So, Guild Wars 2 is out on August 28th and that’s about all there is to say about that, except possibly ‘finally’ and ‘hurrah’. I could try to construct a tortured metaphor about bowler hats, butlers and afternoon tea but you’d probably rather just see official confirmation in the form of a video which uses a series of increasingly rapid cuts to build excitement. Good thing I have one of those somewhere around here.

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I’m sure that many of the people reading this have pledged their hard-earned to at least one Kickstarter project and it may be of interest to see where that money has gone. Not into an actual game in most cases, not yet, but what happens when a project reaches its goals, the timer ticks down and the money rolls in? Stoic, the ex-Bioware staff working on turn-based beauty The Banner Saga, have released a video showing precisely what happens. Not only is the continuing transparency wonderful, with details of where the money is being spent, the video itself is fantastic. This is what the brave new world looks like. So many boxes>.

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The Secret World will be ready to reveal all of its enigmas soon enough but Funcom are already looking to the future, announcing that they are to begin work on another MMO.

…the company has signed a license agreement with the LEGO Group, one of the world’s most successful manufacturers of play materials, to develop a massively multiplayer online game based on the hugely popular LEGO® Minifigures franchise.

Of all the things I expected to read today, that sentence ranks as slightly more unexpected than ‘moon is actually an egg’ but slightly less unexpected than ‘Dreamfall Chapters to release tomorrow; Kinect exlusive’. More on the announcement below.

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STOP: If you haven’t watched Meet The Pyro yet, watch it, for goodness sake.

This morning I found myself grumbling in RPS chat about how news sites were casually spoiling the twist in the Meet The Pyro video, by posting pictures of it. Now I am going to do exactly> the same thing, because you really should take a look at the Pyrovision goggles in action. Anyone who logs into the game between now and next week gets a set of goggles that mods the game world to look a bit like the Pyro’s view of things, including shooting rainbows, balloon-gib deaths, and floating pink plushie unicorn. There are some videos of it in action, below. (more…)

A recent notable Kickstarter success was Nekro, which is an action-strategy hybrid sort of thing in the classic vein of playing as the badguy. Referencing the likes of Dungeon Keeper and Myth, the Nekro team seem to have sparked a great deal of interest in their randomly generated game of necromancy and summoning. We spoke to excellently-named lead designer Scott Thunelius about the project.> (more…)

I’ve always wanted to try Blood Bowl, mostly due to Kieron’s amazing diary of his Skaven team’s inaugural season, so you can imagine my delight when Jim asked me to review stand-alone expansion Dungeonbowl. At last! I was so happy I tucked my t-shirt over my face and performed the traditional foot-to-ball “Frivolous Dance”.

My flat’s a bit small for it, mind, and I ended up putting my foot in my dinner, but the point is I went into Dungeonbowl with an open mind. Also, a sock that smelled of beef. Both of which were probably unwise.> (more…)

This might actually be brilliant. I mean, everything in Diablo-ish ARPGs is ripe for the socketing, right? Maybe you stick some molten rock into your blade and get a fire sword. Or perhaps you imbue a hammer with lightning bonuses and make Mjolnir. So, in essence, Path of Exile‘s saying, “OK, well, why can’t we use that idea on places>?” The promising-looking pulverizer’s solution? Portals to procedurally generated maps can be stored in your inventory, and a series of hyper-specific, maniacally murderous mods can, for instance, make their monsters stronger, resize locations, curse your character, or make the ground sprout unquenchable tongues of flame. See the diabolically smart system in action after the break.

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It’s been a good week for mania. Pyromania got things started in truly asylum-worthy style, and now ShootMania‘s filling the middle of our week with intrigue>. And lasers. More specifically, Nadeo’s DIY FPS is gunning for a closed beta in “early July,” and registration just opened up. The window will slam shut on July 2, but there’s a good reason for that: “Every player who has registered for the beta on the official site will receive a 7-day beta key,” notes the website, which talks about itself in the third-person. Also, yeah, beta access only lasts seven days. Bummer. But don’t let that disintegrate the smile from your face. Instead, watch techno Tron people disintegrate the smiles from each other’s faces (and, you know, their faces and also all of them) after the break.

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Everyone, I have some regrettable news: I woke up this morning with the sudden realization that – in my heart of hearts – my truest wish has always been to lead a life of megalomaniacal supervillainy. So, incredibly long and spellbindingly interesting story short, I’ve wired the entire world to explode. Unless!> You can tell me – without glancing about one nanometer below this sentence – what’s come of the Team Fortress team-up between Adult Swim and Valve. Mwahahaha, I can smell your fea– yeah, it’s a hat. Well, damn. I guess I’ll just go back to writing about videogames, then.

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Oh my goodness, this is bursting with potential. Lying somewhere between Scrabble and Minecraft, cross-bred with Scribblenauts, is Quest Of The Wordsmith. A terrible name for a really interesting game. A spell your own survival sim.

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