PC Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

Spelunky on Steam is getting a big bug-fixing update that also adds a hidden sloth damsel.

Shattered Horizon’s insistence on putting guns in the hands of the astronauts, while a noble endeavor that I was totally behind, never really reflected the perils and potential pitfalls of being a human in space. There’s plenty that could wrong up there in the black: you could have to listen to the characters from Gravity talking banally inbetween incredi-moments of space fun, for one. That’s what >Adr1ft mostly resembles: the exciting and awful feeling of being alone in the glittering remains of a broken space station. Kotaku has the scoop on this, and I am eternally jealous because you know how I feel about space. Go read their take on it. The rest of this post is mostly screenshots and John’s shocking plans for the future. You won’t believe what he’s up to, readers. … [visit site to read more]

Words about Evolve, Turtle Rock’s forthcoming 4v1 co-op beast hunting game, are no good for you, eh? You animal. You monster. Well, have a carefully-edited and highly-stylised promotional video instead. A proper one though, not like yesterday’s nonsense. … [visit site to read more]

Kingdom Come’s crowd-funding effort is still sparking away on the grind-stone of Kickstarter, honing the edge that it’ll need to slice through the metal, meat, and bone of… wait, I’ve accidentally moved from a metaphor into an actual description. It’s because I just watched a video detailing the medieval RPG’s sword-fighting system, and it looks nicely balanced. They’ve taken three basic attacks to six zones on the body, meaning you have 18 basic attacks that leads into a deadly dance of parrying, angled slashes. Will it crack the Holy Grail of FPS melee combat? … [visit site to read more]

The guys behind Left 4 Dead have unveiled their next creation, and we got to play it. So how cool is Evolve? We share stories from our first hands-on.

Hunting fire-breathing monsters on an alien planet? Evolve is the exciting new shooter from the creators of Left 4 Dead.

Evolve is a 4v1 asymmetrical multiplayer co-op action game from Turtle Rock Studios, the main team behind the original Left 4 Dead. Picked up by 2K for an eyewatering sum at the THQ IP firesale, it’s due for release later this year. A couple of weeks ago, I went to play it.

I’m shaking, which while a state I usually associate with over/under caffeination or discovering that there’s been a distressingly cynical free to play remake of one of my most beloved games, is in this case a good thing. I’m shaking from built up and released tension, and from an infusion of adrenaline into my frail, pale form. I’m shaking because I became a monster, and because I won, and because I beat the real monsters. … [visit site to read more]

A brief history of my car maintenance attempts:

1) Reinserting a loose spark plug cable by hand, then driving 80 miles. This caused one of the engine’s valves to meet its maker with such ferocity that the exhaust partially detached while the vehicle was in motion. Apparently, at least. It could have been a double-whammy of coincidence/ineptitude. 2) Topping up the engine oil but forgetting to replace the cap afterwards. This caused boiling oil to explode out of the bonnet, in the manner of a particular catastrophic World of Goo error. 3) In another car whose exhaust fell off (not actually my fault that time), in order to avoid paying to repair it I carried the broken pipe on the back seat of the car for months, so that I might show it to any police officer who stopped me & my raucously loud vehicle and claim it had only just come off. 4) The same car later suffered a handbrake failure, which I also avoided getting repaired for weeks due to my conviction that I should run this ailing vehicle into the ground rather than prolong its misery. This resulted in getting four strangers to push against the car’s front while I reversed up a hill in Cardiff after I’d unwittingly tried to park on a downward slope, in order to prevent it rolling into a very expensive-looking car just in front of it.

So I should probably play the Car Mechanic Simulator 2014 demo. … [visit site to read more]

He also believes Rhode Island governor hurt the IP's future prospects.

The main reason to watch the pitch video for Blackmore – a steampunk adventure game – is for a rare glimpse of the unironic use of the phrase “You might know me from…” And that really is the main reason for watching the first half of the video before they finally remember to talk about the game. Fortunately they eventually do, and while it’s not stunningly original, an adventure game set in a steampunk Victorian London rarely sounds like a bad idea. The main character is Emma Blackmore, accompanied by a robot called Descartes, and they are, inevitably, investigating a serial killer.

… [visit site to read more]

There is finally some footage of Lords Of The Fallen – the new game from The Witcher 2′s lead man, Tomasz Gop. The catch – enthusiastic men shouting over it all.

… [visit site to read more]

Emotional robots are all the rage right now – not to mention all the emotions except rage, which they’re reserving for their inevitable insurrection because people are terrible. But until then, we can have our hearts warmed by our eventual doom-bringers in games like Heart&Slash. This one’s a style-drenched actioner ala DmC: Devil May Cry, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, or ManPunch ShootBelch: Acropotheonical, but with whirring gears of love and loss. Also roguelike elements, because those are basically synonymous with “videogame” these days. It really does look excellent, though. Trailer in the beneathplace.

… [visit site to read more]

In just two month's time, Steam Early Access darling Rust has managed to top one million in sales. Creator of the first-person sandbox survival game, Garry Newman, shared the milestone on Twitter today by including a screen shot of the total number of sales from his Steam page.

In Rust, players are totally independent to explore the open world and act as they wish. Some players choose to scavenge for goods and live in the wilderness in relative peace, while other players have helped to contribute toward a recent torrent of not-safe-for-work videos on YouTube. We won't bother linking any.

More interesting, however, is how Rust has quickly rose to prominence alongside the game it was directly inspired by: DayZ. Newman originally created Rust as a clone after encountering frustrations in the free DayZ mod. Over time, wildlife was added and Rust eventually became the first-person survival sim for PC, Mac and Linux it is today. [Image: Facepunch Studios]

Early Access is one of the more interesting tropes of game modern development. So many games are being field assembled right in front of us that future generations will never know the joy of buying game with a beginning, a middle, and an end. They can expect to own games where major features are as changeable as the colour of their jetpack flames. Everything will be in flux. Rust, Facepunch’s really rather popular game of community base-building and flapping willies, has just had the NPC zombies removed from every server. Update your glossaries. … [visit site to read more]

Team 5 on when we can expect Adventures, why they don’t want to meddle with the meta game and the difficulties of being a small team.

Welcome once again to Joystiq Tiny Streams, our new series of bite-sized streams of the Joystiq crew playing the games currently piquing their interest. Alexander Sliwinski, Joystiq's News Content Director, decided that it was high time he get back into city planning with SimCity. Nearly one year after its disastrous release, Alexander wanted to see how the game fared now that it could be played offline by a lone player. As his stream demonstrates, it's a demonstrably less frustrating experience.

For those thirsty for more streaming action, Joystiq Streams from our Twitch channel every Tuesday and Thursday from 4PM EST to 5PM EST. We've got exciting stuff coming up this week, with a stream of Outlast on PS4 on Feb. 11. Anthony John Agnello, who's never played Outlast, will be behind the wheel. On Feb. 13, the good people at Phantom Compass will join Richard Mitchell for a stream of their new pinball RPG, Rollers of the Realm.

For more Tiny Streams, tune back in every Monday and Friday at 4PM EST right here on Joystiq.
[Images: Electronic Arts]

Seattle-based indie developer's racer expands its upcoming release to the Microsoft console.

The number of units downloaded reached seven figures within a month of the game's release.

Traveller’s Tales have been on a real run lately, knocking it out of the park with Lego Marvel Super Heroes, Lego Lord Of The Rings and Lego Batman 2. So a game based on a movie about people made of Lego? What more could they want? Well, a lot more movie, perhaps a trilogy, for a start. Here’s wot I think of The Lego Movie Videogame:

… [visit site to read more]

Slightly Mad Studios announced its new racing game today, World of Speed. The PC racer will be available this year as a free-to-play download published by My.com, with a closed beta program scheduled for the spring.

The former Need for Speed: Shift and Shift 2: Unleashed developer described World of Speed as a "massively multiplayer online arcade racing video game," with players having access to an "endless garage of cars" to drive on tracks based in cities across the globe like London and San Francisco. World of Speed will feature team and club-based multiplayer racing along with objectives, missions and live events. [Image: Slightly Mad Studios]

By Horace we should have posted about this before now. Classroom Aquatic is a game about cheating at tests. In a school for dolphins.

… [visit site to read more]

This Justin: Twitch Interactive has replaced Justin.tv, Inc. as the company's corporate umbrella name, though Justin.tv remains a product under the primary Twitch brand. Twitch, a video streaming service focused on games, recently reached 1 million monthly active broadcasters, 45 million monthly viewers and an average of 13 billion minutes watched per month. Viewers watch an average of 106 minutes per person per day, Twitch reports. At least you kept your New Year's resolution to watch less Netflix.

The spike in broadcasters and viewers comes from Twitch's PS4 integration, the company says: "Less than two months after the console launched, 20 percent of Twitch broadcasters were PS4 owners." Twitch is on its way to Xbox One as well.

We're personally included in Twitch's monthly numbers report, with our live Joystiq Streams series on the Joystiq channel, plus some streaming our personal channels. [Image: Twitch]

The Court Of Horace has ruled, and the decision is final – infinite even: teaser trailers can bugger off.

Trailers are adverts. Adverts are not precious jewels. Adverts are materials with a joint purpose – to convince people to buy your product, and to inform people about the product. The former is creepy and insidious and why we walk around like a race of sentient billboards with our Nike swooshes and names of jeans manufacturers on our t-shirts. The latter is vaguely useful, and the reason we post trailers on RPS – so you, the ASTONISHINGLY ATTRACTIVE reader, can learn more about a game you might care about. Teaser trailers fulfil none of these roles. As is adeptly proven by both Techland’s latest for Dying Light that we showed you earlier, and frankly the worst, dumbest teaser I can ever recall seeing, for Evolve, which is below.

… [visit site to read more]

According to Origin Germany the DLC bundle, which has up until now been a timed Xbox-exclusive, will be coming to other platforms soon.

I’ll bet everyone at Slightly Mad Studios gets on well with their dads. Since 2009, they’ve made four car games, and everyone knows dads like cars. It explains my strained relationship with my dad, because I like cats, not cars. Anyway, World Of Speed, is their newly announced fifth car game: it’s a massively multiplayer free-to-play racing game. Apparently it’ll include “everyday city runners to the fastest super cars on the planet to the most iconic cars from throughout the storied history of auto racing”, all racing through the streets of London, San Francisco, and more. I have some screenshots, a trailer, and I also have a quote from the press release, which I’m only sharing because I need to crowd-source a translation. … [visit site to read more]

Former Need for Speed developer announces all-new racing MMO.

I’ve got a new twist on the tower defence genre. You don’t have a thing you’re defending, and there are no attacking waves against whom you must set traps and turrets, and there are no towers, and it’s a third-person action game because those are fun and the PC is woefully lacking in them. Rush For Glory, meanwhile, is a tower defence game.

… [visit site to read more]

Here are five new shots from Sega’s merry space rom-com, Alien: Isolation. I believe it’s a comeback vehicle for Tim Allen *record-scratch, generic baseline-driven disco* who’s about to find out that trying to stalk the daughter of Sigourney Weaver through the bowels of a space station isn’t as easy as he imagined. Along the way, he’ll find out what it’s truly like to be an acid-blooded killing machine in a world that’s moved on. I believe the synthetic that’s been torn apart in the screens is also be a comeback for Rob Schneider. … [visit site to read more]

I wonder if the peoples of Consoleton ever get fed up of the definitive versions of games tending to be on the PC? Theirs may be a land of exclusives, but PCtopia is where things get refined. That’s a word that possibly hasn’t been used too often in association with gore-fest OMG HD Zombies. Laughing Jackel’s PS Vita hit is due to arrive on Steam – along with all the achievement additions and so on – on Thursday.

… [visit site to read more]

It's a neat way to discover older games.