Just Cause 2‘s weapons felt weedy and its missions were mostly repetitive and forgettable. It doesn’t matter. I’ve spent fifty hours floating across the tropical islands of Panau with an infinite supply of parachutes, watching the sun set behind snowy mountains. I’ve flown hot air balloons to mysterious, stormy islands, crashed airliners into the ocean just because I could, and tethered more hapless guards to speeding boats than I can remember.

I’ve just spent the last few days doing all those things in the Just Cause 2 Multiplayer mod, which is now downloadable via a standalone executable in Steam. Let me tell you what (but not wot) I think. (more…)

Hello there. Things have sounded a little unhappy at Hitman and Kane & Lynch devs IO Interactive for a while now, in the wake of 2012′s Hitman: Subtitle achieving neither the acclaim or the spondoolies it was hoped to. Last year, the Square Enix-owned Danish studio saw half its workforce removed from their jobs, along with claims that the remainder would get to do nothing but Hitman games. Yesterday, reports circulated that the Next Jennifer Hitman game had been quietly garotted. That claim, despite being made on a Square Enix Montreal senior game designer’s LinkedIn profile, has now been denied. (more…)

Graham mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, but since the release is today and it’s unlikely to be particularly visible for long on Steam, I though it best to draw attention to it again. Just Cause 2′s multiplayer mod is one of the crazier alterations to a game I’ve ever seen, turning the enjoyably daft open world game into a massive landscape of impossible stunts and unlikely vehicle bonding. Supporting hundreds of players, most with the single objective of causing as much hilarity and carnage as possible, it’s akin to a drunken superhero flashmob invading Far Cry 3 and turning the island into the world’s most expensive and ludicrous circus. The video below tells you everything you need to know.

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Just Cause 2 never gets its due. The third-person, open world shooter was hamstrung by mediocre missions, but it was also vast, beautiful and joyfully silly. It’s a game where you could do things like tether a plane to a hot air balloon and then surf atop the unguided plane as it loops around and around. It’s a game where you could fly using a parachute and a grappling hook, and where mods made that grappling hook infinitely strong, infinitely re-usable, and near-infinite in length.

The Just Cause 2 MP mod has been working on bringing the lonely madness beyond the realms of those missions. I’ve played it, it’s great, and now it’s coming to Steam. (more…)

Update: done, and suitably shamed. Videos below.

I have never played Thief: The Dark Project.

Please stop hitting me.

(I have played Thief 3, at least).

In about half an hour, I’m going to play it at last. Would you like to watch? Join me, live-ish. (more…)

The next bright, gold sun in the Deus Ex Universe might be on the way, but that doesn’t mean we’ve seen all Deus Ex: Human Revolution has to offer just yet. There’s more stuff – some of which was cut. By directors>. But now it’s back, and some of it is entirely new. Also, Eidos Montreal is claiming that boss fights are now less awful. Is it an honest-to-goodness miracle or merely hyper-sophisticated science in the trench-coat-clad guise of wizardry? We’ll probably never know. But I can say this much with certainty: Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director’s Cut is just around the corner, and it’s actually quite cheap – especially if you already own the vanilla version of HR.

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Against all odds, Deus Ex: Human Revolution was marvelous. It wasn’t quite> a perfect continuation of the original’s legendary legacy (and those boss fights were utterly atrocious), but it let us dissect a rich and, um, very gold cyberpunk world with a surgeon’s belt of clever tech toys. Also vents. Just the right number of vents. But what’s next? Well, Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Director’s Cut is coming out on October 22nd, but that’s just tying up some loose ends. Deus Ex: Universe, however, is the future, and it promises to be quite grand in scope indeed.

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Following the glorious excesses of Just Cause 2, where a man can dangle a jeep from a helicopter and swing it like an explosive pendulum of doom into a dictator’s face, even Mad Max can seem a bit ordinary. I watched the trailer below feeling that Avalanche might have had their wings clipped a little. That said, it’s exactly what you’d expect: big open world, full of vehicular violence and punches. Max’s double-barreled shotgun showers everyone in buckshot and fire, and cars flip at the slightest nudge. He also appears to have an awesome headbutt. (more…)

After the gaming industry went on a dubstep-and-Dew-fueled vacation to E3 last week, it’s now back to business as usual. By “business,” I of course mean layoffs, and goodness gracious, figurative business is booming. However, literal business – the part where people make money – isn’t faring so well because, well, layoffs. This time, the sobering specter took its scythe to Hitman developer IO Interactive, reducing its workforce by “almost half”. Yeesh. The plan to get things back on track? Er, make more Hitman. Which is to say, make nothing but Hitman.

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The makers of sandbox destruction classic Just Cause 2 + the quintessential movie wasteland setting? Yes please! Er, just one thing… Could you maybe not involve World’s Worst Human Being^TM Mel Gibson? It’d kind of put a downer on things. (more…)