How is your heart feeling today? Mine’s relatively normal, thanks, but then I’m just sitting in a living room with far too much caffeine coursing through my veins. World War I, though – now that thing required some heavy duty hearts. Bullets whizzed, trenches flooded, friends smiled and laughed in one moment and cradled each other’s dying bodies in the next. Valiant Hearts: The Great War is an extremely promising-looking adventure puzzler about the latter. People. Five human beings and their experiences during the war that sadly did not end all wars. Also, there is a big ol’ puppy and he is delightful. Call of Duty dog ain’t shit. And it’s all being put together by people who worked on the likes of Beyond Good and Evil, Rayman Legends, and King Kong. Read on for my impressions of Ubisoft’s secret weapon.>

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Say what you will about Ubisoft, but you can’t deny that it’s significantly less risk-averse than triple-A publishing kin like EA and Activision. Assassin’s Creed III’s alternate history Washington DLCs weren’t the best, but that didn’t stop them from being patently insane. Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, meanwhile, was a quirky, out-of-nowhere gem. And then of course, there was Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, which Papa Ubi has apparently taken quite a neon-tinged, cyber-eyed shine to. But Child of Light might just be its biggest leap of faith yet. Inspired by the massive success of Journey on PS3, the publisher has let two of Far Cry 3‘s leads run wild on a co-op coming-of-age JRPG epic poem about a young girl and also there are drunken crow people for some reason. I recently got to play a small section of it, and I must say that I found it quite enchanting.>

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Total War: Rome II hardly signals the splintering, screaming fall of Creative Assembly’s strategic empire, but history has shown that over-extension is all too often the beginning of the end. But then, one might argue that pride came before the aforementioned falls, and Creative Assembly – to its credit – seems anything but. In the wake of an angry Internet beeswarm (of which Jim and Adam were a part, to varying degrees), the developer has issued an apology, promising to address complaints ranging from bugs and technical issues to entire swaths of gameplay.

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This is the first in a weekly series of features about the art and art technology of PC games, in association with website Dead End Thrills. More from Zeno Clash II can be found here. Click the images below for biggies.>

Punch me in my Salvador Dali and tell me I’m not dreaming. Did just fifteen> people really make Zeno Clash II? Of course they did, it’s by ACE Team, the Chilean house of brothers Andrés, Carlos and Edmundo Bordeu. Making a game that actually seemed possible would be too easy for those guys, and maybe even lose the underdog cachet that makes their first-person brawlers so disarming. (more…)

Is it odd that we report on the localisation work of one specific company? Regardless, the fallout from their last couple of pieces of work – Fortune Summoners, Chantelise, and Recettear – seem to make up for any oddness in localisation reporting. The news that Carpe Fulgur are now converting Trails in the Sky SC into our Anglo-Internet language is wholesome news. The odd things is, though, this is the second> chapter of the JRPG, and the first chapter is soon to arrive on PC without CF’s involvement.

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We’ve written so much about The Swindle that sometimes I forget that it’s not out yet and that I still somehow know very little about it. Stealth, cyberpunk, crime, infiltration. Good things. It’s in the same mould as Gunpoint and perhaps distantly related to Subversion. News from Size Five suggests that there may be a deeper connection to Introversion’s ill-fated infiltrator. Development is proving problematic, although not necessarily for the same reasons:

It’s a great game, but it’s a fucking complicated beast, and I’m simply not sure I can afford to make it the game it deserves to be right now…Nope, after a lot of metaphorical wrestling, it simply can’t be the game I’m going to make next.

Boo.

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Nihilumbra is a puzzle-platformer that originally lived in Apple’s App store, where many people reacted positively to its shadowy atmosphere and bleak narrative. The Windows, Mac and Linux versions will be available on September 25th, and they include HD textures, a remastered soundtrack, completely rethought controls and voice acting. It’s always pleasing to see interesting games making the leap from platform to platform, especially when they’re heading in this direction and the folks involved put in the time to make their work suit the PC’s qualities. Nihilumbra’s central mechanic involves painting the landscape/platforms to change their function, as can be seen in the trailer below, which also includes footage of a world-eating void. Jolly.

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Originally released on 360 last month, Starbreeze’s uncharacteristic single-player co-op Brothers is a story of two sons on a quest to save their father’s life, and has now reached Steam for £11.99. As RPS’s leading expert on experiencing emotions, I set forth to find out wot I think:>

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I reckon I’d be happy to do most things in space. Things that I’d normally consider to be chores or hard labour would become pleasurable, at least for a while, which is probably why Space Engineers makes welding, joining and glazing seem like the best jobs in the world. It looks superb, as you’ll see in the video below, but don’t just rely on images. Here are some words:

Space Engineers utilizes a realistic volumetric-based physics engine: all objects can be assembled, disassembled, damaged and destroyed. [It] is inspired by reality and by how things work. Think about modern-day NASA technology extrapolated 60 years into the future. Space Engineers strives to follow the laws of physics and doesn’t use technologies that wouldn’t be feasible in the near future.

Oh yes. I kept waiting for the press release to mention crowd-funding but it doesn’t. Watch.

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Instead of complaining about zombies, let’s try to be positive about the little rotters. Which game, to your mind, has best used the most common and infectious of undead enemies? Would you opt for the character-driven dread and vulnerability of The Walking Dead? Zomboid’s bleak suburban survivalism? Maybe you just like shooting hordes of former friends in the head, in which case you’re spoiled for choice. State of Decay, formerly of County Console, looks like one of the best survival experiences yet and the PC version is almost here. On September 3rd, an official Facebook page announced that a ‘controller-only version’ will hit Steam Early Access in ‘a couple of weeks’. Mouse and keyboard controls will come later, which seems odd, but I want to play now, so I won’t complain too much.

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