If you’ve somehow managed to get out of being obligated to buy gifts today then you might be able to spend some of the time we saved by shopping on the internet playing Deity, a free game from an intrepid band of Digipen students. It’s free! In it you play some kind of magical assassin dude, as you can see in the trailer below. The team say the mechanics of the game are inspired by Diablo and Arkham Asylum, and the acrobatics in the trailer seem to confirm that can of Batmanly dynamism in taking down your enemies. Seriously go take a look at this one! (more…)

I can’t say I stuck with Trackmania 2: Canyon because I, uh, didn’t stick with Trackmania 2: Canyon. It was fine! But it was also basically doing the same thing as I’ve been doing in a half-decade of preceding Trackmania games, except with prettier graphics, no choice of cars and a mad menu system. Others have stuck with it, however, and have been making the very best of its most impressive feature: the track-builder tool. While the below video is, realistically, pure promotion for the game, it also makes me go ‘ooh’ and ‘wow’ and ‘cor!’ and ‘wouldjalookitthat’ and ‘BLIMEY’. Especially for the guy who managed to replace cars with toilets.

Basically: the community is slowly making the game into the game it should have been, and then into the game it could never otherwise have been. I salute you, virtual architects and paint scheme-designers. (more…)

Presumably sucking the life-force from SWG in some way, SOE’s lightweight (and extraordinarily popular) Star Wars MMO for the youth, Clone Wars Adventures, has expanded this week to include open-world PvP, according to Massively. Players will apparently now be able to use the force on each other when they visit the planet Umbara, home of the Shadow People. What do the Shadow People think about all that? No one seems to have bothered to ask. There are a bunch of other new features for the game, too. Like the ability to jump. Heh.

This is probably old news to you, but it’s new news to me and my ancient Egyptian ancestors told me during my hypnotherapy that the entire universe is just a figment of my imagination, therefore I can post it if I please and if you moan it’s only because I’m imagining someone moaning. Cloud gaming tech Gaikai has been offering streaming demos of various games – most notably Dead Space 2 and Mass Effect 2 – here and there for a while now, but I’ve just discovered that, over on Eurogamer, you can jump into browser-based slices of Crysis 2, Magicka, FIFA 12 and the Witcher 2.

Update: omigodomigodomigod. There are more demos on the Gaikai site. Including FARMING SIMULATOR. Yes! Also, try this link if you’re being region-blocked on the other. It might work: hard to say without catching a few jetplanes to the other side of the world. (more…)

A new dev diary for Prototype 2 makes it look more interesting than some of the previous tentrailacle-themed gorefests. The men who speak in it appear to have good ideas about both hunting and killing, and the kind of freedom on offer, even if it will eventually lead to bloody murders in every instance, is something I can imagine myself enjoying. It’s also worth noting that I don’t think I’ve heard a better quote from a developer this year than: “Someone just fell out the sky and landed on a guy and then ate him”. That comes complete with excited hand motions, as you’ll see if you join me below.

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Neither are we, DAMMIT. But news of Guild Wars stealthily entering closed beta for a lucky, handpicked few is news because this game has hiding over the edge of the horizon for so long by this point. A move towards any kind of beta, then, suggests it’s finally preparing to show itself off to the world in the not-too-distant. (more…)

The first snow of the year made an appearance today, blanketing the world outside with the ghostly beauty of a whispered veil, as the fire roared, pressing freshly cut logs to the glowing bosom of its warming embrace and casting flickering shadows about the room. Christmas is a time for tortured and twee metaphor, that’s for sure, but it’s about much more than that. Above all else, perhaps, Christmas is a time for family.

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When Costume Quest arrived on PC, I hoped it meant Doublefine loved us again. Now, in a characteristically jolly announcement during the X-Play Best of 2011 awards, it has been revealed that the beautifully characterised and wonderfully inventive Stacking is on its way too. All that remains is to sulk until Trenched Iron Brigade stomps onto PC as well. Stacking, for those who do not know, is a game wherein the player controls “Charlie Blackmore, the world’s tiniest Russian stacking doll” and “jumps into more than 100 unique dolls”. It’s set within one of the finest worlds I’ve played around in for some time. The news happens in the video below. Skip to 1.02 to get straight to it.

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The good gentlemen of DIYGamer were well advised to post a link to Epic Inventor, a free-to-play side scroller with a modicum of similarity to the boundlessly popular Terraria. Inventor, though, is all about – get this – inventions and contraptions>, and as such takes on a bent that we could describe as something like side-scrolling strategy. The game is currently a little rough, but it contains plans for you to be able to invent an entire town from the ground up, and gives you a robot to fight for you, and to ride around on. The difficulty curve is also a little off-putting at first, because those beasts just keep coming, and take too long to kill. Nevertheless I expect this to have a bold future. It’s free right now, so there’s certain no cost (other than the precious moments of your life you’ll spend with it) to having a look.

If I was to be run-over and killed by a bus tomorrow, all the sims and wargames on my ‘back end of a bus’ list might never get covered on RPS. That thought keeps me awake at nights (even though recent Hampshire County Council cuts mean my chance of being run down by public transport is now virtually nil). What’s to be done? Well, I suppose I could devote this week’s Flare Path to ugly ducklings. The three titles lurking beyond the jump, might have lovely personalities but, superficial swine that I am, I’m really not sure I can bear to gaze upon them long enough to find out. (more…)