PC Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

Witcher 2, you seem different somehow. Did you get a haircut? Have you been working out? Are you pregnant with a future barbershop owner who will also be a professional body-builder? No? Well then, color me stumped. Unless… no way. Is today the launch of your Enhanced Edition, which has been heralded incessantly by a procession of myths, prophecies, and, like, a million trailers? Truly astounding. I jest, however, because I love, and I certainly can’t complain about gobs of free fixes and content. But what about an altered ending (yes, just like that one thing) and general acceptance of “mature” content in the gaming industry? Are these things worthy of my trusty torchfork, the latest in pitchfork, torch, and duct tape technology? I spoke with CD Projekt Red managing director Adam Badowski to find out.

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Sinister Design’s latest Telepath RPG had enjoyable turn-based combat but at the beginning of the game, the player’s party are so underpowered that their options are few. Stab, shoot, move. It doesn’t lead to the richest of tactical experiences and even though the discovery of more abilities opened the game up later on, the intricacy of the combat didn’t shine through ’til later. Enter Telepath Tactics, which drops the story, keeps the Middle Eastern steampunk setting and concentrates on combat and combat alone. Mainly multiplayer but with AI to fight against should you wish (I wish). Hopefully it will be ready later this year and there’s a very early video below.

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Come May 15, your pent-up Diablo-purchasing desire will be unleashed. Perhaps your furious buying will be so explosive that it also wings a couple of collateral purchases, like the Diablo 3 novel coming out the same day.

Diablo 3: The Order, written by Nate Kenyon, follows longtime Diablo character Deckard Cain on his search for the other members of the Horadrim, accompanied by an eight-year-old girl who may be cursed.

The book is up for pre-order now on Amazon, and Blizzard posted an excerpt on its community site, for those of you who aren't sure you're at the "tie-in novel" stage of your relationship with Diablo.

Quickly, someone carry me to an online petition site right away. I’d go there myself but I’m just so weak with shock. Do you know what’s happened? No, of course you don’t, you couldn’t even imagine such horror. Sit down. Hold onto something, like a pint of brandy. By God, this is even worse than when 5ive split up.

The pure, shining spirit of Baldur’s Gate is going to be tampered with by Beamdog for its Enhanced Edition. Steady, steady, it’s ok, I’ve got you.(more…)

I wasn’t sure what the polite level of enthusiasm for action-RPG Grim Dawn was but as it turns out it’s perfectly acceptable to perform a small dance while saying “it appears to combine the best of the developers previous game, Titan Quest, with a pleasingly unpleasant new world to discover and factions with which to side and war”. Alternatively, just holler wildly and punch the air whenever it’s mentioned. John spoke with Crate Entertainment and they explained much but now, after two years in development, the game requires a swift kick up its grim awning to help it along the way. Yes, gentlepeople, to Kickstarter once more.

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While watching people code is unlikely to be an event at this year’s 2012th London Olympathon, it has become more popular than I ever imagined it would. Admittedly, I imagined it would be marginally less popular than drinking your own eyeballs through a crazy straw so the fact that it’s an activity of choice for anybody is something of a surprise to me. You may remember the Indie Buskers, a gaggle of hardboiled indie types who offered up their coding expertise online, to an audience occasionally yelling requests. The results are now available. Read on to find out what dark ballads were in demand.

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The problem with game shows and conferences is they’re so console-dominated – while PC games are there, they’re often lost behind all those Cliffy Molyneuxs and Medal of Duties. Hurrah then for Rezzed, which is taking place in the splendid seaside city (and my current home) of Brighton, UK this July. It’s a new PC and indie-only show arranged by the goodly folk at Eurogamer – with a big fat helping hand or six from the extra-goodly folk at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.(more…)

The Game: Offroad Velociraptor Safari Genre: 3D Raptor Time Travel Sim Platform: Browser (Unity) The Scoop: Offroad Velociraptor Safari is a weird, weird game. In the best possible way...

Described as a "metaphysical sci-fi thriller in the vein of Fringe," Moebius is set to be the first adventure game from Pinkerton Road Studios, pending a successful outcome on its ongoing Kickstarter campaign. Early project backers pushed Moebius through the gate first, and have contributed nearly $174,000 out of the requested $300,000.

The publicity surrounding the project is hinged on Jensen's prior work as designer and author for Sierra's celebrated Gabriel Knight series, in which a long-haired occult expert and demon hunter solved dark mysteries in-between sarcastic quips.

In Moebius, we get an antiquities dealer named Malachi Rector, who's gifted with an ability to sense "the soul" of an object. (So, think of him as having a knack for explaining any nicks on your knick-knacks.) Rector seeks to identify the significance of a woman's suspicious death in Venice, and how that connects to a shifty millionaire named Amber Dexter.

Moebius, as currently envisioned, should arrive sporting a "graphic novel look" in March 2013. Project backers have until then to fund the project and provide feedback throughout its development, possibly starting with an even-handed request to have the name "Amber Dexter" stricken from the game.

And still they come. Jane Jensen’s Kickstarter has been going for over a week now, and is steadily bringing in the cash. She’s after $300,000, and has almost reached $173,000 with a month to go. It seems pretty likely she’ll hit it, but what is it going to be? Well, a cannily released email has finally made me take notice by saying it’s a “spiritual successor” to Gabriel Knight, and it’s called Moebius.

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Do you remember those book fairs that used to happen every now and then at school when you were a kid? Hoards of children, clutching pocket money in grubby hands, unleashed on tables and tables of books of every description. I always gravitated towards the science and technology section and bought dozens of books depicting fascinating cutaways of engines, hydrofoils and hovercraft. Well, Camshaft Software’s forthcoming car manufacturing tycoon Automation places you at the head of a car company from 1946 to 2020. It looks set to recapture that perfect itch of intricately drawn diagrams of complicated mechanisms with the demo of the Engine Designer, one of the systems that will be in the final game.

The demo will arrive on April 22 (or is already available to anyone who’s pre-ordered), but a trailer and a developer narrated playthrough of said demo are idling below.

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Orwellian publishing simulator OR accurate reflection of today’s hyper-manipulative media? Free, browser based indie experiment The Republia Times has you playing the editor of a state-controlled newspaper, tasked with convincing a skeptical public that they should love their oppressive, militaristic, anti-academic government while at the same time pursuing ever-greater audiences. Pick which stories to run and where to run them wisely – otherwise the government will have your family killed. Jim used to argue that we should run RPS that way in order to achieve maximum efficiency and profitability, but he sensibly elected to keep his mouth shut about it once the rest of us threw his son down a well.(more…)

On Friday, GI.biz posted an article by THQ boxwallah and industry veteran, Richard Browne, in which he argued that pre-owned game sales were the cause of pretty much every major failing present in the current games industry. From homogenisation to high budgets to weak multiplayer, it’s all your fault because you traded in your copy of Homefront. I perhaps didn’t quite agree with everything he said, and after calmly battering down the doors of GI’s HQ, wrote a response piece.

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What with Jim being dead, John imprisoned for stalking Kim Kardashian, Adam suffering another one of his ‘Nam flashbacks and Nathan turning to be just a figment of our imagination, I find myself manning the controls of the dread ship RPS alone today, and thus unable to actually play videogames. Hence, I can only inform you about games’ existence, not attest to their quality first-hand.

Yesterday I was playing a game by Almost Human, this morning I posted about a game by Human Head and now I’m writing one about a game by Only Human. THERE ARE TOO MANY HUMANS. At least Only Human’s game doesn’t, unlike the other two, involve bothering monsters in dungeons. Ensign-1 is an indie space combat game with a sort of FPS sub-game wherein “players leave their ships on foot to commandeer turrets, and other starships.” It’s just released a paid alpha version, which you can pick up from Desura to help fund the game’s ongoing development.(more…)

Nekro appears to have found the happy medium between hellish gore and shiny-happy creatures, and it wants to share this balanced, horrifying world with ours: All developer darkForge needs is $100,000, preferably from its Kickstarter.

Nekro is a top-down, randomly generated action title where players are a powerful necromancer who subsists on blood and creates other demonic beings, such as Punge, a Boomer-like character with gigantic, menacing teeth who explodes poison on enemies.

DarkForge's Kickstarter has already raised $15,000 and has 18 days left to collect the remaining $85,000. If pus, possession and poltergeists are your thing, go check it out.

Sunday! It’s the day of the week when your latent super-powers are at their most useful. Let’s see if we can use those innate abilities to find interesting reading material. Hmm, it’s somewhere around here.

• Games and the making of ominous architecture: “Regardless of what monstrosities we face, digital environments must capture our attention and establish a grim atmosphere. Yet for the most part, the architectures of horror games draw on symbols that we commonly associate with fear and revulsion. From Castle Wolfenstein to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, the stonework, mildew ridden basements, dark hallways, and cobwebbed attics of gothic mansions remain established horror locales. Many games, including the two above, use their environments remarkably well. Regardless, the frequency of candlelit masonry tests my patience.”

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The Shadowrun Returns Kickstarter passed the $1 million mark, meaning all $15 backers will receive the Linux port of the final game -- but that's not all.

Harebrained Schemes added a new $125 donor level that rewards backers with the Deluxe Boxed Edition. This includes a "game disc, soundtrack disc, a mini-poster, and -- check this -- a Shadowrun Returns USB Dog Tag set, containing DRM-free versions of the game (PC/Mac/Linux) and soundtrack (and maybe one or two other surprises, too)," Harebrained writes.

There are two days left in the Shadowrun Returns Kickstarter, so if you enjoy dog tags, get on that thing now.

"To be clear, this is R&D - it doesn't in any way involve a product at this point, and won't for a long while, if ever - so please, no rumors about Steam glasses being announced at E3." A blog post by Valve researcher Michael Abrash clears up just what CEO Gabe Newell was talking about in regards to wearable computing a couple months back - and the kind of hardware "experiences" Valve is hiring for.

In short, it's not a product announcement. When Abrash was hired at Valve, he was encouraged to find his own interesting project to work on. Seeing the rise of wearable computing as an "inflection point" similar to Quake (which pushed things like networking and 3D graphics into ubiquity), he decided that was something he, and Valve, should be ahead on.

"By 'wearable computing,'" Abrash explains, "I mean mobile computing where both computer-generated graphics and the real world are seamlessly overlaid in your view; there is no separate display that you hold in your hands (think Terminator vision)." Google is working on something similar, of course.

In other words, Valve hired a guy to do whatever at its game development company, and he decided to research a type of computing that doesn't exist yet. If nothing else, this is an indication of just how much money Valve has.Valve researcher: wearable computing project is 'R&D,' isn't a product yet 'if ever'

Who wants to stay inside playing computer games this weekend? I sure know I do. If you want to treat yourself to a slice of digital fun for not very much money, compiled herein are this weekends finest download special offers for your appraisal. If you still want more, I continue to keep watch over the best deals in gaming across all platforms throughout the week over at SavyGamer.co.uk. Here’s your bargain bucket: (more…)

Valve doesn’t like to say things. Where’s Half-Life 2: Episode Three? Silence. Why has Left 4 Dead 2′s Cold Stream DLC taken nearly a year? Silence. What does Gordon Freeman’s voice sound like? Silence. Yesterday, though, a Valve job listing seeking out new hardware tech wizards for its shadowy developer coven got the whole Internet talking. And, somewhat shockingly, Valve’s decided to talk back.

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Ten-year-old Dylan Viale wanted to share his enjoyment of video games with his grandmother, who is blind. Instead of breathlessly narrating his own gameplay adventures, however, Viale downloaded the trial of Game Maker and taught himself how to make an audio-only game for her to play.

Quacky's Quest is a maze game in which a duck collects diamonds and avoids spiders. Grandmother Sherry is able to navigate the maze by the distinctive sounds made by diamonds, nearby spiders, and solid walls. Rocks fill the space behind the player to avoid the confusion caused by walking in a space whose diamond has already been collected.

Viale designed the game with sprites and tiles (above), then turned them off for the final version, which Sherry had no trouble playing. He then entered it in his elementary school's science fair, where of course it won first place.

There are relatively few games that can be played with audio only - the Japan-only Game Boy game Soundvoyager is perhaps the most famous one. However, it's unlikely Dylan Viale knew about any of those, so he essentially invented the genre independently. That's worth a science fair medal.

This week, Kat Bailey and Rowan Kaiser have switched roles -- with Kat taking lead in this week's column focusing on the wonderful world of Western role-playing games. These are interesting times. Thanks to Kickstarter, projects that I never thought would see the light of day are getting a chance to prove themselves on their own terms. Who ever thought that Tim Schafer would get a chance to make another adventure game? Or that Shadowrun would get another shot after the mediocre cross-platform 2007 FPS?

That's why I'm writing here today, rather than my usual space at the JRPG column. Long ago, I played the pen-and-paper RPG Shadowrun with a group of friends, though not always successfully. Since then, both the setting and the system have stuck with me in any number of ways. So as you can imagine, the thought of a new computer role-playing game (CRPG) based on the series is exciting.

First, the setting. If you've ever played Deus Ex: Human Revolution - or watched Blade Runner, for that matter - you'll know what you're in for with Shadowrun. The big twist is that magic is suddenly a part of everyday life on this version of earth; an earth where cybernetically-enhanced dwarfs, elves, and trolls freely roam. A little silly maybe, but I've always been struck by the power Shadowrun has to unite those who enjoy both fantasy and science fiction - which is sometimes tougher to do than you might think.

If you're cool with a little freeware/open-source jargon ("free-as-in-freedom"), we encourage you to check out the Liberated Pixel Cup.

Creative Commons, the Free Software Foundation, and OpenGameArt, three organizations naturally concerned with the free transmission of culture, are partnering to make the world a better place for free game development. The contest is taking place in two phases: first, participants are encouraged to create new game art usable by anyone (as long as they attribute the source), and upload it to OpenGameArt.

Then, all that art will be used to make games, between July 1st and July 31st. Prizes will be awarded for standouts in both categories. It seems pretty likely you'll be able to download and play all the games from the contest as well, given that, you know, "free software" business. If you don't want to participate artistically, you can do so financially, by donating to the style guide artists and prize fund. Consider it an act of ironic charity.

I’m writing this in one tab as a tractor is idling away in another, and it’s not even a webgame: right now I have Farming Simulator 2011 running on Facebook, via Gaikai. That’s kind of neat. The cloud-streaming service is hosting seven demos of PC games, with five available in Europe and (Magicka, Sniper – Ghost Warrior, The Witcher 2 – Assassins of Kings, Orcs Must Die!, Farming Simulator 2011) the US, and two (Saints Row – The Third, Dead Rising 2 – Off the Record) only playable to US Facebookers. You get 30 minutes of gametime to test out potential buys, before you need to return to update your status as “Farmboy”.(more…)

I should have called this Jim’s Secret Robot Diary, shouldn’t I? Oh well. Anyway.

We captured an island.

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Kickstarter is feeling like this quote from Blues Brothers. No, not the God part. The “we’re putting the band back together” bit. Jordan Weismen has already managed to set-up a triumphant stadium gig for Shadowrun, and he’s told ShackNews that if it’s a success it’ll have a major impact on the potential for the return of the sky-pirate alternate history flight thing, Crimson Skies.

I don’t want to bite off more than we can chew right now. First comes Shadowrun, and we want to make that great, and then we’ll figure out where to go after that.

I am making a hopeful face. (What kind of face is that?)

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Yes, there are employees at Valve right now who are working on some form of gaming hardware. What that gaming hardware is, however, remains to be seen. A job listing discovered by Engadget this week offers more clues as to what that hardware could be, specifically pointing to job skills like "hardware design, prototyping, testing, and production across a wide range of platforms."

Getting more direct, the "electronics engineer" position entails working "with the hardware team to conceive, design, evaluate, and produce new types of input, output, and platform hardware." Wait, platform hardware? That sounds an awful lot like the Steam Box rumors we heard earlier this year (rumors that were later semi-shut down).

But don't get your hopes up just yet - just because Valve is experimenting with different types of hardware doesn't mean that it's looking to produce a piece of consumer hardware any time soon. We've reached out to Valve for further clarity, but aren't expecting much beyond silence.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending San Francisco’s parody-Twitter-account-inspired Molyjam and pestering roughly a million developers with my inane questions. In between digging for such crucial details as the number of weapons in a game about invisible guns and whether there’d a happier DLC ending for a tale primarily focused on hurling oneself off a cliff, I watched countless off-the-wall ideas blossom into playable games. Truly amazing, however, was the amount of mileage different people – some of them not even professional game developers – got out of a single idea: romantic free-running. (more…)

While the Flare Path Network’s minuscule viewing figures did seem to suggest the world wasn’t ready for a TV channel devoted to military gaming, philately, and Edwardian erotica, I still believe the rebranding and reorientation was a dreadful mistake. The accountants are far happier now we’re SHiT TV (Sharks, Hitler, and Titanic TV) but Frank, Becky, and the rest of the old guard go around with a look of defeat in their eyes that’s painful to behold. Sometimes I yearn for the days before FP diversified. The days when I could just sit down on a Friday morning and tap out stories about obscure sims and obscurer wargames. (more…)

In a classic case of me not noticing what’s right in front of me, it took me at least three minutes to realise that there were bees all over the Oddworld Hand of Odd logo on the new teaser site, encasing whatever the hell that thing is in delicious honeycomb. I’ve no idea what the game will be, but it’s from Just Add Water, who ported Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath to the PC (and it ran like a flatulent donkey after a bowl of chili). The game did exist in a previous, albeit unreleased, form as an RTS on the PS2. We have footage of that below, via the documentarian device known as Youtube.(more…)