I’ve played Receiver 2 for all of 20 minutes, and my heart is ready to vacate my mouth. The sequel to 2013’s tense and fiddly roguelike is out, and it is immediately electrifying. It’s about crawling over dark rooftops punctured by the ominous blue of murder turrets, while screaming at guns that demand you press a gazillion buttons before they fire.

Please do not let this one pass you by.

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If you haven’t played 2013’s Receiver, you’ve missed out on some of the best shoots in videogames. It’s an FPS roguelike where you roam about on rooftops, fending off turrets and drones with a gun that needs more attention than a two-year old. There are separate buttons to slide in individual bullets, fiddle with safeties, and do that primey thing where you slide the top back. I’ve got no interest in real-life firearms, but panicking about this stuff in the middle of a shootout is great.

Developers Wolfire games have just revealed Receiver 2 is coming out on April 14th, and will let me do all of this again with fiddlier and prettier weapons. I’m going to have so much gun.

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“Give the guy a gun and he’s Superman,” Russian playwright Pavel Chekhov said in his manifesto. “Give him two and he’s God.” The same is usually true in video games, except in Receiver. There, giving me even one gun turns me into a fumbling idiot, unable to shoot because I forgot the the safety off, accidentally dropping precious bullets when trying to reload… I hope and pray I am not given two guns in Receiver 2. Over the weekend, Wolfire Games announced a sequel to their fantastically fiddly first-person shooter where it’s vital to master the mechanical procedures of firearms.

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Revelling in the finer points of gun operation seems distasteful to me now in a way that it didn’t back in 2013, but I still bloody love Receiver. It’s about stalking across dystopian rooftops, deserted but for the turrets and drones intent on killing you. So far so videogames, but what sets Receiver apart is the way every weapon requires meticulous care. Press R in the hopes of reloading and, depending on the fiddliness of your weapon, you’ll probably just eject a bullet onto the ground. Not ideal when a single zap sends you right back to your randomly-determined beginning.

A weekend update has smoothed out some performance issues, added a smattering of prettifying post-processing effects, and done away with a bastard of a pipe I can still remember six years on. If you missed this the first time round, cor, give it a go. S’only 4.

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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.>

There are a lot of games with guns in them, and a lot which strive for some measure of simulation, but few that manage to wring the tension, nuance and sense of expression that Receiver [official site] does from its arsenal of carefully modeled handguns.

… [visit site to read more]

Receiver is a game with “a lot of buttons. A needless amount.” So says Graham, who also claims that the gun simulator is one of his favourite roleplaying games. A gun simulator is not a first-person shooter, just as QWOP is not a walking simulator, even though in some ways that’s precisely what QWOP is. Receiver isn’t a game about pointing and shooting, it’s a game about mechanisms – the gun as machine, with parts that require understanding and manipulation.

For the next ten hours, Receiver is free as part of the current Humble Bundle End of Summer Sale. Go get.

… [visit site to read more]

Receiver is a first-person shooter made in just seven days. It takes place on a set of grey rooftops sparsely populated by turrets and flying robots. Your goal is to collect cassette tapes from randomised locations, and each one contains a nebbish voice coldly reciting instructions and explanations of the game’s hard-boiled scifi setting.

It’s austere and 3/$5, yet it’s also one of my favourite roleplaying games. Not because of a character creator or a stats sheet or quests. Receiver doesn’t have any of those things. It’s one of my favourite roleplaying games because it has a lot of buttons. A needless amount.

I want all games to have more needless buttons. (more…)

In between being Humble and making games about dangerous rabbits, the handsome folk at Wolfire have made a game with astonishingly complex gun-mechanics. It’s called Receiver, and it’s arguably one of most interesting experiments in the first-person shooting field for some years. Rather than clumsily attempt to precis this, I’ve posted Wolfire’s own mechanics video below. The game has just had a big content update as it finds itself upon the Steams, and there’s a video explaining that, too.

What a lovely day I am having. (more…)