Back in my day, getting a refund was as easy as strolling down to the local barbershop and pointing out that your trusty neighborhood mane groomer lopped off your ear instead of your hair. He/she would hand you your money, you’d hop in an ambulance, and everything would be squaresies. But times have changed. The Internet has made many of the goods and services we sacrifice our hard-earned paychecks to much less, er, tangible, and some of them can’t even properly be returned. Refunds, then, are tricky business. Steam, for instance, has pretty much just blanket-stated, “NO,” except in special, infrequent cases. GOG, however, is taking a firm stance in the opposite direction.

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Is your game about colossal, god-stomping futuristic machines of destruction most profound? Then make a soothingly voiced “commercial” about them. That seems to be the conventional wisdom of our time, at least if Star Citizen and now Titanfall are anything to go on. It’s a clever tactic, but especially in Titanfall’s case, it also leads to some weird subtext. “Military grade ultra-weapons,” it essentially says in a disarmingly calm growl. “Friends and inspirations to us all and also waterfalls for some reason!” But hey, there’s game/weapon marketing for you. Titanfall really does continue to look utterly smashing, though.

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Preview events often involve around half an hour with a game, while carefully chaperoned through its corridors. I spent sixteen hours playing Divinity: Original Sin over two days in Belgium last week and nobody told me what I should or shouldn’t do. I spent two hours looking for a potato because I wanted to make some chips and Larian’s founder actively encouraged me in that mighty quest.

If I hadn’t had a flight to catch, I would have played for another sixteen hours over the next couple of days as well. There are more technically impressive fantasy RPGs coming out next year and there’s a great deal of work still to be done, but Larian’s latest is living up the early promise and is right near the top of my most wanted list.>

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The witch is dead, League of Legends pros can once again stream whatever they want, and eSports is saved! OK, maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit, but I really> didn’t like the potential implications of Riot’s decision to contractually forbid its pros from streaming Dota 2, Hearthstone, World of Tanks, and tens of other extremely popular games. Fortunately, after copious uproarious outcry, Riot decided to rethink its portentously controlling decision. Now pros are able to stream whatever strikes their fancy or tickles their murder bones, though certain sponsorships/promotional angles are still off-limits. This is admittedly much> better, but I’m still concerned about Riot’s position near the top of the eSports food chain. Allow me to explain why.

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The Witcher 3 looks good. The dark fantasy RPG from Polish developers CD Projekt Red is the first to take the series into an open-world, and it’s doing so without sacrificing any of the visual flair of the previous games. Evidence? Check out this lovely new trailer.

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A couple of weeks ago inXile asked Torment’s backers to make a choice about the game’s combat – turn-based or real time with pause? Late on Friday, the votes came in and the developers reckon that even though “statistically it was a tie”, the combat will be thoroughly and entirely turn-based. Hurrah! I hadn’t even considered the question until it was asked, assuming that Numenera would be following in the action-sapping footsteps of Wasteland 2 and I’m glad that around half of the people who backed the game and bothered to vote agree that turn-based is the most sensible approach. A large update to the Kickstarter page explains the reasoning and I’ve copied some pertinent quotes below.

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No Man’s Sky trailer, first broadcast on December 7th as part of the Spike VGX awards, opens by stating that the game’s “every atom” is procedural. What follows shows a character emerging from an ocean full of fish, climbing inside a spaceship and flying into space in a single contiguous motion, interspersed with quick shots of different planet surfaces, gigantic space stations, space combat, deformable terrain and more.

It’s fantastic, and exciting, and it leaves you with no sense of what the game is. The trailer shows you just enough to suggest it might contain everything you can imagine. It’s the space game you always wanted, as far as you know.

Luckily I had an advantage. When I first saw the trailer, it was a few days before the VGXs, and it was with the nervous, tired, excitable Hello Games development team. I spent two hours afterwards quizzing them about procedural generation, but also about what you actually do> in No Man’s Sky. (more…)

Another week, another Thief trailer. Maybe I should just stop watching them at this point. If the game does turn out to be at least half-decent, I’d like at least some of the surprises to be surprising> when I play it. Previous videos haven’t revealed much beyond the basics of the City (it has a skyline with a clocktower, natch), and new-look Garrett, along with his dubious quips. The shiny new bauble below fell off the VGX Christmas tree over the weekend and it provides more plot to chew on, roll around it in the mouth and then spit back onto the plate. You know, like at a cheese-tasting session.

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I dug strategy/futuresports robo-tournament Frozen Endzone, but while I’m well aware it’s just in beta form for now I’m very much in need of more personality (and in the game, etc) and variety if I’m to be in it for the long haul. Fortunately devs Mode 7 have detailed their plans for the game’s first major update, and it sounds as though they’ll be tackling HAHA LIKE IN SPORT quite a few of grumbles I grumbled its way, grumblily. (more…)

I have played EverQuest Next Landmark, and lo, it was akin to using Photoshop to birth worlds from my finger (and brain) tips>. Also, a giant ice cream cone. For all of SOE’s boasting, there’s actually some awe-worthy power in the toolset, and that’s not even all there is to the game. Landmark is a universe of exploration, combat, and survival that will constantly expand as players build onto it. From a standpoint of scope and ambition, vanilla EverQuest Next pretty much pales in comparison. If you still don’t understand exactly why (SOE did a horrendous job of explaining it early on), there’s a fairly substantial video below that ought to help.

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