There’s a game you probably didn’t play. It came out last year, it’s a genuine epic, a vast, elaborate RPG with a sprawling story and vast numbers of sidequests. It features superbly in-depth combat, has huge variety in character design and levelling, and lets you instantly wander from the main plot and explore its enormous world to your own entertainment. It’s Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning.>
I’m not sure how amazeballs this really is in practice, as PC Tomb Raider code is being witheld until the end of the week because reasons, but I dig the concept. Game hair’s not great, by and large – some engines certainly do OK by it, but the hair-helmet approach very much remains the norm. AMD’s come up with some tech to try and make locks more lustrous. Instead of taking two anti-aliasing systems into the shower, they’ve devised TressFX (oof), intended to make hair flow and change more convincingly. This will apparently first be seen in the impending Tomb Raider re-reboot, which has “the world’s first real-time hair rendering technology in a playable game”, it says here. (more…)
Obeying the new law that all puzzle games must rotate is The Bridge – a black and white, Escher-inspired set of reality bending puzzles from The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild. The last time we heard from it was a demo released in late 2011, but now it’s here, on Steam, GamersGate and the Humble Store. But should you spend your £12? Here’s wot I think.
As surely as night follows day, as surely as “meh, not a game” comments follow enthusiastic posts about Proteus or Dear Esther, most every big online game will at some point suffer a scary hack. Latest to fall prey to Internet Badmen is SOE’s Planetside 2, or at least the ProSiebienSat EU-run aspect of it. The outsourced operators reckon their encrpytion tech means player details are likely safe, but someone has indeed found a way to access “one of our systems” so players are advised to do the password-changing fandango. (more…)
From next week you’ll be able to play Arma 3. Yes, the headline gave it away, didn’t it? Pre-ordering a “Arma 3 Alpha, Arma 3 Digital Deluxe, Or Arma 3 Supporter editions” (all available soon) will soon give immediate access to Arma 3 on Steam, or at least to an alpha test of a limited build of the game that will run until the full beta test some time in the second quarter of the year. Bohemia explain: “Featured in the Arma 3 Alpha are four showcase missions (Infantry, Vehicles, SCUBA and Helicopter), a limited subset of weapons and vehicles, two multiplayer scenarios, the powerful scenario editor and modding support. The 20 km² island of Stratis, which is positioned right off the coast from Arma 3’s main destination ‘Altis’ (270 km²), will form the backdrop of the Arma 3 Alpha.” There’s much more to come, as the scope of the test expands.
Hands on with Arma 3′s alpha, as well as an interview with the Bohemians, coming up later this week.
Nuffle be praised!
See that picture above? That’s quite literally all there is to tell you about Blood Bowl II right now. (more…)
Do you have a residual fondness for point and click adventures? The creators of Eleusis (it’s a Greek island, vocabulary fans!) certainly do. They’ve gone and made a pointy and clicky spooky adventure, complete with bewildering puzzles and abject mystery, using the magic of the first-person videogame technology magic. Yes, it’s a point and click game made in UDK! And that means real time movement, “DX11″ graphics, and irrelevant physics interactions.
I played the demo to find out something or other. (more…)
OK, OK, I admit, I want an Oculus Rift and I will do unspeakable things to any human being of your choice in order to get one. (Er, better not hold me to that.) Stereoscopic 3D in games has left me either unmoved or with a headache to date, but these VR goggles are so much more than that. They mean videogames BEAMED DIRECTLY INTO MY BRAIN, or thereabouts and, as this video of an OR modification for Crysis demonstrates, they also allow the use of natural head movement to look around game environments. (more…)
Close friend of RPS, Emperor of Poetry and World’s Biggest Angela Lansbury fan Chrissy Williams was the only person who could possibly solve the greatest mystery RPS has ever faced – how to cover Murder, She Wrote 2: Return To Cabot Cove. She returned with the following evidence.> (more…)
‘Twas terrible news when The Lords of Midnight, Doomdark’s Revenge and Midwinter designer Mike Singleton passed away suddenly last year. Chris Wild, Singleton’s friend and co-developer on his project at the time of his death, a faithful, multi-platform remake of The Lords of Midnight, eventually took the decision to continue with the game, which was well-received upon its iOS and Android release. A PC version of that is due at some point in the not too distant, and now perhaps adding some more bittersweetness to Singleton’s amazing legacy is the announcement of family-sanctioned plans for The Lords of Midnight: 30th Anniversary Edition, and a remake of Midwinter. (more…)