Remember Me (which does not seem to have its own website) is a game of exploration, platforming, stealth, and fighting-game style kick/punch in a dystopian future world of ubiquitous surveillance and memory fiddling. All that sounds intriguing, and looks spectacular in the trailer below, but it’s still deeply unclear as to whether this is going to be a game to pay attention to, or whether it’s actually a turkey in the oven. In this latest trailer we see the protagonist, Nilin, fighting her way through a series of humanoid enemies, climaxing with giant robot things. It all looks pretty convincing, albeit with inevitable QTE action. Capcom – who are once again keen to impress on us their interest in the PC as a platform – have released some PC screens and specs, which you can see here.

Go take a look. (more…)

The only other Tomb Raider game I’ve ever played was the first one, which I found alternately brilliant and annoying. Oh, and I reviewed The Angel of Darkness for a magazine, but that doesn’t count. This year’s reboot, Tomb Raider, was my first experience of Crystal Dynamics’ work with Lara Croft, so I was a relative blank slate in terms of expectations. Perhaps that’s why I had a better time with it than John did – there wasn’t anything I knew to miss or call for, any pre-existing associations to be endorsed or threatened. That didn’t stop me from howling in misery at all the quicktime events and the often bobbins plot, of course, but there’s an awful lot in there I really dug. (more…)

Signal Ops, which Jim first noticed in 2011: A Lack Of Space Odyssey, is now available on GoG.com, which took me by surprise because I’d completely forgotten that the game existed. It’s not an easy thing to forget, as the trailer below handily proves, being a squad-based first-person espionage game, in which every team member’s viewpoint is displayed simultaneously on the screen. The initial reveal brought back memories of Hired Guns but the nerve-shredding atmosphere of that game is nowhere to be seen here – Signal Ops looks like it could have been visiting the house that Blendo built while wearing a hat borrowed from No One Lives Forever. That, if you are in any doubt, is a good thing.

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It’s magical double-news time for splendid World War II multiplayer (because World War II was totally multiplayer>) shooter Red Orchestra 2, with the appearance of new (although actually mostly old) maps via their big mapping competition, and a free weekend on the Steams. Relatedly, these event coincide with news of the arrival of the original game, Ostfront 41-45, on non-windows based operating system for rich people, OSX. The new maps are from the Counterattack contest, and include Winterwald (overall winner, and snowy place), Arad 2 Tanks (which is the Red Orchestra map delivered unto RO2 for tank-war), Rakowice (also a Red Orchestra map, with Russians attacking an airfield), and Stalingrad Kessel (a user-made Red Orchestra map). And all that should amount to more places to make men meet their maker. As in God, not map maker. That would be weird.

Anyway! There’s a video of the new maps below. (more…)

Before FTL became the short-form sci-fi adventure of choice for the discerning PC enthusiast, Digital Eel had set up a very effective stall in that particular sector of the internet. The Infinite Space games are among the few ‘coffee break’ games that I’ve ever played during actual breaks from work, back in the days when I sat in an office and pretended to be interested in the kind of water cooler conversations that could drive a man to dehydration. News of a third game is welcome and it has the perfect subtitle: Sea of Stars. Digital Eel are seeking $30,000 via Kickstarter and have had a decent start to their campaign.

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In the history of blisteringly bloody and violent top-down games, Cannon Fodder’s twitching wounded and almost everything in Hotline Miami will receive dedicated chapters, but Survivor Squad’s trailer sees the game vying for more than a footnote. The randomly generated levels are soon splattered with the red stuff, wall to wall, as the player seeks survivors, rescuing them and building a team of up to four to scavenge, shoot and survive. The pace is fast but caution is necessary, as characters left alone, with no line of sight to their companions, are likely to be swarmed and devoured. Being devoured is the opposite of surviving. Trailer below.

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No, this isn’t about Brendy Caldwell’s excellent RPS article series of the same name, but it’s arguably just as good. PUNKSNOTDEAD is a fleeting roar of pure mastery. A stage-dive into a candy colored killmadness. An out-of-tune guitar bellowing through shredded vocal chords. It’s a game that feels like a punk song, unrestrained and full of righteous rage. The end result is brief as it is pure, but the cacophonous punch-frenzy of a sidescroller holds nothing back. Also, it uses curse words! Oooooooooooooo.

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I realise this could cause resentment, but it has to be said. Readers #52, #298, and #611, of all the people that regularly peruse this column, you are definitely my favourites. #298, that thing you do with your bottom lip when you’re reading pieces about unexpected OMSI add-ons. Adorable! #611, the way you turn down the radio and shush Minter, your foul-mouthed minah bird, before watching vids on monumental Outerra architecture. Have you any idea how charming that is? And #52… wise, loyal, long-suffering> 52, you’re my Blackburn Roc. No-one but you reads every word of these idiotic intros week in, week out. No-one else nods enthusiastically when I brazenly claim Perfect Distance was last year’s most interesting wargame.

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LUCASAAAAAAAARTS WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. I know, I know, the once brilliant adventure factory stumbled and fell into an infinite, severed-hand-filled Death Star abyss years ago, but I still can’t help but mourn the legendary studio’s loss. For its part, Raven Software’s in a similar boat, but unlike me, it’s been jealously clutching the source code to two major Star Wars videogames for years. (I, meanwhile, have only been jealously clutching the source code to my special ice cream soup recipe, my most valuable possession.) So, in the process of pouring one out for the Disney dismantled titan, it’s released the full source code to one classic, Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, and one, er, whatever Jedi Academy was. You’re now free to tinker to your heart’s content with the entrails of either, or just jam a hypothermia-ridden Luke Skywalker in there, if that’s your thing.

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Stood by the Oculus stand at GDC, I heard someone say “the thing about all this VR stuff is that it hasn’t moved on a great deal from the ’90s.” Can that be true? For a moment I assumed this gentleman in the crowd might know something I didn’t, but it turns out that there’s a good deal that VR and head/body-tracking can do in 2013 that it couldn’t do in the 1990s. For a taste of that, you’ll want to read this and watch the video below, which places the user in a Doom 3 level with a Portal gun, and shows off all manner of body tracking and movement cleverness.

Go look! (more…)