I’m very easily pleased. Just sit me down in front of an episode of Man Vs Food Nation, give me a killer sudoku, and I’m out of your hair. Similarly, give me a toppish-down or platforming rogue-like-like (as I think we’re all agreeing they should be known), and I’ll very likely be kept happy and out from under your feet. Which means it takes me some considerable effort to work out if the one that’s currently distracting me is doing so because it’s good, or because it’s there. I’m still trying to figure that out for Full Mojo Rampage. Either way, I can’t deny that I’m happily wiling away a few hours with its alpha. Also, gosh, I didn’t realise how much I’d missed circle-strafing.>

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I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve had an especially stressful, topsy turvy week. Also, we’ve been posting about bloody manshoots and manwars and carshoots and carmanbloodwars for ages due to Gamescom’s monolithic domination of the news cannons, and it’s time for a change of pace. I want something relaxing. Something soothing. Something that creates instead of reducing everything around it to chalky pools of ash and blood. I want… an ethereal gardening simulator! Watashi Wa Hijo Ni Yoku Nihongo Hanasenai sees you breathe life into a barren, featureless expanse while dreamy melodies dance and drift through the background. Occasionally, there are turtles. It made me feel all warm and happy in my heart chambers.

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Are you ready to leave your boring old terrestrial life behind and start anew among the stars? Well soon, you’ll be able to, but only in the “broke college grad” sense where you take refuge in a garage while selling superfluous organs to pay off loans. OK, I may have read a little too far between the lines on that last part, but Star Citizen‘s first playable module is very much one small step into Chris Roberts’ insanely ambitious new galaxy – not so much a giant leap. You get a hangar. You can explore it (!!!!!!). That’s pretty much the whole thing.

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Philosophy would be so much easier if we could use console commands. Here’s a conundrum people in the new Maia alpha are asking: “What comes first? The door, or the workshop that you need to build to build the workshop door?” It’s actually a trick question, and the answer is that you need to build the workshop first, then use debug commands to place a door. So technically the workshop. As the video shows, the door to the workshop is the first step on the space colony’s sodden road to self-sufficiency, with the systemic strategy game’s colonists using the workshop to build a table to use the table to get to work. If you add lights to the workshop, the people will be able to build things in a more efficient manner. Brilliant! (more…)

With the astonishing success of the current Humble Origin Bundle, which has so far sold 1.75 million copies, and raised $8.5 million for charities, we grabbed the chance to talk with Humble’s John Graham about how this all feels from their side.

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When covering Pegasus Bridge or Eben-Emael wargames, verbose intros are verboten. You are duty-bound to coup de main your subject… drop right on top of it in the dead of night or at the crack of dawn. When writing about Market Garden wargames the rules are a little different. Not only are leisurely preambles permitted, questionable conclusions written in Polish are fine too. Can’t be arsed to acknowledge the Panzery portion of the game in question? Not a problem. Ignore it. Of course, the thing that really marks out a quality MG piece is liberal use of static. Every paragraph should be festooned wFZZZTTZZZTT>ating WIEEEEUUUWW> the reader KLIKKLIKFZZZZZZZZZ>desperateHISSSSSSSSSSHZZZPP>erated. (more…)

This is it, this is the one. The game trailer the aliens will find when studying our radio waves fourteen million light years away. The one hard drive to survive the Guardian-bot uprising will contain it. When the rats rule this world they’ll scuttle around our carcasses as decaying monitors play it on endless repeat. It’s not the last game trailer we want, but it’s the last game trailer we deserve. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages Rock, Paper, Shotgun proudly brings to you the trailer champion of the WHUUUURRRRLLLD: Tactical Intervention.

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If you found the recent announcement of a delay to glorious fantasy strat-fest Age Of Wonders III a bit chafing, then I have a soothing salve for you. Accepting that the release is sometime in 2014 will sting a fair bit, but it’ll be just a little bit easier to bear after watching the 11 minutes of footage we have. It takes us from the sulphurous underground lair of Dreadnought Gustav Gorsmorg, to the lovely clean top soil where I want to live. Fighting all the way, of course. He is a Dwarf. (more…)

Standing alone is hard. Believe me, I know. As a newborn infant, it took me years before I was able to master the art without any parental assistance. Even now – as a young adult who lives inside of a house and can cook without burning it all down (some of the time) – I still occasionally go sailing end-over-end as though tripped by some malevolent practical joke ghost. That in mind, I can totally understand why DayZ’s standalone version keeps slipping. Sometimes it’s unavoidable. And so, due to online infrastructure issues, Dean “Rocket” Hall’s expanded multiplayer survival sandbox is once again without a release date.

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Oh, videogames. You make it so hard to love you. My undying adoration for oft-derided popular AAA FPSs has been echoed in recent days, but really I’m just a fan of high-octane, huge budget, nicely animated action. From Darksiders to Call of Duty, Bulletstorm to DmC there’s nothing I enjoy more than having my young white male preferences thoroughly exploited. Yet there is a line that must be drawn when something looks so generic, and tries to sell such basic concepts as new and original, that even I stop to frown. Such is the way with the latest Castlevania: Lord of Shadows 2 trailer.

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