At some point in every publisher’s offices across the globe over the past five years, an executive has asked “What is a MOBA and why don’t we have one?”

Namco Bandai evidently had that discussion later than many, as they’ve only now tossed their hat into the free-to-play MOBA arena. Yesterday they announced Supernova [official site], a F2P sci-fi MOBA with a twist (got to have a twist!). See, in Supernova, folks can upgrade and customise their creeps – those weak, AI-controlled units forever charging towards the enemy base. A twist!

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Hey come watch Rab Florence’s new weekly video series for us.

Rab Florence digs deep for beautiful PC gaming memories before they’re lost forever in this affectionate series about games, time and life.

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Two years ago, if you’d asked me how a spiritual Ultima Underworld sequel made by assorted Origin/Looking Glass veterans would fare on Kickstarter, I’d have said “funded in 60 seconds!” then smiled smugly. In 2015, that really doesn’t happen unless you’re a funny watch or a card game about weapons of mass kitty destruction. It looked a little touch and go for Underworld Ascendant for a while there, but it’s now crossed its $600k finish line with a few days to spare. … [visit site to read more]

Square Enix have issued a statement to reassure players of episodic mystery Life Is Strange that development of the second installment is on track. The statement (as well as a piece of concept art) followed reports that episode 2 would be delayed.

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Batman: Arkham Knight [official site] won’t be released until June but I already feel like I’m involved in a turbulent relationship with Rocksteady’s latest. After the disappointment of Arkham’s Oranges, I was relieved to hear the makers of Asylum and City were back on the case. That relief was soon replaced by doubt – much as I liked City, I felt it went too> big and the addition of the Batmobile seems like it’ll steer the game even further away from the original’s tight design. The Batmobile trailer seemed to confirm my worst fears, like one of Scarecrow’s guffs, but now there’s another> trailer. And I’m happy. Happier. Conflicted.

I might end up filing divorce papers before the bloody thing has been released.

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Intrusion 2 [official site] is one of the best games. It’s a 2D side-scrolling shooter with physics-driven animation and a commitment to expansively silly action. So, for example, one of its bosses is a helicopter with arms. It punches at you then pumps its fist when it wins. When you destroy its helicopter blades, it uses its arms to drag itself towards you along the ground. And when you destroy the rest of it, you go sliding down a mountain by using its remains as a snowboard. Then you get given a mech suit with a sword and shotgun.

Now its designer is making a new game called Jetpack Squad [official site] and the GIFs of its in-development form are enough to suggest it’s even more physicsy, expansive and silly. There are six of those GIFs below.

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You wouldn’t like our Adam when he’s angry. You wouldn’t like it because you can’t tell he’s angry. Capcom releasing Resident Evil 2 without local co-op support, despite publicly advertising the PC version of their latest zombie-botherer as having it, is the closest I’ve ever seen the lad to angry, and he was still as calm as Hindu cows. One day I hope we’ll rile him proper. Except now he’s even calmer, because Capcom have come out and apologised for their apparently “unintentional error.” … [visit site to read more]

Keeping tabs on all 238 of the world’s active vehicle sim projects week in, week out is an exhausting and expensive business. Why, just yesterday an overworked FP staffer fell asleep at his post, crashing a 12,000 recon drone into The Motherland Calls‘ cavernous cake-hole. It would make life a lot easier for us if there was just one sim – a globe-spanning, multi-discipline jack-of-all-transport. Most of the bleary-eyed blog watchers and forum combers in the FP office think that super-sim should have Outerra at its core. … [visit site to read more]

This morning I have been enjoying Grab Them By The Eyes [official site] – a game by Terry Cavanagh about the cut-throat business of selling burgers on street corners.

But it’s not about who has the best burgers – that would be ridiculous. It’s about who has the best burger signage and thus you must compete with your rival street corner businessmen to buy messages, colour effects, borders and customised text movement for your neon monstrosity.

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Count on Jonas Kyratzes to play with the tropes detailed in The Hero with a Thousand Faces and deliver a brilliant Twine-powered text adventure that simultaneously examines traditional heroic literature values and revels in retelling the classic save-the-world fantasy tale. With The Matter of the Great Red Dragon taking place in the Land of Dreams one can also expect a subtle yet incredibly novel critique of modern societies too. Also a bit of well-placed humour.

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