Hotline Miami now allows players to throttle their flatmates with controller cords. Either that or it’s actually possible to play the game with a controller but that seems unlikely. That’s not the only fix/addition that the update brings and there’s also a native Mac version in the works. Important additions: new environmental graphics, a bonus stage unlocked when the campaign is finished, “more gore with the Jones mask” and “the pot of boiling water has been updated”. We should compile a ‘patch note of the year’ list just so that the pot of boiling water can win some sort of trophy. The update should already be live on Steam.

The beta for indie Metroid-a-like Ex Vitro has been available since the summer failed to sizzle and right now the nibbling gnashers of old Jack Frost tell me that winter has come, so why post about the game now? Because I’ve just played it for the first time, that’s why, and I only found out it exists because there’s a new trailer that warbles about sci-fi disasters in a way that intrigued me. The beta is free and with it you’ll be able to shoot monstrosities, collect new abilities and read datalogs that tell a history of grim failings. The art reminds me of Waking Mars but the game is as much action as exploration.

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There short videos have been attempting to promote Epic Mickey 2 since we last looked at the game and here they are gathered in one place. I can’t believe Warren Spector has managed to incorporate quite so many Star Wars characters and settings into the game in such a short time since the acquisition. The AT-AT boss fight looks absolutely stunning. That’s all in my head, of course, but crossovers are surely inevitable. Kingdom Hearts is the obvious bet, but will Spector develop a Star Wars game? Alec says ‘Tatooine Underworld’. I’ll go with Deus X-Wing.

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Four words all but guaranteed to win my attention: “a game about cats.” When said four words are twinned with the knowledge that the game in question comes from the creators of Super Meat Boy and one half of The Binding Of Isaac team, my attention becomes unwavering.

We know precious little about Team Meat’s Mew-Genics other than that it’ll be “randomly generated, strange and involve cats” so even a tiny, kitten-size scrap of detail is enough to cause a flurry of fluffy speculation. Today, that’s two new shots showing in-game characters. (more…)

Friday’s shock announcement that X-COM co-creator Julian Gollop is creating a version of Chaos, his nigh-on legendary, wizard-based strategy game for the Spectrum, is the best gaming news in forever. But with zero known about it and even some concerns that his little-used, little-followed (at the time) Twitter account was the real deal, a whole slew of concerns can be assuaged by the development blog he’s set up to cover the making of the new game.

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Blue draws my attention to a blogpost over at the Command & Conquer website. The game, which is free to play and seemingly distanced from the Generals 2 subtitle, is set to have “the longest running beta phase in franchise history”, beginning in the first half of 2013. I don’t think that “longest running” C&C beta means a great deal, it’d be surprising if the first free to play release didn’t have a lengthy beta. The post doesn’t contain much information about how the free to play model will be implemented, but it does come right out and admit the problems of previous games and then says it’ll all be ‘different’ this time

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SHIVs, which are like Wall-E’s angrier siblings, have been causing some problems. Sometimes the engineers forget to put a gun on them and, worse still, on occasion the mechanised Muton-mashers stubbornly refuse to leave XCOM HQ. The next patch, which is due soon, should fix all that, as well as issues with the visibility of certain UFO roofs, Interceptor-related hanging and a correction to the use of snapshot during overwatch. Full notes below, including difficulty tweaks. Has anyone found a mod of choice, either for balance or general changes? I installed Warspace (not face) at the weekend but haven’t had much chance to play with it yet.

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“It’s a weird, macho subculture centered around tiny birds.” Real time interactive fiction. Butterfly skull. I think all these text games try to kill you.>

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Hello youse.

I haven’t seen Spartacus, but from what I hear there is a lot of blood in it and plenty of exposed breasts. I don’t know why I haven’t watched the show, because I enjoy both of these things. Don’t you think there are too many TV shows to watch these days? It seems like people are recommending new TV shows every week, and expecting you to buy a box set and watch about seven episodes before it starts to get good. Seriously! “You need to watch about the first five episodes to get properly into it.” Five hours?! You mad?! I barely have one spare hour these days, never mind five.

But let me say this. Whenever I do have some spare time, I want to play some board games with my lovely friends. And now I can play Spartacus: The Board Game. And it’s bloody brilliant. (more…)

Sundays are for waking up and peering out the window at unseasonable snow. Then perhaps to the Internet Parlour, for tea and manic page refreshing. Later there will be time for intriguing reports and opinions from far away lands.

• Polygon’s piece on Kaos Studios is a fascinating read: “That summer, THQ and Kaos undertook an audit of Homefront. They looked at everything in the design document and pitch documents, everything that Kaos had promised since 2008, and then made careful estimates of how long it would take to deliver every feature. That’s when the full extent of the damage became clear.”

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