 2012 video below. They’re really focusing on realism for this new game, and by gum it looks good. The weather is going to be so detailed that you’ll have wet and dry conditions on the same track. (more…)

Nuclear Union does look quite a bit like somebody took one slice of Fallout 3 and one slice of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and then made an irradiated sandwich out of them. Holding the post-apocalyptic pastrami together are the binding brains of Men of War developers Best Way. Jim spoke with the team last month to find out about the switch from strategy to RPG and found that the game will have tactical combat, mutants and environmental hazards. At Gamescom I saw a trailer that includes some gameplay and you can now see that same trailer below and you won’t even have to be in a noisy hall the size of an aircraft hangar, unless that’s where you live in which case you should totally apply to be on Grand Designs.

(more…)

Borderlands 2 looks as barking mad as Cujo strapped to a chainsaw-juggling Salvador Dali in zero gravity and the latest video, a seven minute introduction to the game narrated by machinated manly man Sir Hammerlock, is quite deranged. Through all the mischief and mayhem there’s a remarkably decent outline of the game’s actual features, which is actually more surprising than the gun that further weaponises itself by blowing up whenever somebody reloads it. If all game trailers could be this entertaining and informative, I’d be much more inclined to say, ‘oh, look at this’. And that’s precisely what I’m saying right now. Oh, look at this!

(more…)