PC Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

If you have a little bit of spare change and a lot of free time, Amazon has quite a deal for you. The retailer's deal of the week offers both Civilization IV and Civilization V at a hefty discount. Either game can be had for a mere $9.

If you need a strategy guide, Machiavelli has you covered.

Disney begins its inevitable assault on Facebook through its subsidiary Marvel, with the upcoming Q1 release of Marvel: Avengers Alliance, a new game for the platform developed by Playdom. It's a "combat role playing game experience with dozens of familiar Marvel superheroes and villains to be collected," in which players can train their stable of Marvel superfolks to upgrade their abilities and stats.

This, of course, means we can expect to see more Facebook games from both Disney and Marvel -- the floodgates have been thrown open (let's say by the Hulk, in the interest of following the theme). We're surprised that this hadn't already happened!

It's a new year and a new set of expectations for the editors publishing articles on IGN's PC channel. Anthony Gallegos, Nick Kolan and Charles Onyett took a break from arguing about the best speeder mount in The Old Republic to put together a list of our top 10 most anticipated PC games of 2012...

Following a televised confession to spying on Iran for the Central Intelligence Agency, Amir Mizra Hekmati has been sentenced to death by the Islamic Revolutionary Court. The former United States marine has allegedly admitted to, among other things, spreading American propaganda and misinformation via Kuma Reality Games, a New York-based game developer...

Activision has purchased blackops2.com, suggesting that a sequel to Call of Duty: Black Ops could be in the works. The publisher previously purchased domains up to Black Ops 6, with 2 being noticeably absent from the list, but that domain has now joined Activision's collection...

I am responsible for many of the smaller craters that mark the moon’s surface. It’s true! I’ve been playing Lunar Flight, the modern take on Lunar Lander that I first spotted way back in 2011. Turns out it’s a simulation of me panicking as I hurtle toward the ground, upside down, beginning to rotate wildly in the hope that the motion will somehow cause me to skim off the rocks and bounce to safety. It doesn’t. It’s not an intimidatingly hardcore simulation but it is a lot less arcadey than I expected it to be. The beta, which feels remarkably complete, is available to those who donate $5 or more. More thoughts follow.

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Rab Florence isn’t just an increasingly renowned TV comedian/writer who also writes an amazing boardgame column for Rock, Paper, Shotgun, you know. From 2004 to 2009, he also used to co-present his own online telly show about videogames, Consolevania. It’s excellent, acerbic, weird and affectionately angry stuff (including to our own Kieron Gillen, aka Kevin Leddins), and it’s just been de-archived to arrive in its entirety on iTunes. For free, like. Obviously the iTunes application is THE DEVIL INCARNATE or at least THE WORST PIECE OF SOFTWARE EVER CREATED (I really do believe that), but if you can deal with that or want to bypass it by downloading directly to your EyeTelephone or EyePad, this is about the easiest way to get hold of the complete run and then save it for digital posterity.

Watch, laugh, wince, cry that Rab doesn’t still do games stuff regularly.

Not 100% relevant to PC gaming, but 1) D&D’s rules have been enormously influential on computer RPGs 2) whatever the new edition ends up doing will almost certainly filter down to a PC game or six at some point 3) your mum.

Wizards of the Coast are taking another pass at Dungeons & Dragons, after the recent fourth edition rules proved more than a little divisive. Divisive = MASSIVE RAGEFEST, of course. On top of that, WOTC reckon vidjagames are taking an increasingly deadly bite out of their side. So, they want to get D&D back on track – and they’re actively looking for the community’s input to do so. Is that you? Ooh, probably.(more…)

Here’s the only sensible response to a challenge to make a videogame in under four hours: filling it with absolute nonsense. Sophie Houlden’s Blitzkast 10 submission StarstarstarletterD only skates around the edge of being a videogame, but makes up for its unabashedly basic interactivity and sub-five-minute length by wittering agreeably insane gibberish throughout. Reading all its crazy words was enough to tickle me, and I hope you too. Outward stocking? The egg.

Timelapse Making Of video below, which very nearly lasts longer than the game itself does.(more…)

Bundles here, bundles there, bundles bally everywhere. Indie bundles are bloody fantastic: they help bedroom developers achieve the funding and awareness necessary to pull off truly great things, and they contribute to presenting gamers with a stronger alternative to heavily-marketed mainstream fodder. They’ve changed indie devs’ lives and they’ve brought wonderful new titles to the wider gaming public’s attentions. Most of all, they’re proving long-held idealistic theories of how to make money on the internet without the involvement of mega-corps and in spite of fears about piracy. But there sure are a lot of bundles, and they sure are coalescing around a set formula. I want to see bundles blossom rather than stagnate, and I’ve had a chin-scratch about a few ways that might help to achieve that. To the list-mobile!(more…)

An uncanny piece of scientific equipment. A series of sterile test chambers. A first-person puzzle game that demands spatial awareness and the precise handling of increasing combinations of elements. It’s Q.U.B.E. and this is Wot I Think.

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Good morning and welcome to a new week. How does it feel so far? Does your inbox feel like a Sisyphean challenge that you would rather ignore? Does Zeno’s Paradox amply demonstrate the perceived distance between Monday morning and Friday evening? Are birds pecking at your innards for reasons that you consider a tad harsh? Take a break from all that with a bunch of lo-fi minigames based around Ancient Greek Punishment. It’s like playing Track and Field except with slightly more jocular mythological references. Very annoying that it doesn’t seem possible to quit back to the menu and choose a new punishment, although perhaps that’s the point. THERE IS NO ESCAPE except the refresh button. Ta Indiegames blog.

ESFI World‘s Sam Lingle wraps up the events of 2011. Two years ago, it would have been easy to give e-sports up for dead, especially in North America. MLG’s console league was having some success, and ESL was still puttering along in Europe, though without the growth that marked the earlier years of this decade. E-sports seemed to have hit a wall after the disastrous end to the Championship Gaming Series. 2011 changed that.

A slew of new e-sport titles have energized the scene. Fans have turned out to events in throngs unimaginable compared to previous events in North America and Europe. Streaming media platforms like Twitch.TV, Own3D.TV, and UStream have helped create a community around the fans and players no one ever dreamed possible. Developers have committed to e-sports in ways never before seen. It was an important year. Let’s look at the details.(more…)

Pippin Barr first hit our radar in September when he made a game so boring it couldn't be ignored -- and it seems he's done it again. And again. And again. Barr's games are made to be simple exercises in thought and social commentary; at least we hope they are, because otherwise they're simply extremely tedious and don't offer any reward for effort exerted.

His most recent installment, Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment, offers insight into the futility of desire and mankind's attempt to thwart the powers that be, whether they're godly, psychological or stemming from ritualistic self-abuse. Or it's just a series of games that will really piss you off. We haven't quite decided yet.

Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment tells the tales of Sisyphus, Tantalus, Prometheus, Danaids and Zeno through the clever use of the G and H keys, pressed rapidly and continuously until you tire and your punishment is enacted. Peregrin Took's Dr. Pippin Barr's other titles include Trolley Problem, ZORBA and All's Well That Ends Well, and they're no less, ahem, enlightening than Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment.

Sundays are for planning the year ahead. It will contain victories. It will also, likely, contain videogames and many thoughts about them. So let’s make like we meant to go on and find victory in fine words about videogames.

• Cobbett’s weekly Crapshoot remains one of the best sources of the worst of PC gaming. This week was something I’d never heard of, a Myst pisstake, Pyst: “Probably the weirdest part of the whole thing – other than that it sold well enough for a sequel to be on the cards – is the song that plays at the end. Goodman sings it, and it’s called “I’m Pyst”, but what the hell it’s meant to have to do with anything, I have absolutely no idea. It’s only King Mattrus singing in theory, nothing about it involves Myst in any way shape or form, and… well… listen if you dare.”

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Diablo 3 is stuck in production hell in South Korea, where the Korean Ratings Board is "conflicted about what to do" with the game's auction house, which they feel is too close to gambling to be entirely legal, The Korea Times reports. Blizzard's Mike Morhaime visited Korea in September to resolve concerns and Blizzard has currently submitted three versions of Diablo 3 to the Ratings Board, including one without the auction house feature, but "committee members are still reluctant," The Korea Times writes.

Blizzard is intent on a global release of Diablo 3, and this snag could affect the launch date for everyone. There is no official release date for Diablo 3 yet.

Diablo 3 is stuck in production hell in Korea, where the Korean Ratings Board is "conflicted about what to do" with the game's auction house, which they feel is too close to gambling to be entirely legal, The Korea Times reports. Blizzard's Mike Morhaime visited Korea in September to resolve concerns and Blizzard has currently submitted three versions of Diablo 3 to the Ratings Board, including one without the auction house feature, but "committee members are still reluctant," The Korea Times writes.

Blizzard is intent on a global release of Diablo 3, and this snag could affect the launch date for everyone. There is no official release date for Diablo 3 yet.

It’s the first bargain bucket of 2012, and I think we’re back to business as usual. After the hustle and bustle of Christmas sales left, right and centre, it’s nice to return to normality. Maybe we’ll even have time to play all the games we bought last year. Just because there’s no big sales on doesn’t mean that there’s nothing of interest discounted this weekend though, read on for my roundup of the best PC deals. If you want regular updates of cheap games across all platforms, be sure to pop along to SavyGamer.co.uk whenever you get a chance. Here’s the bargain bucket: (more…)

Hmm, Terrorhedron is looking fairly interesting, what with being a crazy 3D tower defense game and having 8-player online co-op, but it also desperately needs a demo, because I am too cheap to spend $5 on checking out another tower defence game. Yes. It’s true. Check out the video below for a glimpse of the thing in action.(more…)

Spatially clever first-person puzzle game Q.U.B.E. now has a demo, and you can get it on Steam. It’s the first game from the Indie Fund guys, who I interviewed here. I believe Adam is working on a review of Q.U.B.E. at this very moment, so we should have his thoughts on the game very soon. In the meantime why not have a play of the demo and formulate your own?

From Software's Dark Souls is a great game, but one only the console world has been able to enjoy so far. While no definite plans have been made public to bring Dark Souls to PC, a post by a Namco Bandai employee seems to indicate that with enough interest, a PC version is a possibility...

Right then, there’s quite a bit of multiplayer gaming go on around the RPS community, and there should be something there for most folks who want to get involved in something. Your first port of all should be the forums, where you can see things like a Neptune’s Pride being organised. There are a few big sub-communities on there, such as the Unofficial Minecraft server, which is VERY good, and also the Blood Bowl league, which I believe is one of the biggest, if not the biggest community Blood Bowl league. Notice Arma 2 has its own sub-forum? That’s because they’ve got a big old Mumble server they use for all kinds of games, and are organising regular Arma 2 missions on their server. It’s a splendid community that we are really proud of. Especially since it’s almost entirely down to you guys. Hell, there’s even real life stuff in there, too, such as the London social club.

Then, of course, there’s the rest of the internet, include our Steam group, which occasionally helps us organise games. You can follow all the RPS writers on Twitter, here, here, here, and here. Are you running a community or event for RPS readers? Speak up now!

This is an astonishing turn of events. Obsidian’s RPG based upon long-running Pixar-bothering animation showcase South Park looks quite a lot like South Park. In fact, it looks almost exactly like South Park. I could just put some screengrabs from the telebox show down here and you probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, although the actual screenshots do contain the paraphernalia of combat and class-based conflict, and there’s a tendency for people to be positioned as if waiting to fight in a well-ordered fashion. The visual design on the game draws on a decade and a half’s worth of assets provided by Parker and Stone, who are also writing the script. Look, see.

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Commander. Not the most inspiring title in the world, to be sure, but there’s a charming little game hiding behind it. A tower defence game without any towers, Commander plops you in the seat of a ship, zipping about from planet to planet and dropping various sorts of turret on the surface, ready to blast any incoming threat. Those turrets must be enormous and probably bring down property prices in the area, stretching out into space as they do, but they get the job done. The game’s still in alpha but there’s a demo available on Desura, as well as an option to pay £2.99 for this and future releases. See video below.

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Hello. I hope you are having a lovely day. I wanted to ask you something. Now that the Skyrim frenzy seems to be dying off, and your gaming digestive system is bloated with games hoovered up from a run of excellent indie bundles, what will you be playing this weekend? How many of you are going back to things you bought before the Skyrim addiction set in? And how many of you are now faced with a stack of indie games that each demand your attentions? Perhaps you’ve finally realised how wrong you are about the Stalker games and have finally got around to playing them, eh? What shall it be? Speak!

Me? I shall be playing a bit of Starfarer, a bit of Perpetuum, and a smidgeon of Trine 2, just to balance out all those lasers.

Tomorrow morning at daybreak, the Flare Path is being executed for treason. His nosey neighbour, Mr Geoff Himmler, spotted him placing 2p coins on the railway line at the bottom of the garden, and informed the authorities. The next thing FP knew, he was sat in a dingy cell in the Tower of London with nothing but a laptop, a tin of alphabetti spaghetti, and a Dangerous Waters manual for company. After reading the alphabetti spaghetti and eating the Dangerous Waters manual, the condemned man has decided to spend his final hours sharing Achtung Panzer tips and disseminating news of upcoming train, bus, and jet sims.

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Those handsome chaps at Massively have scooped the announcement of Snail Games USA’s next free-to-play MMO, which is the handsome-looking Age Of Wushu. The game’s flag-waving feature set all derives from it being based on wuxia-type fictions, which means the characters are capable of absurd Kung Fu movie actions, such as being able to run on the surface of water. It also has a few ideas that are unusual in free MMOs, such as offline skill progression. You can see the AoW characters pulling off all sorts of unlikely moves, as well as slightly too many camera pans over pretty East Asian architecture, in the first trailer, which is below. There’s going to be an “international” beta starting next month. No word on any EU release at present.(more…)

My second-playthrough sword-and-shield warrior in Skyrim is nowhere near as powerful as he should be. My Sith Sorcerer is only level 31. Everything I've built in Minecraft is a work-in-progress. 2012 doesn't care. It just shows up, right on schedule, gets drunk, pops off some colorful explosives, and teases me with yet another year of promising PC games. I need a break, damn it. I need some time to do things like, you know, eat dinner and sleep...

Unlike so many shooter fans, I have little allegiance and even less experience with Battlefield and Modern Warfare. I love JRPGs and real-time strategy. I love Girls' Generation. But I never devoted myself to one specific shooter series...

Nival, the publisher and developers behind the Blitkrieg series and King’s Bounty: Legions, have got in touch with us this evening to let us know that they are “anti-SOPA” – the bill currently going through the US Congress that could irreparably harm the internet. They have given us a statement explaining their position, which is below.

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