I love a spin-off. Angel? Great stuff! Count Duckula? The Better Call Saul of cartoons. Kourtney and Khlo Take Miami? Take me, I m yours! I could go on and on cutting-and-pasting from this Wikipedia page, but I ll get to the point. Games also have spin-offs. Often they ll be forgotten about. Sometimes they re even disowned. On a few occasions, they ll take on a life of their own and exist apart from the game that spawned them, never calling, never visiting, only sending a multipack Christmas card. Below are a few stories of surprising spin-offs. The 2D Half-Life 2, the Fortnite that failed, the single-player Counter-Strike that no-one asked for, and more.

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GameSpy, a relic from times long before the modern Internet – or indeed, games and spies – existed is closing down. This on its own is not surprising as the multiplayer service is, by modern standards, buggy and kind of a joke, but it leaves a startling number of games with their e-wings clipped and their online-heaving hams strung> in its wake. How many, you ask? Well, Reddit’s /r/Games board compiled a massive list, and the results aren’t pretty.

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Bohemia are well known as the creators of the deep and deeply shonky military sim Arma and its zombie-infested survival spin-off DayZ. They’re moderately known as the creators of turn-based spinoff Arma Tactics and commercial helicopter sim Take On Helicopters. They’re not at all known as the developers of XCOM-homage UFO: Afterlight and Alpha Prime, which is some sort of videogame.

Yet you’ll find all of the above in this week’s Humble Weekly sale, the Bohemia Humble Bundle. (more…)

If, like me, you are a kind of cyborg, you might recall that one of Arma’s keenest community leaders, Andrew ‘Dslyecxi’ Gluck, has been overseeing some of the trailers for the alpha of Arma 3. That’s true now that the game has entered beta, too. His latest work is SITREP (pronounced as if you are giving orders over the noise of gunfire) which covers some ground we’ve already seen – the clever simulatory embellishments of Arma 3 – as well as explaining what that long alpha thing was all about. The idea of it all, I believe, is to entice you into the beta, via their store.

Yes. (more…)

“But Craig”, you’re probably saying to your monitor. “I totes remember insects casting shadows in Arma 2. Like seriously.” To that I say: “That’s cool. Let’s talk.”

This was supposed to be a post about the wonders of Arma 3′s new screenshot mode, splendidly named the Splendid Camera. It still is. Splendid Camera, I shall always call it by its full name, is one of those additions that shows you how deeply into the community’s den that Bohemia are willing to burrow to make people happy. In this case it’s a function that’s specifically designed to allow players to fly around the game, slow time, remove the HUD, and even change exposure and focus settings, just so they can take nice screenshots. That is how I discovered that both Arma 2 and Arma 3 had insects that cast shadows. (more…)

Hello, readers. I am alone in the RPS forbidden chatroom of mystery, which means that I am in charge of RPS until someone comes and takes it away from me. They actually forgot I was here and took Good Friday off without telling me! I am just> a freelancer. So today we’ll have none of the usual nonsense that passes for RPS posts these days. News? Schmews! Faetures? I can’t even spell the word. GDC? I just checked and it doesn’t mean “Gloriously Decadent Chips”, so I don’t know why John and Jim are there. My autonomy means I get to do stuff like this. ArmA 3′s creative director pointed me towards a lovely ArmA 2 mod. An inquisitive six year-old’s first ArmA 2 addon. In the middle of all the horribly detailed war bastards that are usually built for the game, the wee boy made a table. Being a huge sap, I asked for more screenshots and details. They are EXCLUSIVE and below. (more…)

The scenario: you have the Arma 3 Alpha and you’ve exhausted the stock missions the game comes with. You’re also rubbish with the editor, and you don’t live with someone Arma Arm Armasson, who can show you what to do with it. Don’t worry. There’s no such person, so you’re not missing out on his sage wisdom. And Arma 3 is pretty easy to have fun with. Here’s what people have been up to (more…)

There are quite a few communities bustling away in the General Sociability forum, and some of those have produced of videos of their antics. I’ve embedded just a few of those below. There are many more, and I am sure others still I haven’t seen.

Are you> doing video stuff with the RPS community? Link your work/play in the comments! (more…)