PC Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

The question of sexism in videogames really oughtn’t be a question at all. Videogames are rife with the thickest seam of sexism, and have been since the first had front covers on the cassettes. Not just in the games themselves, but in the culture surrounding it, from the prevalence – and misogynistic reaction to – ‘booth babes’, to the wretched response received in all corners of the internet when people attempt to discuss it. Pretending otherwise is pointless, and responses of being “tired” of the topic are a statement of acceptance. And there’s no clearer or more revolting evidence of this than the reaction to a Kickstarter by Feminist Frequency‘s Anita Sarkeesian, aiming to raise money to create a web series about the issue. (Here be a trigger warning – and various links from this article go to some pretty unpleasant details.)

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When Civilization 5's Gods & Kings expansion launches next week, it'll have more than a few extra civs and that whole religion thing. Allow the fine folks at Firaxis to walk you through exactly what to be prepared for in this handy - and heavily informative - video, just above.

David Johnston, the man behind Smudged Cat Games, caught our attention with the absolutely fantastic forthcoming Gateways. However, his previous game, Adventures Of Shuggy, is reaching the PC today via Steam. More mind-bending 2D puzzling, but this time without a magic gun. I took a look to find out Wot I Think.

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When Civilization V's Gods & Kings expansion launches next week, it'll have more than a few extra civs and that whole religion thing. Allow the fine folks at Firaxis to walk you through exactly what to be prepared for in this handy - and heavily informative - video, just above.

Comrades! Come and celebrate the rightness of the one true format with us in Brighton in July.

Friday 6th and Saturday 7th at the Brighton Centre will feature presentations from heroes of PC gaming such as Introversion and The Creative Assembly, playable as-yet-unreleased games like Aliens: Colonial Marines and Borderlands 2, and even a 15-minute developer demo of Firaxis’ X-COM title. The RPS men will be there, drinking tea, probably. Or perhaps a refreshing juice. Or coffee in John’s case. He’s almost an American. But never mind that: come, join us! Because there’s a bunch of other stuff going on, too: a quiz, board games, indie games, and some RPS readers’ drinks and gentle chat in the evening at a nearby pub.

It’s called Rezzed, in case you missed that, and tickets are available now, Now, NOW!

Cliffski’s game of tank (and mech!) battles now has a demo, as per his strict policy of producing a demo for every game he puts out. You can pick it up from the game’s own site, or from the GTB page on Steam. The demo contains a sample of the game’s two-way tower defence action, where you can choose to build the defences, or to drop waves of soldiers and armour into the trenches of an alternate World War I. It’s worth playing the demo, because this one’s not for everyone, as Tim’s verdict concluded.

Trailer below!(more…)

The voice of Darth Maul has lent his vocal talents to the next Assassin's Creed game.

The Potato Sack Reunion? The last time Valve had a bunch of indie games at reduced prices on Steam, linked together by a potato-themed sack, it led to the cluster*crag* that was the Portal 2 ARG. Despite the last deal perhaps having left a somewhat sour memory in some people’s minds, they’re repeating it with a collection of 13 indie games for £14.99. But, why?

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Quick heads-up for the hardware-hungry RPS massive: SSD prices have fallen off a cliff in recent weeks, so if you’ve been holding off until now it may be time to swoop on one.(more…)

Combat takes front and center stage in this brisk, streamlined 4X strategy jaunt.

The Diablo III Auction House opened for business today. Here's how you can make some cash on the side by flipping your loot.

Now you can buy and sell items for real currency in Blizzard's action-role-playing game.

If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that Valve doesn’t yet have enough money. I have it on good authority that at least three members of their staff still have some of their original teeth, and not solid diamond replacements like their colleagues. Hopefully licensing out the Source engine and associated tools to director Shane Acker, the chap behind the pretty but blathering computer-animated movie 9, will help bring those poor devs the priceless nashers they deserve. Deep is Acker’s next project, and it’s being animated by Irish outfit Brown Bag Films who reckon that using Source as opposed to traditional rendering entails “high-quality production value at a fraction of the time and cost.”

‘Underwater Western’ Deep chronicles a near-future wherein the majority of humanity has moved underwater to avoid some manner of surface danger, and it looks a little something like this.(more…)

As the first wave of invites goes out, Bethesda reveals only a tiny portion of those who applied were admitted.

ISOMETRIC ASSASSINATION/STEALTH GAME INSPIRED BY X-COM AND FALLOUT. I do believe I just heard the sound of a thousand necks cracking like dry twigs as people walking past their workmates’ monitors were drawn to that opening. It was followed by the soupy bubble of eyes bursting from their sockets in an attempt to absorb more quickly the evidence that such a thing is in development. That’s the last time I ever write in caps. Hostile Takeover is indeed in development, however, and it might just be deserving of those capital fellows. Onward to videos and information.

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Just as E3 was ending last week, Major League Gaming's Spring championships were getting underway in Anaheim, California. Blizzard held a press preview during the opening hours of the tournament to show off the new units and features coming to Starcraft 2's multiplayer component in the upcoming Heart of the Swarm expansion.

Each of the three races in the game has a few new units and abilities to study (which you can see in the included trailer), and hardcore players will no doubt be combing through them as the expansion goes into beta. But Heart of the Swarm's multiplayer represents an interesting change in Blizzard's original plan for the three-part series that is Starcraft 2.

As lead producer Chris Sigaty (who doubles, by the way, as the lead guitarist for Blizzard's in-house metal band L80ETC) tells Joystiq, the new units are all about adding something to the game without removing what's there.

Of all the games littering the IndieCade floor at E3, just one of them truly belonged there in a way that the others just couldn't touch: Ramiro Corbetta's Hokra. It wasn't necessarily flashier, prettier or more famous than any of the other titles, but it was a game made for public exhibitions - literally.

"Hokra was originally created with the public space in mind, but it was also developed to be the kind of game that I'd like to play with my friends," Corbetta told Joystiq.

Hokra premiered on May 12, 2011 at the NYU Game Center's No Quarter exhibition, and Corbetta developed it with that venue specifically in mind.

"I developed Hokra to be a multiplayer game, and to be honest when I was first developing it I wasn't thinking about how to sell it," he said. "I was only thinking about how to make the best possible game, and since it was going to be displayed in a gallery space, I knew there would always be multiple people around to play it."

Hokra is a simplistic, competitive digital sports game for four local players, and only four local players. Not online, not three, two or one, but four physical people ideally using Xbox 360 controllers, always. This design choice stems from Hokra's gallery goal, but also from Corbetta's passion for local multiplayer titles.

There's a tie-in game for Disney's video game-inspired flick, Wreck-It Ralph. We expected as much, but we didn't expect it to be so good. It's called Fix-it Felix Jr., wherein you play as the titular Felix Jr., neighborhood window repair man and pie stealer. Felix just can't leave a tasty pie cooling on a sill alone, you see.

Felix scales the building, repairing the windows that Ralph destroys. People in the apartment high-rise leave pies to cool and Felix grabs them as he ascends the massive tower for extra points, until he eventually gets hit in the head with a brick and you lose the game. Thankfully that last part looks less horrific than it sounds.

Diablo 3's real-money auction house is set to go live tomorrow, and when it does, it will require players use an authenticator for an "added layer of account protection," Battle.net's Meozeldian wrote. The authenticator, which comes in a physical version for $6.50 or as a free mobile app, will be required for anyone to add funds to a Battle.net balance.

Those who have already added funds to their Battle.net accounts will be able to use those without an authenticator, but from today on, all new additions will only work with an authenticator attachment.

Blizzard has previously suggested all players use an authenticator to prevent hacking, but this is the first feature for which it is a requirement. As this is to protect players' real money, it's difficult to find the rule egregious, especially as Blizzard generally handles thousands of hacks per day, and the mobile authenticator is entirely free.

The trailer for Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph, with its abundance of gaming cameos, seems to have won over all but the grumpiest of Earth’s residents. Even I cracked a smile, although I continued to smile as I watched grimly unnerving British horror film Kill List afterwards so don’t read too much into my facial expressions. I’m all but certain that there will be a Kinect controlled mini-game laden nightmare of a 3D platdeformation to herald the film’s November release, but right now you can play something better. Fix-It Felix, the arcade game that Wreck-It Ralph escapes from. It’s simple, Donkey Kongy and jolly good fun.

If you’re cheating while demon slaying, you could be permabanned.

With the random announcement of a Dead Island sequel coming out of E3 comes word of its discounted retail price.

There’s a big, big part of me (which may or may not be my conscience) that feels grumpily determined to not ever post about the e’er-delayed fan Half-Life remake Black Mesa. I’ve been a member of the never gonna happen club for a long time now, but in the interests of OBJECTIVE, SOBER REPORTAGE I will pretend to take the devs at their word when they tell us they’ll be finally releasing something ‘soon-ish’ and show you these new screenshots which purportedly “really give you the first glimpse into the gameplay of Black Mesa.”

They come via the Source-powered mod project’s Book of Faces page, which just did that ‘give us 20,000 Likes and we’ll continue our marketing campaign’ business to ‘unlock’ them.(more…)

Free fear for all! A Mother’s Inferno, created by seventeen students at the Danish Academy of Digital Interactive Entertainment in the fall of 2011, is a short, experimental first-person adventure built in Unity that is interesting despite its flaws. More variety in protagonists is an excellent way to diversify the horror genre, as promised by the trailer for Among the Sleep and where that game will put players in the booties of a toddler, A Mother’s Inferno casts them as a parent. A train journey with a son and mother goes to Hell, literally and rapidly, and plunges into Dantean depths. Available in browser or to download on PC and Mac. Teaser below.

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Cornwall-based Hermit Games have prior experience in neon-drenched arcade games with a penchant for algorithmic designs, flexible difficulty and eye-caressing visuals. I thoroughly enjoyed horizontal shooter Leave Home and qrth-phyl, which is the sound of a man dredging phlegm from the back of his throat and then spitting it into a cereal bowl, looks to be a similar take on maze games and Snake. Everything makes sense in this short description until the final phrase lights a bulb in the old brainbox and then smashes it, replaces it with a sentient disco ball and bounces around the walls giggling: “The game plays in 3D, is adaptive and fuses elements of documentary”. Trailer below, along with a free browser Snake game of interest.

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I just caused the end of the world. Sorry about that. Although I also died when being driven off a cliff by two girls vying for my affections. And there was the time I spent my life in subjugation to an albino bear. Three of 28 possible endings to Matt Ackerman’s Relive Your Life, a flash game that lets you make small decisions that have been consequences.

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Lead technical designer Emmanuel Lusinchi explains why you shouldn't give up on Bioware's MMO.

For whatever reason, the conclusion to this year’s E3 found me sitting in a retro-style 1950s American diner. Brain nearly as fried as the egg on my sandwich, I couldn’t help but zone out for worryingly long spells while reintroducing my body to the concept of nourishment. During my brief moments of lucidity, however, I noticed that game developers were just sort of appearing – like drops of water beading on a glass that also played Elvis’ rendition of “Hound Dog.” Turns out, they were flocking from a party one building away. What happened next was, well, kind of incredible.

This haggard band of random developers – probably numbering in the 20s – went outside and engaged in a full-on group hug. Then, still in circle formation, they put their hands together and raised them in a “goooo team” fashion. They all seemed so joyful – so triumphant. And why not? They just finished showing the projects they lovingly created to hordes of super passionate people. Word on the street is that this year’s E3 was the sign of some coming triple-Apocalypse – some creative glut that borders on dystopian. On the street outside that little diner, however, I saw no such thing.

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A Reddit tipster has leaked info on upcoming Mass Effect Extended Cut and multiplayer DLC.

I don’t know whether to growl or sigh so I guess I’ll just groan, or maybe even grigh. Jim’s new favourite playground and horrorshow, DayZ, was the victim of a security breach, carrying the risk that the game’s servers could become a botnet. Thankfully the person responsible has been identified, a statement has been released and legal action is being pursued. The official advice is as follows:

…if you are a user who has downloaded the .exe called dayz_auto_updater.exe from the US Mirror…scan against viruses and read the description by ThreatExpert on where to locate this if your Virus detector does not pick it up.

Additionally, server hosts who supplied RDP details to the DayZ team are also compromised and “need to thoroughly scan their server for the same type of processes and to change their servers RDP details and to NOT ever give the RDP details out to anyone *Including DayZ* from now on”. More below.

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