I have a recurring nightmare: I’m sat at my desk and everything is soft-focus and great. I feel happy, and turn to say as much to my girlfriend. But she’s not there. It’s Gabe Newell, who is definitely not my girlfriend, and he’s using one of those old school accounting machines. On the floor is a pile of paper that he gathers up and hands to me, saying: “In Half-Life 2, destroyed 1200 crates. This is your bill.” And I say I don’t have that kind of money, then I wake up crying. I don’t think Valve would retroactively charge me for opening crates, but then I didn’t imagine that their strangely popular unlock system that drives both Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 would end up in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. But that looks like it’s going to happen. (more…)

Even as a (virtual) war-hardened, (often wrist-cramp-related) hardship-enduring Journalist, I sometimes can’t resist yodeling “Oooooo, pretty!” when I lay eyes upon particularly lush games. So it was with Finding Teddy. The invitingly colorful point-and-click adventure lured me in with adorable characters, an appealingly angular bent to its aesthetic, and a world that just screamed whimsy. Then a giant, very clearly unshaven spider leg reached out of our young heroine’s closet and plucked her teddy bear into some nightmare land of unspeakable terrors. “NOPE,” I bellowed. “NOPE, NOPE, NOPE.” But despite the protests of a violently arachnophobic, er, myself, I continued watching.

(more…)

To the anger of Dr Zoidberg, I’m attempting to retain an air nonchalance about GTA V. If it doesn’t come out then I can pretend I was cool about it, but if it is announced then I can break for cover and hug the nearest person to me. That could be you, btw. But that fact is the console version is out in September and nothing has been announced for the PC, so there will be some sort of delay. But a small glimmer of hope has emerged on the possibility of it coming to the PC this autumn, via an Nvidia investor call.

(more…)

The maker of successful geometrical emotions simulator Thomas Was Alone, Mike Bithell, has revealed today that his next game will be Volume, a Metal Gear Solid-style stealth tactics game. The game is designed, coded and written by Mike and scored by David Housden. Based on burgling futuristic trinkets from behind the backs of tall intimidating AI types, the unnamed hero of Volume wants to steal to be heard. I spoke to Mike, a man seldom unheard, to try and prise the secrets of the game from him. Or, as I like to call it, an occlusion interview.> (more…)

Although it’s the fourth game in a well-respected series, Europa Universalis IV has been created in the shadow of Crusader Kings II, which unexpectedly but deservedly discovered a wider audience than its predecessors. As the next game from the internal Paradox Development Studio and a chronological sequel to CK II, EU IV has a weight of expectation upon it. The two games can even connect, covering almost a thousand years of history. Daunting, broad and deep, EU IV is more than equal to its burden. Here’s wot I think.>

(more…)

Payday 2, Overkill’s co-operative heist ‘em up, eventually had to come out with its hands up, and they’ve decided today is that day. They’ve chosen to let us know with a launch trailer, and actually released it on launch day. That’s a rarity for the games industry. It is one of those frozen moment type deals, where the action of a heist has been stopped in the most cinematically pleasing way and the camera zooms around to take it all in: bullets are caught in the air like bubbles in ice, blood spurts from wounds like the red branches from a meat tree, police dropping like Del Boy* at a bar when someone has paused a DVD of “TV’s 100 Greatest Del Boys Falling Through The Bar”. It is embedded below. (more…)

The opening to Project Phoenix‘s Kickstarter video is kind of like a summoning scene from the very sort of JRPG it’s hoping to bring back. Big, handsomely stylish, and full of Gregorian chanting. Difference is, instead of beloved names like Bahamut, Ifrit, and Shiva, it raises a staff toward the heavens and calls upon the immortal prowess of developers who worked on Final Fantasy, Diablo, Metal Gear, World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Halo, Valkyria Chronicles, and the like/unlike. It quite proudly boasts “creators from the East and West” and “visionaries young and old,” which could make for a fascinating thematic melting pot. Or a confused disaster. That said, music’s coming from none other than Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu himself, and the combat is actually more RTS than traditional JRPG. I am intrigued. More below.

(more…)

Stone Rage is a forthcoming third-person online, free-to-play survival game set in prehistory. You play as a cave-person of either neanderthal or home sapien descent, or even one of a number of prehistoric beasts, and try to stay alive in an era of oversized animals and other horrors. It’s going to be a bit “woolly mammoth LFG” out there: “Stone Rage offers a wide array of animals with different tactics, and abilities that will keep players gaming for days. We have put strenuous effort into picking out the best classes possible to keep players entertained. Our classes include the Entelodont for stealth, the Woolly Rhinocerous for defense, the Gastornis as a scout class, a Cave Bear for warrior class, Saber Tooth Tiger for the hunter class, and finally the Mammoth as the heavy.”

Yeah. More details below. (more…)

Hmmm, well, this is sort of an odd situation. Once upon a time, Blizzard nearly fired a legal laser straight through the heart of StarCraft Universe‘s  modswarm, but now – a couple years later – the multiplayer RPG is alive, well, and on Kickstarter. The project apparently still has Blizzard’s blessing, given that it’s fan-made and will be distributed entirely for free. However, somewhat paradoxically, it’s also asking for $80,000 from Kickstarter’s writhing moneydollar hivemind. So long as Blizzard’s on board, developer Upheaval Arts is legally in the clear, but this whole situation raises some rather pressing questions.

(more…)

Space is ever-expanding. It is, for all intents and purposes, endless. Thus, when Amplitude asserted as much with much-loved 4x strategy Endless Space, I was totally on board. “Space? Endlessness?” I said. “Yep, all checks out. Looks like I won’t have to get the Title Police involved after all. You folks behave yourselves now, ya hear?” And then I strolled off into the hungry hills, ever vigilant for a new entry in the Kingdom Hearts franchise. But dungeons? Those can’t just go on forever. I mean, it’d defeat the purpose. Why lock some doer of grievous wrongs up in a never-ending expanse? “You are hereby confined to infinity. There are no limits on what you can accomplish. Good luck, sucker.” I might just have to let Dungeon of the Endless off the hook, though, because of reasons>. Mainly, it looks pretty great – even if we don’t know a whole lot about it yet.

(more…)