That wasn’t a demand for quiet. It’s the somewhat confusingly back-to-front title for the news that Daedalic’s best game to date is getting a sequel. And with it, quite the shift in art style.
Wasteland 2′s beta is officially go! Well, for backers anyway. I booted it up the second Steam finished prying it from some server’s synthetic grip, and I realized something: I was nervous. My expectations were riding extremely high, and I couldn’t help but fear that inXile’s return to post-apocalyptic role-playing’s roots would let me down. What I’d seen up to that point had my head ready to explode like a gerbil full of uncooked rice (and also a blood sausage), but maybe it wouldn’t all come together. Maybe it was pure promise and no execution. All bark, zero bite. >
I was worried over nothing. Wasteland 2′s irradiated peaks and valleys are pretty rad so far. I have some minor quibbles (the interface is awkward, enemy AI can be really dumb, some bugs and glitches), but there’s quite a lot to like here. Watch me play through a few early sections below. Oh, and fair warning: slight spoilers ahead. Nothing too major, though.>
OMSI 2 has just been released and the Steam page contains my favourite feature description of all time:
Relive the change taking place in Spandau between 1986 and 1994! OMSI 2 now replicates the exciting years following the German reunification and all the innovations and route expansions (line 137 to Falkensee) that came along with it.
The exciement and dramatic changes of German reunification recreated via transport developments, timetable changes and route expansions. I’ve been waiting for this transport simulation period piece to come out ever since I first read Tim Stone’s words about the first in the series. His diary is still one of my favourite pieces of writing on the internet.
As the headline says, three Fallout games for free. GO AND GET THEM. These isometric beauties will vanish from GOG at the end of the year. The DRM-free store doesn’t reckon it’ll be allowed to peddle them after year’s end as the current deal with Interplay will expire. After December 31st, the rights belong to Bethesda/ZeniMax. However, the magic of GOG means that if you add the free versions to your account in the next 47 hours (I’m an hour late with this post – SORRY), you’ll be able to keep a copy forever. Go go go.
Update: As we suspected, this is a misunderstanding rather than a conspiracy. A Linux version was never planned. Details below.
Activision have always been a strange lot. Peculiarly aloof to games journalists, they put out their billion dollar generating games with a raised nose, and that seems to be working out for them. But it doesn’t stop them from having a really rather meticulous stranglehold on the IPs they own but never touch. Try to create a fan game based on, say, the Atari 2600′s Fishing Derby, and you can be sure to have a letter from their spinning-eyed shark-teethed lawyers promptly delivered to your door. But most strange of all is the news that the new Gabriel Knight, created with Activision’s eventual blessing, is not allowed to be released on Linux.
Readers. I crawled to the end. You warned me. After part one of the diary, you really did warn me.
At the beginning, I thought Half-Life was the best game I’d ever played. There were so many finely crafted moments; so many things I learned. I avoided reading the slightest thing on it. I wanted it unsullied. As time went on in Half-Life, I gradually realised that each level is a discrete little chocolate box of incidents, scripted events, little puzzles and touches. There is so much attention to detail in the way that everything is centred on the player’s experience, how to psyche you out, how to spook you, how to mess with you. And then, as each new level drags on, you begin to wonder what it is you’re aiming for. By the time you reach Xen, you’re done. By the time you get to gonad beast, you’re completely, oh so really, done. But wasn’t it something? But wasn’t it really something>? (more…)
I am increasingly aware that I’m a creaking old granddad, stuck in my archaic ways and unable to understand the games the kids play these days. Starbound leaves me utterly bemused, shouting something about how it was all better on the wireless, and wondering what happened to good old fashioned big band swing music. But Below Kryll, which too is a side-scrolling platform-based game made of those ever-more familiar Terraria-like squares, has drawn me in much more quickly. And that’s despite this being a game entirely created by its players.
I’ve had my eye on Dungeon of the Endless ever since its mysterrrrrrrrrious “what’s behind the door” reveal campaign (which actually ended up being rather clever). The randomized roguelike-like dungeon defender is about preparation and exploration, with players defending a generator using all sorts of tools and emplacements while cautiously edging through doors that hide writhing horrors of increasing power. You also meet and team up with all sorts of deranged sci-fi/fantasy prisoners along the way. Basically, it’s RPS Advent Calendar: The Game, only less fatal. Oh, and it’s a really pretty, highly unexpected offshoot of Endless Space, a wonderful 4X strategy. I can play it right now via Steam Early Access, and so I shall.
Here it comes, with its lazy eye and its gammy leg. Take a seat before you do yourself an injury, you poor thing. Sit down and do what you so love to do – tell us about your family. (more…)
You there! Yes, you>, with the hair, the shirt, and the microscopically minuscule pimple behind your left nostril that nobody – not even you – knows about. You could well be mere days away from receiving your very own Steam Machine. If you live in the US and signed up for Valve’s first round of testing, I would advise that you check your inbox now, lest you miss the opportunity to excitedly huddle around your fireplace, waiting for ol’ Saint Newell to slide down the chimney and pull your precious bounty from the safety of his beard of impossible wonders.