Hunting through impressive Arma 3 mods is a full-time job. Luckily for me, it’s my full-time job, so I get to show everyone what amazing things the community has been making and> keep myself in the manner to which I’ve become accustomed (impoverished, hungry, covered in sores). So in admiring this amazing in development Arma 3 Construction Mod, you’re doing me a favour. Go on, admire it. It’s definitely worth a coo over: it’s a building mod that will enable you to create everything from simple shacks to complex, multi-story, er, shacks. The trailer is very impressive. (more…)

Given that we have no “next-gen” on the PC, we miss out on the huge leaps forward that consoles get to have. Admittedly, we trade that excitement in for all manner of upsides, but I do miss feeling overwhelmed by a game. The last time it happened was in Planetside 2, when I was hovering over a tank column that was moving along a road. They were in single-file, jokingly maneuvering towards a very small base. As they crawled, the sun went down and I watched as the headlights clicked on. It was quietly glorious. What does this have to do with this new X-Rebirth trailer? I think you can guess. (more…)

There are many details about Myriad in an excellent post over at Indiegames.com, written by designer Erlend Grefsrud. While describing the workings of his extraordinarily attractive kinaesthetic system-space, Grefsrud has this to say:

You are free, space is malleable, no boundaries constrain you: Make the world, then break the world.

It’s worth reading everything else in the post as well because, while there will be questions remaining, you’ll at least have some context in which to place the wonderful video below.

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Cancel all plans. Paradox have just dropped the Europa Universalis IV demo on to Steam. They could have waited until the end of business hours on Friday, leaving it there as a pleasant treat for weary commuters to discover as they crack open the first beer of the weekend, or take the first sip of calm-inducing brewed leaves, but no. They have released the demo on a Thursday afternoon. Enjoy the next few hours, as the office walls close in and dreams of conquest swim through your mind. Enjoy dragging yourself to work tomorrow, leaving a world of possibilities behind. I love pre-release demos, even if the timing is> cruel. Check below for demo details.

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I’d like to think that Starbreeze’s self-co-operation game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons came into being when Creative director Josef Fares looked at a modern game controller. He held it in his hand, probably while wearing protective gloves, and spotted the symmetry between the d-pad and the four face buttons. Then he shouted “eureka”, and ran around the offices showing it to everyone. Work stopped for the day, a team meeting was held, he was reprimanded for shoving the controller into the CEO’s face while he was on the toilet, but everyone eventually came around to the idea of controlling two characters. It was so bound to that moment of Xbox epiphany that it only came out as an exclusive on Microsoft’s RRODbox yesterday, but it is now on the way to the PC. I’m told it’s absolutely brilliant, too. (more…)

While in Rome, playing Total War: Rome II on the set of HBO’s Rome, I spoke to Michael Simpson, Creative Assembly’s studio director. What was supposed to be a ten minute sprint across a hastily reduced list of questions transformed into a longer stroll when we both realised we’d rather talk than take lunch. We begin by lamenting my ability to die in a tutorial, move on to the clash between history and Hollywood, and then discuss some fundamental design philosophies. The latter portion of the interview moves away from the specifics of Rome II to explore how Michael, and indeed Creative Assembly, consider the player’s time to be their most valuable resource.>

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Developer Santa Ragione has traded pseudo-Mirror’s-Edge-ish psychedelic sprints for meandering, contemplative exploration, and the result looks positively haunting in the best way possible. MirrorMoon EP (which John saw a bit of during GDC’s Experimental Gameplay Workshop) is a game about the intrigues of planetary exploration, a stark galaxy pregnant with secrets. MirrorMoon spans thousands of star systems, each with their own puzzles, artifacts, and sleeping structures. The twist, however, is that it’s all multiplayer, and here’s the crazy part: “The multiplayer part of MirrorMoon EP lets players share Galaxy Maps with other players: the first explorers to land on a planet will be able to name its Star System and that name will be forever bound to the star for every other player.”

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SO MANY STRANGE ANNOUNCEMENTS TODAY. What’s next? A Farming Simulator FPS? A Call of Duty art game? OK, OK, onto the actual news: Civilization is advancing into the MMO age, but not as, say, a larger-scale turn-based strategy. No, in Civilization Online, you play as a single character – one churning gear in a civilization’s massive machine of politics, science, and war. It’s not just a traditional MMO with historical trappings, though. Each server can and will end>. Once one of the competing civilizations meets a victory condition, almost everything resets. The resulting sandbox of workers, fighters, researchers, and leaders, then, has to pull together or risk getting trampled by the inexorable march of history.

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Dead-Island-meets-MOBA might sound like an outlandish pairing, but between the time it took me to write that headline and finish this sentence, it’s all clicked into place. The two are exactly> alike. MOBAs are, after all, everywhere, and each new series to be bitten by the battle arena bug begets a horde of lane-shambling brothers and sisters. I’m not knocking the genre or anything (LoL and DOTA 2 are both magnificent, among many others), but I worry that we might be coming up on a saturation point. But hey, if anything, Dead Island: Epidemic is proof that we’re not quite there yet. I mean, how has no one paired MOBAs and zombies – the two most overdone staples of the current gaming era – yet? How did it take so long?

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I’ve been saving Mark Of The Ninja for the winter months. Dark nights, curtains drawn, the room lit by a candle light that’s been strategically placed in a breeze to create rippled shadows. I might even move to Japan to enhance the experience. I’ve put it off this long, what’s a few more months for an unnecessary and stressful intercontinental move? And to everyone about to say “You should have played it already”, well waiting means I get to play the game with the newly announced DLC in one big pile of 2d stealth fun. This new DLC only adds a new prequel level and two new items to help you play more stealthily, but the biggest addition is my favourite game extras: a commentary track. (more…)