The Tripwire guys do like a bit of seasonal celebration in their Killing Floor. This year they’re gifting us with “the Winter Weapon Pack, with seven brand new weapons complete with new achievements, free to everyone who owns the game” but there’s also an entirely new level, the Ice Cave, which you can check out for free, even if you do not own the game, thanks the free weekend on the Steam from Thursday 8th to Sunday 11th December. There’s other exciting new DLC, too, such as the Steampunk pack, which lets you dress like one of those digital distribution punks, I think. Hmm.

No, this storm is nothing to do with disgruntled gamers, and everything to do with with the Pacific rim-based expansion pack coming for Red Orchestra 2, which we have previously mentioned on a couple of occasions. 1c have, for some reason, released the first trailer, which you can see below. It’s looking a lot like Red Orchestra 2, only with more sunshine, more shattered palm trees, and 100% more US Army vs Japanese military. The expansion is currently dated for “2012″, which according to my calendar is next year. (more…)

Tripwire Interactive have released a large statement on the “the state of the game” for Red Orchestra 2, a statement which you can read in full below. It addresses both the commercial success of the game and the technical failures in the opening weeks. The company admit that: “To put it bluntly, the game had a rough launch. We’ve been working diligently since launch to get these issues sorted and have made great progress fixing issues with matchmaking, VOIP, and stability as well as improving performance.”

The company claim to have addressed most of the issues, and will now be doing a stats reset due to problems with how people were earning stats and achievements. Hopefully things will be smoother sailing from here. We’ve requested an interview with Tripwire to talk about some of these issues and future prospects for the game. (more…)

Last week’s launch of Red Orchestra 2: Heroes Of Stalingrad was a troubled one. With a seemingly overwhelming number of players reporting bugs and performance issues, it stumbled into commercial release still reeling from the flashbangs of development. Can Tripwire’s brutal shooter sequel get past this quagmire of problems and snatch victory from the jaws of crashbugs? Here’s Wot I Think.> (more…)

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad is now a game you can play. If you buy it. Which you now can. This is the standard of journalism you get from me after 1am. Far better to ignore me and watch the launch trailer below.

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Do you want to have a crack at Killing Floor‘s frightening-looking Summer Thing but are too poor/miserly to buy the game? Well then no problem> – at least for fifteen of you – because Tripwire have sent us some keys to give away. Hooray! What you need to do is email us at this address with the reason why you are the best candidate for entering a nightmare freakshow armed with dangerous firearms. Enter by Midday UK time on Friday or LOSE OUT.

Please make sure to read this, it’s the competition rules thing. Oh and I am just setting up an RPS Killing Floor server. Details to follow.

Killing Floor server: 85.236.101.3:7757, password: rumpus

The guys at Tripwire have sent word that they’re going to be doing another Killing Floor novelty map event, like they did for last Christmas, only this time it’s a “Summer Sideshow”. What that means is they’ve poured their mapping talents into creating a grotesque freakshow, complete with ‘orrible circus variants of Killing Floor’s hideous mutants, and new unlockables and achievements. You can check them out in the trailer below. More details on the site.

It’ll be arriving on Steam, and the event will from June 30th to July 22nd. (Also I recall Killing Floor being a popular option for an RPS server. Any +1s to that?)
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Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad – first it had a name, then it had some screenshots, then it had some videos and now it has a release date. And so the cosmic ballet continues. Tripwire’s next commercial take on the masterfully dour World War 2 mod-gone-pro has been in the offing for a good few years, but now? Now it’s only months away. To war, gentlemen. Well, nearly.
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You know Red Orchestra, the supremely bleak multiplayer FPS set on the Eastern front of WW2? Darkest Hour is a similarly dark and moody mod for it which hefts out RO’s black, oily heart and transplants it into the Western Front. As well as adding new maps, new weapons and vehicles, its features include “Airborne drops… bullet suppression and supersonic cracks”. The horror.

This weekend Darkest Hour hit version 5.0, adding even more maps, vehicles and weapons (including mortars and mortar teams), as well as plenty of uplifting new features like “Players now drop their weapon when they suffer falling damage,” “Players now fall over when shot in the legs,” and “Players can catch fire from nearby exploding vehicles and world fires”. THE HORROR. Trailer and mammoth changelog after the jump.
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Tripwire’s lo-fi mining game, Dwarfs!?, has arrived on Steam. It has a demo, and harkens backs to games like Diggers and other 2D tunnelers. It might not look like much from that screenshot there, but it seems to escalate pretty spectacularly, and also to have its heart in the right place. It manges to reference both Dwarf Fortress and> Lemmings in a single promotional blurb. If it really is the arcade version of Dwarf Fortress then I suspect the internet is beginning to eat itself, but that’s probably inevitable anyway. Eventually we’ll just end up with some much reciprocity that the internet will turn inside out and vanish in a puff of meme.

Also, I don’t trust anyone who says they don’t like digging. Or mining. We all like it>. Or else. Trailer below.
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