Oops. This was intended to be an initial impressions post rather than a Wot I Think, as I didn’t have the time to give Crossworlds enough of a shake for a verdict. Or so I thought, in my guilelessness. This is a King’s Bounty game, though. It’s a strategy-roleplaying mash-up that plum doesn’t care> whether you have time or not. Show it even a hint of your soul and it’ll eat it, with a beaming smile but without any remorse whatsoever.

So here I am, far too many hours later: exhausted, behind on a frightening number of chores, fascinating webgames and half-hearted calls to family members, but merrily game-sated and with my pointy finger of judgement all ready to go. I’ve missed you, Kingy-kins. (more…)

I’ve only had a quick prod at this, but it’s interesting enough to post – and there’s a reason why posting sooner rather than later, as there’s a sorta-time-limit here. Radio 7 have done a two part radio drama, about a pair of siblings discovering that their inheritance is harder to get than you may expect. However, it’s complimented by an audio-lead web-adventure . The game concentrates on one brother’s perspective. The radio play concentrates on the other. By experiencing them all, you’ll get more of the picture. The game’s produced by DESQ, and is graphically simple and based around simple adventure-style interaction (Finding items, examining stuff, combining, etc), but with pretty neat audio. While the game’s online indefinitely, the radio play is only on the iPlayer service – which means the first part isn’t there any more and the second one only has another five days on its clock. So get a move on, eh? Fascinating to see the BBC trying something that’s as determinedly cross-media as this. Go play here or listen here.

EDIT: However, the play will be broadcast again on the 17th and 24th of September, meaning that it’ll be back on Iplayer for a week then.

Jim posted about Ship Simulator Extremes last week. What could make us post about it again? The fact it’s out now and available to buy from digital-distributor places would be the obvious one, but that would make far too much sense. No, I was attracted by Paradox releasing a press release about the Tourist campaign – complete with trailer. 13 missions where you take a luxury cruiser “on an eventful cruise around the world”. It doesn’t get much better than that, except for enormous orgasms. You’ll find the trailer below, along with another one explaining the Greenpeace Campaign missions… (more…)

If I said that today Cyanide reveal the Blood Bowl Khemri, would you be excited? If you don’t know the Khemri are, no, you wouldn’t. They’re Egyptian skeletons and mummies and shit! Them, playing a hyper-violent American-Football-esque game? That’s probably worth money, and that’s exactly what they’re up to in the forthcoming Blood Bowl: Legendary edition. You can go and see their screenshots here. Regular readers may wonder why we regularly post links to just screenshots of Blood Bowl when we don’t do it for anyone else. Well, because Cyanide do awesome screenshots, frankly. TRY HARDER, DEVS. Also, we’re foolishly enamoured with Blood Bowl, obv. I also notice the Amazons have been unveiled since the last time we posted about the Legendary edition. It’s probably lucky we didn’t post about them, as we’d have to go on another one of our BOOB CRITICISM rampages, probably saying something about how historically Amazons had one boob except the Amazons didn’t exist and the evidence on their one-boobosity is conflicted anyway so that’s that sketch knackered then. Er… Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition will be released before Chrimble.

RPS chum RoBurky has been making games with his comrades in righteousness from Cambridge’s Anglia Ruskin University in the UK. Having had a good old waggle of their programming sticks for a Gamejam earlier this year they made Destroy The Brain. In it you play an invincible sliding tank thing that must destroy the brain of a creepy space station contraption. You can play it here, via Unity plugin. You can also read about it on Rob’s blog. Trailer below, but you might as well just play it, to be honest. (more…)

We absolutely haven’t posted enough about World Of Tanks, the free tank-battling game. Sorry about that. It’s in beta at the moment, and is just about to launch into another round of testing after 70,000 people played in the first stage. I’ve not really spent enough time with it to feel confident of writing a preview, but the few hours I’ve had in the belly of the beast have been great. The combat and tank-equipping is detailed enough and deep enough to be compelling, but I’m yet to really get a handle on the wider world-conquering stuff, or the way in which you level up through the tiers of tanks. It’s seems interesting, and deserves more time. Anyway, you can probably have a gander at it for yourself, as the beta is taking another round of sign-ups just here.

It’s not all glitz in the games industry. Sometimes, no matter how many times you ask “Do you know who I am?” in however many funny accents, you still won’t get an exclusive interview. My Guild Wars 2 interview with Global Brand Manager Chris Lye and Designer Jeff Grubb ended up being a round table affair, with a German guy, a German girl and a Russian guy. But since they were all asking smart questions, I’ve included their questions too. Ha!

Feast your eyes and brain on my four interviews for the price of one> after the jump. (more…)

We’re getting more excited about Company Of Heroes Online by the day. The game is closed beta at the moment, and we’re expecting to have some of our own impressions of the game up here before it hits later in September. For a taste of why we’re excited head below. This recent trailer details a bunch of the units available to Allied forces and it’s really splendidly produced. Go take a look.

(There really is some stuff to be said about the quality of free-to-play stuff coming out this year, but that’s for another article.) (more…)

You know what – you’re wrong about hidden object games. Sure, there’s an awful lot of crappy ones, and sure, people who don’t like hardcore turn-based strategy are happy to play them, but stop judging. They’re calming fun, and the best of the bunch are the Mystery P.I. series, made by SpinTop Games. There’s a new one out (which is a bit like saying, “There’s a Tuesday this week”) called Stolen In San Francisco, and you can download a demo from here. And then you’ll want to play it for more than the allowed hour, and then you’ll realise I was right. So there. I recommend putting on a favourite podcast in the background as you play, and then just relaxing – no one’s looking, no one is right to judge.

“What makes it fun is playing it.” This is the rather excellent reply from a Blue Castle developer talking about Dead Rising 2. In the trailer below you can see an awful lot of footage of the game, but also find out the story behind it all. The story of ex-motocross champion Chuck Greene, and his desperate fight against a zombie outbreak in Fortune City, motivated by attempting to find the drug Zombrex to keep his young daughter alive.

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