There isn’t much that honours the strange, dark art of games journalism, and I’m willing to bet that’s primarily because the kernel of excellence and talent is so surrounded by soulless number-giving and rote promotion on one side and ranting, thoughtless poison on the other. In the UK, we do have the Games Media Awards, but while the right prizes admittedly sometimes go to the right people it is essentially about a cult of personality rather than much to do with the writing itself. The new (no capital ‘n’ there, please note) Games Journalism Prizes are an attempt at an independent award for the best writing (as opposed to best/most liked writers) of the year and, unlike the GMAs’ additional status as a multiply-sponsored big earner for organisers Intent Media, these are not a profit-making endeavour. They exist solely to find and pay tribute to the best writing, in multiple fields. Hurrah! (more…)

That I’ll never get to visit another planet (or moon; hell, I’ll take moon) is one of the great sadnesses of my life. Maybe, if I’m very lucky, Richard Branson will buy RPS and give me a free ride in his spaceship one day, but he’s probably too busy picking up women. So, for now, I must settle with exploring a Unity-powered, browser-based, explorable recreation of Mars, courtesy of NASA. (more…)

Usually when I watch long sequences from unreleased games I’m squinting, wearing my analytical face, trying to work out where the gap between hype and reality is most obvious, trying to see what might be true and what might be marketing. The E3 video of Metro: Last Light, just now released for wider consumption, is thirteen and a half minutes long and I didn’t squint once, I’m not even sure I blinked judging by the film of dust I’m now scraping out of my eyes. It looks and sounds absolutely stunning, and the wait until the Q1 2013 release suddenly seems extremely long indeed.

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Trees are pretty much the greatest. They house wonderful woodland creatures, look very pretty gracefully swaying the breeze, and produce oxygen so we can watch them sway in the breeze without dying. Bonsai Defense, then, lets tree huggers like myself take the next logical step: becoming> a tree. Life as a giant leafy tribute to nature’s might, however, isn’t as glamorous as you might assume. For instance, did you know that trees are constantly besieged by infectious neon bug creatures that travel via some form of trans-dimensional portal? Me neither, but thanks to Bonsai Defense, I’m now truly enlightened. A few thoughts on this freebie after the break.

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I Wanna Be The Guy: Gaiden killed me with a fish before I started the first level. It killed me again when I tried to start the first level. It killed me again before I touched solid ground in the first level. It killed me again with a sudden burst of fire when I tried to hop over a barrel in the first level. It killed me again when I tried to walk under a platform in the first level. It killed me again when I finally managed to leap on top of that platform. It killed me again when I tried to leap over a barrel – with the same fish as the time before I started the first level. That goddamn fish>. It killed me again when I finally made it past the fish, only to be crushed by a platform mere centimeters away. It killed me again when I tried to leap between the platform and the fish. It killed me again when I made it past that part and a purple army man shot me. Then I gave up forever.

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Crowd-sourcing. Crowd-funding. The next big thing. A flash-in-the-pan fad. Call it whatever you want, but right now>, the gaming industry’s fallen in love with the idea of putting its fate in the hands of heaping piles of people. Double Fine Adventure was – so clearly that you could see it from space – the point where everyone took notice. Shockingly, crowds did, in fact, exist before that moment, but DFA caused them to really, truly become a thing> in the industry’s eyes. Last week, however, saw Phase Two of that movement kick off with things like Penny Arcade’s Kickstarter, World of Warcraft’s Guild Mentoring Program, Steam Badges, and Steam Greenlight. Problem is, with the exception of the latter, we’re sort of doing a really miserable job of leveraging communities, you know, well>.

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And it’ll be terribly awkward for you, because it’s not who you think it is. You’ll be like, “Hey, HK-47, how’s it going?” And HK-51> will be like… well, I don’t know what he’ll be like, because he’s a new character. He and his exceedingly murderous brethren are, however, something of a throwback to cut content from KOTOR 2, so you might not end up totally out of your depth. For now, though, BioWare’s prepared a lavish CG trailer, because – and I guess this should’ve been the headline for the story – gameplay doesn’t exist anymore. It disappeared forever while you were asleep. Games are now cobbled together from CG, live-action footage, and meticulously photoshopped still images. You can’t actually play them, but you can hit the pause button whenever you want, which offers a truly unprecedented level of choice in how you approach every situation.

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Every argument I’ve seen defending why there’s no writing category for the IGFs looks damned stupid when you encounter an indie game that shines through its story. It was abundantly obvious that it was a mistake when we first saw To The Moon (just released on GOG), and it’s about to look like a stupid decision all over again when Richard & Alice is released. After a 45 minute preview version, I’m already sold on the writing, and already annoyed that those awards won’t recognise it.

Disclaimer: one of the co-creators, Lewis Denby, is an occasional contributor to RPS.>

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We heard that a Linux version of Steam was in the works back in April and now Valve have set up an official blog to share the details of their Linux team’s plans and progress.

The goal of the Steam client project is a fully-featured Steam client running on Ubuntu 12.04. We’ve made good progress this year and now have the Steam client running on Ubuntu with all major features available. We’re still giving attention and effort to minor features but it’s a good experience at the moment. In the near future, we will be setting up an internal beta focusing on the auto-update experience and compatibility testing.

Left 4 Dead 2 will be the first game ported and, indeed, there is already a working version. Before release, however, Valve aim “to have L4D2 performing under Linux as well as it performs under Windows”.

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Under normal circumstances, I would not be excited about a game called Marvel Heroes. I mean, I love Robert Downey Jr: A Movie About Robert Downey Jr Starring Robert Downey Jr (And The Avengers Sometimes) as much as anyone, but these licenses tend to be about as much fun as being bitten by a writhing mass of regular, non-radioactive spiders. Here, however, there is hope. Marvel Heroes is being headed up by former Diablo leads and, well, it’s basically Diablo – but massively multiplayer and with superpowers and the ability to switch between every hero imaginable instead of devil magic. The latest oh-so-brief trailer, unfortunately, doesn’t really delve into much beyond the POWS, THWACKS, and HULKBIFFS, but it all looks very nice. The break beckons. Heed its call.

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