That was odd. My plan for the afternoon was to download and play Marvel Brothel. Instead I put on the new Alan Partridge, entered a kind of autopilot and ended up downloading and playing historial turn-based strategy game Bronze, of which you can get the demo here.

Despite being the kind of game Alan Partridge might enjoy, Bronze is pretty interesting. The base concept is a kind of enhanced Go- you need to capture as much of the board as possible, and you do this by putting down different developments. Army camps capture all tiles around them except farms, forts protect tiles, ziggurats capture farms, towns capture all neutral tiles around them, etc. I kind of enjoyed myself, plus missions are interspersed with vague history lessons. Curious? Give it a shot.

If I had to compare RPS’s relationship with interactive fiction to something, it would be an ex-girlfriend upstairs that we drop in on when the weight of the world has got us down. IF is always there for us, waiting, pouting, fascinating, erudite, a bit sexy (but not very sexy).

Earlier this week we heard about IF author Andrew Plotkin’s plan to quit his job and write IF full time. He created a Kickstarter page with the aim of raising $8,000. That was five days ago. To date he’s received a total of $18,862, with two people pledging more than $1,000. I got in touch with him to ask about the project, his new game, and why he’s so hooked on IF. In return, he made me look up Higgs boson. I am no smart. If you’re at all curious about IF, this is a must-read. (more…)

EA has announced Battlefield Play4Free, which will be released in Spring 2011 and will offer you guys Battlefield… for free! It’s from the makers of Battlefield Heroes (which you can also play for free), will feature 32 player action and will combine “the most popular maps from Battlefield 2 with the familiar classes and powerful weapons of Battlefield: Bad Company™ 2.”

Fighting will “earn in-game currency to spend on a massive array of devastating weapons and equipment.” Are you ready for my guess? Here’s my guess: You will be able to buy in-game currency with real money. Pow. A teaser trailer lies in the grubby foxhole below. (more…)

1up has the scoop on Spielberg’s cancelled project with EA, the game best known as Project LMNO, as well as an early “visual target” video which I’ve embedded after the jump. It’s all pretty fascinating stuff, but I’ll summarise.

Project LMNO was to be a contemporary game where your character first breaks an alien-looking girl called Eve out of a military base, and then you spend the the game fleeing the FBI, with the girl fighting alongside you and evolving depending on how you treat her. She wouldn’t have been able to speak, but in times of need would be able to project images into your mind. The team use the example that “storm clouds would appear when she was in trouble.” (more…)

They’re calling this the lullaby trailer, which means it’s soundtracked by a spooky rendition of a children’s song. Nothing spookier than that, eh F.E.AR. franchise? Better than being soundtracked by inappropriately shouty rock music, anyway. We’ve seen a fair bit of Dead Space 2 already, and I think it’s fair to say that it looks a good deal more ambitious than the original. Actually, with the infested city and so forth, I am getting a bit of a Bioshock vibe from the environments, but maybe that’s just me. Also, I’m afraid I am one of those freaks who was able to put up with the interface wonkiness on PC and still rather enjoy the game, so I am certainly looking forward to this hitting on the 25th of January. (more…)

There. Old. I said it. This video is over a year old. You may have already seen it before.> Imagine that! Someone being brazen enough to believe that something on the internet isn’t immediately rendered worthless the day after it came into being. You might as well take me out back and shoot me in the head: I’m useless to you now. I’ve broken The Rule.

This is Game Gun. A piece of technology almost as incredible as its promotional videos. (more…)

Good: “You’re going to see us putting out almost every, single console title we can on PC to expand our audience and expand the customer base, ultimately,” says THQ mega-honcho Danny Bilson. Smart guy.

Bad: “Microsoft is really talking to me a lot about getting back on Games for Windows Live [instead of/as well as Steamworks]… I really, really, really like Microsoft as a partner. They’re fantastic partners. I want to respect them.”

Nnng. We were so close. Okay. Okay. But do it because they’ve told and shown> you convincing proof about how they’re going to improve the service, not just because they’re Bigger Boys With Lots Of Money.

(Source.)

Christ. Not last week I posted about Arcen Games’ colossal update of their maximalist space strategy game AI War, which included hundreds of new ships and porting the entire game to a new engine>. Guess what? They’ve just announced a new pay-for expansion, Light of the Spire, will be released next month. Arcen say they’ve got some “some seriously cool ideas for this one, too”.

What’s happening with Arcen’s finances? Weren’t they in trouble? Well, in a recent blog post they’ve once again displayed a remarkable degree of transparency. (more…)

We revealed the new Arma 2 expansion a couple of weeks back: Private Military Company is BIS’ take on the murky world of the mercenary companies working in modern warzones. The latest trailer is one dressed up in the style of media coverage of the activities of these soldiers of fortune, which implicates someone or other in some kind of badness. Hmm!

Don’t forget we have some community-based Arma 2 action this weekend, with Operation Arrowhead games going on. Check out this post for details. (more…)

So many wonderful indie games, so little unwonderful time. How is RPS to cover them all? Well, making their devs do the hard work for us is a start. A few days ago, we put out a call on the Twit-witter-wotter: tell us, indie developer man/woman-person, in around 100 words, why we should turn our sentinel gaze upon you. So some did. Here’re the funnest entries received, or at least those that came closest to fulfilling the mandate of “incredigood words.”

We make no claim as to the quality of the titles in question: that’s for you to find out. Our interest in this instance is in pretty, strange, psychotic or otherwise worthy collections of syllables. Will they cause you to play these games? Let’s see…

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