PC Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

It’s a rainy bank holiday here in the UK, which means that the RPS writers are left to regenerate in their pit for another twenty-four hours. Worry not, though, because you guys are going to tell us what games you’ve been playing, and why. Still embedded in Skyrim? Playing Test Drive Unlimited for some reason? Found something no-one has ever played before? Speak your brains!

What would you call the famous Dutch explorer Abel Tasman if he had a penchant for cross-dressing? A Trans-Tasman! Trans-Tasman is also the term we can now apply legitimately to the IGN AU Pubcast, given we now have a bona fide Kiwi on the AU team, Lucy O'Brien! Lucy brings with her a lifelong...

Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We believe they deserve a wider audience with the Joystiq Indie Pitch: This week, developers Zach Hinchy and Joe Pierce of The Layabouts describe the beauty in monochromatic simplicity with their PC, Mac and Linux title Here Comes Launchman.

What's your game called and what's it about?

Zach Hinchy: Our game is called Here Comes Launchman. You play as the titular Launchman, an explorer for hire, who has been commissioned to explore the mysterious Puzzle Planet. It's a physics-centric puzzle-platformer with unique gameplay mechanics that allow the player to launch themself through the air like a rocket in any direction and manipulate objects telekinetically.

Describe your experience as a featured indie developer at Minecon 2011: how has it affected your industry perspective, networking abilities or development style?

ZH: Minecon was certainly one hell of an experience. We are admittedly a bit disappointed that Mojang didn't do very much to publicize the Indie Dev Theater and the associated kiosk area. However it was great to get some real in-person feedback about what aspects of the game do and don't work, and it was fantastic to network with awesome indie game people who were there, like Petri Purho and Terry Cavanagh. (Fun side note: Previous Indie Pitch spotlight A Valley Without Wind was the demo kiosk directly facing ours. They were cool guys!)

Pinkerton Road Studios, founded by former Gabriel Knight designer Jane Jensen, has raised more than $300,000 in its Kickstarter campaign, insuring work on its first title, Moebius, can move forward. Pinkerton Road is also working on a second adventure title this year, but is using the traditional publishing model, Jensen revealed in the above update.

The new game is called "Mystery Game X" for now and Jensen has revealed just three details: It's a third-person adventure; it's a dark mystery; she thinks you will be excited about it. That last one is less of a detail and more of "wishful thinking" or "early marketing," but hey, we figure she's probably right anyway.

Sundays aren’t often for sun, as the name would suggest, but on the rare occasion when the beams of atomic light do make it past the cloud cover, it’s worth enjoying. Perplexingly, though, my laptop screen is hardly visible in the sunshine, meaning I must retreat to my cave for the study of important videogame links and literature. Hm.

• Matthew Burns on the “Dumbness” debate: “Another way of saying this is: it is extremely difficult— maybe impossible— to come up with a story and characters that, when placed within the context of most current video games, don’t feel inherently silly.” And another perspective from The Guardian.

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The news horn of Game Informer sounds a clear, pure note of announcement: The Elder Scrolls Online, that secret so poorly kept, has been confirmed by Zenimax. How’s this for interesting: the GI article will apparently reveal the “player-driven PvP conflict that pits the three player factions against each other in open-world warfare over the province of Cyrodiil.” Cor!

The key dev quoted by the article – and the lead in the project – is former Dark Age Of Camelot man Matt Firor, who said his team is “committed” to making the MMO into a Best Thing Ever. Lucky they’re not feeling indifferent about the whole affair. That would have been awful. Teaser type trailer will turn up tomorrow, apparently. (The press release even claims that the game will be featured in magazines! Amazing.)

This week’s bargain bucket is being delivered through the hazy mist of a splitting hangover. I may feel a little rough around the edges, but it’ll take more than drinking just a little bit too much alcohol to dull my Savy senses. It was the SavyGamer 5th anniversary party last night, good times and inebriation were had by all. Were you there? Thank you for coming! Were you not there? Well circle the 5th of May 2017 in your calender now, because you better bloody come to the 10th anniversary party. Here’s the games that are cheap that you should consider buying with your pocket money this weekend: (more…)

“The game is out April 20th.” We said that about co-op jetpack blaster Orion: Dino Beatdown, and then it didn’t happen. Distraught, I tossed and turned night after night fearing the worst. Before long, I started putting up posters that read “Have you seen/been killed by this T-Rex” around my city and openly bursting into tears anytime I heard the Jurassic Park theme. Two weeks passed. I became almost certain that Dino Beatdown had scampered into the middle of the road and gotten hit by an errant meteor. My heart sank into the briniest depths of my chest at the mere thought. But then: hope. A Steam listing celebrating a May 4th release - with a four-pack option, no less. D’aaaaw, it had babies. That explains everything. Well, actually, no, but a recent trailer does. So fearfully grip your gun and venture into this post’s thickest word jungles to check it out.

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If you've noticed a lot of a hockey-themed subjects cropping up during your Draw Something playtime lately, it's not just because its hockey season and Zynga is trying to stay topical. Rather, it's all part of Draw Something's new advertising initiative, which allows sponsors to insert their brand/product/whatever into the game's list of drawable somethings.

The NHL is the first major sponsor to hop onboard, posting hockey-related doodles to an official Pinterest board. The concept was tested using recognizable brand names like KFC, Doritos and Nike, with the response being positive enough to implement the system for real. Whether this type of integrated, subtle advertising experience is preferable to banner ads remains a matter of personal preference, but we do love the idea of drawing a box of Toaster Scrambles(R).

This post fictionally brought to you by Pillsbury(R) Toaster Scrambles(R). "They're practically food!"

I would have gone for something about teaser trailer / TESer trailer, but it just wasn’t working. Well, make your own headline, anyway: here’s the promise-filled logo-panning teaser for The Elder Scrolls Online. It has Michael Gambon’s voice tell us about the empty throne and the alliance of dark forces, which seems like a pretty good basis for getting excited about anything, but really acts as little more than a signpost back to things we already know about it. It emphasises the acute appropriateness of a WoW-like MMO having an Ouroboros as its logo, too. Ponder on that, below.(more…)

Details from Game Informer's Elder Scrolls Online cover story have already begun appearing online, it would seem. The game has been in development since 2007 by a team of 250, according to a post on NeoGAF. It will feature full voice acting throughout and will be played from a third-person perspective (generally not the most efficient way to play previous Elder Scrolls titles). As mentioned in yesterday's announce, The Elder Scrolls Online takes place 1000 years in the past and will span almost all of Tamriel, though certain areas are being saved for the purposes of future expansions.

Zenimax Online is apparently doing its best to strike a balance between the Elder Scrolls series and traditional MMOs, trying to appeal to players of both. In other words, yes, expect to use a traditional MMO hotbar to access your skills. You can also expect epic player-vs-player battles - up to 100-vs-100 in some instances - as factions compete to take over Cyrodil's Imperial City, with the winning faction installing its greatest champion as emperor. The NeoGAF post has plenty of other details and, of course, July's issue of Game Informer has even more.

Old alliances broken, new things forged, the enemy of your enemy is your friend... and all that wisdomatic voice over material culminates in another shot of the ouroboros. Enjoy.

With Lovecraftian tactics having recently ported from iOS to PC, it’d be great to see more games following the same path. There are plenty of interesting developments in the touchy world of portable gamesquares and one of the most interesting is Waking Mars, an exploration game in which the puzzles are based around manipulating and understanding the interactions between alien flora and fauna. It’s quite a special treat and developers Tiger Style, also responsible for the exquisite Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, have announced today that they “are taking early steps to bring it [Waking Mars] to PC/Mac/Linux later this year”. Splendid news.

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We know next to nothing about Elder Scrolls Online at this point, but we may have our first glimpse of what the game will look like. A smattering of images, including concept art and what appear to be either screenshots or target renderings, have been published by All Games Beta. Elder Scrolls fans will certainly spot a few familiar elements, notably a flame Atronach.

The amount of developers that seem happy to revive our favourite things from times gone by is something recently discussed in the breezy parapets of Castle Shotgun. A few days later a game appeared on Steam, taking preorders that gave access to its alpha. That game is Endless Space and if it were a farmyard animal it would be plodding around a field saying ‘MOO’ quite a lot. It’s a space-based 4X game and although I need to spend more time with it before I say too many more words, it’s already caused me to miss one night’s sleep and that just doesn’t happen enough anymore. Trailer and brief excited key-tapping below.

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You can tell a lot about a person from their favourite WW2 fighter. Hawker Hurricane admirers are hardworking, realistic, and loyal. Bf 109 fans are contrary and meticulous. Fiat Freccia fiends are Italian. Westland Whirlwind worshippers are prone to melancholy, and often smell faintly of aniseed. Mustang devotees are bold, impatient and have a very low tolerance for silly Flare Path introductions that claim you can tell a lot about a person from their favourite WW2 fighter.

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So here’s a hybrid oddity: FFRacer, a game made from documentary footage of the train ride between Bergen and Oslo. The game plays the footage back at a speed depending on how you control the train, and the effect is quite dramatic. But it is just “go forward”? Apparently not: “The game includes 17 tracks that correspond to the 17 train stops between Bergen and Oslo. The player must complete each track before the time runs out by avoiding crashes and going at full speed. There is no maximum speed — the train accelerates as long as the player makes turns correctly.” There’s a 3-track demo on the site.

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The whole of Tamriel! That’s what The Elder Scrolls Online will contain, so you’ll be able to stride your way through Morrowind and shiver your way through Skyrim. Disclaimer. The whole of Tamriel except for the bits that are going to be chopped out to make room for expansions and Skyrim won’t be as detailed as in Skyrim: The Game of The Place. A lot of Tamriel then. There’s a great deal of player on player action promised, although no NPC marriages. Oh, and you can become the Emperor. What else can be learned from an American magazine’s leaked coverage?

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Fool that I am, I reckoned Renaissance Heroes might be a bit like War of the Roses, being a multiplayer action game with a historical hat on. The trailer persuaded me otherwise and I duly rolled my eyes around the room like a couple of marbles before taking a big gulp of coffee as bitter as a broken heart. Then I paused, added some sugar to the coffee, popped my eyes back in and watched again. It looks a lot like Unreal Tournament, except with more pantaloons and other frippery. That’s no bad thing, not as far as I’m concerned, although it is an odd choice of setting. But I guess it means I can call it a ‘Renaissance man shoot’.

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Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking. No, there aren’t any Temples of Syrinx in the announcement trailer for Emobi Games’ 2112. I checked. I cannot, truthfully, speculate as to these people’s general awareness of Canadian progressive rock – though that’d make a wonderful first email exchange. At any rate, 2112 sounds wildly ambitious on paper, and – while the footage largely consists of mechs marching and tanks making treads – it’s certainly not skimping on dingy dystopian visuals. The short version? It’s a “free-to-play MMO game that combines strategic base defense gameplay with deep customization and the visceral action found in RTS games.” It’s also sticking to the tried-and-true sci-fi strategy trope of three “unique” races. So no Rush, but maybe a little rushing? We’ll see. Check out the debut trailer after the break.

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Comrades, Company of Heroes 2 will make for glorious cover on upcoming issue of PC Gamer. The reveal first leaked on NeoGAF, alongside word that the RTS will engage operations in 2013.

It will focus on the Eastern Front of World War 2, with keyboard and mouse commanders controlling the Russians. Snow will feature prominently, affecting movement and forming cover.

Game Informer got in touch with publisher THQ, which said it would share more details soon. You know, probably after the cover makes it to stands.

Ambitious stealth game République has a long way to go before meeting its Kickstarter goal of $500,000 in its last eight days, but it hasn't stopped the folks at Camouflaj from adding some big names to the game's cast. Today's update reveals both David Hayter and Jennifer Hale will contribute their vocal talents.

"Hayter will play the role of the head revolutionary in the world of République, and Hale will voice the role of 'The Mentor' - a complex character who knows Hope better than anyone," the Kickstarter page reveals. Hayter is probably best known for voicing Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid games, while Jennifer Hale was the voice behind the female Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect series and every other speaking female in video games ever.

Words & Physics is so close to being a brilliant game. The concept is amazing: each screen features the challenge of getting rid of the words “REMOVE ME”, and you do this by deleting and typing new words into the level. As the title suggests, physics comes into play, meaning you can type letters that push the REMOVE ME block over an edge, or delete words making up supporting platforms so things fall. And then it gets even more interesting, with certain words behaving according to their meaning – in one level typing in “WATER” causes the word that space takes up to be occupied by water. In another, “FIRE” sets things alight. The possibilities seem incredible!

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Having already existed on magical futurephones, Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land is a bit of an old one but that’s par for the course when you’re dealing with Lovecraftian horror. The turn-based tactics should actually be a better fit for the PC, as the intimate nature of the squad-based trenchtacle combat often made unit and target selection somewhat problematic on a small phone touchscreen. Imagine poking the wrong bit and actually calling Cthulhu by mistake. He’s in a totally different timezone to you and now you’ve woken him up and he’s got a face like thunder. The game is available now through the Intel AppUp store, priced at $4.99/€4.09/£3.50. I’ll investigate in due course. Launch trailer below.

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Legend of the Time Star has all the potential to be a brand new nostalgia bomb whose inherent paradox rips a hole in the thinly woven fabric of space and time itself, but only if we allow it to. We think that sounds like a pretty cool thing we'd like to witness, but in the end it's up to the larger community on Kickstarter to decide if this retro, side-scrolling action RPG will be made. It's kind of like building the atomic bomb, but with more citizen input.

Legend of the Time Star is in development by Attack Mountain, an "indie-core" collective based in New York City with the goal to "bring that warm, fuzzy feeling back to gaming by providing players with polished and engaging games that have just the right amount of old and new." The game itself features a protagonist named Hero, a villain who looks like Rasputin and a robust world built with a classic SNES RPG art style.

Attack Mountain is asking for $57,500 to create Legend of the Time Star, and with 21 days to go it has raised $5,700. Donate here if you're intrigued and follow progress on Attack Mountain's tumblr.

John pointed me in the direction of Dark Scavenger and at that point all I knew is that he’d written this about it in the past: “They’re calling it a turn-based combat point-and-click adventure.” He’d also said ‘Wuh?’, ‘Huh?’ and even ‘Buh?’. Swelling with hubris I installed the game believing I could be the man to answer those questions, intricate as they are. That was Tuesday. Today I bring definitive and detailed responses along with an oddly shaped slice of wot I think.

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It’s scientific fact that sheep go to heaven, while goats go to hell (see below), so it seems quite some predicament that there are a number of sheep trapped within a hellish underworld of pixelated puzzles. Thank goodness you are a goat, accompanied by an occasionally hat-wearing mouse, who can save them. Through the masterful art of jumping and pushing buttons. Escape Goat (winner of the Best Game I’ve Seen In A While Award) has been a bit of a hit on the Xbox’s obscured Indie Live Arcade, and is coming to PC next month.

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The Elder Scrolls Online was just revealed to be ZeniMax Online's long-rumored MMO. Game Informer's next cover announced the game this morning. The mag says The Elder Scrolls Online will take place across the "entire land of Tamriel," approximately one thousand years before Skyrim's place in time. The story will focus on daedric prince Molag Bal as he attempts to make Tamriel part of "his demonic realm."

The game's director is Matt Firor. "It will be extremely rewarding finally to unveil what we have been developing the last several years," he says. "The entire team is committed to creating the best MMO ever made - and one that is worthy of The Elder Scrolls franchise." The game's July cover reveal will detail a variety of the game's possibilities: soloing, public questing, and a unique new take on player-vs-player, in which the three factions battle over sections of land or a desired position of power.

More will be revealed tomorrow in a "brief teaser trailer" of the game, GI says. We've got our double-horned helm on while we wait, just in case.

Update: Bethesda's PR says the game will launch for both PC and Mac.

It’s true. The Bargain Bucket man has been around for five years, and to celebrate he’s running an extravagant bargain-based games sale from his Savygamer site! Here’s the link, just for you. The games on sale include A.Typical RPG, AI War: Alien Bundle, Blue Toad Murder Files, Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land, Democracy 2, Eufloria, These Robotic Hearts of Mine, Fate of the World, Time Gentlemen, Please!, Planet Stronghold, Gratuitous Space Battles: Collectors Edition, Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD, Super Meat Boy, and Civilization 5. That’s some games, alright.

And happy birthday, Mr P.

It’s true. The Bargain Bucket man has been around for five years, and to celebrate he’s running an extravagant bargain-based games sale from his Savygamer site! Here’s the link, just for you. The games on sale include A.Typical RPG, AI War: Alien Bundle, Blue Toad Murder Files, Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land, Democracy 2, Eufloria, These Robotic Hearts of Mine, Fate of the World, Time Gentlemen, Please!, Planet Stronghold, Gratuitous Space Battles: Collectors Edition, Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD, Super Meat Boy, and Civilization 5. That’s some games, alright.

And happy birthday, Mr P.