PC Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

GSC have announced their arrival at Good Old Games with a bundled package of some of their most fondly remembered titles. Yes, it’s the Cossacks Anthology, containing Cossacks: European Wars and its two expansion packs. Now, I do have very fond memories of Cossacks’ take on the historical RTS, throwing around thousands of units at once, but of course it’s the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games that most people know GSC for. Further titles will be appearing but I’m not even sure S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is old enough to be considered anything other than a GG. The Cossacks Anthology is available here, priced at $5.99. Maybe if everyone in the world buys it twice, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 appears immediately?

BOO! SCP-087 (direct download link only) is a Unity-based first-person horror game that involves walking down some stairs, through a random number of floors with random horrible noises and events occurring. It’s the kind of stairway you might find in a House of Leaves. Incredibly simple and far too dark but with sound design decent enough that I just became too nervous to carry on my descent and quit. But I’m a coward and perhaps you’re not. If you don’t know what SCP stands for in this context, read on.

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It’s exactly like that training course scene from Starship Troopers. The one with the non-lethal lasers, I mean. Not the one where a man gets shot to death in the skull during a live fire exercise. In ShootMania, nobody gets shot to death in the skull – that would be much too violent. Violence isn’t really what this particular FPS has in mind.

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Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy – Commonwealth Forces, or Norman to friends, aka the game that clogged the RPS title cannon, is sneaking up on the release battle. The generals at Battlefront have instigated manoeuvres, launching the first volley of in-game video at the front lines of the enemy browsers. Expect casualties of at least 13 minutes of work, the time it’ll take to examine these videos and report your detailed analysis in the comments below. Are you ready, soldiers? Time to go over the top.

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Abstract first-person puzzler Fract has been going through some changes. Jim had words with creator Richard E Flanagan over a year ago and the future direction of the project wasn’t entirely clear back then. A new developer diary tells us a little more about the spectacular route this interactive synthesiser of a world has chosen to follow.

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After a lengthy drought of mech games, it suddenly feels like armored mechanical behemoths are back en vogue, with Day 1 Studios adding Reign of Thunder to the roster. The game is a fast-paced, third-person free-to-play mech combat game. It will feature a new mech IP by the team that created MechAssault.

"It feels great to return to the Mech genre and community we've played games with and made games with, for almost two decades. Combining the customization and RPG elements of the early MechWarrior PC and board games with the fast paced arcade action of the MechAssault series and making it all Free-to-Play is an exciting opportunity to be part of," said Day 1 Creative Director and Executive Producer TJ Wagner. "I'm dying to get Thunder in the hands of new and old Mech pilots alike and battle it out. The best part is that time is very, very near."

Reign of Thunder will launch into the mech arena as MechWarrior Online and MechWarrior Tactics, two titles officially set in the BattleTech Universe, plan to bring back the glory of mega mech combat this year.

Finally, we have a concrete reason for the eternal delay of Half-Life 2 Episode 3: Valve head Gabe Newell is more interested in wearable computing. OK, that's not directly why Valve hasn't announced a new Half-Life title, but wearable computing and hardware development are definitely something Valve is interested in, Newell told Penny Arcade Report.

Wearable computers -- think Star Trek communication badges, wrist-bound touchscreens or SixthSense -- are seeing a resurgence, and Valve is doing its own research into how they might function as gaming devices. Wearable computers now are "way higher resolution, way lighter weight, much better battery life," and Valve is doing its own research into this technology through biometrics, and is excited to see where it goes, Newell said.

"So we're thinking of trying to figure out how to do the equivalent of the [Team Fortress] incremental approach in software design and try to figure out how would you get something similar to that in the hardware space as well," he said. If Valve were to produce hardware, it would be something easy to iterate so customers don't have to buy 10 million devices, Newell said. Of course, that's if.

"Well, if we have to sell hardware we will," Newell said. "We have no reason to believe we're any good at it; it's more we think that we need to continue to have innovation and if the only way to get these kind of projects started is by us going and developing and selling the hardware directly then that's what we'll do."

No company is safe from irrelevance, as far as Newell sees it, and even Microsoft and Sony can suffer the same fate as Atari and Commodore if they continue to create closed systems and don't innovate. "As soon as Valve stops doing interesting, innovative work we're gonna be left behind," Newell stated, unfortunately missing the "left for dead" pun opportunity.

Is it a coincidence that turn-based RPG Telepath RPG: Servants of God was released on Feb 14th, 2012? 20 divided by 12 is 1.666666666666667. Basically 1.6. What’s the multiplication symbol? An ‘x’. How else is ‘x’ used? When we say things like ‘an x number of boats’. So if we were to say an ‘x number of 16 (derived by multiplying 1.6 by ten) we get ‘a 20 of 16′. If you remove the ‘a’ and ‘of’, you get 2016. Ghostbuster’s II predicted that the world would end on Valentine’s day, 2016. What could this mean? It means the Middle-Eastern flavoured tactical treat Telepath is out now, obviously.

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In my life I’ve shot about 100 bullets and taken about 12 billion photographs, so why are the stats in games skewed towards bangthings? I’ll tell you why: Gov’t funded Big Ammo have been lobbying to have guns replace photographs in all games. Doom was originally about photographing demon families for their Christmas cards, until the developers were visited in the dead of night. Then it mysteriously became about killing things with bullets. Check the game code. It’s all in the code, people! Well brave soldiers Retro Affect are fighting the good fight with Snapshot, their bullet-free platform game where you use photos of the environment to solve puzzles. Five minutes of Zapruder-beating footage is right here. You can’t stop the signal!

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For all I know we’ll be running a similar headline with a slightly larger number every week for the rest of the year, but Double Fine’s crowd-funding experiment does appear to be slowing down now. Still: $2 million. $2,004,877 to be precise, from 59,854 nostalgic backers. That’s a big fat budget for a 2D adventure game, and hopefully they’ll spend it on making something stellar. Or at least something tiny and rubbish but that ships in a box made of solid gold.(more…)

I’d been meaning to try Starfarer since Jim first wrote about it and when I noticed that an update had added the beginnings of the campaign, it seemed only polite to indulge in some tactical ship-bothering. I was hoping for something that mixed my favourite parts of Space Rangers 2, Space Pirates and Zombies, Gratuitous Space Battles and Strange Adventures in Infinite Space. Basically, all my favourite top-down space games. The current version, which is available to anyone willing to part with a $10 preorder, is shaping up to be rather splendid, but can it really be the best bits of the best things? Observe.

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It’s been out a while, but you know what? It takes a while to play! PixelJunk Eden, the four year old PSN platformer, has mysteriously appeared on PC. What did I think of its ambient amblings? Just bouncybounce your way below and I’ll jolly well tell you Wot I Think.

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The Lonely Wizard, a browser-based collaboration between Alan Hazelden and Terry Cavanagh, will take you all of thirty seconds to play. So off you go and play it now – no excuses. I’ll leave the site off the air until you get back, so you won’t miss anything.

Back? I think you’ll agree we’ve all learned an important lesson today.

I remember where I was when I first heard about QWOP, because I was in the offices of a certain other PC gaming publication, working for The Man. Now I work for A Man, that man being me. Stop looking at me like that! I am so. Anyway, QWOP popped up on someone’s screen and we all gathered around watching as something as simple as “run 100 metres” had been made needlessly complex. It gives direct control over the leg muscle groups of a sprinter: it’s like watching a drunken Riverdance on a sinking ship. We all returned to our keyboards and attempted to jerk our way to the gold medal, sadly aware that hilarious, flaily defeat would be a solo experience. Years later that particular sadness has been rectified in 2QWOP: in typically awkward, QWOPPY fashion it forces both players to use the same keyboard.(more…)

I feel like I’m cheating a little here, because I’m going to tell you that Arcane Worlds aims to be a modern take on Magic Carpet but then I’m going to admit that nothing of the sort yet exists. That idea is something to giddily anticipate but the tech demo that has just been released by Ranmantaru Games only shows the absolute Genesis of it. It’s a freely downloadable landscape generator with some nifty fluid physics. In the last half hour I’ve made a great many worlds and while I’m keen to pilot a carpet around them, deforming the landscape as I go, I’m quite enjoying just looking at them.

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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, Michael Consoli helps players grasp the concepts of infinity, vulnerability and self-reliance with his Kickstarter-funded title, Against the Wall.
What's your game called and what's it about?

I'm working on a puzzle platformer called Against the Wall. The point of the game is to explore a world that is one infinite, flat vertical surface. Players use a device that lets them pull bricks out of the wall and form ledges, letting them hop from place to place without falling off the side.

You raised more than $8,000 for Against the Wall in your Kickstarter campaign -- more than your goal. What do you think made your campaign so successful?

I had a playable demo of the game available. Most of the people on Kickstarter seek funding with only the germ of an idea rather than anything concrete. My message was that I have this great thing, and it works, but I need the resources to expand it and make something extraordinary. I didn't need to offer t-shirts or other rewards, I just let the game speak for itself.

SUNDAY 12th FEBRUARY

Today I had to get out and buy stuff for Valentine’s Day. Took my daughter with me (she’s 5) and made a day of it. When we got back, the gang assembled and…

…we played DARK MINIONS(more…)

Sundays are for wondering exactly what was in that black booze you were drinking last night, and marvelling at the peculiar things it seems to be doing to your brain and body this morning. Something about Bristol always makes me very thirsty. And did that girl really describe her job as “the nerd-facing part of the company”? Anyway, things are looking up: there’s sunshine outside and internet full of writings. Let’s take a look at those.

• A few things bug me more than pompous types pissing on people’s enthusiasm for something, but this morning that really bugs me. I noticed a few people dismissing this gigantic essay on the Mass Effect universe, and it made me sad. I can, of course, understand why they’d sneer. It’s basically fan writing, it’s a bit clumsy, it’s trying to read deeper meaning into a commercial fiction. But the author cares, and has poured energy into thinking about something he enjoys. He’s committed to his idea and produced a tonne of words, a bunch of interesting observations, and some comments on what Mass Effect might mean the people who play it. Yeah, games can mean something even if that meaning is much deeper than the message of your average a Star Trek episode. Mass Effect is a huge slab of pop culture, and that’s worth considering. Hell, I generally shrug in the face of Bioware, and the central thesis here is a bit depressing if it’s true, but I’d rather read ten-thousand tonnes of this stuff than another Twitter comment trying to point out how something a guy wrote is over-analysing, pretentious, or however else you’d like to describe something to dismiss a writer’s enthusiasm.

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The alliance that is jagged, but also online (rather than the one that will soon be back in action) has an open beta! You can completely sign up for that right here. I’ve no idea whatsoever about whether this is any good, or not, but I do rather hope it is, because this is the same company (and therefore the same design and tech) as the forthcoming Shadowrun Online. And that is something I have a fair bit of interest in. Oh yes, the residual fandom of the cyberpunk RPGs of youth remains strong.

Thanks to everyone who troubled my inbox to point this beta out.

Next up on the conveyor-belt of interviews that is our IGF Factor 2012 series, it’s the creator of GIRP. What does he have to say about the IGF, about the monsters from Doom, and about who the single most important game designer in the world is? Let’s find out.(more…)

Apologies in advance, because Lewie’s left the SavyGamer.co.uk B Team, Will Templeton and Tony Heugh, in charge of the Bargain Bucket once more. We decided we’d do something different this week and find bargains on actual buckets, until we discovered that there’s currently no digital distribution network for them. So until someone develops that, we’re stuck with regular old videogames:(more…)

What are you playing this weekend, readerfolk? Anyone for Amalur? Anyone still lost in Skyrim? Or perhaps you are up to something multiplayery? Joining in with one of the RPS communities, perhaps? I’ll be wandering the kills of Perpetuum, I suppose, between a bit of messing about it the alpha of some peculiar RPG we got sent.

Anyway, let us know what you up to – speak your brains!

Erik Svedang’s Blueberry Garden was a delightful, surreal platformer about exploring a world in order to discover how to play the game, so it’s only right his next game would be an even meatier meta-commentary on games: else { Heart.break() } puts you in a world where the game’s code itself can be accessed and altered by the player, prompted on by characters in the game. Blimey!

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Ah, that’s the stuff. I knew I could trust IndieGames to provide a Friday afternoon-completing link, and so they did: 8BitMMO! Yes, it’s a super lo-fi MMO that looks like someone made it on a Commodore 64, but is actually pretty contemporary with its open construction options, PvP, and all the jazz that makes the massively multiplayer world so appealing. It’s also free in your browser right here. I’ve posted the trailer below if you want to have a look but can’t be playing Java browser games at work or whatnot. Lovely, lovely.(more…)

I’ve just had couple of playthroughs of Molleindustria’s Unmanned and my immediate reaction to it was that I wanted other people to play it and talk about it. It’s about the mundanity of one man’s life, despite being a UAD pilot for the military, and the thoughts that flit through his brain during the day. You pick at those threads, creating his inner-monologue while carrying out his actions. I want to know how you went about it, but I don’t want to spoil much before you do here, but there’s more detail below. I’d just rather you didn’t read beyond this paragraph before having at least one game.(more…)

Early one August morning in 1999, the residents of Shrapnelton, Grogshire were woken by the sound of an overloaded Gooney Bird leaving its roost. Rattling chimney pots and spinning weather vanes, the struggling C-47 carried the hopes of thousands of sequel-hungry 101: The Airborne Invasion of Normandy fans within its narrow fuselage. Almost thirteen years on, those fans are still waiting for the plane to reach France.

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Developers must have Kickstarter fever right now. After one of the most successful campaigns ever with Double Fine, inXile Entertainment has announced intentions to start its own Kickstarter fundraiser.

The Hunted: The Demon's Forge developer wants to use Kickstarter to fund a reboot of Wasteland, CEO Brian Fargo told IGN. Fargo, who recently acquired the rights to the classic PC RPG, is one of the creators -- apparently fans have been bugging him for a new game since they saw Double Fine achieve success. Soon after, Fargo was having meetings and mapping out a production schedule.

The idea is only 48 hours old at this point, but Fargo is on board. He likes the Kickstarter model since it would eradicate publisher influence on the project, but warns that a reboot would likely need a million dollars.

Fargo hopes to launch the Kickstarter campaign sometime next month.

Filed under: Features, PC, RPGsThis is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. "Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet," - Rudyard Kipling

Conventional wisdom holds that role-playing games are easily divided into two categories: Japanese and Western, or, before the technical lines got blurred a decade ago, console and computer games. We can name the stereotypes easily. JRPGs are story-based, WRPGs are system-based. JRPGs are action-based, fast, and simple, whereas WRPGs are strategic, slow, and complex. JRPGs have bright, cartoonish graphics and catchy music, WRPGs have realistic graphics and darker music. JRPGs linear, WRPGs open. In JRPGs, your characters are given to you, in WRPGS you create your characters. And so on.

It's not true, though. What's more, it never was.

The Game: Achievement Unlocked Genre: Satirical 2D Action Platform: Browser (Flash) The Scoop: "Don't worry, meta-gaming is all that matters." Achievement Unlocked's slogan pretty much says it all. Most gamers can admit to doing something in a game they wouldn't normally have done, all...

Yes, it's true. You can share the experience of not being able to walk at all with a friend or bitter rival, in a new two-player version of Bennett Foddy's footrace to the bottom, QWOP. Following last Sunday's showing at Juegos Rancheros, Foddy has released the competitive browser game online.

The game suggests a second keyboard "for best results," but both players can actually share a single keyboard. This is a much more awkward situation, and thus seems more appropriate.