Has it really been an entire age since Dragon Age: Inquisition lead designer Mike Laidlaw and I last spoke? Of course not. The first part of our interview went up yesterday. We discussed combat, choice, and exploration, and today we’re delving even deeper into the rabbit hole dragon den of certain doom. Read on to find out how race/sex, crossovers with previous DA games, romance, and more will function in BioWare’s hopeful return to form.>

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EA’s free-to-play reimagining of Command & Conquer just keeps on growing. Next year, it’ll slowly but surely roll out a full single-player campaign set in the Generals universe, replete with triumphant returns (or cackling callbacks) from the Global Liberation Army and revamped Chinese and US factions. But how exactly will these missions release? And what lies beyond, after what essentially constitutes Command & Conquer Generals 2 has given up all of its tiny, suicidally obedient ghosts? Victory Games explained in a new video, and let’s just say that they haven’t forgotten the legendary RTS series’ legacy.

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This Stanley Parable trailer is definitely my favourite game trailer of the second Wednesday Thursday (this post was written yesterday, time fans) of September of the year 2013. The developer has embraced popular culture> and asked Youtube game talker-over Chilled Chaos to make one of those Let’s Play things, but all is not as it seems. Watch as the boring corridors slowly lull the gabbing gamer into a comfortably mundane meandering. In that mindset, when the walls of a corridor become the warm centre of the universe and everything is recognisable and safe, change can send a man mad. It’s really funny. (more…)

There’s a first-person shooter coming out on Steam this month called Alien Rage. Now unless you’re currently performing surgery or you’re on a tight-rope, I want you to close your eyes and imagine it. The trailer is below. (more…)

Here’s something I never expected to say: Steam has stolen a feature from the Xbox One, and it’s really, really cool. Back before Microsoft cut the cord on that X-est of bones’ online requirement, it touted a family sharing program as one of the (few) perks that constant connectedness would bring. But then there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about, well, everything else, so Microsoft packed up its whizzbang new toy and went home. The only real winners in that whole scenario? Us! Soon, we’ll be able to share our entire Steam libraries> with up to ten people of our choosing.

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Something strange is afoot in the land of OUYA. The Kickstarted console, running on Android, is obviously not usually in RPS’s purview. But a recently launched incentive to get developers to create OUYA games is treading on our toes, and merits a look. OUYA’s Free The Games Fund offers to match money raised by Kickstarted games, if they can reach a minimum of $50,000, in exchange for six months OUYA exclusivity. It’s hard to know where to begin pointing out what’s dumb about that. And OUYA’s failure to recognise why is causing a number of indie names to loudly complain, some to even stop developing for the console. We’ve spoken to a few of them to find out why.>

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It’s not Android games, nor soundtracks, nor books about kettles. The new Humble Bundle is the original, the Humble Indie Bundle 9. And for a ninth time in a row, it’s a corker. With names like Mark Of The Ninja, FTL: Faster Than Light, and FEZ, you can see the dollar signs spinning already.

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Splinter Cell is one of those series that suffers through repetition. There are so many of the buggers, the most recent being the borderline-psychotic Conviction, that only the die-hard keep track, and to everyone else it’s one amorphous blob of banjo-legged throat-slitting. But Blacklist is far more than a production-line piece of gristle. It’s not merely an exemplary slice of, forgive the oxymoron, action-stealth – but also contains the best Aliens game in years.

No you didn’t misread that, so hit the jump and find out why.> (more…)

Believe it or not, we’ve been coddled by super-cute and ultra-tough space-race simulator, Kerbal Space Program. Players who have a ring of dead Kerbals orbiting Kerbin, or who’ve left lonely craft to sink into the canyons of Eeloo because they forgot to add chutes, might beg to differ, but with upcoming update 0.22 more will be asked of you than ever before. No longer is it enough to just make it to orbit and beyond for the fun of space adventures. There will be science to be done when you’re up there. (more…)

This is the first part in a new series looking at contemporary multiplayer gaming and the e-sports phenomenon.>

Since Steam’s inception, just a handful of marvellous gems have topped the Steam Stats page. Games like Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2 and Sid Meier’s Civilization V have earned accolades, snared players in their thousands, and then hovered around the 50,000 mark. For Valve’s Dota 2, now just wrapping its beta period, that figure currently sits at 500,000 concurrent users (not including China and South Korea). Five hundred thousand!>

More users play Dota 2 simultaneously than the nine other ranked games combined and it is only going up from there. Why? (more…)