I suppose it’s only fitting that, just as one of the holliest, jolliest, holiest of holidays begins to descend upon us, we’ve suddenly struck a blood-and-pus-spewing vein of Binding of Isaac news. First there was a completely mad (in a good way) looking Team Fortress 2 mod, and now Edmund McMillen himself has reclaimed the stage to present a hellish heap of details about the upcoming Binding of Isaac remake. In short, Nicalis – they of the recent Cave Story console remakes and NightSky – are handling the heavy lifting while McMillen cracks the whip from the lead designer nightmare throne. Non-Flash graphics, local co-op, and a Wrath-of-the-Lamb-sized expansion are the standout features, but it wouldn’t be Binding of Isaac without a million-billion other gleefully gruesome things. And on that front, McMillen and Nicalis intend to deliver.

(more…)

Update: Ubisoft have tweeted an apology, saying they’re working as fast as they can to get the servers back online.

So, like many others, I’m very excited to play Far Cry 3. After Jim’s review, and many similar elsewhere, I’ve been dying to play it and finally have the chance. Today is my day off, hooray! And so far I’ve been treated to a horrible, horrible time, and all at the hands of the technical mess that is Uplay and idiotic mechanical choices. And right now? Ubisoft’s servers are down. On launch day. You can still play in offline mode, but ho boy, this isn’t a good start.

(more…)

Update: I got in touch with the Humble Bundle folks to find out more about how this out-of-nowhere partnership came about. See what they had to say after the break.

Original: I was incredibly tempted to begin this post with a joke about how the charity slider on this Humble Bundle is redundant, because THQ is already basically a charity. That would be mean, though, so I opted to– oops, I already did it. Hm. Shame backspace was never invented. Anyway, the latest bundle of densely packaged humility puts the spotlight on a decidedly non-indie THQ, but oh well. Indie’s a pretty terrible word when it’s used to write off great games because they weren’t coded by a half-person team in a garage-bedroom constantly beset by subarctic winds and ravenous wolverines. So, right then, let’s take a look inside.

(more…)

God of Blades is a pretty special thing. On the surface, it’s about running through a variety of environments and hitting things with swords, but it’s inside those environments that you’ll find a far more interesting tale. The previously mobile-only game of thrones that really don’t look like thrones draws its main inspiration from pulp fantasy and ’70s synth-prog album covers, resulting in gloriously trippy landscapes that curve and pulsate and glow like wispy cotton candy dreams. Which are the only kinds of dreams I have, frankly. A PC version’s been in the cards for quite some time, but the full game’s slated for early 2013. Until then, though, Slayers is a frantic Nidhogg-meets-Canabalt back-and-forth appetizer, and it’s free.

(more…)

From the Siberian news gulag at VG247 we received word that Company Of Heroes 2 got a gameplay trailer, complete with dakka boom and all those noises. Take a look.

Release is March 2013. (more…)

We sent Brendan to the Hawken press event in London, and there he caught up with Mark Long, boss at Meteor, the company responsible for publishing the F2P mech combat game. From there it was a journey into alternative business models, transmedia experiments, live-action mech-movies, rivalry between mech games, and the appeal of adult diapers.> (more…)

Firefall, Red 5 Studios rather fancy jetpack MMO (one of the project leads is the excellent Scott Youngblood, who worked on the original Tribes games) is heading for some beta weekend plans. They explain: “Firefall’s upcoming Beta Weekends are scheduled Nov 30-Dec 2 and Dec 7-9. These are North American and European 48-hour stress-tests with players encouraged to find bugs, test various features and help the developers improve the beta by providing feedback.”

You can sign up here, with the now-traditional pre-order “founders” pack option alongside it. Recent video below for motivational beta-sign up purposes. (more…)

Sometimes, modding is a delicate, subtle art – its inspirations many and nuanced, and its results unexpectedly evocative. It’s akin to the flap of a butterfly’s wings – barely even a whisper on the wind, yet capable of breathing pollen-dappled life into countless fields and genres. Other times, modding’s about taking one crazy and thing and cramming it into another crazy thing to make a third, orders of magnitude crazier thing. Which brings us to a completely insane Binding of Isaac mod for Team Fortress 2. The objective, so far as I can tell, is to do normal TF2 stuff (teamwork, friendship, murder) while also dealing with an onslaught of decidedly un-bound bosses. It looks completely wild. Traverse the break’s treacherous dungeons to check it out.

(more…)

Retrobooster’s junkyard ships thrust, spin and blast their way through hazardous caves, all the while spewing extraordinarily impressive particles. Activating a thruster to stabilise, even if there’s only the slightest touch of a button, and the air fills with fumes. Bombard an alien and its mechanical walker erupts, debris scattering, flames billowing. Creator Terry Welsh, formerly of NASA, has this to say about the in-development title: “Piloting a ship that is always seconds from a fatal collision, Retrobooster sustains a quiet tension. Survival is between you, the alien horde, and the game’s realistic physics.” The demo contains plenty of fatal collisions and a sensible person would probably download it immediately. Trailer below.

(more…)

Remember Deus Ex’s long-awaited New Vision mod? Of course you do. We brought you word of its incomplete release last year, and obviously, you’ve calibrated your cyber-brain’s nanomachines to remember every last detail of every last revision of every last RPS post. I mean, what else would you use flawless memory superpowers for? At any rate, for those still running inferior flesh hardware, New Vision repaves the original Deus Ex with crisp modern textures. All of them. It’s a labor of love that’s been in the works for the past five years, but it’s finally completely and totally finished.

(more…)