Who fancies a mystery? Valve prepared what must have been an incredibly expensive video for the VGAs’ best character category, starring Wheatley, complete with Stephen Merchant’s voice, floating in space and begging for help getting home. So, that’s nice and fun, if lacking in the big laughs. (He didn’t win.) But of course Valve being Valve, they’ve filled it with more details. Not many, but there’s Russian text, star constellations in the background and weird numbers, which of course means those with a mind for such things are tearing it to pieces. Of course, it might have just been filler to make the image more interesting. But Valve MUST know by now that anything they add is going to be analysed to pieces, and they’re clearly the sorts to troll their community in every imaginable way. What do you make of it?

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The video that first made me aware that Rainbow Six: Patriots would allow me to press square to kiss my wife was a breath of fresh air in the stale confines of this business called game. Tom Clancy’s skill as writer, computer graphics wizard and cinematographer allowed him to deliver a rollercoaster ride. I gasped with delight as foreclosures were topically referenced, screamed in excited glee as a wiggly-hipped woman was held at knifepoint and actually raised my arms and went ‘wheeeee’ as a man wearing a suicide vest was thrown off a bridge and exploded. I was concerned that this level of intensity was impossible to maintain. But, lo! A new teaser trailer shows that Tom’s still got it where it counts. In his willingness to ensure that all promotional materials contain an unarmed man being forcibly blown to bits in an urban environment.

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First: we do not know what the Skyrim DLC will be. I’m not pretending otherwise. But Todd Howard has been musing upon the nature of add-on chunks for the game of swords and shouting, and while he’s obviously PRing to some degree, it sounds like the thinking is along ambitious rather than cyncial lines. Bethesda are looking at “ways to make the game better, not just have more, because the game is so big,” Howard told Joystiq. “So we’re going through ideas right now, and processing everything people are doing in the game, and trying to think of ways that we can improve it.” I would take fixes and thoughtful improvements to abilities and world behaviour over another chunk of quest-littered terrain any day. (more…)

Darksiders II was also revealed at the ridiculous VGA Spike thing. THQ’s sequel to, well, Darksiders, has been quiet since July, when we took a look at it. But it was waiting for the annual fartfest to reveal itself a new teaser trailer, and indeed its release date. Which will be, oh, “Summer 2012″. Well, it’s better than “TBA”.

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The VGAs coughed up a new trailer for Hitman: Absolution, which is crammed with sneaking, stealthery and silence. Except for all the parts with windows exploding in slow motion and The Bald One murdering almost every single person in his path, which just happens to take him through a hospital ward. Those parts are quite noisy. There’s also a crying nun. She is crying because of the constant gunfire and images of men being shot through the abdomen at point blank range. Do you want to see such things? They are below.

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I’m a simple man, driven by simple pleasures. Such as when playing a climbing simulator, deliberately placing one foot on the rock, and then with arms by my side, placing a second foot on the rock. And watching the character fall stupidly on his back. But then I’m a twit. Vertigo is actually a rather serious climbing game, very impressively recreating the necessary actions and thought that goes into scaling a vertical surface. Using ragdoll physics, you control each of the guy’s four limbs to find grips on a rockface, seeing how high you can get him. Which is more interesting than it sounds.

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Straight from the Gears of War / Mad World school of ironic juxtaposition-based maudlin marketing, this new vidotrail for BioShock: Infinite features EXPLOSIVE ACTION set against someone singing unhappily. It’s quite affecting, I’ll give it that, but I think we’ll need someone to do the excruciatingly dedicated frame-by-frame analysis thing to identify exactly what new stuff we’re seeing. (more…)

The very important #indieVisibilty awards ceremony took place in London last night, organised by SizeFiveGames, officiated by OneLifeLeft, and with awards selected by IndieGames and “Rock, Paper, Shotgun”. You can see the full list of the awards distributed below, including Best Minecraft, Nicest Man, “best attempt to do what mainstream devs will not”, and Notch’s game of the year.

Well done to all those involved! (more…)

On the 11th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me… Well, nothing. Because they’d perished, like the rest of them.

Happy Christmas, everyone. (more…)

Sundays are for waking up early to see what the previous night’s hype ceremony has disgorged into the guts of the internet. Then, later, you turn to other things. Words on those games. What might there be amongst the debris? Let’s scavenge.

• It’s difficult not to be impressed by Totilo’s profile of Tim Sweeney, a programming legend who is about to be added to the Hall of Fame of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. Totilo talks about what Sweeney the man he is, and explains a bit about why the mind behind Epic’s tech is so important: “These days, if a company wants to show off how impressive their new computer, phone or console is, the easiest path is to get the latest Unreal Engine on it. They want Sweeney or one of his colleagues on stage showing how well it runs and how easily people can make games with it. “He enabled us to make fun games that I call ‘system justifiers,’” Bleszinski explained. “He made an engine that made it easy for developers to make good-looking things fast, which then let you get a great-looking game on an iPad 2 or through a 3D card and show your wife that ‘this is why I got this.’”"

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