SimCity Social‘s open beta first really> started bothering me when I stopped playing it. And not for the reason you might think. Someone called me on the phone while I was poking around and still mourning the fact that “OppressionVille” was too big for the city name field, so I looked away from my burgeoning burg for, oh, 15 minutes. When I returned, nothing had changed. No tornadoes had struck. Nothing caught on fire. Yes, SimCity Social is a turn-based game, but that only partially> robs it of the gleeful insanity that so characterizes’ Maxis’ most-famed of llama-loving city builders. After all, that structure could work if given proper treatment.

Here, though, it’s symptomatic of a much larger problem: SimCity Social is about as easygoing as they come. There have been (at least, after a few hours) no downsides to my actions – no tension or intrigue. Sure, neat things (like a UFO crash) occasionally happened, but they largely served to stuff more Simoleons into my jingling mayoral pockets. Well, until typical social game stuff took center stage, anyway.

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Today is tank day! I’ve just decided. And now I probably won’t find any other tank games to post about. Oh well.

I’ll confess that THQ’s ongoing money-woes have me fearing for the security of some much-anticipated videogames (and the good folk who make ‘em), most especially Metro: Last Light and Company of Heroes 2. Hopefully Relic and 4A are ring-fenced from the cuts’n'terror at the besieged publisher, and the release of some new pictures of the former’s Eastern Front battle still my palpitations somewhat. (more…)

Alright, busted. I’m almost entirely posting about this because of the amazing name. WAR OF THE HUMAN TANKS is the best of all the names, you see. Would I be posting about this Japanese indie strategy game if it was not, in fact, called WAR OF THE HUMAN TANKS?

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Remember McPixel? You first met the bizarro rapid-fire point-and-click adventure when it was naught but a bouncing baby demo. It may have vomited on your shirt. It, er, finds those sorts of things funny. But now McPixel’s all grown up and available for purchase, so naturally, its humorous sensibilities have matured. A little. OK, so it’s still amazingly low-brow in places (for instance, McPixel’s go-to means of attempting to save the world is generally a casual kick to the groin) but replaying 20-second, constantly exploding scenarios for hidden gags yields some gleefully unexpected results. Witness the mesmerizing (and, for some reason, partially live-action) madness in a new trailer after the break.

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And not just because it seems like a billion of these things have popped up in the past week or so, either. See, a recent developer diary about Spec Ops‘ potentially uncomfortable marriage of meaty, blood-spattered fun> and the grim truths of war prompted me to wonder if the whole thing wasn’t like duct-taping a cat and dog together. And while Hollywood tells us that’d lead to a heartwarming adventure of self-discovery, reality isn’t generally so kind. So along comes Spec Ops’ launch trailer, and yeah, this reeeeally> doesn’t look like it’s trying to downplay the glamorous lifestyle of videogame life-ending. You know the drill: buildings, vehicles, and people get shredded into bloody confetti while caught in gooey bubbles of slow-mo. So now I’m confused.

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War. What – some of the greatest scholars of our time have asked – is it good for? “Absolutely nothing” is the traditionally arrived upon conclusion after miles of mind-boggling chalkboard math, but the gaming industry begs to differ. “Naming things,” it posits, resulting in an immediate surge of shocked whispers and “harumphs” all around the lecture hall. “Modern Warfare, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Warface, Gears of War, God of War, World of Warcraft, World of Warplanes. And that’s just the beginning.” Which is technically> correct, because now there’s also Warframe, an F2P “fast-action PvE shooter set in an evolving sci-fi world” from Digital Extremes – they of BioShock 2′s multiplayer, The Darkness 2, and, er, something called Warpath. So then, what exactly is> a Warframe, anyway?

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Revitalised by going microtransaction-to-play last year, Dungeons & Dragons Online has found itself in a healthy enough state to launch what appears to be a pretty beefy ‘premium expansion.’ Menace of the Underdark is, somehow, DDO’s first ever full-fat add-on after six years of hanging onto its servers for dear life until business models changed. It brings the more appealing, darker, undergroundy, demonic’n'Drowy aspects of the Forgotten Realms setting to the fore, as well as introducing the skinchanging Druid class for the first time. I am genuinely amazed this game didn’t have Druids before now. Aren’t all fantasy MMOs supposed to have Druids?

Take a look at the new stuff, settings, enemies, classes and “Epic levels to 25″ in a four-part video, which also talks about luminescent algae. (more…)

Even if you don’t like flight simulations, you should probably watch this. Some trailers give me a migraine, some tickle my curiosity box and many have very little impact on me at all. I press play, I sit back, I watch and then I wonder why it was quite so noisy or why it adds nothing to, or seemingly contradicts, what I already knew about the game it purports to advertise. Since I probably couldn’t even manage to turn the ignition key and check the mirrors in DCS: P-51D Mustang’s intricately simulated WW2 fighter, I’m pleased I can at least enjoy looking at the game. This is one of the most beautiful promotional videos I’ve seen for a long time.

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I’m about as much use as toenails on a strawberry in terms of discussing StarCraft II’s popular, ladder-based multiplayer, so I’m sure you’ll be hanging upon the golden wisdom of my every word as I bring you news that the UK SC2 championships are being held at BAFTA this weekend. To be honest I mostly clicked through because it said ‘free tickets‘ and even though I now earn enough to have three square meals a week the f-word brings me running every time. (more…)

Not that it will be a surprise to Rock, Paper, Shotgun readers, all familiar with my legacy, the Walker Principal*, but the release date for Far Cry 3 has just slipped by almost three months. It’s now at the end of November. Perhaps a touch ironic, after Nathan recently reported for us that the PC version would be launched alongside the consoles. It turns out what they meant by that was, “not at all, for a bit.”

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