Now Playing: The Loltracktor’s lament in World of Tanks
This article was original published in PC Gamer UK 230.
World of Tanks can be intimidating to the newcomer, so I decided I’d try to learn the ropes by grouping with a high level friend. This turned out to be a terrible mistake. The game generally has pretty good matchmaking, but our wildly different levels have confused this system. I’m put into a high tier game in a ‘Loltracktor’.
The Elder Scrolls Online: everything you need to know
The Elder Scrolls Online has been announced! In the coming months we’re going to gather every nugget of information about the game and post it here, as a constantly growing repository of facts and analysis. Whether you’re for or against an online adaptation of the single player-dominated RPG series, The Elder Scrolls Online has the potential to be a great MMO on its own terms. Bethesda and Zenimax have assembled an experienced team, and – to hear them tell it – the game has been in development for several years. Keep checking back for more info as we get it.
Saturday Crapshoot: Sentient
Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week, it’s alive! It’s alive! Well, virtually speaking.
What made the 90s such a great decade for games? Many things, obviously, but high on the list was that while technology was good enough to leap forwards on a constant basis, there weren’t as many rules, established ways of doing things, or games to simply clone. Experimenting with crazy ideas wasn’t simply for indies or a lucky handful of people who probably didn’t smoke anything like as much weird stuff as everyone suggested, because they weren’t actually crazy. They were simply different.
And sometimes, as with Sentient, they didn’t work out. Still, if you want to see an RPG that shot for the stars, you won’t find many more ambitious examples. And if you don’t? Well, don’t ever let me catch you complaining that the latest mainstream hit is generic. That’s officially your fault. Retroactively.
A time machine may or may not be brought in to facilitate this.
Now Playing: Taste-testing alchemy in Skyrim
This article was originally published in PC Gamer UK 236.
Skyrim’s alchemy system asks players to combine ingredients based on their statistic-altering properties. Once you’ve found out what ingredients do, you can make them into potions. The best way to find these properties is by jamming them into your gob, masticating for a while, and scribbling the results down in your poisoning journal.
My Skyrim character – a beardy Breton – was stood on an ice floe to the north of Winterhold when I decided to taste a few of the more exotic ingredients I’d picked on my travels. Imagine 90s semi-celebrity wine-taster Jilly Goolden, except six and a half foot tall, covered in hair and blood, and backed up by a monstrous ice-beast.
Wonderful WASD: Legend of Grimrock and the value of easy input
I like most of Legend of Grimrock’s impenetrable puzzles. I like the way it makes consumables scarce. I like its shadows. I like the way its spell system feels like Simon. I don’t like its damn electric bats. I like that it’s the most insulated I’ve felt in a game space since BioShock.
But an under-mentioned thing I love about it is that I can play it mostly one-handed. You know, while swirling a tumbler of Mountain Dew, or something.
Saturday Crapshoot: Softporn Adventure
Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week, as the Leisure Suit Larry Kickstarter races towards the finish line, it’s time to take a look back at how this unlikely series got its original kick-start…
Ah, Leisure Suit Larry. PC gaming’s ultimate loser, if you don’t count Les Manley and the guys who made Limbo of the Lost. He’s been the star of six ‘proper’ games, two obscenities against gaming, and a few spin-offs that are probably best forgotten. The Laffer Utilities, anyone? Thought not.
The thing is though, the games get a bad rap. Some of them, anyway. The first three have more heart than you’d expect, and while things got a bit too sleazy in Larry 5 and 6, Larry 7 is actually a really fun, sex-positive comedy with the focus firmly on laughs. It’s a solid series, which is why so many have bothered contributing to a Kickstarter focused on a second remake of his first adventure.
The thing is though that the original Leisure Suit Larry was itself a remake of an even older game, Softporn Adventure. Clearly, with a name like that – why, it must be filth! Let’s hit the town!
Weekend Game Deals – Save on Skyrim, Anno 2070, Kingdoms of Amalur, and more
This week, GameFly comes through with 33% off The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, 50% off Anno 2070, and $10 off Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. In other highlights, The Mount & Blade collection is still super cheap on Steam, GamersGate is offering 50% off Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, and if you act before the end of Friday, you can still get $20 off The Old Republic.
Now Playing: A streak of luck in Spelunky
This article was originally published in PC Gamer 236.
Spelunky is a platformer with randomised levels. Creator Derek Yu is working on a prettier Xbox version that may also come to PC, but I’m still playing the free original. It’s my coffee break game, my netbook game, my ‘I really want to play something but I don’t have time to play anything’ game. I also think it’s the future of games, or a large part of it.
I’ve played over a thousand games of Spelunky, so I know roughly what I’m doing. But I still have no idea what level 1 is like, because it changes every time. So I leap into it with a weird mix of bravado and caution: dealing with enemies and traps quickly, but edging into the next area pixel by pixel to spot what’s ahead.
Saturday Crapshoot: Escape From Hell
Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week, from Hull, from Halifax, from Hell, ‘tis thus. From all these three, Good Lord deliver us. Unfortunately, you can’t get out of this one with a TomTom.
Of all the things to do if you find yourself in Hell, plotting escape has to be at least the third most important on the list – the first two things being saying “Oh, dang,” and complementing Satan on his Andy Hamilton impression. This isn’t quite the hellish abyss of infinite torture you might be expecting though. No. It’s one of the weirdest RPGs you’ll ever play, in a very literal comedy Wasteland.
(This is a sly allusion to the fact that it uses the Wasteland engine – that popular RPG whose Kickstarter pulled in $2.5 million for a sequel. No Kickstarter for this one though, is there? Wonder why…)
Weekend Game Deals – Save big on TOR and Interplay classics
$20 off Star Wars: The Old Republic, the entire Gothic series for only $12, multiple ways to save on the Mount & Blade series, lots of triple-A titles for as low as $5 and much more should keep some money in your pocket this weekend.
Now Playing: Rainbow Six Vegas 2′s terrible ending
This article was originally published in PC Gamer UK 225.
The last time we wrote about Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, Tom explained the terrifying sense of vulnerability Terrorist Hunt mode subjects you to, and the panic that inspires. He and I have now finished the co-op campaign, and it’s wonderful mostly for the same reasons. Rather than repeat what’s already been said, I want to talk about the ending. The atrociously bad ending.
PC Gamer’s Skyrim mod collections on the Steam Workshop
If you haven’t already seen, we’re pulling together all our favourite Skyrim mods from the Steam Workshop into two collections. Collections are just lists of mods, but they make it super easy to install them all at once: we check they’re good and that they all work together, and you just click a ‘Subscribe to all’ button. They’ll all be downloaded and added to your game the next time you start it up, and they’ll even be updated as the creators improve them.
To give you more choice, we’ve split our favourites into two collections. The Improvements collection is full of mods that just tweak the game, round out rough edges and add useful features. The New Content collection is about mods that add something substantial to the game, new areas, or more significant features like camping.
We’ll be adding to both collections continually, so you know any mods you think we should add, let us know in the comments and we’ll check it out. Here’s what we’ve put in both collections so far, and what it does.
Saturday Crapshoot: Dizzy
Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week, it’s Easter! Who wants some eggs?
When you think of heroes, you probably don’t think of eggs. At least, not if you’re sane. For a while though, Dizzy was one of the faces of the UK computing scene – his smile legendary, his adventures popular, and his games mostly a load of complete arse. It’s amazing how much less that mattered in a time when most games came on cassettes and only cost pocket-money though, so in honour of Easter, let’s take a look at some of Dizzy’s greatest hits, and most egg-scruciating misses.
Yeah, okay, that’s a bad pun. But I’m almost positive there won’t be any others…
Now Playing: The genius and maths of Rainbow Six: Vegas 2
This article was originally published in PC Gamer UK 218.
“LOTS OF THEM LOTS OF THEM LOTS OF THEM LOTS OF THEM!”
That was me, talking about three people, in Rainbow Six Vegas 2. Shortly afterwards I was killed, in two hits, by three people in Rainbow Six Vegas 2. The ferociously quick deaths have a way of amplifying everything: any number of people you can’t kill in 0.75 seconds might as well be an army. Two’s a double homicide, three’s a crowd.
Saturday Crapshoot: Conquests of the Longbow
Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week, Robin Hood could be in a fix. Robin Hood, Robin Hood, spies a Weetabix. Does he retreat? Back to Sherwood? No. Because it’s just a ****ing cereal.
Today I want to talk a bit about one of my favourite game endings of all time. Of course, to get there and see why it’s so great, we need to take a little bit of a journey. The place? Sherwood Forest. The time? How about right now, or in a few hours if you’re reading this in Americaland? And the hero of the quest? A man in Lincoln green tights by the name of Robin Hood. You may have heard of him…
