Ho ho ho! Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho! HO HO HO! Father Christmas’s demands on the sex worker industry are frankly grotesque. He is a bad, bad man. Fortunately, you can distract yourself from his ways by finding out what is behind door number 18 of our 2011 calendar of gaming goodnessment.

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Sundays are, if you so inclined, already Christmas day. And why not have Wintermas a week early? You’re (probably) a grown up? There’s literally nothing stopping you. I’m going to have another Christmas in April, too, just for the hell of it. Fuck calendars, I say. No one tells me when to decorate my house with tinsel!

• Dan throws some water in the well-marketed flames of The Old Republic launch: “Whether SWTOR is any good or not is academic at this stage. It’s a supertanker that can’t turn fast, a holiday resort built in boom times. With its brand and the hype, it’s likely to succeed; but it’s almost certainly the last of its kind.” That will seem true, I think, until a company figure out what we will pay a subscription for again. Could that company be Blizzard? It’ll be interesting to see…

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Hello youse.

I promised you a wonderful Christmas board game video. However, editing problems have meant that this will arrive too late. The only thing that a writer can do in a situation like this is pour a drink and write. And today I would like to write about games, and how much we should pay for them.

“What is it worth?” That’s the question, isn’t it? (more…)

Listen, I know you are a busy person, so I’ll just leave this link here. It’s the Steam page for Trine 2. There’s a demo on there. It works on PC and Mac. It’s about as pretty as that pretty girl from your halcyon schooldays, you know>, the one carved out of pretty, with nice hair. It really is that pretty. Read more about the game in this fine review, and then perhaps play yourself? Eh? Why not, it’s Saturday, after all. I don’t really believe you are that> busy. You’ve probably got the day off.

TERA‘s action-combat and overall ludicrous prettiness has caught my attention on occasional, but the way it ties guild quests to an overall political system is really quite something, as you can see in the video below, via PCG. You can rise to power through either a popular vote of actual players, or through the PvP battlegrounds, and once you are in power you can make life easier for people (or not) via your control of various resources such as shops and teleports. To perform actions with these your guild will need to be perform particularly high-end quests, fighting monsters and so forth. It all looks rather satisfying, at least within the constraints of traditional MMO systems. (Eve Online it ain’t.) (more…)

What’s for dessert? Probably some kind of pudding that we cobbled together from elements gathered while we were out exploring. It’s lucky people left all this stuff laying about or we’d never satisfy this raging hunger… (more…)

Are you ready? Things are kind of quiet at the moment, aside from the constant distant humming of bundles bundles bundles. Next week is when everything starts going crazy, and the Christmas sales seasons really kicks off. Word on the street is a 20th of December start for the Steam Christmas sale, but you didn’t hear that from me. Read on for the best download deals around this weekend, and you can rely on SavyGamer.co.uk to steer you through the upcoming assault on your gaming budget. (more…)

This week we’re speaking to two producers from Allods Online; Lori Bray and Vincent Douvier about liberalising Russia, if pay to play games have a long-term life and the empty shelves of the next generation. Oh, and about Allods Online.

Read on!> (more…)

We got an email from a chap called Bill this morning. He’s making an RPG called Bloodlust: Vampire Shadowhunter and he’s looking for some feedback. He explains: “…it’s a little rough at the moment… just looking for some feedback, suggestions, etc. so I know where to focus my resources on the most.” We can certainly help with that, because there’s a demo available over here. I’ve not had a chance to play it yet, so I can’t attest for the roughness, but Bill’s keen to stress that this is a work in progress and he could do with some constructive feedback. Perhaps you can help him out? (more…)

While this isn’t actually> a game announcement as such, the confirmation that next summer is the summer of Lego Lord Of The Rings does rather suggest that there will be a Lego LOTR game. I’ll be looking forward to Lego Ents, Lego Balrog, Lego Orks, Lego Eye Of Mordor, and, of course, Legolas. It also strikes me that the minifigs will need to be extra-mini for Lego Hobbits and dwarves. Hmm.