I’ve been fascinated by the rebuilding of Rust [official site], and DayZ too, and how different their developments are the second time around. The initial free versions of both open-world survive ‘em ups were scrappy things, quickly growing and tossing features onto foundations that, it turned out, weren’t quite able to support them. Starting over from scratch, both have moved more cautiously through Early Access, and I’ve enjoyed seeing how they grow at this slower pace.

Rust is about to enter a bit of a growth spurt, now stable enough to start boshing in more features.

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Alec and Graham have both had a go on SteamVR, aka the HTC Vive (as described here and here). Yes, aren’t they glorious, beautiful, shining examples of humanity? You can touch them if you like. No, not there. And not for that long. What are you.. ew, no, no, get off>.

Actually, just stand over there and avert your eyes while they have a big old natter about what worked best, what might go wrong in practice, where this might all lead to, whether this is basically MAGIC, Valve vs Oculus and whether the hell we should let children use this thing. … [visit site to read more]

You know those rumours going around that Metal Gear mastermind Hideo Kojima and publisher Konami have fallen out, and he’ll be leaving the company after Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, throwing the series into turmoil just as it starts settling down on PC? Well!

Following statements to press saying everything was hunky-dory, Konami and Kojima have issued a public statement which carefully avoids confirming or denying the juicy bits of the rumours. It mostly says what we know: Kojima will finish MGS V, then Konami will keep on making Metal Gear games with or without him.

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You may remember the recent news that a lorry, aeroplane and cargo ship all carrying gaming genres crashed into each other off the coast of the M4 near Swindon. What you may not have heard is that emerging Terminator-like from the resulting carnage appeared Ironcast [official site]. A turn-based match-3 roguelite steampunk resource-management RPG. Here’s wot I think:>

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Hey come watch Rab Florence’s new weekly video series, made just for us. Part one, part two, part three.

In the fourth part of this series about games, time and loss, Rab remembers Unreal Tournament.

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Being a space janitor is pretty ruddy exciting, we can all agree. After an merry day of scraping guts out vents, mopping up blood, and collecting bullet casings, I need something slow and dull to unwind. And in the game.

Viscera Cleanup Detail [official site] today added a little drudgery to its workload with post-cleanup incident reports full of boxes to tick and text areas to complete. They’re optional, but who could ever turn down an opportunity to squeal on Pip to the guvna?

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There’s some fondness for old man Overlord ’round these parts, isn’t there? I mean, no-one’s filing it alongside Deus Ex or anything, but it was a jolly enough time, as I recall. Herding malevolent imps around, wanton cruelty for comic effect, being disparaging about humanity, that sort of thing. The hitherto two-game series is about to make some manner of comeback, depending on how much you want to read into cryptic teasing. Though it’s about as overt as cryptic can be. … [visit site to read more]

Given that one defining characteristic of Rogue, roguelikes, and roguelikelikes is that you can return to them over and over and enjoy a new experience each time, a whole bundle of them sounds like overkill. Well, that or a squillion hours of mirth for only a few quid.

The Humble Weekly Bundle: Roguelikes 2 launched last night with anywhere from three to six roguelikelikes depending on how much you fancy paying. They include the likes of Road Not Taken, Heavy Bullets, The Nightmare Cooperative, and A Wizard’s Lizard.

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Diablo III [official site] is a game I’m accustomed to playing on console while curled up on the sofa with another player. We savour the hammy (and sometimes nonsensical) dialogue, take turns examining our inventories for legendary items or tweaking our character builds, and we mash treasure goblins up REAL GOOD.

But I’ve recently found myself wanting to play when I’m solo, tinkering with my inventory as much as I like rather than with a veneer of consideration for the other person in the room and exploring entirely at my own pace.

… [visit site to read more]

Concluding what turned out to be a two-part review-in-progress of EA’s latest big noisy man-shooter – part 1 is here. I wrote it in pieces purely because we didn’t have code until US release day and I wanted to be useful to people thinking of buying the game ASAP; there’ll probably be more of that sort of thing here.>

Battlefield: Hardline is a stupid game. Clanging, colossal, cacophonous stupidity. It s a morally ugly one too, implicitly endorsing the idea that American police should be Judge Dredd, free to take as many lives as they feel like without consequence, fighting the war on drugs as a literal war, celebrating American policing s increasing shift towards the openly militaristic. Though, quite frankly, all that might just be a consequence of its unbridled stupidity. It really is very> stupid.

I quite like it.

… [visit site to read more]