Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Sundays are for waking up the heart of ancient Oxford, having sucked the knowledge out of thirty PhD students the night before, and leaving them useless husks as you grow only more powerful. Also, it is for compiling internet lists of useful reading material on the important topic of computer games! Hooray!

• Over on Eurogamer Mr Cobbett asks why the games industry is afraid of failure: “It says something about modern games that BioShock Infinite has been able to make headlines by adding a special “1999 Mode” where your in-game decisions will actually matter…. Where normally you’ll be able to jack-of-all-trades your way through most situations, here – supposedly – everything will be a trade-off. n short, it’s being set up as a mode that’s not afraid to let you fail – and that’s practically unheard of these days.”

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The Internet’s Leigh Alexander gave us her take on visual novel, Katawa Shoujo.

It’s with a mix of amusement and chagrin I admit my career as a game journalist might well have never taken off if it weren’t for the erotic visual novel genre. Some of my earliest writing explored the “weirdest” games I could find – bunny girl dating sims, teenage girl “training/raising” games, brutally sexual supernatural murder mysteries, and stuff like that, and I think my work was recognized fairly early on in my development as a writer just because I was pouring so many words onto stuff no one else would touch.

I put “weird” in quotes, by the way, because I actually tasked myself with understanding and explicating them. And when you do that, these games don’t actually seem all that weird. What else would a niche, shut-in audience of otaku want but a gameplay experience that blends anime porn tropes with emotional simulations of human drama – without any possibility of becoming stuck or frustrated, since visual novels are indeed more “story” than “game”? (more…)

So then. I suspect the needle of Minecraft cuteness has swung way too far to the “d’aww” end of the meter with the introduction of tameable, breedable ocelots (which you can see emitting clouds of love-hearts in the video below.) This is a game with zombies and suicide-explosion beasts in! I demand more sinister threat. And I believe that it is only sensible, because horrors lurking outside our castles only make the cute, homely stuff cuter and more homely. Right, minerfolk? (more…)

Whilst we were down in the RPS dungeon, thrashing kobolds for copper pieces, we stumbled upon a group of MMO developers coming the other way through the Underdark. Sitting down by the light of our magic auras, we made a nice cup of elf-leaf and talked to Fernando Paiz, Executive Producer on Dungeons & Dragons Online (married to Kate Paiz, the executive producer on Lord Of The Rings Online) and Adam Mersky, Communications Director of Turbine. These bold adventurers in online gaming had much to report about about DDO’s history, the first DDO expansion, and the mysterious emanations coming from upcoming releases. (more…)

If only you could talk to the monsters. Now that would be something. So, why not ask our resident agony aunt-monster Ian Cacodemon for advice and tips on anything you need help with? Ian awaits your queries on Twitter here or via email here, and will post selected replies on RPS on a semi-regular basis.

This week, Ian offers guidance on chainsaws tidying, magazines, imp-cacodemon relations and dodgy Nigerian investment deals. (more…)

Edit: Nearly forgot! Saint’s Row: The Third for £11.99. Apply coupon “pcgamer20″, registers on Steam. Go get.Here’s your cheap games for this fine weekend. We’ve got games about shooting things, games about telling little men to shoot things, and even games not about shooting things. All bases covered then. For cut priced games pumped into your browser windows around the clock, SavyGamer.co.uk is the website you’re looking for. Bucket go! (more…)

Mr Caldwell has been playing APB Reloaded. We asked him to tell us what he thinks about it. It’s quite the story.

Right, this is the thing… (more…)

Blue notes that Firebase’s exquisite scrolling shooter Orbitron: Revolution is making its way to the PC system for explosions and fun times. There’s no date yet, but the devs boasts that they have the PC version running at 60fps at 1920×1080. That is moderately fast! Like an elite frame-rate making game thing, or something. What? It is early on Saturday. Look: Orbitron: Revolution, which has already appeared on the console boxes for some reason, is a very pretty curved Defender/Uridium sort of thing going on. Those are things we like.

Ludocraft send word that they have opened the shop for Air Buccaneers HD, allowing you to get permanent access to the alpha and all the builds beyond that. They are also following a “benefactor” (ie Kickstarter) model which allows you to contribute more for some additional bonuses and early adopted stuff that won’t be obtainable later on by anyone.

There’s a new version of the alpha up, too. We’ll get an RPS server set up for this next week. Trailer belowdecks! (more…)

Here is where you find download links and a video for a brilliant game that took me just over five minutes to complete. It’s a two-button scenery-dodger in which the scenery is a succession of angry shapes and forward motion is impossible to halt. It’s called The Cat That Got The Milk and I feel like it contains colours I’ve not seen on my monitor for ages. It’s an interactive art gallery of sorts, in the least masturbatory way. If you enjoy the nifty soundtrack, it’s available for free here. The game is free as well. Download for Windows here or for Mac here.

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