In addition to the most egregious issues with texture popping above, Vsync, Anisotropic filtering and texture quality settings were only added in a patch. The first (1st) and only (1) patch. Certainly, omitting these more fine-tuned customization features in this day and age is not in the least unheard of, but finding the paragons of the PC platform since 1991 – Id Software – as the offending party is rather inconceivable, even in a gaming world where Crytek, Epic and Rockstar Games have long since bailed out.

The texture popping above is related to the game’s texture Auto-Balancer, which somehow tends to load and utilize 4096k textures instead of the much crisper 8192k (or the gargantuan 16384k textures that take most of the game’s 21659 Mb install size!).

More puzzling yet is the inability for players to bind numpad keys properly – especially the number 5(!?) – leaving left-handers in a proverbial bind. Different mice and keyboards are exhibiting various symptoms as well.

Let’s not even mention the 64-bit executable. …or lack thereof. Let us however mention the missing idstudio level editor, which is apparently dependent on the very same 64-bit .exe.

To wrap up this terribly clever post before things get utterly out of hand, we could take a look at the game’s collector edition (check out the comparison photo on the left), which comes bundled with a Rage comic that not only is 2/3 the size of the normal issues, but also only contains 2/3 of the Rage story arc. Boom!

I can vouch for the two main games which are excellent offerings, but Trine in the secondary bundle is also a good time. A beautiful 3D-rendered game in which you are confined to a 2D plane, Trine is a platformer with physics-based movement and puzzles. Frozenbyte are set to release a sequel within the next few months, so this is the perfect opportunity to catch yourself up before then. Frozen Synapse, as I have covered in brief before, is a slick tactical combat game with both a decent singleplayer campaign and a plethora of multiplayer modes. The included soundtrack has a great cyberpunk feel and is reminiscent of Alexander Brandon’s work in Deus Ex. SpaceChem is a gem of a procedural puzzle game hiding beneath a nerdy chemistry theme. Speaking as someone who was always terrible at chemistry, this game is worth your time. It’s best to try the free demo and see for yourself, because the game looks more intimidating than it actually is. My best attempt at a description is that you create a reactor by means of flowchart tools in order to produce target outputs from a given input. Oh dear, you had better try that demo, it’s much more fun than it sounds, I promise. You’ll see what I mean when you finish your first reactor and then go back and obsessively try and tweak it til it is more efficient than anyone else’s in your friends list.

So go on, do it and thank me later.

Gemini Rue
Fans of Blade Runner may recall that the original movie tie-in game was a point ‘n click adventure. This indie offering from WadjetEye Games, recently covered in more depth by Martyn, wears its inspirations on its sleeve but has confidence to explore new ground. With its moody art style and an immersive soundtrack, Gemini Rue sticks close to its neo-noir roots and offers an intriguing dual narrative following the parallel journeys of two protagonists, mysteriously linked in some way.

Frozen Synapse
I’d been a fan since the beta, and on release it managed to impress even further. Games tend to only occasionally foray into virtual worlds as part of their gameplay, but Mode 7 Games’ Frozen Synapse takes place solely in a virtual world. A “simultaneous turn-based strategy game” with both a singleplayer campaign and multiplayer mode, Frozen Synapse manages to fuse itself with its established world – the interface and your interaction with the game is part of the game’s internal fiction, a smooth transition into the story not unlike that found in Introversion’s Uplink. Assisting an underground movement in their cause to topple a megacorporation, you plug yourself into the system and command every action of your peons in infiltration and combat. If that isn’t cyberpunk, I don’t know what is.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Eidos Montreal’s prequel to one of the best games of all time is only a week away, and I’m excited to say the least. Human Revolution is rich with artistic flair, its “Cyber-Renaissance” aesthetics exude a glowing gold-black motif that pervades every screenshot. The dense cityscape of Shang Hai draws similarities to the futuristic metropolis in Ghost in the Shell and the rain-drenched downtown streets in Blade Runner. The cyperpunk influences don’t stop there, though: the game’s key theme is transhumanism, and the gameplay involves modifying your body with cybernetic augmentations to grant you new abilities. Another staple of the literature, hacking, is abundant here too, allow you to compromise security systems and computer terminals.

Hard Reset
A surprise announcement a few weeks back revealed Hard Reset, a sci-fi shooter that is to launch only a month from now. It’s not often that games have such a short pre-release marketing cycle, and it could prove to be a good move by industry veteran supergroup Flying Wild Hog to keep the buzz fresh in the minds of gamers. Described as “a marriage of Painkiller and Diablo”, Hard Reset is a PC-only shooter from the school of over-the-top action games like Painkiller and Serious Sam. It doesn’t look like it will be faithful to any particular genre mainstays but it certainly has dystopian and futuristic-looking environments and a host of sci fi gadgets and weapons, so there’s that to look forward to.

Prey 2
The first Prey from Human Head Studios was a mishmash of portals, aliens and Native American mythology. The sequel looks to eschew almost everything but the name, but rather than be an obvious franchise cash-in it seems to have taken an identity of its own. Very little media has been released thus far but word is it appears to be a cross between Assassin’s Creed and Blade Runner. An open-world cyberpunk game? Can it possibly be so cool? We’ll have to wait and see, in the meantime have a gander at the screenshots and concept trailer.

E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy
This is an odd, odd beast. We’ve had a brief look at it before, but even after launch it’s not so easy to describe. E.Y.E is a sci-fi fantasy RPG shooter using the Source engine, featuring an overwhelming number of options in terms of character customization and environmental interactivity. I haven’t yet had a chance to try it out, but from what I’ve seen of it, cyberpunk elements comprise just one part of its many aspects. Not only is it possible to hack enemy turrets for your own use, but it’s entirely possible to be hacked yourself, at which point you have to fight back to regain control. A very interesting indie title that may be worth a closer look.

Otherland
This “cyberpunk Lord Of The Rings” MMORPG was only just announced the other day, so we don’t know much at all about it other than it will be free to play, it is based on a series of books by Tad Williams, and that it is expected to release in 2012.

Samaritan
This last one isn’t quite a game – at least, not yet. At GDC 2011 Epic Games dropped this bomb on the industry, a video demo of what they envisioned as the next-gen game. Running on a monster rig, the stunning realtime sequence showcased the very cutting edge in visual technology offered by Epic’s Unreal Engine 3. Titled ‘Samaritan’, the video featured a trenchcoated man in shades, a walking trope of cyberpunk. It is a scene that could have been taken right out of Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell, with cybernetic humans trading blows and gigantic robots joining the fray. Seeing as even the Gears of War series started out as a tech demo demo back in the early days of Unreal Engine 3, it’s possible that we could see a whole game fleshed out from this concept. Here’s hoping.

I am sure that’s not all that we can expect to see in the coming months. There have been numerous rumours over the past year of a Syndicate reboot, and they’ve reached a breaking point with an almost-certain expectation of some kind of announcement at Gamescom taking place in Cologne, Germany this week. The classic cyberpunk franchise sorely needs to return, let’s hope EA is working on it.

This time around the games are VVVVVV, And Yet It Moves, Hammerfight, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Steel Storm and Cogs. Purchasing the bundle gives you a unique link to download the games completely free of any DRM as well as bonus activation codes for Steam and Desura; additionally, they have thrown in a free trial of Minecraft. If that wasn’t attractive enough, the whole of Humble Bundle #2 will be available too if you pay more than the current average.

If it’s not quite obvious yet, these bundles offer crazy – nay, insane - value, especially considering that you decide how much you pay for it all. With all of the bundles I have found that I tend to be interested in only one or two of the games, the rest being merely ‘bonuses’ or potential surprises. Moreover, I tend to already own some of them in some form or other, so I’m paying for redundant copies, in fact. But the opportunity to send your money directly to specific developers and charities is a great reason to be part of this. The bundles have been hugely successful in the past, and I fully expect this one to reach similar heights.

I haven’t spent that much time with all of these games yet, but my picks of the bunch are without a doubt Braid, Revenge of the Titans and VVVVVV. I reviewed VVVVVV earlier this year, and found it to be a short but delightful platformer very much worthy of your time. Have a read through the review and consider the bundle worth it for this title alone. Creator Terry Cavanagh has recently brought a number of key updates to the game. It has been rewritten in C++ which apparently allows it to perform better on a larger variety of computers – including the Linux platform now. There has been talk of adding Steam Achievements as well in the near future. On top of that, included with the game is a level editor, allowing you to create your own levels for anyone to download and play. And a few people have already started – Terry has called upon a few of his peers to try their hand, including Minecraft creator Notch and VVVVVV soundtrack composer SoulEye. More recommended level packs are being regularly posted on his blog.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the value of the bundle changes over time – I’ve had to redraft this post two times to keep up with the additions – and in the past bundles bonus items were added up til the very end to incentivize purchases. Keep an eye on the Bundle twitter account for updates. At the very least the transparent live figures will prove to be fascinating, such as the top purchases and the average size of purchases from people on each of the three platforms. There’s still time: do the smart thing, name your price and play some fantastic indie games.

Mass Effect 3 was announced at last year’s Spike VGAs, along with a teaser trailer that set the tone for what is to come. Check out said trailer below. While the release date stated at the time was “Holiday 2011″, the game has since been delayed and will be out “in the first three months of 2012″. In the meantime, the game is set to have a grand unveiling at E3 this week, with a live demo likely to be shown during EA’s conference.

The images in the trailer will be familiar to anyone who has completed the first two games. An alliance soldier witnesses the destruction happening around him in what is barely recognisable as the Earth city of London, England. The Reapers have arrived and are wreaking havoc on the galaxy, starting with Earth. Meanwhile, Commander Shepard watches from orbit, end trailer with the throbbing bass of the original theme. ME2 ended with somewhat of a cliffhanger, and it looks like the third game is picking up right where it left off. Without going too deep into spoiler territory, Shepard’s mission in this last chapter is to unite the various races in the galaxy to help defeat the Reaper threat. How successful you are in rallying each army to your cause will determine the outcome of the war, with a granularity that will produce “degrees of success” as opposed to just one good ending and a bad ending.

You’re basically building towards greater and greater degrees of success, in terms of how you’re able to fight the Reapers … If you just rip straight down the critical path and try and finish the game as soon as you can, and do very little optional or side stuff … it’ll be a lot more brutal and minimal relative to if you do a lot of stuff. If you really build a lot of stuff and bring people to your side and rally the entire galaxy around you, and you come into the end game with that, then you’ll get an amazing, very definitive ending.

- Casey Hudson, Project Director

Of course, the decisions you made in the previous two games will be at play here as well. How you dealt with Rachni Queen in ME1, for instance, will determine if they even exist in the third game for you to ally with, and either way there will be a certain opportunity open to you that was not available otherwise.

Fans will no doubt be eager to know which characters will be returning, and moreover which will be selectable as squadmates. So far only a few have been confirmed as playable, and there are hints that some will only be selectable for certain sequences. The tactical combat is reportedly much better, though personally I already found ME2′s improved combat mechanics to be a huge turning point in the series and made for some tight shooting. Given how closely BioWare listened to its fanbase in improving ME2 over ME1, I am sure that they will further refine the game systems to arrive at an even better design in ME3. The production of the ME2 DLC during the interim will certainly have been a valuable process for the studio, as is evident in their varying content and quality. The early screenshots shown here indicate a visual style pretty much identical to ME2′s – a desaturated colour palette and gritty textures. I’m sure with how well optimized ME2 was, ME3 will be able to deliver some spectacular scenes. One minor note I feel worth recalling is that film composer Clint Mansell, who produced a minimal and memorable score for indie sci fi flick Moon, has been signed to do the soundtrack, taking over the duties of Jack Wall. It will be interesting to see what his take on the established aural style will be.

More information is due come E3. There are rumours of more Mass Effect-related announcements; suggesting some Kinect functionality in ME3 as well as some kind of MMO in the works. Whatever gets revealed, I’ll be sure to keep you informed.

The last time we looked at Irrational Games’ BioShock Infinite, Martyn walked us through the newly unveiled teaser trailer and some of the early details about the game. Not much to go on in this all-too-brief CG video, a finely crafted reveal of the world of Columbia, but the details paint a grim picture. Posters touting the city’s motto describe an ultra-nationalist, xenophobic society, clearly the core philosophical theme to be explored by the game in true BioShock fashion.

Infinite takes place in 1912 on the massive floating city of Columbia. You take on the role of Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, on a mission to seek and assist in the escape of a young woman by the name of Elizabeth. It seems that she is no run-of-the-mill damsel in distress, however: your NPC companion has a mind and will of her own, and a host of supernatural abilities to boot. She will aid you in combat with her various powers, and you can choose to exploit these abilities at a cost not yet fully defined.

Along the way your progress will be impeded by enemies from either of the two warring factions, the Founders, the patriotic supporters of the city, and the Vox Populi, anti-capitalist Marxian thugs. And this wouldn’t be a BioShock game without some bizarre and distinctive icon; the Songbird may very well be this game’s Big Daddy. A hulking, mechanical bird-like figure with human hands that seems to serve as both Elizabeth’s protector and captor, the Songbird shares a unique relationship with your partner – not quite like that between the Big Daddy and Little Sister perhaps, but just as nuanced.

So that was what we gleaned from the teaser and the press materials during the announcement, but since then we’ve also been treated with a ten-minute uninterrupted gameplay demo, embedded below. Reminiscent of that very first demonstration of BioShock way back when, this video of in-game footage offers a fascinating glimpse of a unique new world crafted by Irrational.

One of the first things you may notice is the monologue that opens the video. One fundamental step forward that Infinite makes from the previous two BioShock titles is in the nature of the main character. In the earlier games the player controlled a cipher who had a personality and backstory, but no voice of his own; his actions controlled by the player and his mindset presumed by his puppeteer. But in Infinite, not only does Booker DeWitt have a past, he plays an active role in the goings on as the player progresses by voicing his thoughts at opportune moments. I see that most other sites can only name recent similar examples of the wry, quipping hero, such as those voiced by the prolific Nolan North, but my memory goes farther back to a much more likely influence on DeWitt’s expressive nature. That is to say, one of the fathers of the immersive sim, Thief, and its sorely missed protagonist Garrett. In that classic series it felt more like you accompanied the master thief on his journey, each tense moment a shared experience and your every triumphant move validated by his assured demeanour.

But I digress. We’re not 20 seconds into the video and we’re inundated with images of American Exceptionalism, an ominous introduction to Columbia. As DeWitt walks through a rundown alley a mechanical horse pulling a broken carriage stutters by. Reaching the streets we’re graced with a gorgeous view of open air, and a huge floating building towering over us. Short-lived wonder, though, as the structure breaks down before us and comes crashing down to the ground at our feet. The place is in a state of disrepair, this much is clear. DeWitt makes his way down the street and along the way we witness some haunting scenes, such as that of a woman sweeping the porch of a burning building, and a dead horse sprawled across the sidewalk.

There’s someone on a bench, feeding crows, and another man under a pavilion preaching his patriotic cant. Only when DeWitt draws his rifle does the man react and shimmer with malevolence. There’s something supernatural going on here that will hopefully be explained at some point. Suffice it to say that both NPCs have at their disposal some powers that DeWitt can gain to his advantage, too. The man commanding the crows leaves behind a curious bottle, which upon drinking bestows DeWitt with the Murder of Crows “vigor”. Flashes of old BioShock here for sure, in the splicer-like enemies and the tonic-like vigors, though no doubt there will be a different explanation to all of this.

The scale of the environments is staggering, with enormous buildings floating in the air and expansive sky beyond. Spatiality – one of Irrational’s trademarks – is strong here, with various kinds of landmarks such as hotels and clocktowers in sight. There’s definitely some nifty new tech powering this game, a big step forward from engine used in the previous games.

There’s hardly any time to take all of that in, however, as a gunfight quickly escalates into a cannon fight, and DeWitt isn’t faring too well just picking enemies off in the distance with his rifle. To close the gap between him and the enemy, he has to make use of a new mechanic known as “the skyline”, a rail transportation system that connects each of the discrete floating islands of Columbia. It certainly looks like a thrilling way to get from place to place, jumping from one rail to the next, attacking enemies as you go. I recall that earlier this year at PAX East some of the Irrational developers gave a panel about the creation of Columbia, which featured some footage of an early version of the game with the rail system already up and running. It’s worth checking out if you’re interested in the genesis of the mechanic.

Back to our gameplay, anyhow. DeWitt lands in the thick of the combat, handling crowds that are surely larger in number than we’ve seen before in a BioShock game. DeWitt employs plasmid [sic] power after power, but it seems the hoard is too overwhelming – when suddenly Miss Elizabeth appears to even the odds. Summoning a rain cloud gives DeWitt the chance to electrify them all at once. Phew! DeWitt and Elizabeth make a good team, but the closing moments of the video present a couple of much tougher foes, the Handyman and the terrifying Songbird. It’s going to take a lot more to bring down these beasts.

That’s all we have of the game to date. Things are ramping up for an eventful E3; there will surely be brand new footage to see. The official site has been revamped, and who knows, there may be some additional marketing – of the viral kind, perhaps, in the same spirit as with previous 2K games. Lord knows I have obsessed over some of it already. Various previews that went live this week have discussed a new demo shown to the press, elaborating on the nature of Elizabeth’s abilities, and head dangerously into spoiler territory – even hinting towards the meaning behind the term ‘Infinite’ in the title. We’ll cover the new details once we see it for ourselves. Catch you back here during E3 week.

While I did enjoy a handful of the huge AAA releases in 2010, I would have to say that I’ve gotten stuck in deep into the indie scene, playing countless magnificent small scale titles be they fleetingly minimal or elaborately ambitious. RPS brought charming indie effort Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale to my attention, for which I’m ever so grateful. A cute little JRPG that turns the institution on its head and offers a twist on the tired formula of grinding and item management, Recettear had me spellbound for the duration of its campaign – after which there is still much more to discover. I will most definitely return to it to tackle its postgame modes. I spent a lot of time platforming too, mostly with VVVVVV and Super Meat Boy, two triumphant celebrations of the genre. Both incredibly challenging, but hopelessly addicting.

Despite being hopelessly terrible at strategy games, I continue to be fascinated by the many indie strategy offerings out there. Flotilla, from Blendo Games – the same nutters behind oddball Gravity Bone – is a quirky turn-based strategy adventure, reminiscent of previous procedural exploration series Infinite Space. I dig the flat-shaded glowing graphics, the simplicity of its mechanics and the bite-sized gameplay, all of which make for a great quick-fix. I am very much looking forward to the asynchronous turn-based Frozen Synapse, due out very soon. I fired up the beta client often the past few months, and enjoyed the Introversion-like aesthetics and intricately detailed command controls. The second Humble Indie Bundle contained a gem of a tower defense game, Revenge of the Titans, which overcame my dislike for the subgenre and wooed me with its distinct look and tight design.

Having joined the smartphone bandwagon this year, I have been trying to find good games for it, but the selection is disappointingly small save for a few fun time-wasters. Angry Birds has been quite the success story, and I can’t deny that I’ve spent many an idle moment trying to topple some towers. Game Dev Studio, the popular iPhone game about making games, finally came to Android so I was able to get a taste of its completely addictive grind.

I had a good time with all of these titles, but what blew me away in 2010 were the three games I was anticipating the most.

Assassin’s Creed 2 came to the PC a little later than its console counterparts, so I had to wait quite a while to get a chance to play it. The ambitious sequel takes off at a brisk pace right where the first game left off, and doesn’t let up until its bizarre, fourth-wall-breaking finale. I haven’t been a big fan of the story in the series, but it’s the moment-to-moment gameplay that brings me back each time – the AC games have the best melee combat mechanics and environment navigation controls I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. Not to mention that there sure is an astounding number of things to do in the beautifully reproduced world of Renaissance Italy. Brotherhood can’t come soon enough.

I was excited about BioShock 2, but I never thought a sequel was particularly needed to the adequately self-contained first game. I was curious whether 2K Marin had anything more to say about the world of Rapture, or if this was just the cashgrab that it could so easily be. They proved themselves worthy of the mantle: BioShock 2 is an understated and eloquent return to the tragic underwater city, with a story that takes the ideas of choice and agency in its predecessor forward into the realm of consequences and legacy. I look forward to playing the well-received DLC mission, Minerva’s Den, and whatever next 2K Marin come up with.

At this point, I have become a complete Mass Effect fanboy. I’ve invested in the world and characters created by BioWare – played the games, read the books – and am fully committed to seeing the trilogy to its end. So Mass Effect 2 was going to be no small event for me, and I couldn’t have been more happy with the way it turned out. It’s a daring reinvention of the RPG Shooter, stripping away many things that were thought staples of the genre and of the series. What was broke, wasn’t fixed: it was removed entirely or replaced with something better. The resulting game felt like a tight third person shooter with a tense plot and a fresh sense of player ownership over the direction of the story. I have my canon Commander Shepard and all of her painstakingly-made decisions ready for the final chapter, and I can’t wait to see how it unfolds.

2010 was a great year for games, and I’ll be revisiting a few of these titles as well as other notable releases to examine them in more depth here in the coming months. 2011 looks promising too, so I’ll be previewing some of the upcoming games that interest me most. Stay tuned!

At least the player above got in-game, though – while personally installing Fallout 3, I was met with a faulty DVD, an “Error: -5006 : 0x8000ffff” notice and finally the magnificent extent of Bethesda’s Windows 7 support. A veritable brick wall, in other words… in any case, New Vegas senior designer Chris Avellone, who also worked as designer on the aforementioned Fallout 2 (a connection that we detailed in an earlier post, From New Reno to New Vegas), quite unsurprisingly explains away the bugs with the length and scope of the game:

I think when you create a game as large as Fallout 3 or New Vegas you are going to run into issues that even a testing team of 300 won’t spot, so we’re just trying to address those as quickly as possible and so is Bethesda. … It’s kind of like the bugs of the real world – the sheer expanse of what you’re dealing with causes problems.

In other words, having never completed Fallout 3, it becomes much easier for me simply to stand back and enjoy the show of fireworks until this latter-day Frankenstein’s monster gets stitched together and squeezed into yet another “Game of the Year” box. I don’t mean at all to imply that I find enjoyment in Obsidian and Bethesda’s misfortunes; instead, what’s exciting to me are the dynamics and mechanics of a major botched launch… after all, instances such as these are rare glimpses into closed-door game design and corporate decision-making at its most tangible, glimpses that only really become available if something goes truly awry.

Which bugs cause the greatest alarm in players? How do players cope with them? Which platform is prioritized, which bugs get fixed first? These are the things that pique my interest. Equally interesting is how a company responds in the face of adversity, adjusting its flow of information. For instance, I’m sure fans were not all too happy to hear Avellone reveal that “Almost everyone who was on New Vegas was slated to move over to another project within a week or two after it went out, so they’re all getting ramped up on other projects now.”What’s extremely curious, though, is how very little actual effect the massive extent of bugs (of which more than 200 have already been fixed) had on the game’s grades. Given New Vegas’ archaic multi-purpose engine, its empty streets and overall poor graphics (that are admittedly largely redeemed by successful art direction), I expected much more fluctuation from the game’s reviews, yet sans a lone 6/10 from Edge and 1Up’s gentle slap on the wrist, Arstechnica’s Ben Kuchera is pretty much the first person I’ve seen comment on the curious lack of criticism on the behalf of critics and players:

You need a franchise with a large amount of goodwill up front and gameplay that’s strong enough to combat a high number of bugs. New Vegas has both, which is why we’re seeing the game gain critical accolades, as well as funny YouTube videos covering the game’s technical flaws.

Even though the reviews remain positive, the company has not completely avoided the debacle unscathed. Take the Escapist’s Shamus Young, for instance:

A few hours later I forgave the game and came back. I managed to win a $16,000 jackpot at the slot machines. (An exceptionally unlikely spin.) And then the game insta-crashed on me. This was like scratching off a winning lottery ticket and then getting hit by a car. A car driven by Obsidian Entertainment.

In his article, Young scrapes together evidence for a history of failed sequels, frequent bugs and poor performance, painting a picture of the company as hired goons that are called in to produce sweatshop-style third-rate sequels. (I’m paraphrasing here.) As harsh as the article is on Obsidian’s track record, it’s not by all means a complete fabrication. But even then I cannot quite shake off the feeling that the Obsidian narrative is undergoing revisionism as we speak.

After all, the manner in which New Vegas so far compares to Fallout 3 seems to be very similar to the company’s previous titles, with the difference between the PC version of Fallout 3 and New Vegas being a mere four points. In fact, this is a narrower gap than exists between the two-part Knights of the Old Republic, where the difference is eight points – and at the time of release, KotOR 2 was touted as a highly successful sequel, something that is quite illustrative of just how short our collective memory is.

I can’t help but feel that the landscape took a sharp turn to the worse with Alpha Protocol, which by all means should be considered a high-calibre flop from the company. Even then, if I had to come away with something from the New Vegas launch is not only the players’ burning desire to keep on going despite having to deal with potential game-ending bugs in the game, but also the utter ingenuity and passion with which fans go about trying to discover, avoid and isolate the various bugs and errors – simply to keep on gaming.

What do you think, is Obsidian really, truly a second-rate sequel company, or is the current backlash more of a matter of perception?

Bear with me as this post is largely hearsay given players in the EU are currently locked out of the game at this juncture, but the general assumption to be made here is that the combat more closely resembles that of other Source titles like Dark Messiah of Might & Magic and Zeno Clash, in turn bridging the gap between an MMORPG and an online dungeon crawler. There are other ways, too, in which the utilization of the Source engine affects the game’s overall design and gameplay. The Source base becomes more evident in the trailer below, illustrating a wider-than-usual array of smooth close combat:

Like Source titles commonly, the game is also rather heavily instanced, with relatively few truly “open-world” locations; instance portals are supposedly littered all about the main city. The game’s Source-based server architecture also explains the key reason as to why the open beta has been so strictly regionalized so far: Unlike MMOs normally, Vindictus operates by having one player serve as host with other players connecting. An EU version of the game, for which a placeholder website already exists, was nevertheless announced during Gamescom earlier this year. This does sadly mean the game’s EU launch – or a beta available in the region – will occur much, much later.

I’m actually quite keen on seeing just how well the gameplay pans out – we are all big fans of both Dark Messiah and Zeno Clash, both which brilliantly show the engine’s ability to lend itself to close combat – and completing smaller-scale instances with four to eight people seems just right for quick dip-ins rather than solitary grinding. The screenshots (borrowed from the Mabinogi Heroes website; for those interested, the Korean website has much more content than its US counterpart) definitely seem dynamic enough. All these things added up together, Vindictus sounds more like a co-op dungeon crawler that is then monetized with an additional layer of MMO-like features.

The game operates on Nexon’s own virtual currency, “NX,” which is used for purchasing various upgrades ranging from clothing and apparel to tokens that are used to enter higher-level dungeons. The instances require an escalating amount of tokens, too, and it appears that if you plan on playing the game every day, purchasing more tokens seems to be your only option. A late beta revision to the token system actually caused a bit of a ruckus in the community after players realized they would not be getting an endless supply of tokens to play with, with the Nexon team going so far as to invite fans to discuss the matter in their office. At the time of writing, lower-tier tokens replenish three days a week. That sounds more like the Korean-style optimal slash maximal grinding that we know to expect.

Another aspect that has been honed down to questionable perfection are the highly sexualized and youthful character models:

While this is strictly speaking nothing new, as every MMO under the sun has been marketed with good-looking women, this time around, as evident in the wallpapers above, the “moe” is extremely strong with the player character designs that additionally go with first name only instead of a character type or class: “Evie,” “Fiona,” “Lann” and so on. In fact, according to Massively, Nexon USA Vice President Min Kim describes the game as

…kind of like 300, except with sexy girls kicking the crap out of stuff as well. So, it’s better than 300.

I suspect the player characters come packaged with first names in the hopes getting players more attached to their characters, but even more than that, the designs are there simply to beg players to spend more NX. The game’s store currently sports such atrocities as a “Captivating Scent Inner Armor” for “true fashionistas.” Gosh, I’m blushing here. In other words, Nexon are basically counting on players to throw about NX in order to take clothes off their characters just as much as they expect them to put on clothing. These money shots below will really tell you all you need to know about this aspect:

I wouldn’t be too surprised to find a good portion of the games press harping in on the marketing and the character designs as sexist, classless and gaudy; they are, surely, but I do also think that they are far more telling of the peculiar all-out design of the Japanese-Korean video game development style than anything else. Whether it will take something away or undermine the team’s efforts is something that remains to be seen very soon.

Internet detectives have traced the site’s domain registry info back to Take Two games, and a rumour some months ago connected the project codename ‘Project Icarus’ to Irrational Games, so it wasn’t difficult to put two and two together. However the company made no acknowledgement of it until yesterday in a tweet.

Things have been building up to this for a while now. Irrational came out of hiding in the beginning of the year with a shiny new site and a focus on community and company culture. Since then they have stuck to a regular schedule of updates that includes podcasts, employee spotlights and a look into the company’s back catalogue with previously unreleased material. Earlier this month fans were invited to call in and try and guess what the new game was going to be, and the clips were featured this week in the latest episode of the Irrational Behaviour podcast.

At long last they have addressed the pressing question of what they’ve been working on since their seminal BioShock three years ago. We thought it was an X-COM remake, but it turns out that that’s someone else’s project. Rumours point to it being a brand new IP in the form of an “ambitious” FPS. So what is it and when will we know? Invitations have been sent out to a press event in New York on August 11, where they will unveil a demo to journalists. The next day will bring us a CG trailer and more information in the next podcast.

It’s been a long wait for fans, but finally we’ll get a chance to see the highly anticipated mystery game; the 12th can’t come quickly enough. I want to know just what the heck Icarus is.

XCOM is the re-imagining of the classic tale of humanity’s struggle against an unknown enemy that puts players directly into the shoes of an FBI agent tasked with identifying and eliminating the growing threat. True to the roots of the franchise, players will be placed in charge of overcoming high-stake odds through risky strategic gambits coupled with heart-stopping combat experiences that pit human ingenuity – and frailty – against a foe beyond comprehension.

A release date hasn’t been specified as yet, but the game will be coming to the XBox 360 and PC and there is a bare-bones website up already. No doubt the news will be received with mixed feelings by the community: the well-loved original series was a mix of turn-based tactical combat and strategic base-building, a far cry from the announced first-person action remake. And the last couple of attempts at changing the genre have not been very successful. Diehard fans can still take solace in the unconfirmed portion of the same rumour, suggesting that Civilization devs Firaxis are handling a turn-based version of the IP. For the rest of us, it’s worth remembering that against all odds 2K Marin more than proved themselves with a worthy sequel in BioShock 2.

Only a single screenshot is available at the official site, not giving much to look at. The newest issue of OXM, out in May, will feature a story on the game; the two covers shown above give a hint of the art style. Judging by the clothing, the game could possibly be set in the 1950s, just like the Destroy All Humans! series. Supporting this is 2K’s ARG in progress, which started a couple of days back and has had fans receiving letters and packages from secret governmental organisations discussing classified cases of human abductions from the Cold War era.

I suppose the biggest question now is, how is it going to work as an FPS? Will there be a strategic element at all? I am reminded of Division 9, the scrapped tactical shooter that Irrational pitched before moving on to BioShock. In addition to the basic SWAT 4 FPS design, there was to be a strategic layer with base-building and resource management. Could this be the foundation for XCOM’s design?

So if 2K Marin is handling XCOM, what’s Irrational actually up to? Just the other day there were hints that it’s an original IP they’re working on, which we have more reason to believe now that we know it isn’t X-COM related. Whatever it is, we most probably will hear about it at the upcoming E3 in mid-June, as well as more information on XCOM.

It wouldn’t be the only thing Sega’s screwing up: the game was initially to drop in October last year, but was then pushed back to “Summer 2010″ without an announcement, only to be finally dated for May 28th in Europe, and June 1st in the US. Much of the team has already moved on to their next title, Fallout: New Vegas, also slated for this year.

So, Alpha Protocol. The “first modern day spy role-playing game” puts you in the shoes of Agent Michael Thorton on a covert ops mission to investigate terrorist activity and all that jazz. It seems to be more traditional with its RPG mechanics than most RPG shooters these days (which usually only go as far as incorporating “RPG elements”), featuring a full skills system allowing you to customize your character’s physical attributes and ability to use weapons and gadgets. Each ability tree can be upgraded with skill points with passive and active skill milestones. A point in the Pistols tree, for example, can improve accuracy with the weapon; one of the passive skills early on improves critical hit chances, and an example of an active skill is the Chain Shot, which momentarily slows down time to let you mark one or more enemies before your character executes an efficient series of shots to take them all down. It reminds me of the V.A.T.S. feature in Fallout 3, or perhaps the Mark and Execute feature in the upcoming Splinter Cell: Conviction.

The shooter side of the game appears to be pretty solid so far. I’ll have to be honest, I find the animations and overall action to look a little rough, but I’m willing to forgive that if it feels right when actually playing it. It’s kind of hard to know for sure, anyway, with the walkthrough videos being demonstrated with fiddly joypads, making the player look like a fumbling idiot. A familiar problem, sigh. The game focuses on allowing you to be an expert (read: badass) in whichever area you choose, fulfilling the fantasy of being one of the three J.B.s, Jack Bauer, James Bond or Jason Bourne. The cover art most certainly reflects this, giving off that espionage vibe well and an improvement over the old art. I thought at first that the subtitle “The Espionage RPG” was a little strange, but looking back at some of the developer’s older titles it made a little more sense.

Another feature of note is the conversation system. Presenting you with something resembling the conversation wheel in the Mass Effect games, the game gives you a choice of conversational tones as opposed to actual lines, which lets you direct your responses in a more general way. Additionally, you only have a limited time to pick one, à la Indigo Prophecy, hence declining to respond is an option too. With Avellone behind the writing, I do look forward to the story – clichéd trailers notwithstanding. The game promises branching story paths, leading to not only multiple endings but “multiple middles” as Obsidian explains in the video below. Every character presents you with a choice in how to treat them, and there are “ripple effects” of every action resulting in consequences that are not necessarily “in terms of good or bad, but just the reactivity of the world to what you do”. The complexity of the narrative and its many branches, something Avellone tries to describe on his blog, is intriguing and probably the biggest draw for me.

Alpha Protocol launches on May 28 in Europe and June 1 in the US, for the PC, XBox 360 and PS3; if you preorder it on Steam you can get a free copy of Gas Powered Games’ Space Siege.

The company has also started an underground advertising campaign for the game – one that might not reflect as well on the game’s profile as they might have hoped, for reasons that are rather out of the company’s hands: While Valve is going all out and wooing the games press with massive high-profile PR stunts like there was no tomorrow, all we got from Eidos was these lousy renders:

Then again, it seems almost cruel to expect the same level of commitment as we do from Valve at this point, so… in case you’re stoked to see these images, you should keep on checking out the official thread in the Eidos forums.

In the meantime, do check out our Deus Ex 3 teaser trailer image gallery which contains full captioned explanations for each subliminal image present in the trailer (It was a lot of work).

Then, Ron Gilbert and DeathSpank.

According to EA Partners, DeathSpank will be published via Xbox Live and PSN:

EA Partners … and leading independent developer Hothead Games announced today an exclusive publishing agreement that will bring DeathSpank to Xbox LIVE® Arcade and PlayStation®Network in 2010.

Does “exclusive” mean what I think it means? In that case, I suggest a solution:

Now spank it
Into shape
Shape it up
Get straight
Go forward
Move ahead
Try to detect it
It’s not too late
To spank it
Spank it good

Spank you, Ron! Spank you very much. In the meantime, new screens for you console folks:

From the very early work-in-progress demo that was shown, it appears that the game is about infiltration and sabotage. Where Uplink was a game of hacking and espionage on the intangible, ethereal level of the internet, Subversion takes place on the physical, infrastructural level, with the same kind of goals to accomplish. In the examples given the player was tasked with finding a secure server room in an office building, and had certain tools at his disposal including a stolen keycard and a wallscanner. A second run demonstrated a brute-force approach with guns and explosives. The way RPS’ Jim Rossignol puts it excites me:

On a wider, genre basis, it sits roughly in the Commandos area of careful execution of planned procedures. Or perhaps it is to Syndicate as Thief was to the shooter tradition…

The visuals of the game will no doubt use the neon-retro style that Introversion is known for. As you can see in the early development screenshots, flat-shaded and wireframe graphics portray the city blocks and interiors. It suggests an abstraction of the action, placing the player in the role of an overseer, able to witness the situation from various camera views.

As explained in the blog posts (and in the video embedded below), the art assets like the buildings and room layouts are all created procedurally – that is to say, generated by a computer algorithm as opposed to hand-crafted by a person. Changing certain values or randomising them produces completely different results, and in this way whole cities and offices can be created. Perhaps this will be done every time you play a level in Subversion, which would mean that each playthrough would have different maps to infiltrate.

Update:
Chris Delay of Introversion has updated the blog with a post about the Subversion demo, with screenshots of the build shown. Hit the jump to check them out.

Chris explicitly calls the game a “spiritual successor” to Uplink, confirming our first impressions. Have a look at the post for more early information including the ambitious premise.

You will be using Sabotage, Social Engineering and Grifting, custom Electrical and Mechanical devices, Distractions, Hacking, Stealth, Acrobatics, Precision demolitions, Trickery, whatever gets the job done. In the best case scenarios your enemies will never know you were even there.

The game is still probably very far from completion, but be sure that I’ll be watching very closely for updates and will post them as they come. Below, the magic of procedural generation.