FTL: a game about managing a spaceship in an infinite galaxy
FTL is “a spaceship simulation real-time roguelike-like”, according to its website. That’s a fair description. You travel a galaxy as a spaceship, encountering random enemies, upgrading and maintaining your systems, re-routing power from life support to shields, and directing your crew to frantically put out fires. Every journey ends with your inevitable death, as your crew is killed from one calamity or another.
I’ve been playing an early build of the game, and it’s amazing. When it comes out in the middle of next year, you should play it because it’s amazing.
To convince you why you should start looking forward to FTL, I’ve written about my experience with the game below. Read on to find out why doors are important in space.
How to play Saints Row 3 as a toilet
Saints Row 3 is the unrestricted id of gaming smeared across an open world city. It’s brash, juvenile, violent and obsessed with toilet humour. So much so that you can play the game as a toilet.
Watch the video above, and then read on for how you can easily do it yourself in an instant and without mods.
Prison Architect preview
After six years of on-and-off development, Introversion’s bank-cracking sort-of-a-heist game Subversion has been cancelled. “I was on holiday in San Francisco, and I’d been thinking quite a lot about Subversion and what was going wrong with it,” explains Chris Delay, the designer behind Uplink, Darwinia and DEFCON. “Three things then happened: we took a tour around Alcatraz, which was such an atmospheric place to visit. I then made a connection to a prison mission in Subversion.” Players were going to be breaking out one of their team from a fully simulated jail. “I imagined turning that on its head – let the player build the prison and setup the security. In other words, I wanted to build Alcatraz, not escape from it.”
Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad review
Red Orchestra 2 is the best murder simulator I’ve ever played. It’s not the best first-person shooter or multiplayer game, or even the best team-based multiplayer game. It’s certainly not the best World War II game, and its singleplayer is the worst I’ve played in years. But in the killing, and in the being killed, Red Orchestra 2 is a terrifying and satisfying experience.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 review
Think back. You’re ten years old and in an arcade, playing Time Crisis while a friend watches. You press the pedal to pop out from behind cover, take down some bad guys – soldiers, terrorists, it doesn’t matter – and then duck back down. You think the story has something to do with a Vice President, but you don’t really pay attention during the story parts. “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could walk around, instead of just shooting?” says your friend, idly. That would be cool, you think, but then you die in the next area and, out of money, go home.
What you didn’t know is that, back at the arcade, Dr. Peter Callofduty overheard your conversation, and he’s just had an idea.
While fighting through the streets of New York, Paris, London, Prague, Berlin and more in Modern Warfare 3, I keep coming back to this. If you compare the Call of Duty series to, say, Skyrim, or even Half-Life 2, then it’s a regressive, controlling, anti-gaming experience. Don’t compare it to those games, then. Modern Warfare 3 is an arcade rail shooter, except you can control your legs a bit.
Modern Warfare 3 PC impressions
I’ve been playing Modern Warfare 3′s multiplayer a little bit this morning. First impression? If you sat me down in front of it and told me it was Modern Warfare 2, I wouldn’t know you were lying.
There are differences. The maps are new, and tighter. From my experiences so far, there are fewer courtyards lined with sniper-filled windows. I also know that there are Perk changes, because I’ve read about them.
But the first time I connected to a server, I was instantly killed by a helicopter I had no hope of destroying or avoiding. The game looks visually dated. The sounds and menus are all taken directly from previous games. The similarity isn’t necessarily a criticism. Modern Warfare’s multiplayer has always been a hair short of brilliant. I’ve been having a ton of fun with it so far.
Battlefield 3 review
A helicopter just buzzed over my head, thirty feet above the ground. It was moving quickly, skirting around a hill, firing its main gun at an enemy I couldn’t see. I stopped running and just stared at it.
I do this a lot. Battlefield 3’s multiplayer makes me want to place a deckchair in the desert and watch the chaos happening all around. On its best maps – like the 64-player Caspian Border – every pixel on screen flickers with battle. I’ll climb to a rooftop and just freeze. In the distance, smoke stacks rise from a burning forest. In the air above me, jets twirl, chased by artillery. On the ground below, a tank has smashed through the lower floors of the building. I’ll spot a glimmer from a hillside 300 metres away, and it’ll be a sniper readying to kill me.
Battlelog is a bit mad, isn’t it?
Battlelog, EA’s service for tracking player statistics in Battlefield 3, is a really cool service. It’s great to be able to see your progress, compare your score and accuracy against your friends, and look at the player leaderboards for the entire world.
The problem is that Battlelog isn’t used solely to track stats; it’s also Battlefield 3′s server browser and menu. I have an unlocked copy of the game, but when I tried to log in to the service this morning, I was told that Battlelog was currently closed and that I should come back later. That meant that I couldn’t play online.
Battlefield 3 first impressions
I’ve been playing Battlefield 3 for the last few days. You might have noticed reviews appearing on other sites, but not here on PCGamer.com. That’s because, due to issues with the game, I haven’t been able to play enough of either the co-operative or multiplayer modes. I don’t know if these problems will be part of the final release, or whether they’re specific to the review set up, but for now we’ve decided to wait until we can play it more. Read on for more details on the problems we encountered, and my thoughts on the singleplayer, which I’ve completed.
Card Hunter, from developers of BioShock, Captain Forever and Magic: The Gathering
What do game developers do when they get tired of making immersive, big budget first-person shooters? They make digital card games. Card Hunter is being developed by Blue Manchu Games, led by Jon Chey, Ken Levine’s former producing partner at Looking Glass and Irrational Games. Jon previously worked on Thief, System Shock 2, and BioShock, and he’s joined by Farbs (indie developer of the Captain Forever series), fellow Looking Glass vets Dorian Hart and Ben Lee, and the creator of Magic: The Gathering.
Right now, information about how the game plays is fairly thin on the ground, and the above trailer is described as “awesomely inaccurate.” We do know that it’ll be free to play, primarily singleplayer, and that they’re striving to avoid anything that could be described as “pay to win”. There’s an ongoing Card Hunter blog, if you’re thirsty for more.
Thanks to Jay Kyburz – another Irrational vet who now makes similar games like Neptune’s Pride and Jupiter’s Folly – for pointing this game out to us.
Tribes: Ascend first impressions from Gamescom
My first day of Gamescom started off very well, as I got to sit down and play Tribes: Ascend for the first time. It didn’t disappoint. Ascend feels like the Tribes game you remember, and its new free-to-play mechanics might end up making the game better.
Payday: The Heist hands on from Gamescom
Tim came back from E3 raving about Payday: The Heist, punningly saying that the four-player co-ops and robbers game “stole the show”. I just played it at Gamescom – can it pull off a second successful caper?
Star Wars: The Old Republic Eternity Vault raid showcased at Gamescom
EA’s press conference at Gamescom just ended, where after announcing Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes, Dr. Ray Muzyka showed The Old Republic’s first “operation” – or raid, clarity fans – the Eternity Vault. It was first announced at E3 with a snazzy trailer, but this was the world’s first chance to see it being played.
The Eternity Vault is an eight or sixteen player mission on an ice planet “where an enemy older than both the Republic and the Empire has been contained.” It’s a prison, and it must hold some real bad people inside. How bad is up to the players, who can change the difficulty of the raid before they start.
Solar 2 review
You begin life as a lonely asteroid, using the WASD keys to pootle around in the depths of space. By crashing into other space rocks, you gain mass until you become a small planet. Because that’s science.
Minecon first details; Mojang’s Minecraft Convention takes place Nov 18th-19th in Las Vegas
The first details of Minecon, the Minecraft convention, have been released to PC Gamer. The event will take place on November 18th-19th and will coincide with the launch of Minecraft’s full release.
“For me, MineCon is about celebrating the full release of Minecraft,” said Notch via email. “I’m really looking forward to getting up on stage and pushing the button to upload the final build.” Read on for more details.
