Archive for June, 2010

Monkey Island 2 remake trailer: nostalgiagasm

The trailer for Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck’s Revenge ruthlessly leverages our fondest memories of the game it essentially is, to make us want to buy the game it actually is. It works.

Civilization 5 trailer

Of all the games to indulge in documentary-like interviews with its own developers for a trailer, I’m glad it’s Civ 5. Here are five minutes of interviews and game footage, narrated by the silkiest cyborg machine-voice to ever haunt your dreams:

Front Mission Evolved screenshots: actually good?

I’m not a marketing exec for one of the biggest games publishers on the globe. It’s hard for my tiny mind to work out why you’d make a game where you command mechanical soldiers and shoot missiles out of your hands, and then call it “Front Mission Evolved.” I can’t answer that question, but I can tell you why you should care about… what was it called? I forget. Mission something. Anyway, MECHS.

Spec Ops: The Line trailer released

A trailer’s been released for Spec Ops: The Line, and it looks to be the source of all those screenshots they released yesterday.

New Rage screenshots suggest possible mutants

There’s a lot of passion, experience, and intuition behind the PC Gamer name. That’s why, with only a few newly released screens of id Software’s upcoming shooter-with-cars Rage to go on, we can tell that there’ll be some sort of angry guy with a wrench to fight. Maybe he’s a little mutated, you know? Maybe there are more than one. ”Pfft, what are you basing this on? Where are the FACTS?” I hear you ask. Well, when you’ve been doing this for as long as I have (about four weeks), you’ll understand how I can just know that. Here are the new shots:

Star Wars: The Old Republic E3 hands on

In a private meeting room above the E3 showfloor, I had the chance to play many of the zones in The Old Republic: the massively anticipated, massively multiplayer Star Wars game. And guess what? It’s the most polished game at the show.

Official Starcraft II hardware rates you as you play

At E3, I had a chance to sit down with the head of Razer, Robert Krakoff, to talk PC hardware. The Starcraft II keyboard (the Marauder), mouse (the Spectre) and headset (the Banshee) are outrageously OTT, sleek, and pretty cool. But they have wider implications. If you want, they can display just how good you are at the game. Despite already owning a great mouse, a great keyboard, and a superb headset, I kind of want the set.

DC Universe Online release date, pricing, details

We got to see DC Universe Online at E3, and Sony Online Entertainment let us know that it’ll launch in November with a $14.99 monthly subscription. Players can create heroes or villains (but no swapping sides here), and interact with every big name character in the DC Universe – including Batman, Joker, Superman, and the Green Lantern. Also, some game details:

Should Rock Band 3 be on PC?

I did a bit of console reconnaissance at E3. I snuck in to see Rock Band 3–the industry’s flagship music game. It supports seven players. It has a MIDI keyboard. It has an actual, stringed guitar. And it’s still not on PC. Should it be?

10 minutes, 235 indie games

We’ve got five mans at E3 right now, each of them blogging furiously about the latest and greatest in flashy, triple-A, mainstream, $50 million games. I imagine they’re all also going to poolside parties, high-fiving each other in a constant slow-motion music video set to a song by Wham!. “Oh look, it’s someone smart and famous! Let’s go have adventures,” one of them will say. “I will tweet about this in real-time,” the others will respond in unison.

I am not at E3. I am sat at my desk. I had a £3 meal deal from Boots for lunch. But I also watched this fantastic video from Pixel Prospector, which crams clips of 235 free indie games into 10 minutes of chiptuned video. It’s the best argument for why PC games are fantastic you’ll see all day. Who needs E3? Eh? Yeah! Yeah.

Watch the video below, and let us know how many you reckon you’ve played already in the comments.

Hands on with the new Lara Croft game

You might have heard that Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is Indiana Jones-meets-Diablo: isometric Mayan dungeon crawling where hell’s minions are swapped for giant spiders, spells traded for pistols and flamethrowers. But developer Crystal Dynamics is keen on downplaying any comparison between Diablo and Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. I got to play it for myself in co-op with the game’s creative director Daniel Neuburger, so here’s my take.

Kane & Lynch 2 ditches GFWL – and it’s good

I’m enjoying watching Square Enix hammer another nail into the Games for Windows Live coffin. A week ago, Bethesda announced that Fallout: New Vegas would drop Live integration in favor of Steam for all its achievement and DLC needs. Today, while getting my hands on the surprisingly promising crime shooter Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, it came out that the cops and robbers sequel would also drop Microsoft’s reviled copy protection and match-making system.

Bricks spilled on LEGO Universe MMO release

Hear ye! Hear ye! Amateur architects, mad-scientists, and children everywhere–come forth, and help me find a yellow flat-top two-by-two brick. It’s just the piece I need for my planet rover. You’ll understand when LEGO Universe launches on October 26 this year.

Lord of the Rings Online free to play beta today

Real estate values in the Shire have plummeted! Right about now you can pick up a cozy two-bedroom for literally nothing. That’s because today marks the launch of LOTRO’s free-to-play beta–where talk is free, and a shiny staff will run you a few hundred points.