PC Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

Like the return of the tides, so it must be that every so often a body calls for better regulation, tighter legislation, or the outright banning of violent video games. While we absolutely agree that children should not be playing adult-rated games, there’s no peer-reviewed evidence for a long-term, significant negative effect on young people from playing violent games (and that’s despite so very many organisations funding research that would prove it), but once more the press is bursting with scare stories over the indelicate subject. This time it’s UK teachers claiming younger class members are having their behaviour and health influenced by games. Are there new findings we should be taking notice of to support these claims? Guess. And there’s a reason why this is more serious than our rolling our eyes at yet another scare story. There is potentially great harm to be caused by this. Below I argue why.

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Minecraft creator Markus 'Notch' Persson has revealed his new game. Called 0x10c, the space title is still early in the development process, but includes an intriguing set of features...

The Game: Aether Genre: Cloud-Flicking Platformer Platform: Browser (Flash) The Scoop: Aether is a light and breezy puzzle platformer from Super Meat Boy creator Edmund McMillen and Closure developer Tyler Glaiel. Gamers click their mouse to flick their tongue onto clouds, then use WASD to...

With CPUs, GPUs and screens (x2) in the bag, it’s time to put the RPS spotlight onto that most mysterious of PC components, the motherboard. By some metrics, mobos are pretty easy to pick these days. For starters, there aren’t many chipset vendors to worry about. Only AMD and Intel are really left in the game. But Intel, in particular, has plenty of marketing tricks up its sleeve. It’s always worth knowing your Z77s from your H67s. So, let’s begin.

Now, I’ve never been a card-carrying motherboard aficionado. It’s a lot easier to get excited about crazy clocks speeds, lots of cores or a shit-load of shaders than it is all-solid super caps and 8+2 power phasing. It’s also true that chipsets and in turn motherboards have become less critical as ever more features have migrated onto the CPU itself.(more…)

When a 35 year old is in nappies, there are one or two questions to ask. (Like, “Would the big boy like his milky-wilky?”, before the spanking begins.) It’s usually a sign. So why does the 35 year-old video gaming still feel like it’s in its infancy?

We’ve been using the excuse that the medium is so young for as long as I’ve been in this business, and since my career couldn’t be considered youthful any more, gaming sure doesn’t count either. Certainly, the first few films might have been people falling over, but 35 years in and they were making All Quiet On The Western Front. We’re making Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare. So why is that? Does it matter? Is this how games are supposed to be? And who am I to be making such rash generalisations?

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This is my first encounter with the longish-running DROD series of puzzle-dungeon crawlers, and a quick check of our much-abused tag system suggests that same is true of the other nodes of the RPS Hivemind too. Thus, for a few precious moments, I can enjoy the lofty status of Hivemind Prime, until the Independent Action Guards activate and laser away the deadly fungal strands of personality that have infected my corner of the monstrous Brain Jar.

So it’s with the new, free demo of fifth DROD game Gunthro and the Epic Blunder that I join the party, and am immediately mildly confused because it’s a prequel to the events of the first four games. This didn’t prove too serious an impediment to a rank newcomer, fortunately, as DROD seems to have a fairly Princess Bride take on fantasy kingdom rather than a depresssing downpour of Important Lore.(more…)

Kyle Pulver, superior veteran of a thousand gamejams, has expanded a riff on the theme of motherhood that emerged from his brain last year, making it into a full release for PC and Mac. It’s a platform game, with puzzles made up of switches, blocks and infant forest animals deflecting around the levels. The clue as to your maternal ability is in the title: Offspring Fling. As the mother of a sizable brood of cuddly critters, your method of transporting them to safety is to balance them on your head and then lob them out of harm’s way. Of course, as you progress through the 100+ levels throwing your kids around the place becomes increasingly hazardous, as they begin to act more like soft, organ-filled pinballs than living, dying creatures. Watch.

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As well as being the year of the Gamejam and Kickstarter, 2012 is the year that turn-based strategy finally uses up all the action points its been conserving since the ’90s and trundles back into view. There it is now, jogging up the road, ready to show us alien-killing, petrol stations exploding and maybe the occasional viking with a banner. Oh, but now it’s stopped in the middle of the road. It’ll be there for a few months, squatting, but then the fun will begin. Void Rim should be joining the turn-based battle soon as well. From a quartet including the co-creator of PoxNora, it’s a squad-sized emulation of tabletop gaming set in an original sci-fi world. Behold, a trailer.

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Capybara Games have confirmed that their beautiful, lo-fi iOS adventure game Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery will be arriving on Steam “very soon”. Good news, I think, because it’s a gentle, weird little game that does a lot with a little and creates an unusual atmosphere. Sort of nostalgic, but at the same time feeling quite modern.

There’s also going to be a Mac version, of course. Trailer below.(more…)

Antichamber is the seventh title to receive the financial backing of Indie Fund, who has recently helped in the success of such titles as Q.U.B.E. and Dear Esther. Antichamber has won almost as many awards as the number of years its been in development -- casually since 2006 and full-time since 2010 -- and has been nominated for three more than that. We'll wait while you calculate that one (remember to carry the two).

Developed by Alex Bruce, Antichamber is a practice in psychological, philosophical, impossible puzzle games that has captured the attention of festivals and reviewers for years, and with Indie Fund backing we're looking forward to seeing this one finished some time soon.

The Game: I Wanna Be the Guy Genre: Masochistic Platformer Platform: PC The Scoop: I Wanna Be the Guy is a 2D platformer famous for its legendarily high difficulty. It isn't difficult in a fair way. Or "hard but still fun." It is just ridiculously, stupidly hard. IWBTG can't be recommended in any genuine way. It isn't fun to put in death after death to progress, only to have an unseen deathtrap leap out of nowhere and kill you once again...

This weekend saw the inaugrual ‘What would Peter Molydeux?’ 48 hour gamejam, inspired by the e’er-brilliant fabricated, Twitter-based game design ramblings of the world’s premier fake Peter Molyneux. I (with some guest contribution from Mr Adam Smith) having been combing through some of the entries and lo, I have seen divine madness at work. Some are outright genius, some are the seeds of great game concepts, some are misfires but all deserve our praise and love for being real, working realisations of ideas that were never intended to be made flesh.

(Please note, this isn’t a ‘best of Molyjam’ post – it’s just the stuff we’ve looked at so far. And we’ll probably look at more soon, because there is gold in them thar lunatic hills).(more…)

How many people like They Might Be Giants’ 1992 album Apollo 18? I think I count six raised hands. This next question is just for those six then: do you also like interactive fiction? OK then. That one handsome fellow jumping up and down, waving his arms, this is the post written specifically for you and me! In fact, it’s possible I’m jumping up and down in front of a mirror. No matter. A gathering of wordsmiths have created a textual adventure for each track of Apollo 18, celebrating its 20th anniversary. They’re all short, mostly clever, often funny and you can play them online or download them.

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Original Worms creator Andy Davidson has returned to Team17, just in time for the development of Worms Revolution. Davidson originally designed Worms in 1993 as an Artillery-style game featuring Lemmings sprites, then added original worm sprites in an effort to release it commercially. He left the game industry fourteen years ago, according to Team17; we're guessing to pursue other interests like fishing and gardening.

And now he's back at the company, where he will "offer the Worms Revolution developers his support." So he's not heading up Worms development just yet. In fact, the announcement notes that he's working on a "variety of new game ideas."

When you’re at a gaming event, often times you can sit down with someone to chat, put on the recorder, and see what happens. That’s very much how I approached lunch with demaking champion Eric Ruth, and his friend and colleague, Ben Walsh, CEO of Pure Bang. It was an interesting dynamic, Ben a calm, sensible man who carefully chooses his words, experienced in the world of gaming from his years working at Bethesda. Eric… not so much. Eric sounds like a professional wrestler smack-talking about his next match. Incredibly fast-paced, and impressively driven, he’s a force of passion with a remarkable past. Clearly Ben’s goal is to mediate what Eric says. Ben does not succeed at this. We chatted shortly after the release of his most recent game, Corril Slayer, with no real agenda in mind, which is how we get to talking about Eric’s history of homelessness, the difficulty of pricing games, and masturbating to antiques programmes. We also chat a lot about the making of Corril Slayer, and the place of the $3 indie game.

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Robot Entertainment's Orcs Must Die! 2 was announced this morning, with the sequel adding the feature that was painfully absent from the original: cooperative gameplay. The sequel, which will be playable at this weekend's PAX East, welcomes the return of the doofy War Mage and adds the Sorceress, "who keeps enemies at bay with mind-control and magic."

"Only 3.4 billion orcs have been slaughtered to date," Robot Entertainment CEO Patrick Hudson declared this morning. "The only way we will get to a respectable orc death toll is by adding another killing machine and cooperative play. Bring a friend and destroy the orcs!"

The sequel adds a whole new campaign, more enemies, additional defenses and a new upgrade system. We look forward to hearing the call of orc slaughter and reporting back on our experience this weekend.

The Company of Myself combined clever puzzles, occasionally frustrating platforming and a sombre mood to pleasing effect. The prequel, Fixation, ditches the time clones of the original but keeps the melancholy, with similarly atmospheric music, and conversations bleak in their mundanity. Progress is made by indulging in the odd cigarette or fifty. In fact, judging by the amount of smoke pumped out of her face, the lady at the centre of the story might as well use her lungs as an ashtray. Smoke blocks lasers and activates switches, that sort of helpful thing, and is the only protection in a world of stress and anxiety. Play now over at Armor Games.

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Come one, come the other one, and press your earlobes against the modern radio. It’s the awkwardly Skype-recorded Rock, Paper, Shotcast, complete with ghost-bleeps, episode 3. It’s what Marconi always wanted. You can find out about why you should listen, and even listen, below!

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We’ve got the wacky, surrealistic end of the 90s point’n'click adventure game spectrum covered all over again, but what about the horror side of things? Back when we were laughing at monkeys or sending hamsters through time, we could also opt for a real downer with the likes of I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, Gabriel Knight and Darkseed. STASIS is a new take on this old darkness, a 2D, isometric sci-fi horror adventure (horenture?) with impressively lavish graphics and suitably scary noises. It really does look rather good, in a frightening sort of way.(more…)

It’s official. GAME, the UK’s biggest high street retailer of games, is saved. GAME, and Gamestation, will continue on, and 3,200 jobs secured. This is thanks to the company’s being purchased by Baker Acquisitions and OpCapita, recent owners of Comet. That’s good news for those who stay, which will include a “small number” of head office staff, previously made redundant, but little comfort to the 2,100 who lost their jobs, and are still facing not receiving redundancy payments. 277 stores haven’t survived the ordeal, but the new owners say there will be no further closures.

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It was touch and go there for a while – which I like to say because it makes me sound like I’m a hotshot heart surgeon from California, hero to all, lover of many ladies, astonishingly high wage and once-in-a-generation talent – but Takedown, the game formerly known as Crowdsourced Hardocore Tactical Shooter has met its Kickstarter funding goal. It passed the $200k target with hours to spare, wrapping up at $221,833.(more…)

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, Berlin's Ludic Philosophy team explains how TwinKomplex, its social hybrid title featuring real actors, is a game, but isn't a game. You really have to see this one for yourself:

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

TwinKomplex. It's about you and me -- and what happens to us when we partake in the DIA, a Decentral Intelligence Agency. It is also about conspiracy theories, how we try to understand our reality.

What's the coolest aspect of TwinKomplex?

The performance of our actors. The fact that we blur reality and fiction, that we use the Internet as a background for our fantasies. This reflects in the way our interface looks like and in the fact that we run a multitude of fake websites. One of these is a clinic for plastic surgery in Switzerland -- and it looks so real that we have received a few inquiries for silicon implants, etc.

Sundays are for planning the conquest of central Europe. It doesn’t all have to be violence, of course. I am sure some of those Kingdoms will give way to diplomacy. Anyway, all that stuff is for the afternoon, right now we have to plan the conquest of a week’s worth of videogame writings. Let’s see what’s ripe for plunder.

• Tom Francis writes about the exquisite Proteus: “Even once most of your curiosity is satisfied, your exploration is still motivated by music. It’s quiet at night, so I headed to the place that was most frenetic by day: the trees. Their tone and mood is different with the moon out, and it gave my song a new texture. I found an unusual creature and chased it. Each time it ran from me, its movement struck a new cord, one which tinkled on as long as I followed in its wake. It led me out of the trees, over a mountain, through the desert, and finally leapt into the sea. Its thread faded from the music, and as I watched the water glint, I realised the sun was coming up.”

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The blurb on the front of Offspring Fling!'s fake, SNES-inspired box art invites potential players to "experience the thrill of motherhood in this baby throwing adventure," which unsurprisingly is an invitation we're remarkably inclined to accept.

Developed by Kyle Pulver and scored by Alec Holowka, Offspring Fling! puts the player in control of a "poor forest creature" who must locate her lost children across 100-plus levels. Once found, said children can be stacked upon the forest creature's head and then tossed about to solve puzzles and defeat enemies. It sounds fairly simple, but as you can tell from the above trailer, things can get a little squirrelly.

Offspring Fling! is available for $7.99 on PC and OSX, direct from the game's official website. There's also a playable in-browser demo that we heartily recommend, if only because we want the rest of the world to experience the simple pleasure of picking up one of these tiny little baby-chick-bunny-duckling things.

I was a bit poorly last week, and couldn’t quite manage to hold it together long enough to compile a bargain bucket. Normal service has resumed now though, so read on for this weekends top discounted PC downloads. You can always rely on SavyGamer.co.uk to bring you updates for the latest gaming price drops. (more…)

The Game: Sugar, Sugar Genre: Pixel Manipulating Puzzler Platform: Browser (Flash) The Scoop: At first glance Sugar, Sugar looks like another "sandbox sim," allowing gamers to mess around with particle systems. But the game is actually a clever physics puzzler. The goal of each stage is si...

@PeterMolydeux operates a twitter feed of brilliant ideas, inspired by the thoughts and imaginings of an unspecified developer, which has been a source of intrigue and belly laughs since its inception. Just looking at today’s feed I see these startling visions: “Just imagine a kart game where you spend most of the game building one with your mother in a shed, you are the only people alive on earth” and “you play a baby in a pram and can only see your parent’s faces. Studying those faces deeply is the key to true progress”. This being the year of the Game Jam, a global 48 hour extravaganza will take place this weekend, exploring the visionary’s finest brain-eggs. Livestreams, chat and more await here.

In addition to debuts on the Xbox 360 and PS3, and a 3DS spinoff, Epic Mickey: The Power of Two is apparently taking a steamboat ride on over to the PC and Mac. During a London preview event, Junction Point representatives told GameSpy that PC and Mac versions were planned.

We were able to check out the upcoming sequel at a recent Disney event -- all of our coverage can be seen through this handy link. We highly suggest you check out the prototype Wii controllers because oh man they are so adorable!

We've contacted Disney to confirm the PC and Mac ports. Stay tuned.

I should probably disclose that I’ve known the developer of Gunpoint, PC Gamer’s Tom Francis, for a few years now, having worked with him on that magazine in the dark times before RPS. And that means playing Gunpoint has a peculiar flavour to it, for me. I’m aware of the kinds of games that have had a significant influence on Francis – such as the platformer N, Deus Ex, Hitman, Splinter Cell, and so on – and I can see these sorts of influences displayed right on the surface of Gunpoint. We are each of us our interests, of course, and I am sure this kind of thing is true of all indie developers, but seeing how someone’s brain remixes and recompiles the stuff they love has never been quite so clear to me as when playing the post-IGF build of this intricate platformer.

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Browser-based narrative experiment Echo Bazaar has quite the following and when it took on the new name, Fallen London, I decided I was long overdue a visit to the delirious, devil-haunted sprawl of suggestive steampunk. It’s a browser-based adventure, working from a lovingly illustrated but mostly textual interface, which involves seeking mysteries, stories, secrets and opportunities in the sunken city. There are stats that increase as plotlines are pursued and there are action points that replenish over time, or through the expenditure of real world currency. The pleasure of it isn’t really in the self-improvement though, it’s in the joy of discovery, and the word-forging and world-building are quite brilliant.

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