Today, a rummage in the RPS archives brings up Jim’s fond farewell to Eve Online from late 2009, documenting his dramatic half-decade as a leading member of a successful corp. He’s seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Oasa. He watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tenerifis Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to repost.> (more…)

I love rules. Not following them, of course – that’s for other people. I love writing them. And since I’m the best qualified to decide how everyone else is allowed to behave, it’s only appropriate that I be in charge of everything. So it is that I have been making clear the Rules For Games, both for developers and for players, in an ongoing series that shall be added to forever. You can find the first four parts below.>

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Such is the way of RPS, gaming, and my brain, that long-term diary projects might not necessarily reach an absolute conclusion. We like to call these, “ongoing”. So it is that I attempt to plug the awkward silence over the holidays with the “ongoing” A Smurf In Terraria series. >

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The RPS Hivemind is still recharging, the major nodes soldered directly into the towering soul-capacitors necessary to sustain their thin simulacrum of consciousness for another 12 months. Fortunately, an errant pustule has attained basic mobility, and opted to present you with artifacts from the Shotgun archives to help see you through until our resurrection. First up, a return to the Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, with a haphazard diary series written by Alec back in Summer 2009 during a obsessive revisit of the game that many still feel is Bethesda’s finest hour. It’s a tale of hats, spider-dwarves, assassin-besieged home ownership, grand burglary, poorly-designed forts and existential crisis, in a land far, far stranger than Skyrim. (more…)

Happy post-Christmas, one and all! How was it? Did Aunt Agnes do that thing with her teeth at the dinner table again? And did you get Ninja Action Man or did mum cop out and get you Office Temp Action Man again?

Us, we’re not here right now. We’re hibernating and pruning our ear hair for another a week or so, preparing for the many word-based adventures of 2012. However, we have one final new missive for you in 2011: more games from the last year that we’ve loved. Yes, it’s true, we have room in our heart for more than 24 games. All of these deserve your affection and/or money as much as all the others we frothed about – we just didn’t froth about them quite as much. Your suggestions for our terrible, unforgivable oversights yet beyond these are, of course, welcome. (more…)

The final game of Chistmas had been chosen. It is the game you should play with your family before you are devoured by Horace The Endless Bear later today. Good luck everyone, we’ll see you at the other end.

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Is it Christmas Eve already? How did that happen. Whatever mysterious machinations of the Gregorian calendar have lead to this series of events, it’s time for all the download outlets to drop their prices in an attempt to get you give them more of your money. Just like Jesus would have wanted. Keep an eye on SavyGamer.co.uk, especially since many retailers have decided I shouldn’t get a day off and that January sales should start on Christmas day. Here’s this week’s extra Christmassy Bargain Bucket: (more…)

It’s here again, again! The RPS advent calendar is almost entirely updated, bringing on Father Christmas’ birthday, and today, in a bit, we will reveal our Game Of The 2011! Amazing.

Here are the rules of the calendar:

1. The games are in no particular order, except number 24, which is our game of the year.

2. That means that number 5 and number 17 are on an equal footing as a game of the Christmas, do you see?

2011 has been an excellent year for videogames, I’d say – but one videogame it has not been an excellent year for is EVE Online. The space MMO has been through the wringer in recent months: leaked internal memos, poorly-received updates, a misguided move towards microtransactions, protests, fan-angering dev blogs… More recently, devs CCP announced they would be sadly pruning their ranks, refocusing on the core EVE game and trying to win back their fans’ ardour. Part of that, it transpires, involves occasionally notorious senior producer Arnar “CCP Zulu” Gylfason handing the captain’s chair to someone else. (more…)

I have no complaints when developers add a couple of snowmen, a Father Christmas costume or a giant rolling snowball to their games at this time of year, but it’s rare for a seasonal update to impress as much as the level added in Polynomial’s latest update. I’ll admit, I’ve only ever played the demo of the “musical space shooter” but you’d have to be a fool to argue that its dancing fractals aren’t a wonderful sight to behold. Are you a fool? I hope not, because then you might not be overjoyed by the abstract made merry in the video below. Perhaps try the demo (Windows, Linux, Mac)? The full game is currently on sale for £1.49 over on Steam.

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