Yes, it’s one of those things where they add stuff to a game for free! We used to call them patches, but now we call them free DLC, at least when they have content and not just fixes in. A subtle distinction, don’t you think? Anyway, Dungeon Defenders, the excellent FPS tower defence, is getting one of them. Actually I read wrong, it has got one, RIGHT NOW. It includes four new skins for the Apprentice, Monk, Squire and Huntress, new “holiday-themed weapons” and a “mission where you must deliver Christmas presents to random locations and defend them, ending in an epic boss fight with the evil Mega Snowman!”

Woo! Ludicrously colorful trailer featuring said snowman below. (more…)

So that one might live, another must die. And so it was that Star Wars Galaxies went the way of Mark Hamill’s leading man status last week, having been ushered out of existence by the dark forces of licensing in order to make way for The Old Republic. We’ve already posted news of the closure, but it’s well worth having a look at the below player videos of its final moments. As well as all the epic space battle stuff, the death of an online world makes for a strange, and sad affair, where the evident outpouring of emotion is so often hampered massively by the constraints of the game. Yet for all that the stiff animations and looped emotes somehow make these farewells all the more poignant.

Also: watch Luke Skywalker get murdered by Ron Burgundy. (more…)

We at RPS know what it’s like to be too popular. Unable to walk from our Limousines to the exclusive clubs and restaurants we frequent without being assaulted by mobs of screaming, frantic fans, we completely understand the challenge it offers. And BioWare/EA are discovering the same with Star Wars: The Old Republic. The queues: they are long.

Which is a bit of a shame in your first week. With queues for servers sometimes stretching to over two hours, it is a bit offputting. And BioWare are warning it’s not going to get better soon.

(more…)

Well goodness crikey, Skyrim seems to have snuck out a micro-patch. Running the game tonight an odd thing was happening – important texts from bodies were automagically opening when I looted, rather than waiting for me to pick them up and dig them out of the inventory. A change! I cried at the screen, and checked the version number. It’s now 1.3.10.0, and it seems there’s a bigger reason for the update: the game now supports 4GB of RAM.

(more…)

If you can’t or won’t afford The Old Republic but are grumpily hanging around comments threads wishing you too were off on online adventures, it’s worth remembering that exactly 312,129 MMOs have now gone free to play. No lightsabers, but also no queues.> One of the more recent of these is Everquest II, the at-the-time ambitious fantasy world that’s probably slightly annoyed that its precusor still co-exists alongside it. Below is a narrated video tour of some of the new stuff in the free to play to play update, the Age of Discovery expansion, the new class Beastlords, a dungeon designer tool and a major overhaul of key city Freeport. This is actually my first peek at the game in quite some time – it’s really quite pretty, in a slightly austere way. (more…)

There’s been another MMO launch today, sort of. The ‘open preview’ of Doctor Who: Worlds In Time can now be played over here. With The Old Republic now available, it would be fun if this was turned into a clash between widely loved sci-fi franchises but that is not to be. The two games are as different as two games can be, unless one were hopscotch and the other were the clash of Empires that was The Great Game of the nineteenth century. Doctor Who: WIT, you see, appears to be in the same mould as Three Rings’ previous title Puzzle Pirates. There’s a Doctor to dish out missions, themed puzzles and a bunch of familiar worlds to investigate. Could be fun. Sign up here, watch trailer below.

(more…)

Today’s the day, then. The day the world finally discovers if EA’s long-gestating, mega-hyped Star Wars MMO is KOTOR 3+, WoW in space, Galaxies without the madness, a Wookiee or a Jawa, a winner or a loser, an Empire Strikes Back or a Phantom Menace, a Sarlaac or a Hutt. (I don’t even know which of those is better). Many John Walkers died to bring us thoughts on the game, which we hope to have next week. I too have a copy I plan to look at as soon as humanly/wookieely possible, though I’ve been too busy breaking my beloved record player today to get started as yet.

So, who’s in, who’s out, who’s Light side, who’s Dark side, who’s loving it, who’s hating it and who’s going to waste everyone’s time by posting ‘meh’ and having it silently deleted a few seconds later? Also, below is an eight-minute ‘launch documentary’, which is a fancy way of saying ‘advert.’ Warning: it seems to auto-play, which I can’t work out how to stop. Sorry. (more…)

On one level, this post exists to inform of a fantastic deal on that thar Steam, however it’s also the first time we’ve mentioned that the games in question have appeared on Steam at all. They are the Geneforge Saga, five RPGs created by Spiderweb Software between 2002 and 2008, although they feel as if they could have been made between 1992 and 1998, with their turn-based combat, isometric graphics and enormous amounts of questing and freedom. The Geneforge world combines traditional fantasy tropes with monster-making, leading to all sorts of choices and ethical dilemmas. Steam is currently offering these five massive RPGs for £8.49. There are also sizable demos over at Spiderweb’s site.

(more…)

Could it really be that Relic are at last working on some manner of follow-up to their very well-received and very well-realised World War II RTS Company of Heroes? It could, claims PC Gamer’s print edition, claims Kotaku, claims VG247. I cannot verify this, but on this slowest of slow news days I shall report it nonetheless. There are no details because this is mere rumour, but though PCG are in the habit of eating live babies they aren’t generally in the habit of being scurrilous, so let’s hope they’re on the money here. (more…)

The 20th day of Advent is of course traditionally marked by tying a t-shirt around your head and screaming in the face of a stranger’s baby. But ever flying in the face of society’s mores, RPS instead simply peels back a door on the festive calendar to reveal another game that’s made our 2011 lovely. By Great Yarmouth’s testes, what could today’s be?

(more…)