PC Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

Apologies for the initialism-filled title, but for an explanation make sure to read the main post here.

This is to say that we’ve created a permanent page (I’ll link it from the text below the featured boxes at the top) to tell you where each member of the Entertainment Software Association currently stands regarding the censorious and extremely disturbing Stop Online Piracy Act. We’ve contacted all 34 members to find out their position, and will update the page as people get back to us. Please get in touch if you spot any of the companies making comments elsewhere.

You can read it all here.

Oh good heavens, it’s a good job Alec’s in his recovery tank today. He’d be running in circles until he was sick. Firaxis have just revealed they’re making a new version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

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LEGO Batman 2 was announced very quietly and a few months later an image appeared to semi-prove that it definitely existed. Now a press release has arrived to tell us that it’s real, although without confirming that it was previously announced. Exciting stuff but what does it all mean? I choose to believe that a game starring Batman, Robin and several other DC chaps and chapettes will be available in Summer 2012. More below.

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Games containing blocks for building with have been around since at least the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza, a process which historians inform me probably resembled a shoddy session of Tetris LARPing. Nowadays, Minecraft is all the rage but it’s not the only bright young thing on the block scene. Yesterday, John brought news of Cube World, a spiffy looking cuboid RPG, and today I would like to draw your attention to Castle Story, which looks a bit Minecraft at first, though with voxels for added smoothness, and then turns out to be an RTS of sorts. Fervent anticipation is upon me! Video below.

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It’s been over a year since I first dabbled in obscure indie MMO Perpetuum, and I decided that since PvP and territory war had been overhauled, it was time to go back. Click onwards for some thoughts on the game as it stands now, and for a report of the activities of the RPS corporation’s first week in the game.

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Hello 2012! The observant among you may have noticed that I appeared to write something yesterday but I actually wrote that in 2011. Yesterday, I was still in a burrow eating the last needles of the Christmas tree in preparation for emergence. The first thing I saw as my eyes adjusted to the light was a developer diary for Gratuitous Tank Battles, so I brought that with me. Within, Cliff puts forward two game design proposals. One, “a sort of Upper Class World War I English General Simulator”, the other a game taking place during a war that has spanned centuries, leading to battlefields strewn with laser-spewing Tiger tanks, tiny infantrymen and robots alike. He’s making the latter. We must demand the former as well.

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I have no idea what an “all-new form factor” is, but that is the ridiculous phrase Razer are using to describe something that’s currently dubbed Project Fiona, due to be announced properly on the 10th. Appearing on their incredibly unhelpfully named pcgamingisnotdead.com website (er, yeah, we all knew that thanks) is a deliberately opaque trailer for, um, something. Whatever it is, Razer assures that “it’s not simple, it’s not delightful, it’s not magical”. But it is, they inform, “just badass”.

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It was a foregone conclusion that we'd never play the announced Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer MMOs from developer Multiverse, but the closure of the studio makes that all but certain.

The company actually ceased operations in early December, with a post on its website noting the studio closed due to a lack of funding after it was unable to achieve profitability with the Multiverse platform.

The Multiverse platform was used as "proof of concept" for Facebook titles Battle, Team Battle and Battle: Realms at War. The platform was also used for McDonalds and Coca-Cola web games.

Our condolences go out to Browncoats and followers of the Scooby Gang.

Okay, so Starfarer – which is in development, but playable now with a pre-order – looks like the kind of game we don’t see enough of. It’s a 2D space trading and fighting sort of game. The devs explain that it is “a single-player sandbox style space role-playing game with strategic elements.” That sounds good, eh? And then there’s “a procedurally generated sector of the galaxy, seeded with well-known core worlds and factions.” Hmm! Sounds like my kind of thing. I am going to get hold of it and take a look more detail. In the meantime have a look at the trailer, below…(more…)

I’m a little flummoxed by Retrode – I mean, if you’re going to spend this much on a special hoojum to play SNES and Megadrive/Genesis cartridges on PC, why not just pick up one of the original consoles second-hand? It’ll probably be cheaper, and you’ll have a big lump of retro plastic to show off and tell relatives boring stories about. Then again, this thing uses third-party emulation software (as reverse engineering Nintendo and SEGA’s hardware would be illegal and stuff, I believe) so it in theory does fun stuff like resolution upscaling and third-party controller support and save states and NASTY EVIL CHEATS and all those kinds of deviously modern things.(more…)

Brendan was not allowed to sleep during his holidays, instead we made him play Stellar Impact, which he thinks is pretty good. Shame, then, that so few of you are playing it.

Merry Christmas. I trust everyone had a wonderful time, stuffing their faces with poultry and listening to that quaint little old monarch talk about her Royal Gas or whatever. Anyway, now that I’ve insulted the Royalists I’m going to dispense with the Christmas theme because there is no way I can link it to Stellar Impact, which is a spacey game set in space. The first thing you should know about Stellar Impact is that it is a good game. There. The second thing you should know is that it is a slightly unbalanced game. The third thing you should know is that I have no idea what I’m talking about. But why? (more…)

I’ve just come up with this amazing idea for a game! Ready? So, you have this procedurally generated world, entirely made of cubes. And you can hit them with tools, and build them. And there are mines. And crafting… Oh, but I’m being a cynical one. It’s not as if Minecraft was the first to do it. And Cube World is doing something pretty different. And something pretty. The gorgeous-looking cuboid game is primarily an RPG, and with that in mind developer Wollay has just added quests, which he proves in the video below.

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A new year of PC gaming is upon us. But what dark delights await? Wonder not, for we’ve sent our tobacco-powered robot down into the game-mines to report on what is being hauled to the surface by the terrified ponies of development. Onwards for elucidation!(more…)

Combining game consoles and emulators, the Retrode 2 is a device that lets you play SNES and Genesis games on your computer. It's a USB device that you plug SNES and Genesis cartridges and controllers in, and use them with any emulator program. When not in use, it folds up into a little clamshell box. It's kind of magical, as far as we can tell.

It's hard to say why you would be playing on a computer, in an emulator, when you have the cartridge and controller handy. Perhaps you want to be able to use save states or other emulator niceties. You might just want to take a bunch of screenshots. Whatever the reason, we like having the option! It'll be available January 23 for 65 euro or $85, depending on your region.

Normal service resumes tomorrow, at least if four men sleepily trying to remember how to login to our CMS counts as ‘normal service’. In the meantime, pray enjoy Gameboys From Hell, one more vintage game diary from the RPS cellars.

For just shy of a couple of months in 2009 six arch-demons waged a war in hell. For just shy of a couple of weeks, four arch-demons wrote up their perspectives on the struggle. The resulting mass of writing works both as a multi-perspective narrative of a single, increasingly dramatic game, a review highlighting the game’s merits and as an extended tutorial of exactly how six newbies came to understand one of 2009′s most intriguing, subtle and just plain best games. If you’ve any interest in learning more about Solium Infernum, this is where to start. If you haven’t any interest in Solium Infernum, this will hopefully start it.(more…)

RPS was all about the standard daily blogging back on April 1st 2010. Standard daily blogging as if it was April 1993. Journey back with us to the previews, Wot I Thinks, scandals and futurology of a golden age of PC gaming – and to the mindsets of our more youthful selves.(more…)

Indie Royale, the new indie bundle that allows you to pay anything above a minimum (which changes depending on what other people pay), is launching a "New Year's Bundle" of PC and Mac games, which you can pre-order now at a minimum price of $3.99. The trick is that you won't know what you're pre-ordering. It's a "blind pre-order," with only descriptions of the available games given. The identity of the games will be revealed sometime later this week.

"We first started the blind pre-order for Indie Royale for two reasons," Indie Royale co-founder Simon Carless told Joystiq. Firstly, we did it because the popularity of Indie Royale was crushing our website when we launched, thanks to the 'ascending price' model - although we've improved our systems a lot since then! And secondly, because the price is variable for the bundle, we found our users were stressed about being in front of a computer when the bundle launched." Also, Carless added, "We find that some people have fun guessing the games in the bundle! More power to them!"

In case you missed it first time around in March 2010, this epic space conflict AAR is about as required-reading as this site has to offer.

Neptune’s Pride is a slow-form multiplayer Strategy game. We got together with our friends from PC Gamer to play. Weeks of bloodthirst, treachery and violence on a galactic scale later, we stopped. Then took a few weeks to recover. And then we wrote about it. The results follow. They say more about the players than anyone would like to admit.(more…)

Hello! I’m afraid RPS service isn’t going to resume properly until Wednesday, because we’re all on holiday and stuff. In the meantime I have a small competition for people who like glacially-slow sandbox MMOs! Yes, you know who you are. I’ve been messing around in Perpetuum (think Eve Online with robots) and the devs have given me some 30-day timecodes to give away to RPS readers. If you’d like to join me and the dozen other RPS readers who are currently playing then drop me a line via this link explaining why you should get a code, and then join the chat channel ‘rps’ in game. Codes are limited, so it’s a first-come, first-served basis only. Not that this will stop you joining us, of course, because there’s a fifteen-day trial of the game available here. I should point out that Perpetuum is a little slow-moving and a somewhat grindy MMO of the territory war/economics/freeform PvP/dismissed-as-a-spreadsheet school I favour, so it won’t be for everyone. Only apply for a code if that sounds like your kind of thing!

Perhaps "remade" isn't the best word to describe what the team at Infamous Adventures has done to Sierra's 1987 classic Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge. "Lovingly rebuilt," perhaps, or "delicately hand-milled," if such a term can be considered applicable in a programming sense. (We've decided it can.)

Infamous Adventures' reproduction features "hand-drawn backgrounds, hand animated characters, a full voice pack featuring over 4,000 recorded lines and a whole lot of extras," according to the group's official website. We don't know what's more touching, the fact that a small group of people completely rejiggered a classic out of love for the original, or that the fruits of their labor can be downloaded for free.

Watch those system requirements, though, as the PC version requires a whole meg of RAM.

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 at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Alex Ayars discusses (a few of) the potential downsides of an alien invasion with his space-based RPG, Zigfrak.
What's your game called and what's it about?

Zigfrak is a game of deep-space conflict and discovery. Players begin in the midst of a human civil war, complicated by the invasion of technologically superior aliens.

Is the Zigfrak story inspired by any real-life events? How pivotal is the story to the gameplay?

The underlying story draws inspiration from historical and modern day events. Ronald Reagan gave an address to the UN in the '80s, at one point positing that the conflicts between human nations might dissolve if we were to be confronted by a truly alien threat. A big angle of Zigfrak's story is that his statement probably wasn't true -- that humans would continue on with their petty squabbles, even when faced with annihilation by a superior alien adversary.

The backstory is also inspired by the American Revolution and the contemporary debate surrounding the security theater. I try to present this nonpolitically, leaving the door open for players to interpret events however they are most comfortable with.

Zigfrak's story helps to prop things up, but is auxiliary to the many approaches one might take when playing. Each hub of content is a platform for telling a self-contained and lighthearted short story, with the player taking on a pivotal role.

Perhaps "remade" isn't the best word to describe what the team at Infamous Adventures has done to Sierra's 1987 classic Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge. "Lovingly rebuilt," perhaps, or "delicately hand-milled," if such a term can be considered applicable in a programming sense. (We've decided it can.)

Infamous Adventures' reproduction features "hand-drawn backgrounds, hand animated characters, a full voice pack featuring over 4,000 recorded lines and a whole lot of extras," according to the group's official website. We don't know what's more touching, the fact that a small group of people completely rejiggered a classic out of love for the original, or the fact that the fruits of their labor can be downloaded for free.

Watch those system requirements though, the PC version requires a whole meg of RAM.

Originally discussed back in August, talk of a remade/remixed version of Adeline Software International's Little Big Adventure (known stateside as Relentless: Twinsen's Adventure) has resurfaced during an interview between GoG.com and the creative minds behind the series, Didier Chanfray, Frédérick Raynal and Sébastien Viannay.

Other than confirmation that a rerelease of the original Little Big Adventure is in the works, the team also hinted at the possibility of an eventual Little Big Adventure 3: "We obviously have a lot of ideas for a third part, our best fans already know some of them, but before telling you more we need to test some of them with the remake. Games are different nowadays and we don't want to be stuck in 90's." If only every developer could be so self-aware.

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Over the years, we’ve built up a vast stock of Gaming Made Mes – highly, unashamedly subjective features about the videogames that proved, for one reason or another formative to writers including the RPS Hivemind and associates, and developers such as Ken Levine, Erik Wolpaw and Soren Johnson. This is the complete collection.

Some spectacular reading awaits you below, on a huge array of even more spectacular games.(more…)

Time for the final bargain bucket of 2011, and appropriately it’s a rather good selection this week. Any predictions for how the market for discounted computer entertainment software might change in 2012? Has Bundle Fever already hit its peak? Will Origin ever discount games for all regions rather than hand picking a portion of their international customers? Will you have played all the games you’ve bought for cheap in 2011 by the end of 2012? I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but what I do know is that you can rely on SavyGamer.co.uk to always be up to date with the best deals on games on any format, and the Bargain Bucket will continue to serve you the best PC download deals every weekend. Have a shifty at this lot: (more…)

A new year is about to dawn. It is a time for change, and renewal. A time for earnest dedication to a better you. A time, indeed, for resolutions – so Rock, Paper, Shotgun would like to share a few with you.(more…)

Next up from the dusty annals of prehistoric RPS is a 2008 barnstormer of a tale from our all-too-quickly-departed gentleman caller Quintin Smith, and probably the best thing you’ll ever read about the one-time greatest videogame in the history of existence, Planetside.

Planetside, then. Do I have any veterans in the audience? At ease, gentlemen.

It might not have dredged up the subscribers Sony were hoping for, and you personally might have found it a disappointment, a bully, a bastard, or most unforgivably, a bore. The developers were perhaps overambitious, and in any case they managed to screw up both on paper and in practice. But their game has achieved one beautiful thing, and that’s the creation of the same invisible veterans’ club that results from a real life war. If you played Planetside you might have already encountered this phenomenon- the mutual respect that instantly exists once you find out someone’s an ex-Planetside player. Since I can’t think of a name for this whole process, I’m going to dub it “I WAS THERE, MAN” syndrome.(more…)

A hopeless nostalgic, The Flare Path always finds year ends troubling. On one hand, The Past is about to get a little fatter; on the other, the extra girth means 1692 – FP’s favourite year – is even more likely to get overlooked by historians. What’s so special about 1692? That was the year Thomas J. Halthrope invented the Alliterating Alice, a donkey-powered ‘worde gin’ capable of producing bespoke sim & wargame news preambles at the touch of a lever. This very intro was produced on a 1692 Halthrope that works as well today as it ev///<$> Assetto Corsa <$$> Scourge of War: Antietam. <$$$> Steel Beasts Pro <> hereendethpreface/// (more…)

I love rules. Not following them, of course – that’s for other people. I love writing them. And since I’m the best qualified to decide how everyone else is allowed to behave, it’s only appropriate that I be in charge of everything. So it is that I have been making clear the Rules For Games, both for developers and for players, in an ongoing series that shall be added to forever. You can find the first four parts below.

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