Battalion 1944 [official site] blindsided me. I played a few rounds last week at developer Bulkhead’s studio in Derby and consistently came last in the leaderboards at the end of our team deathmatch battles. That’s partly because I’m not the best FPS player in the North West, let alone the world, and it’s partly because I was playing with the people who made the game. They know the maps, they know the weapons, they know the details of motion and gunplay. There’s a much more simple reason though: I was crouching and crawling and looking for the perfect shot instead of running and jumping and shooting anything that moved on sight.

The level I played, the Manor house, contains elements of the historic assault on Brecourt Manor, which you may remember from episode two of Band of Brothers. Visually, the cues are striking, but this is a traditional deathmatch game, with rapid respawns and movement rather than an attempt to recreate anything resembling reality. Battalion blindsided me because it is, aesthetically, very successful in conjuring up one kind of history but the way it plays is looking to much more recent historical references.

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Le R probateur is an extremely unusual piece of French multimedia IF. It is a personal favorite of mine so odd, so unlike anything else out there but for the past few years it has been difficult to recommend to people, because it was not only commercial, but also unreliable about installation. (At least, so reported the friends who tried to play it.) But Le R probateur>‘s author Fran ois Coulon has just re-released it, for free, in a browser-accessible format, and now anyone can get at it. The browser version is a tiny bit less elegant here and there than the original presentation, but what you get in exchange is something that actually functions on a modern computer. … [visit site to read more]

First-person mustard-gasser Battlefield 1 [official site] is set to allow friends of season pass holders to play on all current and future DLC maps, the shootmen at Dice have announced. This system of keeping buddies together no matter where they want to die is called Premium Friends , which sounds like a weird mail-order service for lonely people but is actually quite a savvy move by the gun scoundrels at EA. … [visit site to read more]

Most platformers take movement for granted. Sure, it might be tricky to nail precise timings and pull off complex chains but you have move buttons and jump buttons and they do your moving. That’s certainly not the case with Snake Pass [official site], which launched today. Sumo Digital’s platformer gives players a snake to wind, coil, and wrestle with to make him move and climb. Unconventional physics-driven platformers can be a bit kooky but this looks great. See: … [visit site to read more]

Surprise classic RPG remastering attack! Mere weeks after revered 1999 philoso-roleplayer Planescape: Torment [official site] enjoyed a belated spiritual sequel in the over-lored but otherwise strong Torment Tides Of Numenera, it gets itself a modernised re-release too. It’s due out April 11, but I’ve got the thing updating my hard drive’s journal and changing the nature of my VDU right now.

We’re not going to run a full review because we all played PST a thousand years ago and know full well it’s a solid-gold classic of narrative’n’choice-led games, but I do want to look at what’s changed in Beamdog’s ‘Enhanced Edition‘ and whether it’s a meaningful improvement. It’s a bit of a mixed bag, though the net result is the most playable and best-looking version of PST to date. … [visit site to read more]

Mirage: Arcane Warfare [official site] is the new game from the developers of Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, trading that game’s team-based sword-fighting in favour of team-based sorcery-fighting. The game launched into beta earlier this week ahead of a planned May 23rd release and we’re giving away 10,000 keys to the beta below.

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He’s a difficult man to pin down, but we managed to secure a world exclusive interview with the project lead behind The Signal From T lva [official site], one Jim Rossignol. After months of negotiations he agreed to speak to us, divulging thoughts and feelings about the game that will most likely kill him and all involved. Now, >some people are going to say that there’s a conflict of interests here, what with Rossignol coincidentally being a director and co-founder of Rock, Paper, Shotgun, which is an outrageous accusation that impugns our integrity, wholly accurately.> … [visit site to read more]

Jumping is so easy, even a hedgehog can do it. Jumping around an obstacle course while also kicking a ball is tricker. But it does look looks great fun in HackyZack [official site], a platformer about dashing and wall-jumping around while kicking a ball to hit points and reach a goal across increasingly complex levels. Wait, hang on, I’ve got this: Super Meat Ball. Kick-upforce. BBBBBB. No? Here, have a look in this trailer: … [visit site to read more]

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

I know what you re looking for. You re looking for a game that let s you be a janitor in a school riddled with drug dealers and class clowns. But also a game that will let you be a cop fighting robbers. But also a game where you are a soldier in World War 3. But also a game in which you are a prison guard keeping rowdy inmates in check. But also a game where you can be a footballer. But also– … [visit site to read more]

This is a post with a very clever title! The last game featured in our RPS Cave of Wonders at Rezzed this week is Everything, David OReilly’s gorgeous interactive nature simulation where you can skip up or down in scale to make discoveries and roam an entire universe. BUT! It’s also a good point to remind you of everything that will be joining Everything in the cave, so read on for, well, Everything and everything: … [visit site to read more]