PC Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

The PC gaming scene, by which I mean the Windows scene, is not a simple one. It includes the hardcore power users with money to burn that obsess about overclocking the latest hardware to those that log into Facebook to play Adventure World. Unlike the console realm where the word of Nintendo, Sony a...

Sledgehammer Games is now hiring for the next Call of Duty game. A job listing on Gamasutra reveals that Sledgehammer is currently seeking a Senior Online Engineer to work on an upcoming title in the Call of Duty series...

Multi-millionaire Richard Garriott probably hasn't been to a garage sale in many years (unless they were actually selling garages), but he's making a game about them. Perhaps those are the "roots" he intended to return to with his recent startup, Portalarium.

Ultimate Collector: Garage Sale, going into closed beta "just after the holidays," is a Facebook game that claims to invent a new "shopping and collecting" category of social games. Players create homes and avatars, and then search in-game garage sales, storage units, estate sales, pawn shops, and other junkeries to complete collections of real-world items, using them to decorate their houses or flipping them in their own sales. Portalarium said that "national retailers" will also have in-game stores.

Garriott's own experiences do play into the design of Ultimate Collector. Many of the available items will be from his own collection of ephemera, including space memorabilia, "quack medical devices," and of course shrunken heads. And all of the real-world items will come with information about their provenance.

"In fact we've provided links in the game so players can go back to these websites to learn more about the items they've collected," said executive producer Dallas Snell, "and, in some cases, even buy them for real if they still exist and are available for sale."

It's been a busy year for games, but something is missing. Batman, Assasssin's Creed, Skyrim, sure, those are all great, but what about Ninety-Nine Nights? Q? Entertainment has got you covered, unveiling the 2D PC action MMO we've all been dying to play. Ninety-Nine Nights Online is being developed by UserJoy Technology, and the trailer reveals that it contains both hacking and slashing.

We'd say this one probably won't see a release outside Asia. If you feel like braving lots of Japanese text, however, Siliconera reports that you can sign up for a preview version over at the official site.

Hey, you look ripe for some testing of a turn-based fantasy strategy game with RPG-elements. Yes, I knew you would be, and that’s why you’re going to click over here and apply for the Warlock: Master of the Arcane beta, which has just been announced by the Paradoxes. They explain: “Set in the Majesty series’ fantastical world of Ardania, players have to manage cities, muster armies and enlist the help of three unique races without neglecting their wizardly training- dedicated scholars will find that a new spell combinations or powerful enchantments can be as dangerous as an army.” If you need more convincing there’s a baffling teaser trailer below, voiced by someone pretending to the Sean Connery. I wish I knew who to blame.(more…)

I have this widget that pops up when I get an email, telling me the subject title. I’m sure you do too. I’m not special. An email just arrived, and that subject read, “Dragons Vs. Unicorns”.

If this was going to be one of the 870 emails about iOS games we get every day, I was going to cry. And beat up whoever sent it. But no! While of course it IS for iOS, it’s also coming out on PC! I can legitimately write about a game called Dragons Vs. Unicorns, which is clearly going to be the best game of all time. And they can quote me.

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We’re a week in! A week closer to the Horacetide celebrations, as children across the world excitedly await the arrival of Horace snaking down their chimneys, devouring the milk and deer carcass left on the fireplace, and leaving his “present” on their living room carpet. To cope with the tension, we recommend you continue reading our in-no-particular-order-apart-from-the-last-one collection of the 24 best games of the year.

What’s behind today’s door?!!?!?questionmarkone

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It’s been a while since I’ve been able to able to really get stuck into any kind of municipal simulation in my day job, so I was delighted to realise that there was nothing better to do today than crack open my copy of Police Force and “experience law enforcement like never before”. Join me for the first day on the beat with Marc Angel and his implacable sidekick, Susan. (Yes, that is actually what they are called in the game.)(more…)

OnLive's microconsole has booked passage over to The Old World and will be arriving at Game in time for the holidays. MCV reports that retailer Game gets initial dibs on selling the streaming device, with others to follow in 2012. The OnLive service launched in the UK back on September 22.

"There's going to be a number of things we're doing," said OnLive CEO Steve Perlman. "Consumers will be able to play demos on Game's website, buy the OnLive game system in stores as well as top-up cards like XBLA and iTunes vouchers." OnLive subscription cards will also be sold in Game stores before year's end. Currently, OnLive has "millions" of users in the UK.

That’s more fully destructible objects than any man can destroy, surely! But that’s what Strategy First are claiming for the third Flatout racing game, which is out on the 13th. More importantly, perhaps, you can do some of that thousands of destruction with monster truck races, which sounds like a killer selling point for a racing game, if ever I have seen one. No word on a demo, but it would be a shame if it didn’t have one. Trailer with hilarious music below!(more…)

8Realms has announced an exclusive partnership with IGN for their browser-based RTS. If you join the game via our VIP Access link, you'll receive the following bonuses: $4 worth of in-game currency (gems)Special boost to Attacking Might when you pass through the first ageExclusive IGN flag when y...

Did you know that by counting the number of ‘R’s in a cold person’s ‘BRRRRRRRRRR!’ you can tell the temperature of their surroundings? My ‘BRRRRRRRRRR!’ for instance, indicates my room is currently -10C. Why is it so fffffffffflippin (it also works with ‘f’s) cold? I blame greedy British energy companies and the bitter Siberian wind that has been gusting from my monitor all week. Stick a scarf round your throat and a vodka down your neck (or vice versa) and you’ll be ready to hear Wot I Think of Graviteam’s latest Eastern Front wargame. (more…)

I think you might be too, if you watch the trailer below. Pid‘s a forthcoming platform game that seems to borrow from everything ever, in a really rather impressive way. Anti-gravity beams, homing missiles, backpacks full of equipment, and a really gorgeous art style. Take a look:

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With his most popular creation continuing to connect with new audiences through The Sims Social on Facebook, Will Wright is keeping busy with The Stupid Fun Club creating all types of new entertainment experiences across media. Wright talks about his latest "personal gaming" project, HiveMind, what amazes him about his 18 month old son's gaming habits, and why he's excited about the direction the game industry is heading.....

It was time to find out a bit more about Air Buccaneers HD. So it was that we spoke to Ludocraft CEO Tony Manninen and asked him what they were up to. That investigation commences below.(more…)

I was sat on a beach on Zanzibar this summer, watching a lunar eclipse. The moon’s light dimmed and winked out, the sky filled with stars and I could see the edge of the Milky Way. As spectacular as the view was, my mind briefly turned to Elite II: Frontier, when I was up there in those stars, hunting and hauling. I wanted to be back. I’ve found out how. Pioneer is free sort-of remake of the classic space sim. Every time I load it up it *feels* like the game I lost months to, but the development team aren’t stopping at a perfect recreation: this is Frontier being reborn. I chatted to some of them, a group of passionate fans spread all over the globe, about how you build a universe.

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It’s the season of giving. The season of giving SLAUGHTER SLAUGHTER SLAUGHTER SLAUGHTER SLAUGHTAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHAH.(more…)

When I noticed that Big Fish had released a Mountains of Madness game I was immediately apoplectic with rage. I gnashed my teeth and raged at anyone who would listen, clamouring about the disgraceful behaviour of reducing my favourite Lovecraft tale into a series of loosely connected scenes in which the only challenge is to click on a random smattering of household detritus stuck in a snowdrift. Then I tried the demo, which allows an hour of play in what sources inform me is approximately a three hour game. Were sixty minutes enough to change my baseless opinion?

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Mr Timothy Stone, in his superb regular column The Flare Path, has been keeping an eye on Steel Armour: Blaze Of War. In fact, he’s interviewed the team behind it. And today there’s a new trailer for the ultro-realistic tank sim.

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My significant other has been away a bit lately, and being the wanton reprobate that I am, I immediately took advantage of this unmonitored freedom. Then I got bored of wandering around the shops in my underpants while bellowing David Bowie and Bing Crosby’s Little Drummer Boy/Peace On Earth at pensioners, so I devised some other way to indulge myself. But what?

I had it. The sofa was mine, all mine. The television was mine, all mine. I need no longer be banished to my tiny, airless ‘study’ to play PC games. I lugged my brute of a system (purely in mass, not in power, alas) to the living room, shivered at humiliating recollections of abortive, time-wasting similar attempts past, and set to work.(more…)

I’ve only played a very early version of Against The Wall, which presents an environment so empty that it’s little more than a proof of concept, but it almost immediately wormed its way inside my head and it’s now near the top of the massive list of things that I’m excited about and will furiously attempt to keep track of. It has a brilliant, somewhat Borgesian premise that it’s hard to imagine in terms of exploration and navigation until you play it.

This world is an infinite vertical surface composed of irregularly-sized white bricks. Entire civilizations and ecosystems cling for survival on the side of The Wall, everyone and everything existing under the constant threat of tumbling into the endless sky.

Doesn’t that sound absolutely fascinating? There’s a short trailer tumbling in the endless space below and you can download the alpha here.

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If you were running a commercial website, the most important thing you could do would be to make sure you put the game name in a prominent position in the post, and of course in the title, to ensure the maximum presence on Google. What would be ridiculous would be an annual massive feature in which you hide the name of the games in question, even from the tags, in order to maintain an air of surprise. But then as Saint Cliff taught us, Christmas is about giving, not receiving. So what are you – who is getting it ALL wrong – receiving today?

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Hugely ambitious crowd-sourced racer Project CARS aims not only to look utterly gorgeous but to allow a full career, beginning with karting and ending up in the motorsport of your choice. If it all comes off it could be the definition of definitive. There’s more on the development process here and the official site contains plenty of details. For now, here are some screenshots that have been cleverly disguised as photographs of vehicles. Racing game images often convince me that petrol-burning simulators will soon reach the point at which they look more like footage of cars driving fast than actual footage of cars driving fast.

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My brain: C&C news is big news, we should report it! My soul: But it’s just a rumour of the name of the rumoured new C&C game that a division of Bioware is rumoured to be making. Rumour, rumour, rumour, and even if it’s true it doesn’t reveal anything about the game. My brain: Maybe it does – ‘Command & Conquer Alliances’ could mean a lot of things. Like, NOD and the GDI palling up? Or they’re merging all the different C&C universes? Or a co-op focus? My soul: Or it’s just a random word added after the colon, like Hitman: Subtitle. You take these things too seriously, man.(more…)

This is how it is now. Review scores for games are clustering in the high eights and nines. The titles worthy of those scores are appearing more and more frequently as developers produce an ever higher calibre of electronic entertainment...

It is, apparently, the season to be jolly. So which is the season to be deadpan? And the season to be sardonic? It seems like who ever is deciding on which season is which attitude really hasn’t thought through a fair system of use, or considered the roles they play in our society. I honestly think a poll for the use of seasons is the only fair way to decide.

Anyway, which game is day four? Which, indeed?(more…)

Sundays! They can be for all kinds of stuff. Singing, dancing, rejoicing. But it’s possible you’re having a quieter time. You’re sat down somewhere with a glowing screen, and you’re filtering through information. So much of it… Here comes some now.

• Read of the week, for me at least, was the Frozen Synapse post-mortem: “Commercially, our targets were: Focus completely on digital; achieve Steam distribution; sell over 100k copies within a year from release without a significant marketing spend; create a game that would be popular with core PC gamers; we wanted to make something that would really appeal to readers of RockPaperShotgun!” Well, that’s always a good idea.

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Last week, we asked IGN readers around the world to tell us how they felt about the huge crop of first person shooters released in 2011. Whatever your FPS preference is, chances are you got your fix this year. And if you didn't, what's the deal? Why are you so hard to please? I guess that's a topic for another poll...

Hello youse,

I’m delighted to be able to tell you that I will have something very nice for you next week. A special festive video called “RAB’S CHRISTMAS CARDBOARD CRACKERS” – which will see me recommending some games for you to buy for your loved ones this Christmas. Included in that special video will be some great games I’ve played recently and some from the good old days. It will be fun.

Seriously, I’ve played some nice things lately, and I’m just play-testing them hard before I unleash hard opinion at you.

Today, I’m pretty much going to be telling you about Dust: Tactics.(more…)

There’s some great offers on this week, although many of them have got 24 hours or less left, so you’ll probably want to get a move on. After perusing this weekends finest download deals in the bargain bucket, get yourself over to SavyGamer.co.uk for regular updates on the cheapest games around for all formats. Here’s this week’s selection: (more…)