Star Wars takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, and Star Wars: The Old Republic is set an even longer time ago than that. Thus, this Hypergate – which is positively ancient, even by SWTOR’s musty standards – must be older than time itself. Naturally, then, people (and blue not-people and green not-people and spiky faced not-people) must risk reducing the precious relic to ash by waging brutal, ceaseless wars over it. That’s just how these things work. And now you can join in on the ill-advised carnage for absolutely no money*. No strings attached**. Nope, none ***. Seriously****!

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I regrettably never took a closer look at Under The Ocean back when Jim fished it out of the Internet’s perilous depths earlier this year, and I’m now kicking myself for it. Contorting my legs such that they collide with my own body and produce sufficient force to cause painful (but justified) injury does, however, make it quite hard to type, so I’m going to stop now. Otherwise, I won’t be able to tell you to quit paying attention to me and watch this video of Under The Ocean’s excellent-looking random island generation system. Get stranded, survive, explore, build, eat, become seriously ill, slay really mean pigs with a spear, die. Then roll a completely different island and do it all over again. This looks quite special, in other words. Wash up unconscious and naked and maybe a little bit drunk on the other side of the break to see for yourself.

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If you climb to the top of Mt Videogameland, you’ll see that Crysis 3 is just over the thoroughly tessellated, HDR-lit horizon. That, however, is hardly the only thing that’s got Crytek’s tear-powered mega-lair whirring along at maximum efficiency. There’s also Homefront 2, Warface, Ryse, an entire F2P social platform, piracy concerns, and a brand new Crysis – which is totally not Crysis 4, but also kind of is. I spoke with Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli about all of this things and also asked him the question that’s almost certainly been devouring your every idle thought for far too many months: why’s it called “Warface”? >

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It’s Christmas! And over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be dropping into Rock Paper Shotgun on a regular basis to make my “12 (BOARD)GAMES OF CHRISTMAS” posts. This list will contain 12 board game gift recommendations, with a light review and some suggestions for the perfect people to give that gift to.

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A slightly shorter, but still very much full-length sequel to last year’s The Book Of Unwritten Tales features the previous game’s best characters. But can The Critter Chronicles repeat the same grin-inducing entertainment, perhaps this time without falling apart at the end? Here’s wot I think:>

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Voxel team-based constructoshooter Ace of Spades is out tomorrow and I’m looking forward to seeing how it compares to my fond memories of yesterweek. With the free version beginning a pure game of digging and shooting, I was worried that the classes available in the commercial release would be annoying, but they have drill-guns and rocket launchers, which are the opposite of annoying unless they happen to be destroying the towering fortresses that I’m constructing. Even then, watching the battlements topple isn’t all bad because I tend to enjoy watching any sort of structure fall over. I thought Red Faction: Guerilla was a Fred Dibnah simulator. Here are some videos showing Ace of Spades’ classes and their gear.

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Recently, I had the chance to play Aliens: Colonial Marines and I’m going to try and write more than one thousand five hundred words about the experience without quoting Aliens once. Will I manage to describe two varieties of multiplayer from the perspective of both alien and marine without once using the words of Hudson or Hicks? Will I convey my thoughts about the small portion of campaign I experienced without inserting a Vasquez line or two? Probably not.>

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How had it escaped my attention that best-named-developer Ocean Quigley is working on SimCity alongside challenging-for-the-title Stone Librande? You can hear the latter in the latest SimCity video, as he demonstrates multi-city play. I don’t think the feature was designed for the likes of me, who would rather operate a sort of mayoral dictatorship in a Dark City isolated from the rest of the world, but will you be convinced of the possibilities offered by this online mode?

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I would have written this post a great deal more quickly but I accidentally got Stoned while doing a quick spot of research. Fear not – nobody’s been pelting me with rocks and I haven’t decided that the only way to write about flight sims is in a herbal haze. I did> make the mistake of checking the writings of Tim Stone in historical Flare Path briefings and that was, as ever, like entering a world of exciting things that I know so little about. Did you know that pilots in WWI flight sim, Rise of Flight, have sidearms in the cockpit with them? 777 Studios were behind that> game and 1C have handed them development duties on the WWII Eastern Front sequel.

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I was under the impression that my announcement post about the new PC adaptation of Games Workshop boardgame Space Hulk yesterday was as comprehensive as can be, but it transpires that I may have overlooked a minor detail or two. For instance, what type of game it is, who’s making it and how it will work. Allow me to fill in these tiny gaps now. (more…)