Mirrored: 23rd of November 2011, 16:52 Original: www.rockpapershotgun.com Views: 109 Settings: Loading the mirror...
Link: index: Rock, Paper, Shotgun: basically collecting vegetables Link: canonical * Reviews * About Us * Advertise * Hey, Developers! * Support RPS * Privacy * Steam Group * Twitter * RSS * Forums * Login Rock, Paper, Shotgun * Judged: Modern Warfare 3 SP John takes a look at Modern Warfare 3's single-player campaign, from the back, following, wondering exactly how it is that the world's most popular game could be like this. Read -> * Loads Of Guff About Skyrim We've pretty much spent the entire week writing stuff about Skyrim, and you have a good look at the whole lot right here. Read -> * Touched: The Secret World Adam put his hands all over Funcom's forthcoming The Secret World, and turns from cynic to convert over the possibility of a story-led MMO. Read -> ALSO: The peculiar EA banning saga continues, The life and death of Skyrim's Lydia Retrovirus Almost Has A Trailer By John Walker on November 23rd, 2011 at 3:38 pm. Tweet this IFrame IFrame Come on, some in-game footage please. You may remember Cadenza Interactive from Sol Survivor, the tower defense game that captured Jim's attention last year. They've recently announced their second game, Retrovirus. It is, they say, "a modern take on the classic six degrees of freedom shooter", made only on PC. Ooh, like Descent? we asked when Jim spotted it last week. The moving pictures below help to explain. Read the rest of this entry >> cadenza interactive, Retrovirus, sol survivor, trailer. 1 Comment >> At Long Last, It's Martial Arts: Capoeira By Adam Smith on November 23rd, 2011 at 3:07 pm. Tweet this IFrame IFrame It's a perfect way to exercise those abs while losing several teeth under the repeated hammer-like blows of an opponents heel Perhaps I shouldn't admit this, but one night last week I awoke drenched in cold sweat, my hands gripping the bedclothes as if they were the only viable scraps of flotsam to emerge from the splintered wreck of the good ship Sleep, which had been torn asunder by the crashing waves of doubt and the Kraken of existential angst. The question which plagued me was one which every man, woman and child has asked themselves, often in the hours just before a winter's dawn when the streets outside are indistinct and all existence seems poised to crumble like a biscuit in a blender. Has there ever been a PC game that captures the noble and exotic art of Capoeira? Read the rest of this entry >> beat-em-up, Just A Game, Martial Arts: Capoeira, rhythmic assault. 11 Comments >> DarkOrbit Made EUR2 Million From One Item By Jim Rossignol on November 23rd, 2011 at 2:43 pm. Tweet this IFrame IFrame If you want a single reason why the free-to-play market seems to so attractive to the people interested in making money from games, then take a look at this craziness: Gamesbrief have run a story claiming that Bigpoint's DarkOrbit game has sold two thousand EUR1,000 "drones", which are virtual items that help players in combat. The article explains: "There are different levels of drone ranking up to the 10th Drone. The 10th Drone - also called the Zeus Drone - is very rare - you need to have all 9 previous drones and collect blueprints to make it in the game. Earlier this month, on a total of four separate days, Bigpoint made it possible to buy a 10th Drone for EUR1,000." And such is the popularity of the game, that quite a large number of people were willing to buy it. Or at least that's what publishers Bigpoint claim. Are you one of those people who spent that much? Speak up! And also lend us a fiver. (Unrelated, does anyone want to buy our mysterious The Tenth Blog Post? We'll make it available next week for -L-79,000? Anyone? You won't even have had to read previous RPS posts!) bigpoint, DarkOrbit. 39 Comments >> The RPS Electronic Wireless Show Episode 51 By John Walker on November 23rd, 2011 at 1:31 pm. Tweet this IFrame IFrame In episode 51 of the RPS Electronic Wireless Show, Jim and John catch up on the events that have taken place in the week since we last recorded. Events like the release of some games, and some games we have played. Those are the events we experience in our lives. There's chat about how great Tim Stone is, Jim's racism against cat people, and we ponder why RPS readers like RPGs so much. John explains why he hates Modern Warfare 3 so much, while Jim moans about BF3's doors. There's thoughts on how open we really want our worlds to be, and then, perhaps not surprisingly, we turn to Skyrim. We talk Skyrim's structure, exploration, quests and peculiarities. Read the rest of this entry >> Podcast, The RPS Electronic Wireless show. 40 Comments >> Rock Paper Shotgun Feature "God is in the details" Funcom Unveil The Secret World: Part One By Adam Smith on November 23rd, 2011 at 12:48 pm. Tweet this IFrame IFrame Our conversation took place in a distant land, but thankfully it was Oslo and not a splintered realm between two realities Playing The Secret World was enlightening but the only way to explore its most secret parts was to sit down with some of the myth-makers who are conspiring together to create this story-led MMO. So I did what was necessary, gathering together three of the minds behind the game and forcing them to talk at me and each other for many an hour. In the first part of this two-part conversation, you will DISCOVER the reason the game is set in the modern day, THRILL to the origins of the secret societies, CONSIDER the difficulty of inserting narrative into an MMO, and PONDER religion and mythology at great length. Read the rest of this entry >> feature, Funcom, interview, Ragnar Tornquist, The Secret World. 20 Comments >> Google Logo Is The Best One Yet, Gamey By Jim Rossignol on November 23rd, 2011 at 12:15 pm. Tweet this IFrame IFrame This isn't PC gaming news so much as general internet nerding, but it's a lovely thing nonetheless. I have to admit that I haven't seen the Google homepage in months, so I wouldn't have realised that the current logo is an extraordinary interactive Google doodle game thing, had John not alerted me. How did he know? Well, there are a lot of tubes from all round the world leading to his office. He was probably peering down them. [Actually my wife told me - John] Anyway, the new doodle is the tale of a meeting of robots, and has been put up in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the first publication by brilliant sci-fi author, Stanislaw Lem. Lem is best know for Solaris, which was made into movies by Tarkovsky and Soderburgh, but his influence on sf generally has been enormous, thanks to his prolific and insightful writing and amazing short stories. You should definitely have a read of some of his stuff, if you haven't already. (The art in the logo is inspired by Lem illustrator, Daniel Mrozh, who illustrated a version of The Cyberiad. Which now, I learn, was even turned into an opera!) google, pointless sf wittering, Stanislaw Lem. 31 Comments >> Ban "Call Of Duty 3'', Cries Keith Vaz By John Walker on November 23rd, 2011 at 11:55 am. Tweet this IFrame IFrame Oh shut up, Keith Vaz Oh sigh, as soon as we report some balanced coverage of the effects of gaming, of course Keith Vaz appears once more to make everyone feel stupid again. He's tabled an Early Day Motion to condemn Modern Warfare 3, presumably after some careful analysis to make sure such a thing would bring him maximum attention. Well, actually he's condemning "Call Of Duty 3'', which is perhaps a bit late. But heck, why know the name of the game you're wasting Parliament time over? Where he finds time to play all these games between chairing so many parliamentary committees I cannot imagine. Because of course he's played the game he describes as having "gratuitous acts of violence", right? More than that, he's even finding the time to do his own scientific research, because his (as yet unpublished, I presume) study has found that "there is increasing evidence of a link between perpetrators of violent crime and violent video games users." Which is a remarkable finding! Read the rest of this entry >> Gaming Science News, Keith Vaz, Oh shut up, Tom Watson. 105 Comments >> 1, 2, 3 Voxeloids: Miner Wars' "Killer" Features By Jim Rossignol on November 23rd, 2011 at 11:35 am. Tweet this IFrame IFrame Miner Wars 2081 is an astonishing thing, really. It's a freeform mining, trading, and building game, based around the mining of vast voxel asteroids - and that can be accessed now at a sort of tech-demo level by preordering, with the full game due in the Spring - but it's also going to be an MMO, which will apparently arrive in the Winter of next year. Yes, I can hardly believe it either, but that's the plan. I've had a few glances at the steadily updated alpha client over the past year, and the work is certainly continuing apace, and you can see some of that in the awesomely narrated trailer, below. There's apparently going to be a public demo before long, too, so we'll keep an eye out for that. I suspect that this could be one of those games that really rewards a community getting involved, or at least it will be when that multiplayer aspect of it opens up. The satisfaction of chomping up asteroids and fighting off privateers as a group could be quite something. Read the rest of this entry >> Miner Wars 2081. 17 Comments >> Rock Paper Shotgun Feature To Science! Nature's Neuroscientific Review Of Games By John Walker on November 23rd, 2011 at 11:05 am. Tweet this IFrame IFrame 8/10 The presence of videogaming matters in scientific papers has, of late, become a somewhat depressing prospect. With both formerly respectable/respected scientists making unsupported claims without evidence, and published papers basing conclusions on woeful errors and contradictions, the one place where you'd think you could look for balanced, reasoned thought on a subject sometimes seems to have abandoned us. But there is light. Nature, surely the most respected and popular scientific journal, has published a "Viewpoint" discussion on the subject of gaming's effect on the brain in its Nature Reviews Neuroscience journal. Brains On Video Games is a collection of leading experts looking at the published material and discussing the matter with open minds. Read the rest of this entry >> Brains On Video Games, feature, Gaming Science News, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Science. 38 Comments >> Bioware Making Command & Conquer? By Jim Rossignol on November 23rd, 2011 at 9:56 am. Tweet this IFrame IFrame A little more of the new Bioware game was shown last night, giving us a glimpse of APCs. Meanwhile the various nodes of the internet were at work, speculating that the new game could be either Command & Conquer or even a Mercenaries game. Or even Army Of Two. It won't be that. (I hope.) The best lead is the clue that was in this LinkedIn profile, which stated at the artist worked for Victory Games, which was formed from EA LA to make C&C games. Combine this with the apparent disappearance of Visceral, another LA-based EA studio, and you have a bunch of devs who could have formed into this new studio. This could, it is speculated, be a new Los Angeles-based Bioware studio working on the old faithful. Sounds like a jenga tower of theorising to me. And I think it's time for a new IP, anyway... We'll find out soon enough. Bioware, Command-&-Conquer, Electronic Arts. 61 Comments >> 1, 2 Not Spelunky: Cave Story+ By Adam Smith on November 23rd, 2011 at 9:30 am. Tweet this IFrame IFrame There were more impressive images, but the joy of discovery means you should see them first for yourself Every time a new indie bundle is released, anguished cries echo around the Great Hall of Comments that is carved in the dark obsidian which forms the foundations of Castle RPS. The reason? The inhabitants of that grand place are often the proud owners of every game included in the bundle due to their uncanny ability to be ahead of the curve. Therefore, it is with some trepidation that I bring the news that Cave Story is only now available on Steam, seven years after its original release, albeit in a `plus' form. It's a lovely game, taking a Metroidvania template, then adding oddness and pretty pixels. I think it was probably partly responsible for that particular graphical trend in yon indies. Who hasn't played it yet? Trailer with delightful music below. Read the rest of this entry >> cave story, free, indie, Nicalis, Pixel. 36 Comments >> << Older Entries Search _____________________ [ Submit ] _____________________ [ Submit ] Read our finest words * Funcom Unveil The Secret World: Part One * Nature's Neuroscientific Review Of Games * Hands On With Spec Ops: The Line * Level with Me, Davey Wreden. * Wot I Think: Take On Helicopters * And much more... Respond to our gibber * mana : "lies, it's not on my iTunes store page thingmajig at all.... I demand refunds, also TF2 hats ...and a cuddle" on The RPS Electronic Wireless Show Episode 51 * chorisscheman : "So what do you call an assassin build with high Conjuration? Is that still a mage build, even though I don't use any other spells ..." on Skyrole: 29% Of You Are Warriors * CaspianRoach : "Wait, is Capoeira an actual fighting techinque? I thought it was just a pretty dancing style." on At Long Last, It's Martial Arts: Capoeira * Teronfel : "http://www.youtu~" on DarkOrbit Made EUR2 Million From One Item * Dath : "1 week* ;D" on The RPS Electronic Wireless Show Episode 51 Play indie, mods, demos * Not Spelunky: Cave Story+ * A Space Inventory: Egress * Your Turn: Molecat Twist Demo, Trailer * Hi Seas, Lo Fidelity:Treasure Adventure Game * Star Me Kitten: Hoshi Saga 7 * More freebies from the RPS archives Browse the archive [____________________] All our stuff and things * home * about * advertise * hey, developers! * support RPS * steam group * twitter * podcast * rss * forums Rock, Paper, Shotgun was * Jim Rossignol Twitter Site This Gaming Life * Alec Meer Twitter Site * John Walker Twitter Site * Adam Smith Site Info and appendices * (c) 2007-2011 Rock Paper Shotgun Ltd. * Designed by James Willock. * Hosted by Positive Internet. * Today's scotch egg consumption: 3450 * Hivemind Throbometer reading: 1.079%